Every eight years, state housing regulators give cities and counties across California an especially dreaded homework assignment: Make a plan for a bunch of new homes. Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration assigns localities goals to hit at four different affordability levels. Collectively, the numbers represent the housing department's best estimate of the number of new homes needed to match any expected population growth and to chip away at the state's decades-in-the-making shortage of affordable places to live. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.

This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.

This summer, a massive chunk of the state, including all of Southern California, passed its halfway mark. But the data is grim: less than a third of cities and counties are on track to permit enough "above moderate" units, the category that typically refers to market-rate housing.

The progress report for more affordable types of housing is even bleaker. Only 32 jurisdictions — less than 6% — are on track to hit their "very low" targets, referring to housing within financial reach of anyone earning less than half the typical local income.

Only five jurisdictions in the entire state are permitting at a pace to hit all four income targets. Four are the lightly populated unincorporated bits of small, mostly rural counties: Plumas, Napa, Yolo and Mono. The fifth is Placerville, a town of roughly 11,000 people in the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento.

For example, the city of Irvine in Orange County was told to plan for 8,671 market-rate units by 2030. Now halfway there, the city has issued more than 6,000, making it one of the minority of cities to be on pace to reach its target for above-moderate housing. But for more affordable digs, Irvine, like most California cities, is far behind: it has permitted just 9% of the very low-income housing needed and a mere 3% for the next most affordable category (for those earning up to 80% of the regional median).

Critics of the state's planning process have long stressed that California's targets are unrealistic and that local governments can only do so much. "Cities cannot require developers to develop and cities don't build housing," said Jason Rhine, a lobbyist with the League.