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City officials considering housing issue for year 2006
State requiring all housing proposals to be in place by December of 2001
By Erin Mayes
Members of Campbell's Planning Commission held a dinnertime study session Aug. 8 to discuss the housing element of the General Plan.
Over sandwiches and cookies, board members discussed how the city will meet the state mandate that requires the city to identify 777 adequate sites for housing by 2006. Since 1999, 212 new units have been built, so the goal is now 565 homes.
The state of California requires all cities and counties to regularly update the housing elements of their General Plans, which are blueprints for future development in cities.
The deadline for all Northern California cities and counties to adopt housing elements for their General Plan updates is Dec. 31, 2001.
During the board's meeting, members discussed items that the city council had expressed interest in when the housing element was presented to them at a meeting on July 3.
Among those items were secondary living units, for which the council is interested in reducing the minimum lot size. The current minimum is 12,000 square feet and will probably be taken down to 10,000 square feet. The average lot in Campbell is 6,000 square feet.
The council was also interested in the effect that building to maximum density would have on traffic and wanted to know what the maximum height would be for building in maximum density areas, such as on Bascom and Hamilton avenues. The current maximum density is 27 units per acre, which the council was not interested in increasing.
The planning commission expects quite a bit of growth in the downtown Campbell area in anticipation of the light rail stations planned for Hamilton and Central avenues, scheduled for completion in 2004. The commission's ideal housing would be mixed use, with retail on the ground floor and apartments on the second level.
The commission's consultant, Cotton Bridges Associates, has held public workshops to get input from the community about housing concerns. The public's primary concern seems to be high housing costs. The median price of a single-family, three-bedroom home in Campbell is $495,000. The median price of a multi-family home with two bedrooms is $345,000.
Only three of the 212 units that have been built since 1999 are designated for very low-income tenants--households that earn $44,000 per year or less. Nineteen of the homes built during the period have been designated for low-income tenants, and 79 are for households with moderate incomes, which, in this area, is $105,000 per year. Most of the homes that have been built--111--are for households that earn above the median income.
About 75 percent of residents who do not belong to median income households are in overcrowded conditions.
A lack of housing is also a problem. As of June, about 2.2 percent of housing was available to buy and rent. About 48 percent of Campbell homes are owned.
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Campbell, California
