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City council searches for answers to housing woes
High costs and lack of open space cited
Teachers ask for fund
By Oakley Brooks
The shortage of affordable housing in Saratoga has teachers scampering to positions in other towns and city emergency personnel enduring marathon commutes.
The problem appears likely to continue.
According to both a recent community development report on the city's housing needs and comments from the Saratoga City Council, solutions for the current housing crisis aren't close at hand.
The report, a draft of the city's housing needs assessment, says any prospects for improving the housing situation are "severely constrained" by the high cost of land, lack of open space on which to build, and the extremely high price to make existing Saratoga housing affordable.
The draft report was released at a special city council session on affordable housing on March 27, where a group of parents and teachers asked the council to set aside $2 million of the city's projected budget surplus for teacher housing. Councilman Evan Baker said even that commitment of funds might not alleviate the housing problem in high-priced Saratoga.
"Don't expect miracles," Baker told the concerned gathering, "Our budget doesn't provide for miracles."
Teachers and emergency workers are just two of the groups hard hit by the Saratoga housing crunch, according to the draft report. Seniors on fixed income, large families and one-parent households are also deeply affected.
The report also notes that entry- and mid-level professionals are having a hard time finding suitable housing in Saratoga.
"There's much more of a continuum of need than there has been traditionally," interim Community Development Director Irwin Kaplan said. "All sorts of new people are affected by this."
City officials know this all too well. Those who remain have watched a 25 percent turnover in city staff in the last year, according to Mayor John Mehaffey.
But while members of the city council all expressed concern about the housing issue, they seemed skeptical of any real solution in Saratoga
"A 25 percent downward move in our housing market would still not fix our affordable housing problem," said Councilman Baker.
In light of Saratoga's spiraling land costs, both Silicon Valley Housing Trust Director Chris Block and Vice Mayor Nick Streit advocated that Saratoga contribute--through the Trust--to more housing in surrounding cities.
Councilwoman Ann Waltonsmith said new housing in neighboring towns still wouldn't count towards the 539 new units that the Association of Bay Area Governments recently directed Saratoga to provide over the next six years. Saratoga officials are currently at a loss as to how to comply with the city's regional housing allotment, including the directive that more than half of the new units be priced at or below ABAG's affordability threshold of $313,000.
Under state law, Saratoga must comply with the ABAG housing allotment in order to have a certified housing section for the city's General Plan. Saratoga is updating the housing portion--the housing element--of its General Plan this year.
The housing needs document was the first step in updating the city's housing element. Interim Community Development Director Irwin Kaplan says the document will provide a firm foundation for housing policy decisions and, with public comment, will hopefully be finalized by the end of April. Then the Community Development department will begin to suggest solutions to the city's housing needs.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
