AB 1738 amends Government Code Section 65400 to expand what planning agencies must include in the annual report on their general plan and housing element. The bill layers in new, granular production and demolition reporting (including assessor parcel numbers and income categories), requires documentation of replacement-housing obligations, and adds a new confirmation and metrics requirement showing implementation of a remote inspection program under Health & Safety Code Section 17970.9.
The practical effect: local planning departments must collect and publish more granular site-level data and implement or document remote inspection programs; the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) gets a formal correction-and-rejection pathway and courts get an explicit enforcement route if jurisdictions fail to submit compliant housing-element reports. The bill is oriented toward statewide data transparency and enforcement, but it also raises administrative and technical demands on local governments and building departments.
At a Glance
What It Does
Expands the scope and specificity of the annual housing-element report to include unit-level production data (with unique site identifiers), demolition and replacement-housing details, density-bonus and student-housing reporting, and — starting in 2028 — confirmation and performance metrics for a remote inspection program. It authorizes HCD to adopt standards, request corrections, and reject noncompliant reports, and gives courts authority to compel compliance and impose sanctions.
Who It Affects
City and county planning agencies, local building and permit departments, developers (especially projects using density bonuses or student housing), tenant and housing advocates, and HCD. Smaller jurisdictions and local permitting teams will bear most of the new data-collection and program-implementation burden.
Why It Matters
This bill standardizes and centralizes previously inconsistent local reporting, creating a richer dataset for statewide housing oversight and accountability. The remote-inspection reporting ties building department operations to housing-element transparency, which could accelerate permitting reforms but also demands new technical capacity and audit procedures.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
AB 1738 amends the annual-reporting duties that local planning agencies already owe after adopting a general plan. It preserves the existing requirement that agencies report on progress toward their share of regional housing need, but layers additional, precise data points: unique site identifiers (such as assessor’s parcel numbers) tied to entitlements, building permits, and certificates of occupancy; separate counts for rental versus for-sale production by income level; and explicit tracking of replacement housing and demolition activity.
Several of these new reporting items phase in over the next two years, with key requirements beginning for reports due April 1, 2027 and April 1, 2028.
On the housing element side, the bill directs HCD to provide standards, forms, and definitions that jurisdictions must use for the housing-element portion of the report. Those forms are expressly not subject to the state Administrative Procedure Act’s Chapter 3.5, meaning HCD can adopt and revise the reporting templates without the usual notice-and-comment rulemaking.
HCD may request corrections to a submitted housing-element report within 90 days; planning agencies must make requested corrections within 30 days or risk having the housing-element portion rejected. If a report is not submitted on time or in substantial compliance, the bill gives courts a direct enforcement path to compel compliance and to impose sanctions.A discrete but consequential addition is the remote inspection reporting requirement tied to Health & Safety Code Section 17970.9.
Beginning with the report due April 1, 2028, jurisdictions must confirm they have implemented a compliant remote inspection program and include counts of remote versus in-person inspections by permit type, comparative failure rates for each mode, and the number of audits of remote inspections. That creates a transparent link between building-department operational practices and statutory housing-accountability reporting.
Lastly, HCD must post each city or county report on its website "within a reasonable time," making locally collected, site-level housing data broadly available at the state level.
The Five Things You Need to Know
HCD can request corrections to the housing-element portion of a local annual report within 90 days, and the planning agency must correct it within 30 days or HCD may reject the submission.
Reports must include unique site identifiers (including assessor’s parcel numbers) for each entitlement, building permit, or certificate of occupancy listed in the production report.
Beginning with the report due April 1, 2027, jurisdictions must report replacement-housing obligations and, beginning April 1, 2028, they must confirm implementation of a remote inspection program and publish counts of remote vs. in-person inspections, failure rates, and audits.
Any standards, forms, or definitions HCD adopts for the housing-element portion of the annual report are exempt from Chapter 3.5 rulemaking requirements, allowing HCD to change templates without the Administrative Procedure Act process.
If a court finds a jurisdiction has failed to submit a substantially compliant housing-element report within 60 days of the deadline, it must compel compliance within 60 days and may impose sanctions and retain jurisdiction to enforce the order.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Planning agency duties to implement the general plan
Reaffirms that planning agencies must investigate and recommend reasonable, practical steps to implement the general plan so it guides growth, conservation, and efficient public spending. Practically, this preserves the agency’s advisory role while framing the annual reporting obligations in service of implementation.
Housing-element progress reporting and HCD templates
Requires the housing-element portion of the annual report to be prepared using standards, forms, and definitions adopted by HCD. Those templates may be updated by HCD without following Chapter 3.5 (the state’s APA-like rulemaking procedures). The housing-element report must include a status section describing actions taken toward program completion and compliance with housing-element deadlines, and it must be considered at a public meeting with oral and written testimony allowed. For compliance teams, the key practical implication is that HCD controls the reporting format and can change it quickly, so local teams must monitor HCD template updates closely.
