The frenzy of housing legislation adopted in recent years, designed to increase the zoned capacities of California, has had ironic consequences for many planning departments: a shortage of the very planners who are needed to implement those laws locally.
It’s not exactly a shortage of planners, but, in some cities a shortage of the right type of planners at the right times. Authoritative statewide numbers on hiring and openings are hard to come by. But planners are feeling the pressure.
“I think it highly depends on the agency. But, in general, I think it has been challenging for public agencies to hire planners post-pandemic,” said Andrea Ouse, president of the California Chapter of the American Planning Association.
That challenge extends to many corners of the planning world.
“I have definitely heard in lots of different contexts that planning departments across the Bay Area, and agencies at the state level and even nonprofits — everybody is feeling incredibly capacity-constrained and need more staff,” said Carolina Reid, professor of City & Regional Planning, UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design.
Just as the Covid-19 pandemic reshuffled the populations of many California cities—with residents seeking more living space and wider open spaces — it also put lingering constraints on planning departments themselves. Many midcareer planners took early retirement or themselves moved to suburban or exurban areas.
More notably, shifts in work styles have not favored public sector offices that may be slow to adopt remote work.
“While this is really anecdotal, we find that the public agencies are potentially less flexible in terms of having an onsite presence…. versus working remotely,” said Ouse.
“There’s been a lot of opportunity for planners to work elsewhere, with the flexibility of working from home,” said Sacramento Community Development Director Tom Pace. “That has made it challenging for many different agencies.”
That is but one reason why aspiring planners, including students in planning-related graduate schools, may shy away from municipal offices. Substantively, though, other planning-related organizations may be more appealing to younger planners.
“The newer generations of planners that are early in their careers are seeking what they perceive as an altruistic focus of their career,” said Ouse.
“Others want to work in community organizations, affordable housing developers, advocacy organizations,” said Reid. “They are interested in organizations that are pushing the boundaries of planning practice, that are planning for more just and sustainable futures.”
Even in a vast city like Los Angeles, with a planning department of over 570 positions — 18% of which are currently unfilled — bureaucratic constraints push away would-be hires.
“In the last decade or two, people seem to be very specific to what they want,” said Shana Bonstin, deputy director of the Los Angeles Department of City Planning. “That’s a little too bad. I think the idea of learning your first few years and being adaptable is really valuable. But, I do see that people fresh out of schools want to settle for nothing less than what is in their minds.”
In high-cost areas, sometimes even the most committed public servant simply cannot afford to live on an early-career salary.
“Our extremely high cost of living here in Santa Barbara makes recruitment generally challenging, and the increase in housing costs, both for-sale housing and also rental housing,” said Elias Isaacson, community development director for the City of Santa Barbara. “The huge spike in costs is an outcome of the pandemic and has made that preexisting challenge even more challenging.”
In Los Angeles, Bonstin said that there’s even a sort of intergenerational envy, between planners who arrived when the city was less expensive and new planners who are trying to eke out a living amid high rents and often unattainable sale prices.
“There’s a real generational gap: for the people a generation above me, the types of homes they were able to afford in the late 1990s are at a completely different income level. That’s probably true of the millennials compared to me,” said Bonstin, who has been with the department since 2001.
Bonstin added that many of the applicants the city does receive are not necessarily experienced in planning.
Even applicants who want to work for cities often face daunting application processes. In that respect, they may be kindred spirits with the many developers who claim that approval processes are unconscionably lengthy.
“It’s a long, bureaucratic process overall that it takes to apply and get into somewhere in government, whether it’s local or federal,” said Kevin Medina, director of Student Affairs and Career Services at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
“We have certainly lost candidates to other jurisdictions because we haven’t moved fast enough,” said Monica Davis with the City of Oakland. “In my last year with the city, I’ve been working with hiring managers to make quick decisions. The time frame from application to actual extended offer can range between 2-6 months.”
