I'm trying to position my UIView to be 20pt under the navigation bar, but when I set it relative to the view on the view controller it's still under the navigation bar at 20pt, and I don't want to hardcode it.
Is it possible to position it away from the navigation bar?
Try adding contraint with TopLayoutGuide,
The main difference between TopLayoutGuide and self.view is, top layout guide starts with bottom of status bar + bottom of navigation bar(if exist)
, but self.view always start from (0,0) coordinate in iOS 7 for translucent navigation bar.
So in your case you should try pinning from top layout guide.