Coronado added 37 housing units in 2025, mostly single-family homes and accessory dwelling units, and not one of them qualified as “affordable” under California’s standards. That leaves the city essentially stuck on its lower-income RHNA goals for the 2021–2029 cycle, even as city leaders move to hike developer in-lieu fees and buy market-rate properties to convert into subsidized units, a fix that will not happen overnight.
According to the Coronado Times, the city’s annual Housing Element progress report, scheduled for City Council review on March 17, shows that all 37 units built in 2025 were priced at market rate. Of those, 27 were single-family homes and the rest were accessory dwelling units. The same report details Coronado’s RHNA progress by income group: 217 of 272 above-moderate units, about 79.7 percent, and zero reported units in the moderate, low and very-low income categories. If the council signs off on the report, staff will be cleared to submit the annual filing to state agencies before the April 1 deadline.
What the RHNA math looks like
Coronado’s draft 2021–2029 Housing Element sets a RHNA allocation of 912 units that the city must plan for in its sites inventory and programs: 312 very low, 169 low, 159 moderate and 272 above-moderate. The city’s draft Housing Element outlines those figures along with the policy steps intended to meet them. State reviewers commonly expect cities to build in an extra planning buffer of roughly 15 percent to avoid coming up short, a practice reflected in state and coastal agency reports.
Fees, a stopgap purchase and why production is slow
Looking for a way to generate money for subsidized homes, the council in mid-2025 approved a phased-in affordable-housing in-lieu fee that starts at $25 per square foot and is set to rise toward $55 per square foot by 2029, after public debate about the economic impacts, according to The Coronado News. The city has already started putting those dollars to work. In December, the council signed off on purchasing an eight-unit D Avenue complex for just under $6 million, using $1.8 million from the in-lieu fund and an intra-fund general-fund loan to cover the rest. The units are currently market rate, and staff say they will be phased into affordability over time, according to meeting coverage by Coronado Times…