Lodi council approves 2025 housing-element progress report after hearing on falling permits

Lodi City Council on March 18 approved the city’s 2025 annual progress report on the sixth-cycle housing element and directed staff to transmit the document to the California Department of Housing and Community Development and the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research.

Deputy Director of Community Development Cynthia Marsh told the council the report is required by state law and tracks progress on the city’s housing programs and its regional housing needs allocation (RHNA). Marsh said the city’s assigned RHNA for 2023–2031 is roughly 3,399 units and stressed the report measures zoning capacity and program implementation—not a mandate to construct that total.

The presentation highlighted a substantial decline in 2025 compared with 2024: entitlements dropped from 371 units in 2024 to only a handful of approvals in 2025, and issued residential building permits fell from 180 in 2024 to 66 in 2025. Of the 2025 permits counted in the report, Marsh said 12 were accessory dwelling units and 54 were single-family homes; there were no permits in 2025 recorded for very low– or low-income categories. Marsh said two larger multifamily projects (known in the presentation as Lakehouse and 12 West) are in the permit pipeline and are expected to add activity and reported permits in 2026.

Marsh described actions the city has taken to support future housing capacity, including rezoning about 600 parcels to add roughly 3,000 units of theoretical capacity, advancing the downtown specific plan to encourage infill and mixed-use development, and processing phased code amendments to comply with recent state law changes. She also noted city involvement in affordable-project pipelines such as the Saleless Park (sic) housing project and the Main Street transitional housing project, which staff expects to report on in next year’s APR.

Council members asked clarifying questions about the difference between entitlements and issued permits, timelines for issuance and completion, and whether cost-of-construction or annexation activity figures into the city’s counts. Marsh said the APR reports permits issued during the calendar year and that some projects in review will show up in future reports once permits are issued.

The council opened and closed the public hearing with no public testimony before voting to approve the report. The council’s action directs staff to forward the report to the state agencies as required by the April 1 submittal deadline.