By Clarence Cromwell
California housing officials have given their nod to Los Gatos' housing element, the document that explains how the town will provide the hundreds of affordable units the state wants to see.
Now that the seven-year struggle with state housing officials is over, the hard part begins: The town must explain to residents a housing element that will mean more high-density housing in town.
Before officially enacting the plan, the Town Council must hold a series of public hearings that begins with an April 23 Planning Commission session.
The new housing element, not yet adopted by the town, states that Los Gatos will allow developers to build affordable housing units here and contains a new promise that the Town Council will consider rezoning land to allow for more apartment buildings.
Before the rezoning clause was added, the town and state were deadlocked because the state demanded to know the sites where apartments will be built and the town refused to upzone dormant land, a politically explosive prospect.
Town Council members have said they doubt the community will swallow high-density apartment projects.
The lack of a housing element has been a monkey on the town's back for more than seven years. The General Plan is incomplete without the housing element.The 1990 version of the housing element was handed back by the state three times for revisions before the town gave up on receiving approval. When the state Department of Housing and Community Development refused approval of the housing element, the Town Council passed a resolution stating that it was satisfied with the document, regardless of state policy. A number of Bay Area cities have taken the same route, including Saratoga and Monte Sereno.
In the end, the town paid housing consultant Melanie Shaffer Freitas more than $20,000 last fall to help get the general plan approved by state officials. The language promising to rezone properties was added on the advice of Shaffer Freitas and resulted in a March 7 letter from the housing department stating that the current draft of the housing element is acceptable to the state.
The state requires every city to write a housing element chapter in its general plan because the housing department wants cities to be accessible to homebuyers, regardless of their race or economic status.
The shortage of affordable housing here, as in other Bay Area cities, is serious.
The Association of Bay Area Government--the regional authority on affordable housing--says Los Gatos needs more than 200 affordable units, especially very-low-income units.
Housing costs in Los Gatos virtually exclude all but the upper-middle class; the median home value here was $439,000 last year, according to June 1996 data supplied by the Peninsula West Valley Association of Realtors.
In the past, Town Council members have refused to support an affordable housing plan that would bring about a dramatic influx in population, saying that would lower the quality of life for those who live here now. At the time they hired Shaffer Freitas, Town Council members made it clear that they still don't want big apartment complexes in town, but they agreed, nevertheless, to add the language promising more high-density housing.
Despite the housing element revision, the council is still free to turn down requests for high-density zoning, Planning Director Lee Bowman said.
Mayor Joanne Benjamin said Los Gatans may be ready to support affordable housing.
"I think there is a concern in the community for people who want housing their children can afford," Benjamin said. She added that companies in the region--whose corporate officers may live in Los Gatos--want to see housing for their employees.
But Benjamin also understands community opposition to high-density housing, she said.
"People moved here because they like the more rural atmosphere," she said. "I like to visit a big city, and I like to leave it. It's important for us to remember the quality of life that people moved here for."
Housing elements are not very effective at creating affordable housing, but they're better than nothing at all, said San Jose State University political science department chair Terry Christensen.
"It depends on whether the city is truly committed and hangs in there," Christensen explained. "A lot of more affluent suburbs stick an affordable housing element in their general plan and then ignore it."
Moreover, the promise to rezone does not indicate as strong a commitment to affordable housing as simply rezoning would indicate, Christensen commented.
The Planning Commission hearing on the housing element begins at 7:30 p.m. April 23 in the Town Council Chambers, 110 E. Main Street.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, April 23, 1997.
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