 |
 |
By KEVIN MCCALLUM
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
A committee charged with figuring out how Santa Rosa can improve the way it builds affordable housing has disbanded after what members describe as a frustrating year of polarizing debate.
Mayor Susan Gorin formed the 12-member committee in September of 2009, asking it for a “concise recommendation built on consensus” about the most equitable way to encourage affordable housing to be built in the city.
Instead, a rift developed early between developers and housing advocates and it only deepened over time, making agreement impossible, said Tanya Narath, committee chairwoman.
“There are such different perspectives,” Narath said. “I don’t think we could have arrived at a different outcome.”
Housing advocate David Grabill, a representative of the Accountable Development Coalition, said the developer representatives on the committee were infuriated by his proposal that the city implement stricter requirements for private developers to integrate more affordable housing in their regular housing projects.
“They were throwing bricks across the table,” Grabill said. “It was really painful.”
Meanwhile, developer Hugh Futrell lambasted Grabill’s proposal as likely to create less affordable housing instead of more and less geographic diversity instead of more.
“At a time of economic devastation, Grabill wants to make the rules more complicated, more politicized, more exacting, less predictable and more expensive,” Futrell said. “I think it’s just nuts.”
State law requires all cities and counties in California to accommodate their fair share of the state’s growing population, and to have policies that encourage the development of housing for low and moderate income residents.
Last year the Santa Rosa City Council approved updates to the city general plan, a document that serves as a blueprint for how the city should develop through the year 2035.
Currently, developers are required only to integrate affordable housing units into their projects if they are over 15 acres. For all others, they can instead pay “in-lieu fees” which the city’s Housing Authority combines with other sources to make loans to non-profit developers such as Burbank Housing.
The system has generated a significant amount of affordable housing in the city over the years. The city built 4,083 affordable units between 1999 and 2006, more than all other Bay Area cities except San Jose and San Francisco.
But critics contend the system has exacerbated the social and economic segregation of the city by allowing developers in well-off areas to just write a check to pay for someone else to build affordable housing in low-income areas.
Grabill claims the pattern has created a high concentration of low-income developments in neighborhoods west of Highway 101 while areas like Fountaingrove have been developed with no such housing. He says Santa Rosa has the most developer-friendly policy toward on-site affordable housing in the county, despite his efforts to encourage tougher requirements.
He claims he’s been unsuccessful because “Hugh Futrell and his friends the builders fought for years to not have an on-site requirement.”
Now that the economy is stalled, the developers are pushing back harder than ever, which made the committee’s meetings tense and often unpleasant, Grabill said.
“They kept yelling at us. I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
Futrell said he and other developers on the committee became frustrated that despite clear evidence that Grabill’s proposal would have the opposite of its intended effect, he would not compromise.
“He is utterly ignorant of how housing regulations intersect with the actual work of producing housing,” Futrell said.
As a result of the acrimony and obvious stalemate, Grabill stopped participating in the committee over the summer.
He also didn’t have a lot of backup. The committee lost two other members sympathetic to Grabill’s position, Jim Wilkinson, head of the Neighborhood Alliance, who died, and Marlene Dehlinger, a director of Accountable Development Coalition, who resigned.
The result was that both camps drew up their own proposed changes to what is known as the city’s Housing Allocation Plan, and the committee submitted both.
While the committee didn’t agree on a single proposal, Narath said she doesn’t view its year of work as a failure.
“Our goal was to provide good information so that sound policy decisions could be made,” she said. “From that standpoint I feel very good about the work the committee has done.”
Community Development Director Chuck Regalia said city staff will review the competing proposals and at some point ask the council for direction.
“I’m kind of at a loss right now,” he told the committee toward the end of its final meeting.
Subscribe by Email
Follow us on Twitter
Oh and add onto that the hiring of young people to manage these properties that falsify documents and make things disappear so they can get their friends into these apartments. Or how residents are able to afford brand new cars and somehow qualify as low income. If your friends with anyone running the properties youre a shoe in even if you earn too much to be living at them. Tough luck if you dont.
The biggest issue with low income housing is that a lot of these properties run by Burbank Housing are filled with people who are here illegally. While our citizens are sitting in homeless shelters or renting rooms with their children, Burbank is renting units to people who have forged documents and are here illegally. They also employ illegals to manage their properties. Case in point, the Cypress Ridge property on Meda Avenue. The properties managed under Bonnie Maddox go through managers like they go through underwear….none of their managers sticks around for more than a year. If we didnt have so many illegals being rented these apartments we would have more low income housing available to people who have a right to them.
Kevin-
Thanks for your link to the ABAG white paper; it’s a good read for anyone looking to learn more about why government should be encouraging housing development near transportation.
