Cathedral City approves plans for about 2,500 housing units
Cathedral City Council approved an updated Housing Element – a state-mandated eight-year plan that addresses local housing needs – on Wednesday.
This plan describes how the city will facilitate development of 2,549 new housing units for its sixth cycle Regional Housing Needs Allocation for 2021 to 2029. RHNA is the amount of housing cities must plan for in order to meet demand created by growth.
The California Department of Housing and Community Development determined Southern California’s sixth cycle RHNA is around 1.3 million housing units. The Southern California Association of Governments then divided these housing units among jurisdictions.
Cathedral City’s fifth cycle RHNA was 600 units, meaning its current RHNA is an almost 325% increase. Its fourth cycle RHNA was 3,329 units.
Councilmember Nancy Ross questioned how these numbers are determined. It's like make believe, she said.
“I sit on the SCAG Housing Policy Leadership Academy and I have asked again and again and again ‘How do you formulate RHNA numbers?’ to everybody I can find and their answers are something like ‘Well, it's complicated,’” Ross said.
Nicole Criste, a consultant from Terra Nova Planning & Research, Inc. said it is an “exceedingly complex” combination of anticipated jobs, growth in the city and relationships between the distance of jobs and the city.
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Cathedral City’s 2,549 housing units are divided into extremely low income, very low income, low income, moderate income and above moderate income levels. Criste said the purpose of the Housing Element is to guide the development of housing throughout the community with a focus on affordability.
“The city’s responsibility is to facilitate and make sure that there are not obstacles to housing,” she said. “It is not the city’s responsibility to build that housing.”
The updated Housing Element identified vacant land that could be used to add units in the downtown commercial, downtown residential neighborhood, mixed-use commercial, multiple-family residential and single-family residential zones.
It mentioned the Veterans Village project, which will create 60 extremely low, very low and low income units for veterans. This development is expected to be complete by the end of 2022, according to the Housing Element.
Cathedral City also identified 15 locations for affordable housing, including Mountain View Apartments, Cathedral Palms Apartments and Creekside Apartments.
“We are also going to be bringing back to you shortly changes for the zoning ordinance that are required, relating to parking requirements for homeless shelters, supportive housing, manufactured homes and accessory dwelling unit regulations that we need to comply with,” Criste said.
Cathedral City will next submit the Housing Element to HCD for certification, according to a city staff report.
Ani Gasparyan covers the western Coachella Valley cities of Desert Hot Springs and Cathedral City. Reach her at ani.gasparyan@desertsun.com.