The City of Yorba Linda was actively involved in the 6th cycle Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) preparation process with the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). Yorba Linda Councilwoman Peggy Huang served as the Chair of SCAG’s RHNA Subcommittee in 2019, which is the committee responsible for providing detailed analysis and recommendations to SCAG’s Regional Council on the RHNA methodology. Unfortunately, the RHNA Subcommittee’s recommendation for an equitable housing solution, which was unanimously supported by SCAG’s Community, Economic and Human Development Committee, was overturned through a last-minute decision by its Regional Council to redistribute significantly more housing into Orange County and Los Angeles County than was initially recommended by the Committee. This resulted in Yorba Linda’s draft RHNA allocation increasing from 200 to 2,415 units. Importantly, the City does not build housing. The City’s role is to create zoning that would theoretically allow that number of housing units to be built over the RHNA period; in this case, 2021 to 2029.

City staff, City Council, and individual residents (see below) have made efforts to lower Yorba Linda’s RHNA obligation, but these were rejected by SCAG and the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD).

The City put together the above video for the RHNA Appeals Board outlining many of the same concerns that the City is hearing from the community about why it did not make sense to add 2,415 additional housing units into Yorba Linda.