☆ Opinion: Beware 2026, when developers will get free reign to build high-congestion Bay Area projects (2/3)
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Says past Palo Alto mayor Lydia Kou: Sacramento completely failed at promoting housing production, yet still wants cities to comply with the “un-compliable” Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). In Part 2 of this Opp Now exclusive, Kou explains how cities that fail to meet the RHNA cycle midpoint quota by 2026 will lose control of the approvals process. Expensive, lousy projects will fall short of RHNA but still plague midpen neighborhoods with traffic congestion, environmental havoc, and an unraveling of the social fabric.
Opportunity Now: So the housing needs assessment requires 441,176 new units in the Bay Area by 2031.
Lydia Kou: Yes, and we’re holding our breath for the midpoint of the RHNA cycle, which comes in 2026.
But the reality is, RHNA has been and is an expensive failure. Nowhere near that amount of housing will actually get built. The 220,000 below market rate units require subsidies that aren’t there—even RM4 funds would have been maybe 20% of what RHNA actually needs.
The other half is market rate, which won’t happen because housing is expensive to build in California; and with the population not growing anymore, the number of high-wage people who can afford new construction isn’t growing either.
ON: What’s the harm in setting a high, aspirational goal for the Bay Area’s housing needs assessment?
LK: At some level, RHNA is all academic, except the whole Sacramento exercise has cost cities a couple billion dollars in basically paperwork. I wish we’d spent that on something useful instead; say, teaching more kids to read—and, oh yeah, to do basic math.
Everybody in Sacramento knows this, by the way. The things that would really make a difference—construction costs, population, income inequality—Sacramento has no control over. They know that. Everybody there knows the emperor has no clothes, but nobody wants to say it.
ON: What will happen to cities that can’t meet the RHNA midpoint housing quota?
LK: There are going to be many approvals of applications for building, and no oversight because the state will be in control. Anything can get built, and people will find out after the fact because there will be no requirement to notify neighbors anymore.
But even then, only a fraction will actually get built, because the underlying economics just don’t work without high-wage population growth. So there’ll be pretty much the same amount of housing, still expensive, just in crappier projects. And cities across the state will have to waste more time and money trying to comply with the un-compliable.
Of course traffic congestion, parking in residential neighborhoods, no parking availability for small business operators, natural environment and biodiversity, and historical preservation (cultural events) are not part of the discussion. All of these considerations affect quality of life and what makes up the fabric of a community.
Once you get past political talk and look at actual data, the reality is that Sacramento is spinning 'round and 'round like a broken record. Sacramento completely failed at housing. Worse than failed—in the process, they've forced 500 cities to spend a couple billion dollars on trying to comply with the economically un-compliable; and they've picked needless fights and hurt communities in the process.
ON: What do you think about the phrase “density is destiny”?
LK: I do not agree with that. That's somebody dictating how your life is supposed to be, that you're supposed to live in a little apartment, a little box. That is the ideology of urban supremacism; and one of its major aims is to eradicate single-family homes, among other cultish ideals.
Big tech corporations and Wall Street seek profit and control. It is no surprise they lobby state legislators to support one-size-fits-all laws. They have prevailed in part because it is overwhelming for cities, let alone individuals, to track the thousands of pieces of legislation that are proposed.
Essentially, this is the financialization of our communities. All the legislation that pushes dense housing is putting people into little apartments. The legislature and big corporations then have more leverage over tenants.
Homeowners in condos, townhouses, and single-family homes put a lot of effort into enriching our community. The same is true for long-term tenants. We all get involved because we value quality of life.
Density is destiny is dogma and short-sightedness. Trickle-down housing is a lie.
ON: So there’s higher tenant turnaround with high density projects?
LK: Yes, tenants in high density projects start needing more space due to life changes. They discover they need a car and have to pay extra for the parking space because there isn't enough parking. Then there's more congestion on the street.
Tenants may have to pay rent for each pet they get. (Hopefully they don't have to pay for fish pets.)
On top of that, cities have to have the right ratio of police and fire, to match the density of the population, which means the city's costs go up.
ON: What about the effect on the environment?
LK: We haven’t even done an environmental impact study on any of this, on the increase of our housing element.
A lot of the “build, baby build” people also call themselves environmentalists who care about climate change. But they’re talking about building infill. That means they have to demolish, in order to put something new up. Then add more concrete and steel. How much greenhouse gas does that create? And then there’s the trees that have to be removed.
It's so destructive to our natural environment and reduces the habitat for creatures by eliminating single-family residential backyards.
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