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It’s put up or shut up time for dozens of cities across the San Francisco Bay Area.
Last January, local governments across the region were required to submit “housing elements” to state regulators — future development blueprints that spell out how each jurisdiction intends to make room for its share of the more than 2.5 million new homes the Newsom administration wants to see built across California by the end of the decade.
One year later, on Jan. 31, many of those same jurisdictions are now required to turn key components of those blueprints into law. That means re-inking their zoning maps, converting thousands of suburban-style tracts into apartment-ready parcels and proving to the state that they are, in fact, going to do what they said they would do to address California’s chronic housing shortage.
The Bay Area zoning crunch is just the latest inflection point in a years-long tussle between California’s housing agency and local governments over how many new homes California needs to plan for and where this anticipated influx of development ought to go. The Bay Area’s end-of-month due date is the first big one in a series of rolling regional deadlines. Next up: Santa Barbara County on Feb. 15.