I see that your figure of 4,083 comes from “Appendix A: Bay Area RHNA Performance, 1999 to 2006.” I’m sorry that you failed to also cite explanatory “Note a” which describes the source of the numbers listed for Santa Rosa as follows: “Data was provided by local planning or housing staff.” In the end my earlier comment stands, i.e. the numbers you have cited – which ABAG is using – come from a self-interested party.
It’s an important point. A number of the comments to your piece and a general theme of conversation I’ve heard in SR rests on the idea that Santa Rosa has “done its part” in regards affordable housing. That is simply not the case.
To understand how little Santa Rosa has actually done it is important to further break down the numbers and to understand what “affordable means, at least as defined by ABAG. To do so I believe stands on its head the idea that Santa Rosa is in any way a leader in affordable housing and community development.
The ABAG white paper you’ve quoted describes how the 4,083 units of affordable housing allegedly built from 1999-2006 are broken down into three categories: Very Low, Low & Moderate. The categories are differentiated by the percentage of AMI (Area Median Income) they describe. Thus, “Very Low” captures housing units affordable to households making 0-50% of AMI. “Low” are units affordable to households making 50-80% of AMI. “Moderate” is 80-120% of AMI. AMI for Sonoma County is $80,400 a number calculated by HUD and updated annually (https://www.efanniemae.com/sf/refmaterials/hudmedinc/hudincomeresults.jsp?STATE=CA)
With apologies for all the numbers but they are critical. Based on Sonoma County’s AMI the 4,083 housing units you cite are categorized as follows:
*591 “Very Low” units affordable to households earning:
or $0 to $40,200 (50% of $80,400)
*1,338 “Low” units affordable to households earning:
or $40,201 to $64,320 (80% of $80,400)
*2,154 “Moderate” units affordable to households earning:
or $64,321 to 96,480 (120% of $80,400)
Putting aside my belief that many of these 4,083 units were never actually built we learn from the ABAG numbers that 86% of these “affordable” units – 3,492 or 4,083 – were built for households earning between $40-96,000/year or 50-120% of AMI.
Assuming we can agree that households earning $40-96,000/year are something other then poor – “struggling,” “blue collar,” “middle class” might be better descriptors – then I would think that nearly every commentator to your piece might fully reconsider their respective position. In fact, Santa Rosa has built 591 housing units for truly low income households over an eight year period, or not quite 74/year.
Putting aside the “right sizing” of these numbers and taking a longer look at the ABAG white paper I would encourage you to consider future articles on topics like:
*how the little affordable housing SR has built fails to meet any of the core criteria set by ABAG for well-sited, sustainable housing;
*how there has been a complete failure by Santa Rosa government to execute housing transactions in core downtown locations proximate to transportation and jobs, a failure which really differentiates SR from peer communities in the Bay Area;
*how the Santa Rosa market and ABAG’s numbers are really best described by the recently coined adage “drive til you qualify” which is meant to explain the reality of sprawl, especially in higher cost housing markets, where families of modest means are forced to drive ever farther out to the fringes, where land is cheaper, to afford a home. (http://design.walkerart.org/worldsaway/Terms/DriveTilYouQualify). Sonoma County is hardly “cheap” but it is cheaper then Marin which is – mostly – cheaper then SF which explains why households earning $40-96,000 would end up in SR;
*how “drive til you qualify” explains why SR is third on the list of Bay Area communities in the production of “affordable housing,” i.e. it’s not really affordable to poor people it is only affordable to the middle class that cannot afford housing closer to their jobs;
*how “drive til you qualify” has affected development patterns and land consumption in Sonoma County and Santa Rosa and how these patterns are fundamentally not sustainable;
*how each new housing unit built built at SR’s edge – or on a greenfield – is actually a net tax burden on the City given the costs of maintaining the expanded roads & sewers necessary to service that new, sprawling house and, importantly, educate the children expected to live in that house over time.
Kevin, I am sorry for the longwinded nature of this further response to your piece. Unfortunately, Santa Rosa’s development is a topic I think about regularly and “conventional wisdom” in our community depends on bad math. The fact that the City’s budget has cratered during this economic downturn is evidence of this and there is no one in the conversation – whether they be either “greedy developers” or “housing advocates” – who is actually talking about real solutions. I’ve only heard self-interested mumbo-jumbo. I would encourage you to write more on these topics – in a more forward thinking manner – because the very best aspect of Santa Rosa – its extraordinary environment – is being trampled in the meanwhile., and under false pretense.
SG
Soren,
The 4,083 figure in the story comes from an ABAG report from June of 2007. Building permits pulled for very low, low and moderate income housing between 1999 and 2006 add up to 4,083 units. Whether they were acutally built is another issue. Hope this helps. Here’s the link. http://www.abag.ca.gov/planning/housingneeds/pdf/resources/A_Place_to_Call_Home_2007.pdf
KM
More Corrections:
#1)The ADC is not involved in the lawsuit over the Rohert Park Wal-Mart. That is SCCA, the Sierra Club, and Healthy Communities Network.
