In April, 2024, the City adopted its 6th Cycle Housing Element, spanning the years 2023-2031. Subsequently, this amendment was certified by the State Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), and remains certified to date. In addition to the benefit of helping a city plan for growth, an adopted Housing Element also shields a city from punitive State measures like the “Builders Remedy”, which take away large amounts of local permitting control.
Of the 349 units of new housing required to be planned for in the City’s Housing Element, a large number of those units, 231 in total, must be constructed as “affordable” units. This means that they must have some sort of income qualification component, or deed restriction to qualify for this designation. The one caveat to this requirement, is that Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) can also be used to fulfill this affordability requirement.
In order to get the City’s Housing Element certified by HCD before becoming subject to the Builder’s Remedy, two City Owned properties were included in the Housing Element ‘Sites Inventory’, which lists properties targeted for development of housing over the 8-year period. These City owned sites, Vista Lobos and Sunset Center, were key to getting the Housing Element certified by HCD because they were the most viable options at the time to actually produce affordable housing units due to their ownership by the City. In total, these two City sites account for 149 of the 231 affordable units the City is required to plan for.
Over the final months of adoption and certification of the Housing Element, members of the community, as well as members of Council expressed concern over the use of these City owned sites for housing, and requests were made to remove these sites from the inventory list. Ultimately, a majority of the City Council adopted the Housing Element with inclusion of the City owned sites, and it was certified by HCD, prior to the State’s certification deadline, which prevented the City from being subject to the Builder’s Remedy. However, throughout the adoption process, the concept of the Housing Element being a ‘living document’ was discussed at some length, meaning that the plan could be altered following certification if the Council chose to do so, as long as the total housing targets were not lowered, and the State approved the modifications. In response to those conversations, Council is being asked to consider a resolution that would direct staff resources to begin working on exploring alternative housing sites and programs. The concept would be to produce enough new housing options to allow the City to amend its Housing Element for removal the City owned sites from the inventory list. Any amendments to the Housing Element will ultimately need to be reviewed and certified by HCD. Staff will be prepared at the meeting to discuss the process surrounding amendments to a certified housing element.