Indio issued 706 housing permits in 2025, far outpacing recent years
City planner credits the surge to a post-pandemic recovery, with more development expected in the year ahead.
The city of Indio issued 706 housing building permits in 2025, a sharp increase from the prior two years that city staff attributed to a rebound from the COVID-19 era slowdown, according to a report presented Wednesday to the Indio Planning Commission.
Principal Planner Gustavo Gomez presented the city’s 2025 Housing Element Annual Progress Report, “I wanted to make sure to highlight that we issued over 706 housing permits last year,” he said. “It’s a significant jump. For 2023 it was 100 units, for 2024 it was 53 units.”
The permits span a range of housing types, including accessory dwelling units, multifamily projects such as the JFM Villas and the Pacific West Company apartments, and single-family residential developments.
Gomez links rebound to post-COVID recovery, “Things were slowing down, but I think it’s picking up now,” he said. “We’re expecting to have even more of that development happening next year.”
The commission voted to receive the report and forward it to the City Council, which must submit it to the state Department of Housing and Community Development and the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation by the end of the month.
The report tracks Indio’s progress toward its Regional Housing Needs Allocation, or RHNA, which requires the city to plan for 7,812 housing units of varying income levels over the current eight-year housing cycle running from October 2021 through October 2029. Of that total, 2,963 units are designated for households ranging from extremely low to moderate income.
The city has permitted 2,247 units since the cycle began, leaving 5,565 still needed to meet the full allocation, according to the report, which Gomez said means they’re partially on track.
Gomez said the city was making progress, particularly in the above-moderate income category, while acknowledging uneven results across income tiers, “We do have different tiers that we have to hit. In some areas we’re doing better than others, but we’re halfway through the RHNA years, so we still have time to catch up.”
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