Opinion: Irvine City Council’s Attempt to Cheat on Housing

  • August 14, 2024, 12:11 pm America/Los_Angeles

On August 13, 2024, Irvine City Council held a public hearing on the General Plan update to identify capacity for up to 57,000 units of housing as part of state housing requirements. State law requires cities to identify enough housing capacity such that it is likely that the city will actually build a target number of affordable housing units over the next 20 years. For Irvine, the state target (RHNA) was 23,000 units. The city had already previously appealed this target to the state and been rejected. This context is important to keep in mind when the city council took an unbelievable vote. They voted in favor of the General Plan update, but also directed staff to count UCI-built housing, even pre-existing ones, towards the state target.

Attempting to count student-exclusive as housing units for the purpose of state mandated housing is nonsensical and goes into absurd territory when trying to count ones that already exist towards new construction. There are 20,000 UCI housing units present and future, almost the RHNA target, so this would essentially mean Irvine would opt out of building any real housing for the next 20 years. Imagine an elementary school student given an assignment by the teacher to grow 10 flowers. Let’s call this student Mickey. Mickey decides that growing 10 flowers is too much work and notices some weeds in his parents’ garden. He counts the existing weeds and the one that’s starting to poke out of the ground towards the 10 flowers he’s supposed to grow. Mickey takes a picture and presents his weeds to the teacher when the assignment is due. What would the teacher’s response be? Now imagine the response of the state Housing and Community Development agency when they see what Irvine is attempting to do. The scolding of a teacher towards an elementary school student cheating on his assignment would pale in comparison to the wrath of a state agency tasked with tackling California’s housing crisis.

Student housing is not generally accessible, permanent housing. Anyone who is not a student cannot live there, and they cannot provide a long term place to live for a resident of a city. California has a deep shortage of housing due to decades of underbuilding, and every city must do its part to resolve this crisis. When more than a third of county residents are considering leaving due to the immense cost of housing, there must be a full-throated effort to build more housing and affordable housing, which approving the General Plan update’s option 1 (up to 57k) would do. There is no room for gimmicky games with all the cleverness of a third grader cheating on an assignment.

The consequences from the state would be dire. The city council voted to approve option 2 of the General Plan, which sets a development cap at the RHNA target of 23,000. If the city attempts to count UCI housing towards this and effectively caps development at 3000 for the next 20 years (for context, Irvine historically builds 3000 housing units per YEAR), then there is a high likelihood the state will decertify the city’s housing element. That means a loss of grant funding, a loss of permitting authority, and builder’s remedy, which would force the city to approve all developments disregarding its own zoning. If there’s anything that would destroy the master plan, it’s playing stupid games to win stupid prizes.

In 45 days, the city council must take another vote to approve the General Plan finally (due to a procedural requirement of 45 days in between two hearings to override the airport authority’s objections about new development in IBC). Staff will have asked the state HCD if Irvine can count UCI housing towards RHNA requirements, and the answer will clearly be no. At that point, the city must approve the General Plan without accounting gimmicks, or Irvine and its residents will face the consequences.