A Weak Link in Efforts to Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing? Evaluating Public Engagement Processes in Housing Plan Development in Southern California

Public participation is a core component of federal and state fair housing law implementation, but its effectiveness at Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) remains understudied. In this paper, we analyze the public engagement processes of eight southern California municipalities as they developed a newly mandated AFFH component for their 2021–2029 housing element update. We evaluate the timeline of plan development, outreach efforts, websites, surveys, meeting sufficiency, and the efforts to make public meetings inclusive. We find that they budgeted insufficient time for participation and provided insufficient information about this complex planning process. The two cities with more extensive public processes created fair housing programs that are meaningful, but they are also the more affluent cities in the sample therefore it is not possible to ascribe causality. We propose that AFFH law should standardize outreach processes, assist cities that have fewer resources, and conduct representative surveys on behalf of localities.