Expanded application, approval, and density-bonus data
The bill expands reporting on the number and status of housing applications received, distinguishes ministerial versus discretionary processes, and (starting in 2027) flags whether applications carry replacement-housing or relocation-assistance obligations. It requires detailed density-bonus tracking — counts of applications received and approved and project-level data on percentage bonus, affordable units, incentives, and parking waivers — and includes student-housing units that received density bonuses. For planners and developers, this creates more transparent project-level visibility into how incentives and concessions are being used across jurisdictions.
Production report with unique site identifiers and income breakdowns
Mandates a production report that lists units issued entitlements, permits, or certificates of occupancy within the housing-element cycle and breaks those units down by income category and tenure (rental vs. for-sale). Each entitlement or permit entry must include a unique site identifier — the assessor’s parcel number, and optionally street address — so state reviewers can trace specific projects. From a compliance standpoint, this raises data-management requirements: local governments must reliably link permitting records to APNs and income categorizations.
Demolition and replacement-housing reporting
Beginning with the 2027 report, jurisdictions must report on demolition approvals and completions, including location (APN), dates, unit counts by tenure and income level, protected units demolished, and any relocation assistance provided. The bill also requires, starting in 2027, detailed reporting on replacement units required under local, state, or federal law for non-housing development projects, including site identifiers, developer identity, and anticipated completion dates. These provisions are designed to surface net-housing impacts and track whether replacement obligations are actually being developed.
Remote inspection confirmation, HCD review, and enforcement
Adds a new requirement (effective report due April 1, 2028) that each city or county confirm implementation of a remote inspection program compliant with Health & Safety Code Section 17970.9 and provide metrics: counts of remote vs. in-person inspections by permit type, comparative failure rates, and the number of audits of remote inspections. Separately, HCD may request corrections to the housing-element report within 90 days and reject noncompliant submissions; courts can be asked to compel compliance and impose sanctions if jurisdictions fail to submit substantially compliant reports in time. HCD must also post submitted reports online in a reasonable time, creating public access to the new datasets.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on Housing across all five countries.
Explore Housing in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Department of Housing and Community Development: Gains standardized, site-level data and direct correction authority, improving statewide oversight and the ability to identify implementation gaps.
- Housing advocates and researchers: Receive more transparent, machine-actionable datasets — including APNs and income-level breakdowns — to monitor production, demolition, and replacement compliance.
- Tenants facing displacement: Benefit from required reporting on demolitions, protected-unit losses, and relocation assistance, which increases accountability and creates a public record of mitigation efforts.
- Developers using density bonuses or student-housing exceptions: Obtain clearer, standardized reporting on how jurisdictions are processing such projects, which can improve predictability for projects relying on incentives.
Who Bears the Cost
- City and county planning departments and permit offices: Must collect, match, and publish more detailed site-level data (APNs, income categories, tenure), implement or document remote-inspection programs, and respond to HCD correction requests — all of which require staffing, IT, and process changes.
- Local building departments: Face obligations to operate and audit remote inspection programs and to track comparative failure rates and audit counts by permit type, adding operational and recordkeeping burdens.
- Smaller jurisdictions and rural counties: Likely to incur proportionally higher costs per capita to stand up data systems and compliant remote inspection programs, creating fiscal and capacity pressure without dedicated funding in the bill.
- Developers and project teams: Must provide documentation and possibly additional data to ensure projects are captured correctly in the production and replacement reports; errors could trigger scrutiny or delays if reports are rejected.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
AB 1738 pits two legitimate goals against each other: the state’s need for uniform, verifiable data to hold jurisdictions accountable for housing production and net losses versus the administrative, technical, and fiscal burden placed on local planning and building departments — especially smaller jurisdictions — to collect, validate, and publish that data quickly and precisely. The bill solves the information problem but shifts the capacity problem to local governments without providing funding or detailed measurement standards.
The bill tightens transparency and statewide oversight, but it leaves several implementation choices unresolved. HCD will adopt templates and definitions outside the Chapter 3.5 process, which accelerates standardization but limits formal public rulemaking and may create friction if local governments do not have adequate notice or transition time.
The statute requires failure-rate comparisons for remote versus in-person inspections but does not define "failure rate," the sample size standards, or the window for measuring outcomes; different methodologies across jurisdictions could make state-level comparisons misleading. Similarly, the APN-based production reporting improves traceability, but local data systems vary widely — jurisdictions will need to map legacy permitting records to parcel identifiers and to income categories, a nontrivial data-integration project that the bill does not fund or timeline.
The enforcement apparatus — HCD correction requests, potential report rejection, and court-ordered compliance with possible sanctions — creates real leverage but also risks adversarial relationships between state and local governments. Courts are directed to compel compliance and may issue sanctions, yet the statute does not constrain what sanctions are appropriate or how courts should weigh local resource limitations.
Finally, the remote inspection reporting requirement references Health & Safety Code Section 17970.9 but leaves the substantive technical standards of a "compliant" program to that statute and to agency interpretation, which could produce uneven application and legal challenges over what counts as implementation or adequate auditing.
Try it yourself.
Ask a question in plain English, or pick a topic below. Results in seconds.