#2)THe ADC is seeking to prevent a lawsuit at RRSQ project, and has been actively supporting it from the beginning. It is the West End Neighborhood Association that is threatening a lawsuit.
Just the facts, please.
How much affordable housing has been produced in Rincon Valley, St Francis, Fountaingrove, McDonald and downtown?
Or is it all on the west side of town, AS USUAL!
Gee, Hugh, didn’t you make some money working for the City as an affordable housing advocate? Now you’re getting paid to work the other side?
to have consensus, you need to concede something. this was a failed committee from the start because of bad choices by leadership when the members were appointed. these poicy influencing committees need more community business representatives (like Futrell) that understand practical. these are tough times Mayor Gorin-we do not have time or money to pursue utopian views. we need a reality check or our businesses will go the way of this committee—-
projected costs of unpopular projects are always bogus and pumped up. Imaginary numbers that are just so much wind. These people could come up with a figure that says that it costs Santa Rosa $1 every time somebody drove by on the freeway, and $4 when they got off the freeway, and $6 if they drove around for a bit. And then added that the city needed to quadrupal its collection of taxes from businesses that catered to these people, and that they would be bankrupt shortly if they didn’t get the money, so instead of taxes they impose fees based on the projected costs of the drive by’s and varieties of stops. NONE OF IT MEANING ANYTHING. Just flim-flam that some take as factual, like fees for developments. These are negotiated arm twisting in better years but blatant lies at present. Most of those fees were meant to be paid for by other taxes years back but the taxes were then just thrown into the mix to make the gov. look good enough to raise pay for administrators and staff, retirement and other goodies. The tax money never got there. Private sector actions like this would be felonies with severe jail sentences.
You can’t trust a word out of any of these people, including some advocates for the poor.
Most of this ends up as ghettoes as it is administrated to create ghettoes out of it. Low cost housing isn’t mixed use if the only residents are all Mexican, or all black, or even all white. Because of poor admin, housing that should be a safe mix for all residents including seniors, becomes safe only for the few as gang bangers are allowed to dominate even when the project started in a non gang area. This is because some advocates for housing are blind to their own bs. Other low cost housing is hardly low cost. With opaque requirements for applicants, there is no way to figure the biases unless blatant.
With Santa Rosa, it’s like what happened with the ban on ridge development. A mistake, oh yeah! Mistakes never let other things pass for the non-influential, so someone here has relatives that got some big help and no one in city gov. said a word. NOT A WORD. So, does anyone believe what passes for factual communication from the city?
Real housing is possible, but like prisons, it is being held back until they figure out how to keep making the money from it (things like 3 strikes, prison construction, guard pay all go together), but it won’t be good until politics is removed along with gang membership.
if they wanted simple and factual input, query all the low income applicants including seniors to see what is needed. have some open meetings, and some more when ideas are proposed instead of going opaque when it gets serious.
Somebody is outrageously overcharging if it costs 300k to house a senior not needing assistance, and the 300k might be gight for a triplex low income unit. Remember, these costs are inflated as part of the bargaining, not stand alone as costs or as stand alone construction. Someone with construction experience needs to be on the advocates’ side.
Mayor Gorin put together a committee of community member to build consensus? No she tried to craft a polical outcome that would benefit her re-election. By giving her progressive friends the keys to car she was hoping to strengthen her alliances with those same progressives. What occurred has once again shined light on the fact the Santa Rosa is without leadership.
Who would try and build consciences by including leaders of the Accountable Development Coalition on any community committee ? This is the group that is suing the City of Rohnert Park over the Mal-Mart expansion. This is the group that sued over the Mal Mart planned for Santa Rosa. This is the group that is threatening to sue the developers over the number of affordable units for the Railroad Square SMART site.
The ADC will tell you that no they are not the ones making costly legal battles but if you look closely you will see the groups suing are or were part of the ADC. This now you see me now you don’t bullying game that the ADC is trying to pull off is transparent and boorish.
Mayor Gorin if you want to build consciences you should put together committees of open minded community members that are not blinded by progressive ideology. Yes we all like bikes. Yes we are Green. Yes we believe in supporting housing of all. Yes we all want open space. These are just words don’t be fooled. Leadership is a skill not a title.
The level of discourse in Santa Rosa around affordable housing – and economic development in general – is painfully low. To argue in 2010 that affordable housing is a “huge drain on the economy” flies in the face of literally hundreds of communities where such housing has in fact resurrected entire neighborhoods and reinforced trends which benefit the overall economy, e.g. retention of younger workers and reduction of commute times. Moreover, the dollars to build these units are derived from budgets at the State and Federal levels, i.e. Santa Rosa receives important investment it otherwise would forgo. Far and away the largest housing subsidy in the United State is the mortgage interest tax deduction, a subsidy that has led to grotesque sprawl, the sort of which plagues Santa Rosa and has made the City much less liveable.
