The following is an update from the United Neighbors group:

Hi Everyone,

It was great seeing many of you yesterday.  As a recap, we focused our discussion on the Housing Element that each city must submit to the State.  The Housing Element needs to show where housing might be built within each community to meet the RHNA requirements.   We want everyone to take a minute to look at what your individual community faces by going to your Planning Department’s website and find their interactive maps. Look at what they have in mind for your community.  If you are concerned at what you see, we hope you will take the time to identify more appropriate areas in your community and have a discussion with your councilmember. We will help you if you do not know how to get started and we strongly recommend that you reach out to your adjacent communities so you can work together.

We will have a workshop showing you how to do this at our June meeting.

You can get a fairly good idea of what your individual community’s RHNA requirement is by figuring what percent of your city’s population your community is and then multiply that percentage by the RHNA numbers required of your city.  Once you have that number you will have a good idea what you are up against.

We know many groups will be fighting the RHNA numbers and we support that effort but don’t lose sight of the fact that once your community gets upzoned for more density the law prevents you from down zoning it.  We encourage everyone to find locations within your community where you can support the housing you might be asked to provide and fight against areas that aren’t right.  If you do your research, we think you will have an easier time working with your council member for their support.

We have community groups already working together.  The more of us that get engaged the better an outcome we will have.  We are all here to help.

Best,

Maria Pavlou Kalban, mpkalban@gmail.com