Item 28 - Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan

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Santa Ana 2020 Urban Water Management Plan arcadis.com 4-9 priority for providing water service to lower income households. A lower income household is defined as a household earning below 80% of the MHI. DWR recommends retail suppliers rely on the housing elements of city or county general plans to quantify planned lower income housing with the City's service area (DWR, 2020). RHNA assists jurisdictions in updating general plan's housing elements section. The RHNA identifies additional housing needs and assesses households by income level for the City through 2010 decennial Census and 2005-2009 American Community Survey data. The sixth cycle of the RHNA covers the planning period of October 2021 to October 2029. The SCAG adopted the RHNA Allocation Plan for this cycle on March 4, 2021. The California Department of Housing and Community Development reviewed the housing elements data submitted by jurisdictions in the SCAG region and concluded the data meets statutory requirements for the assessment of current housing needs. Under the assumption that the RHNA household allocations adequately represent ratios of the City’s overall future income categories (not the exact ratio of all household by income but a conservative one for low-income household estimates), the RHNA low-income percentage can be used to estimate future low income demands. One objective of RHNA is to increase affordable housing, therefore RHNA has been allocating additional low-income households to various regions. Because relying on the RHNA distribution of households by income category is likely to produce an overestimate of low-income water demands, this approach represents a conservative projection of future low-income water use. Table 4-6 presents the City’s RHNA housing allocation. RHNA classifies low income housing into two categories: very low income (<30% - 50% MHI), and low income (51% - 80% MHI). Altogether 30.6% of the City’s allocated housing need for the planning period of October 2021 to October 2029 are considered low-income housing (SCAG, 2021). Table 4-6: SCAG 6th Cycle Household Allocation Based on Median Household Income Household Category by Income Number of Households % of Total Allocated Households Very Low Income 586 18.9% Low Income 362 11.7% Moderate Income 523 16.9% Above Moderate Income 1,624 52.5% Total Future Allocated Households 3,095 100.0% By applying the percentage of low-income housing from the SCAG report to the total projected SF/MF residential demand calculated in Table 4-3 above, low-income demand can be conservatively estimated for both SF and MF through 2045. For example, the total low-income single family residential demand is projected to be 3,664 AF in 2025 and 3,400 AF in 2045 (Table 4-7).