Healdsburg City Council, residents debate raising growth cap to address housing needs

The need for more housing for workers and families is something many people seem to agree on in Healdsburg, but the trick will be whether and how to alter the city’s restrictive growth cap to make it happen.

The tension between the desire for more affordable housing versus the fear of rampant development was on display Monday night as the City Council and members of the public weighed in on a possible amendment to Healdsburg’s growth management ordinance.

“I truly believe we all want the same thing - small town character. I agree we need more housing. The issue is, how to get to where we need to go,” said Jim Winston, who authored the measure approved by Healdsburg voters in 2000 that restricted the amount of new homes to an average of 30 per year.

“What I cherish in Healdsburg is the slow-growth mindset,” said Winston, a retiree who lives just outside city limits. “What makes it special, is it’s grown slowly and orderly over time.”

But planners say the current growth controls constrain the development of apartments and multifamily housing, because it is very difficult to build them in small increments, and increases the financing hurdles and risk for developers.

On Monday, the council consensus was to aim for a ballot measure in 2016 that will loosen up the growth restriction and help create more housing, particularly in the central Healdsburg area, with an existing lumberyard eyed for redevelopment.

Mayor Jim Wood said new companies that are locating in Healdsburg can’t find housing and their workers are forced to commute. That includes a new software company and a loan company, the types of businesses that represent diversity beyond the wine, food and tourists that define the town of 11,400 population.

“They’re good, high-quality jobs not related to tourism. There’s no ability to find housing for these folks,” Wood said Monday.

Without adjustment to the growth management ordinance, planning consultants say that most new housing will continue to be in the form of small-scale, single-family development that is not affordable to workplace households.

The City Council last month jettisoned a proposed ballot measure that would have amended the growth ordinance. Essentially a majority of the council didn’t think it went far enough to provide more housing in Healdsburg, which has some of the highest home prices in the county.

The amendment - if approved by voters - would have allowed developers to build up to 510 new dwellings units over 15 years. That compares to 450 allowed in the same period under the current voter approved ordinance.

Warren Watkins, founder of Healdsburg Citizens for Sustainable Solutions, on Monday agreed on the need for more rental units for Healdsburg employees now forced to commute, as well as for “small, middle-class-owned, modestly priced housing, such as townhomes, condominiums or row housing.”

But he said his group is very wary of what may replace the current growth management ordinance “and who is driving this change of direction.”

Mayor Wood said no one on the council is advocating for big growth. But he said if the ordinance isn’t amended, the community will continue to see higher prices for homes, more wealthy second home owners, and young families with children continuing to disappear.

Councilman Tom Chambers said any change to the ordinance needs to be something citizens “get behind.”

“The wrong thing for us to do is sit here and say what needs to be done, and hope it gets some validation from the audience,” he said.