Seal Beach Community Development Director Alexa Smittle updated the council on the status of the city’s Housing Element during the July 22 council meeting.
Background
California requires cities to update the Housing Elements of their General Plans at regular intervals. The state has required Seal Beach to plan for 1,243 places for people to live (called a Regional Housing Needs Assessment). The state does not require the city to build anything. The city cannot legally force anyone to build anything. But the state can penalize cities that don’t plan for their allotted Regional Housing Needs Assessment. (“Seal Beach Housing Element, Zoning Code updates,” at sunnews.org.)
Update
“As council remembers, in April we submitted a revised draft of the Housing Element to
HCD,” Smittle said, referring to the California Housing and Community Development Department.
“They took their full 60 days of review and we did receive comments back
last month,” Smittle said.
“Then we had a one-on-one meeting with our analyst that’s been assigned to us for this round. Overall, it was a very positive conversation,” Smittle said.
“It looks as though we are finally very close to having their agreement,” Smittle said.
She said Seal Beach was on track.
“So the next steps: We’ve actually already redlined the Draft Housing Element. Most of the corrections and things that HCD was looking for are clarifications, a little bit of additional information,” Smittle said.
“There are no major changes from the last draft that will be implemented, which is really, really good news,” Smittle said.
“When we have that completely cleaned up, and run it by our legal team. We’re also setting up another meeting with our analyst so that we can meet one-on-one with him; let him know the changes that we’ve implemented in response to their comments,” Smittle said.
“Hopefully, he says we’re on the right track. We will then re-submit the Housing Element after making it publicly available on our website for seven days, send it back to HCD and, fingers crossed, we will be given a finding of substantial compliance at that time, which is really, really great news,” Smittle said.
“This process has really kind of been hung up waiting for that finding of substantial
compliance,” Smittle said.
“Once we have that, we can finish up the EIR that’s been underway,” Smittle said.
“All of this most likely won’t come back to council until somewhere in April of next year,” Smittle said.
She said the council would not bring the matter to council until the EIR can be completed.
