Consultants tell Loma Linda council city has adequate sites but must amend zoning rules to meet state housing law

Simran Malhotra, principal at Ramey and Associates (now Alta Planning and Design), and consultant Veronica Tammen presented a mid‑cycle review of the City of Loma Linda’s sixth‑cycle housing element during a pre‑meeting study session, concluding the city retains surplus site capacity but must revise zoning and development standards to comply with state law and facilitate housing production.

The consultants told the council and the public that the city’s certified housing element (May 2024) includes 12 programs across five areas — adequate sites, removing governmental constraints, facilitating affordable housing, housing for special populations and affirmatively furthering fair housing — and that the consultants’ review finds “a little bit of surplus in each income category.” Simran Malhotra summarized the three‑part presentation and invited Veronica Tammen to explain the analysis and recommendations.

Tammen said RHNA (regional housing needs allocation) income categories are indexed to county area median income and therefore reflect the metropolitan statistical area rather than local household incomes. “It’s based on the median income in the county, not locally in the city,” Tammen said, describing why small university cities can appear different from more rural parts of the same county. She warned that the city is not currently fully compliant with recent state changes and walked the council through no‑net‑loss requirements under SB 166, which require accounting for site capacity when projects are approved and, if a shortfall occurs, finding replacement sites or making equivalent sites available within statutory timeframes.

Consultants reviewed compliance items and specific zoning topics recommended for amendment: permitting emergency shelters in zones that also allow housing, allowing limited residential use (by conditional use permit) in a small part of the business park so shelters can be allowed by right, clarifying residential care and group‑home rules, allowing low‑barrier navigation centers in multifamily/mixed‑use zones, and reconciling inconsistencies in the IHC (institutional and health care) zone and planning‑area policies. On emergency shelters, Malhotra noted the city’s point‑in‑time homeless count is 19, meaning the shelter capacity requirement would be small but the zoning must still allow for it.

They identified code constraints that can prevent projects from reaching the densities the code allows: high interior side setbacks that prohibit driveway access and parking, prescriptive open‑space and amenity requirements, minimum parking and garage requirements, and minimum unit size rules. Malhotra illustrated with R2 and R3 examples showing a duplex or a multifamily parcel where combined standards leave insufficient room to build the number of units the code’s density would permit.

The consultants’ preliminary recommendations include simplifying setback calculations, allowing driveway or parking access through side setbacks, permitting carports as an option to garages in multifamily projects, changing guest parking from per‑bedroom to per‑unit, reducing minimum open‑space requirements and allowing required amenities inside open space, and removing an exceptionally strict local energy certification requirement that consultants said was infeasible for most residential development.

Lorena, a city staff member who introduced the session, said staff and consultants will draft code amendments and return them for Planning Commission review and public hearings before the City Council, with hearings targeted for late summer or early fall. No formal action was taken at the study session; multiple council members asked for additional analysis and public outreach before any adoption vote.

Next procedural steps: staff will draft the proposed zoning text amendments, publish an online site‑inventory map for public review, and present the amendments at a public study session and hearings to allow the council to adopt, amend or reject changes.