What Regulations, Plans, and Reports Are Available on the California HCD Website?

Updated

The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) website hosts two main reference areas for housing compliance and planning: a Building Standards section that includes Purchase Regulations, and a Plans and Reports section. These are reference materials rather than online services, so you read or download them to understand requirements and planning context. The site's own navigation also points to Mobilehome Owner & Park Services, Clearing the Path for More Housing in California, Leadership, and Connecting with HCD, which tells you where these documents sit relative to the rest of HCD's work.

Regulations: Building Standards and Purchase Regulations

The clearest regulation entry point on the site is the Building Standards area, which links to a Purchase Regulations page at hcd.ca.gov/building-standards/shl/purchase-regulations. The path places it under building standards and the "shl" segment, which is consistent with HCD's manufactured housing and mobilehome responsibilities.

Use this section when you need to check the rules that apply to buying, selling, or installing housing covered by HCD's building standards. The page is a reference document, not a transaction portal — the presence of a "purchase" page does not mean you complete a purchase on the site.

A practical way to use it: start from the Building Standards section, open Purchase Regulations, and confirm which edition or scope applies to your situation before relying on any single page.

Plans and Reports

The Plans and Reports section at hcd.ca.gov/plans-and-reports is the site's home for planning and reporting documents. This is where you look for HCD's published plans and reports rather than for interactive tools.

Use it when you need background for a housing element, a local planning review, or a compliance check that depends on HCD's published positions. Because the section is a document library, the useful step is to scan the listing for the plan or report that matches your topic and date, then read the document itself rather than inferring requirements from a title.

How the Sections Fit Together

Section What you find Best used for
Building Standards → Purchase Regulations Regulations tied to building standards and purchase Checking compliance rules for covered housing
Plans and Reports HCD plans and reports Planning context and published findings
Mobilehome Owner & Park Services Services and information for mobilehome owners and parks Owner and park questions
Clearing the Path for More Housing in California HCD's housing-supply framing Understanding HCD's stated priorities
Leadership / Connecting with HCD Leadership information and contact routes Finding who to contact

The Mobilehome Owner & Park Services heading is the natural companion to the Purchase Regulations page: if your question is about a mobilehome owner or a park, start there and follow into the building standards material when the question turns to rules.

What These Pages Are Not

These are reference materials for compliance and planning. Nothing in the site information indicates an online application, payment, or account system for these documents, and the "purchase" wording should not be read as an e-commerce function. Treat the pages as sources you read, cite, and check against the current edition.

A Workable Approach

  1. Identify whether your question is about a rule (go to Building Standards, then Purchase Regulations) or about planning context (go to Plans and Reports).
  2. If the question concerns a mobilehome owner or park, begin at Mobilehome Owner & Park Services and move into the regulations only when the rules are the actual issue.
  3. Confirm the document's scope and date before acting on it, since a plan or report describes a position at a point in time.
  4. Use Leadership and Connecting with HCD when you need to route a question to the right part of the department.

The main pitfall is treating a listing page as the answer. The listing tells you a document exists; the document tells you what the requirement or finding is.