Regional board adopts housing‑allocation methodology after state approval, flags local capacity concerns

The Mendocino Council of Governments on June 1 adopted a methodology approved by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to allocate the region’s housing need, and simultaneously directed staff to issue the draft allocation to member agencies.

James, MCOG staff, told the board HCD’s final determination for the region is 6,456 units over the next eight years after the agency reviewed multiple iterations of the methodology. Staff said they appealed the determination but were unsuccessful and worked with a methodology committee composed of planning staff from the five jurisdictions to revise the approach before HCD’s approval.

Officials from Ukiah spoke during the discussion and said the numbers assigned to their city felt "unrealistic" given existing zoning, parcel sizes and local capacity. "It's almost like a 10% growth in each jurisdiction," a representative for Ukiah said, expressing concern that the HCD allocation did not reflect local constraints.

Board members and staff said they had made changes to the methodology where feasible but that statutory compliance required moving forward with the approved figures. The board discussed preparing a letter to HCD that documents the region’s concerns and context to accompany the draft allocation.

The motion on the item — to approve the methodology and issue the draft allocation to agencies so they can proceed with housing‑element work — passed on a roll‑call vote with all present directors voting yes.

Next steps: staff will transmit the draft allocation to local agencies for their housing elements and send the board’s letter of concerns to HCD as part of the record.