Sixty seconds with Google also suggests that a key point in the PD article is simply wrong. The 2000 Census lists 57,578 housing units in Santa Rosa. The PD article – no doubt depending on some self-serving economic development leader – tells us that Santa Rosa has produced 4,083 affordable housing units in just SEVEN YEARS!! Over 7% of the City’s entire housing stock was built from 1999-2006 – and all of it affordable?! What dark and previously untravelled corner of Santa Rosa hosts this extraordinary number?
Santa Rosa does build affordable housing, maybe 200-300 units in a banner year. Successful communities build affordable housing within mixed-income developments in their downtowns, close to transportation and jobs. Santa Rosa builds its affordable housing in sprawling, unsustainable developments which are in fact mostly on the West side of town.
The political class talks about doing better development and doing development Downtown but no such developments have been done and many developers – for-profit and not-for-profit – have walked away from Santa Rosa because they sensed it would be easier to build projects elsewhere. Empaneling a committee to direct future housing policy and then stuffing it with ideologues and firebrands would suggest that these developers have it right and that Santa Rosa is neither interested in good housing policy nor, arguably, in actually having a serious conversation about making a better city.
David Grabill was an advocate and lawyer for Burbank Housing before he started HAG. Looks like a conflict.
Section 8 is a system already in place that provides subsidies for those in need. Those people can live anywhere in town and pay what they can afford; the Section 8 program picks up the rest. This distributes the low income people throughout the city. I support low income housing that supports the entire community, such as Section 8.
Burbank Housing has received many millions of dollars from the city. Most of those 4,000 units have been built by Burbank. They calculate that they need over $300,000 for each apartment unit, and they get that money from the City, from in-lieu fees, and from HUD.
Santa Rosa has approximately 170,000 residents and is third in the Bay Area for affordable housing. Numbers 1 and 2: San Jose and San Francisco, are large cities of about one million each.
Unfortunately building low income housing is an on-going problem because these projects do not pay property tax but use city services. They cluster low income people together instead of giving them the opportunity to live throughout the city, and then put huge pressure on the police, fire, medical, schools, and other services in their area.
This is not a sustainable system.
What a shame that all of the folks on this committee could not get out of their own heads and do work for ALL of the people of Santa Rosa.
But no. Lets stick to our guns. Not give an inch and watch the whole bloody mess crash. Great leadership folks. Really great leadership.
It’s true… we have done a respectable job with our affordable housing numbers… but for some reason there are always certain factions demanding more. Do we need more? I really can’t say… but I do know that the same areas, such as my neighborhood, are always first in line to fulfill this “need”.
Will concentrating low income housing in my very modest and affordable neighborhood allow it to enliven and thrive? I personally don’t think so- but as long as City Council and ADC members who live on prosperous hillsides or out on an acre somewhere make decisions for my neighborhood, that they would never allow for their own, I’m afraid it will continue.
A healthy community needs balance.
“The result was that both camps drew up their own proposed changes to what is known as the city’s Housing Allocation Plan, and the committee submitted both.”
“There are such different perspectives,” Narath said. “I don’t think we could have arrived at a different outcome.”
What if Mayor Gorin had appointed say three developers, three affordable housing advocates, and five or six good, knowledgeable citizens–with no ties to either faction–who would listen, contribute, and mediate?
Longtime Council critic Jack Osborne–a conservative who understands housing issues–would have made an excellent chairman, for such a committee.
What if she had
A minor correction:
David Grabill represents the Housing Advocacy Group, which advocates for affordable housing. The Housing Advocacy Group is a member of the Accountable Development Coalition, but they also pursue independent projects.
Would these “affordable houses” of which you speak include the condos between Mendo and Healdsburg Avenues? The $500k condos that Jane Bender referred to as “affordable housing?” Perhaps we need to first come up with a definition of the term.
Over 4,000 units of affordable housing in 7 years were built in Santa Rosa. That’s enough! I haven’t seen the two proposals but I would support eliminating the in-lieu fees altogether and stopping the subsidies for more affordable housing projects that we don’t need.
I recall a recent court decision in California that determined that charging in-lieu fees was unconstitutional. How can we still be doing it? If developers didn’t have to pay that enormous fee, maybe some of their projects would pencil out. I hope that any housing that is built will be market rate housing so that taxpayer funds are not used for subsidies.
The taxpayer subsidies for affordable housing are massive. They get multi-million dollar grants, then are eligible for low income housing tax credits, and they receive rents and ownership of the property. They pay no property tax either. Affordable housing is a huge drain on the economy and it competes with market rate housing. Please, enough already.