Under California’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) laws, each local government is required to work with the state government to establish what is called a housing element. The housing element identifies sites that can be redeveloped to meet regional housing needs, within an eight year timeframe. If the city can’t find a usable site under their current zoning laws, the zoning laws need to be modified. In Southern California, the housing element deadline was October 15, 2021. The deadline for Northern California is later this year.
Five cities — Bradbury, La Habra Heights, Laguna Hills, South Pasadena, and Vernon — failed to submit a housing element altogether prior to the deadline, and a sixth, Manhattan Beach, submitted a plan that indicated a site that could not be redeveloped in a reasonable timeframe. The site indicated was the Manhattan Country Club, which was purchased in 2017 and the City of Manhattan Beach cannot guarantee its availability by 2029. Without the 149 units provided by this redevelopment, Manhattan Beach fails to meet its regional housing needs. In response, the nonprofit organization Californians for Homeownership has sued all six of these cities.
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More: https://www.car.org/aboutus/mediacenter/newsreleases/2022releases/ca4housingelements