That delay often results in a “bit of a whack-a-mole situation,” according to Davis, in which the onboarding of new employees is offset by retirements or reassignments of existing employees.
“It can take a full year to work through all of the cascading vacancies. It’s not necessary coming from a lack of interest,” said Isaacson.
Pace and Isaacson — both of whom are community development directors who oversee several departments related to land use — said the shortage of planners pales in comparison to those of more technically oriented employees. They cited difficulties hiring engineers and building inspectors, the latter of whom are dwindling in part because of overall disinterest in the building trades, from which many inspectors are drawn.
Whatever the reason for an individual department’s hiring woes, one of the most profound consequences is that of delays in implementing housing regulations — and intense workloads for planners.
In recent years, the legislature has adopted hundreds of new planning-related laws, many of which add to planning departments’ workloads. Departments must conduct much more extensive analysis on their housing elements, for instance, and must draft regulations such as objective design standards. In short, there’s more work for, in many cases, fewer planners.
“The state legislation is an avalanche,” said Pace. “The impact that has on local planning agencies is tremendous, requiring us to change the way we process development applications, just being aware of all the new laws and requirements that have to be met (is)… a huge effort.”
“When the state started becoming much more engaged in local control, I think it was much more of a shock to the system for local government planners,” said Ouse. And many cities’ hiring practices have not been able to adapt to the “shock.”
“The state laws and housing element and the number of urgent, very large, important projects that are time-sensitive,” said Bostin. “We have sections within policy that didn’t exist 15 years ago, and now we can’t keep up with adding people.”
In some cases, local planners may feel that they are doing the state’s bidding rather than devising their own context-sensitive regulations.
“It has impacted our morale in general,” said Isaacson. “The feelings that loss of local control makes some of our planning staff feel a little disconnected from our community when we’re trying to implement some new legislation that may not fit very well with our local situation.”
In this sense, many planners have personal interest in implementing laws and increasing their respective jurisdictions’ housing supplies. In some cases, this takes the form of formal programs.
“Employee-sponsored housing is a hot topic of conversation…… many of our large local employers are looking at how to provide housing for employees,” said Isaacson. “The school district is meeting with us and hoping to put some teacher housing on some of their sites.”
Isaacson said, though, that however motivated planners may be, they cannot let self-interest influence their professional duties.
“It’s an issue that cuts both ways. We have a lot of staff that are extremely passionate about housing issues because they are experiencing housing challenges themselves,” said Isaacson. “One of the challenges is to ensure professional staff maintains objectivity around these issues even though they have firsthand experience of the realities of the housing crisis.”
The provision of affordable and “missing middle” housing, though, may be exactly the sort of opportunity that can draw applicants to municipal planning departments. Pace said that Sacramento’s progressive ethos has drawn mission-driven planners.
“Probably more than anything, it’s the fact that we have a pretty aggressive planning agenda, we have a lot of resources devoted to planning, and we have some progressive policies,” said Pace. “I think it’s benefited us… whether it’s our climate action planning, our Prohousing initiatives. That may not be true in other agencies that don’t have those priorities.” Sacramento was one of the first cities designated by the state as “Prohousing.”
Contacts & Resources
Shana Bonstin, Deputy Director of Community Planning, Department of City Planning, City of Los Angeles, shana.bonstin@lacity.org
Monica Davis, Assistant Director, Planning & Building, City of Oakland, mdavis2@oaklandca.gov
Elias Isaacson, Community Development Director, City of Santa Barbara, EIsaacson@SantaBarbaraCA.gov
Kevin Medina, Director of Student affairs and career services, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, kmedina@luskin.ucla.edu
Andrea Ouse, Director of Community Development at City of West Sacramento and President, APA California Chapter, president@apacalifornia.org
Tom Pace, Director of Community Development, City of Sacramento, TPace@cityofsacramento.org
Carolina Reid, Professor of City & Regional Planning, UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, c_reid@berkeley.edu
