Saratoga News
News
City faces chore of dealing with housing element
By Chris Vongsarath
City leaders have a tough task ahead as the city's General Plan housing element calls for 292 new housing units--235 of them below market rate--by 2012.
At an Oct. 16 study session, council members and planning commissioners met to discuss a state-mandated update to the city's housing element. Every five years the state of California requires the city to look at the housing element and allocate housing based on the regional housing needs assessment determined by the Association of Bay Area Governments.
The study session was meant as an introduction to the current update, which has to be adopted by the city council before June 30, 2009.
"It really clarified for both the planning commission and city council how important it is to do this and what happens if we don't," said Councilwoman Kathleen King.
Both bodies discussed the upcoming issues that may arise when trying to allocate so many housing units and brain stormed ideas to meet the state's requirement.
The city has to show steps have been taken to meet the requirements; otherwise, it faces losing rights to land use.
The assessment revealed 90, 68 and 77 of the units are to be made available for very low, low and moderate-income households, respectively, with 57 remaining for market-rate housing units.
City leaders agreed the numbers were not unique to Saratoga--as the ratio among housing levels was comparable to other Bay Area cities--but Saratoga housing prices hinder efforts to allocate below-market-rate housing.
Vice Mayor Ann Waltonsmith was careful to differentiate between low-income housing and below-market-rate housing. Some residents may qualify for below-market-rate housing in Saratoga, but may not be viewed as low-income residents in other cities.
"We are trying to provide rules that produce some percentage of below-market-rate housing, and that's the hard part," she said. "I certainly believe we're all citizens of a larger entity than Saratoga. I don't think anybody in that room was against that."
City leaders discussed a number of ideas, including using the West Valley College campus as a site to provide affordable housing for teachers and students, which would greatly benefit the below-market-rate housing requirement.
Planning Commissioner Joyce Hlava said she has had 20 years of experience with the issue and offered a possible approach.
"The best way to do it is to figure out how to get the least impact on the least amount of people," she said.
Saratogan and developer Gary Hansen addressed the city leaders on the issues facing developers given the city's building codes and ordinances. Hansen brought up the city's mixed-use ordinance that includes provisions for a property's residential component to be rental only and no larger than 1,250 square feet, making it difficult for the property to be profitable.
The study session kicked off what looks to be an ongoing issue as city leaders wrestle with competing interests.
John Livingstone, community development director, said city leaders provided good feedback and "out-of-the-box" ideas for him to move forward in selecting a consulting firm that will give more expertise.
The city leaders appointed three planning commissioners--Hlava, Susie Nagpal and Linda Rodgers--to work with Livingstone during that process in the coming months. The consultant and council will then hold a public hearing to get feedback from the community.
