Show All Answers

1. What is the Housing Element

The Housing Element is one of the mandatory elements that must be included in a City’s General Plan. The Housing Element provides goals, polices, and actions that help the City plan for the housing needs for all segments of the City’s population while maintaining consistency with other General Plan Elements. The Housing Element does not require local governments to actually build housing, but rather facilitate the improvement and development of housing for all economic segments of the population.

2. What is included in the Housing Element

The Housing Element must cover the following topics:

• Review of previous element
• Housing needs assessment
• Inventory and analysis of adequate sites
• Analysis of potential governmental and non-governmental constraints
• Housing policies and programs
• Quantified objectives

3. Who prepares and certifies the Housing Element

The City of Arroyo Grande prepares the Housing Element, with the assistance of consultants at PlaceWorks Inc. State law requires the California Department of Housing and Community Development to review and certify the update.

4. How much housing do we need to plan for?

State law requires each city and county plan for their “fair share” of the region’s housing needs. The fair share is determined by each region’s Council of Government through a process known as the Regional Housing Needs Allocations (RHNA). RHNA is produced by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) and identifies the projected housing needs in the region as part of the periodic updating of local Housing Elements of the General Plan. HCD finalized its RHNA allocation determination for the San Luis Obispo region at 10,810 units for the 10-year production period (December 31, 2018 to December 31, 2028). The City of Arroyo Grande’s RHNA for the housing cycle is 692 units as outlined in the table below.

For the 2020-2028 Housing Element cycle, the RHNA assigned to the City of Arroyo Grande are as follows:

Income Category	Number of Units
Very Low Income	170
Low Income	107
Moderate Income	124
Above Moderate Income	291
Total	692