Sonoma exploring affordable housing possibilities

Firefighters, teachers, nurses and restaurant and hotel employees are forced to commute miles every day from Santa Rosa, Vallejo and beyond because they can’t find affordable places to live in Sonoma, City Councilwoman Laurie Gallian said.

The stories about those struggling to find housing close to their jobs are numerous, and it’s becoming a bigger concern as younger families join the local workforce, she said.

“We have a lot of young professionals who are coming in (to work),” Gallian said. But, she added, many of them can’t find an affordable place close, especially if they’re dealing with college debt.

Sonoma is searching for ways to bring in more low-cost housing for seniors and its workforce. A consultant found that 90 percent of those employed in the city live outside of the city limits and on average commute 30 minutes each way. To boost their affordable housing stock, city officials could turn to builders, hitting them with special fees.

A proposal calls for exploring the possibility of collecting impact fees on new residential and commercial developments to go toward building more affordable homes and rental units. It remains unknown whether council members will support the impact fees and what it would be set at. The idea was included in an update to the city’s housing-needs plan, which will go before council members in March for consideration. The Planning Commission gave it a thumbs-up last week.

But it could be a while before developers even see the fees, which typically are passed down to the buyers. The city must first do a study, a state mandate, ?to determine the kind of impact commercial and residential ?developments have on affordable housing and what’s the ?maximum fee that can be collected.

“The earliest we could start will be in the next fiscal year,” Planning Director David Goodison said about the study, which he explained is a lengthy and complex process.

City staff argued in the housing plan draft the fees could be a good way of “distributing the responsibility for affordable housing,” but some builders say it’s unfair to tack on additional fees.

For years, the city heavily relied on redevelopment dollars to spur construction of low-cost housing, such as the Valley Oak subdivision. Sonoma was left with a significant hole to fill when Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011 disbanded local redevelopment agencies statewide that used property revenues to fund local development projects.

“With the loss of redevelopment (dollars), we don’t have a stable source of funding for an affordable housing program,” Goodison said.

It’s too soon to tell whether impact fees are the answer to the shortage problem, Gallian said. But, she added, something will need to be done to address the growing need for affordable units.

Mayor David Cook voiced a similar sentiment. He hasn’t decided whether he would support the affordable housing impact fees. But he said it’s worth exploring the idea.

“It’s good to turn every stone,” Cook said.

In Sonoma, more than 30 percent of renters are spending more than half of their income on housing, a city consultant said last week. Meanwhile, 60 percent of senior households were considered low-income.

Sonoma has 400 affordable units, including those strictly for seniors, Goodison said. It’s estimated the city will need an additional 137 units, ranging from low- to above-moderate income level, within the next eight years.

“It’s really important that cities like Sonoma take steps to generate some funding to build affordable housing. Now with the economy rebounding, this is a very appropriate time to do it,” said David Grabill, a Santa Rosa attorney and member of the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group.

Developers already have to pay transportation and school impact fees. It makes sense that builders should have to pay for the impact on the low-cost housing stock, added Grabill, who previously sued Napa and Sonoma counties for insufficient affordable housing policies.

But tacking on extra fees and making it more expensive to build doesn’t resolve the shortage in housing, a significant problem throughout the region, said Bob Glover, executive officer of the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area, which boasts more than 400 members from Monterey to Lake counties.

“We have a supply problem in the Bay Area. It’s what jurisdictions fail to understand,” he said, adding that builders have seen governments charge them various impact and regulatory fees that total as much as $100,000 a unit.

“When you look at the culmination of fees in total, that’s where you start seeing the issue,” Glover said.

While he says builders should be part of the “solution,” he added “there is no evidence that shows the creation of new housing creates a need for affordable housing.”

However, city officials argue that commercial and office developments put further pressure on the affordable housing stock, introducing more workers into the community, as do residential projects, which increase the demand for goods and services by bringing in more residents.

Sonoma County requires most residential and commercial developments to pay fees for workforce housing, said Kathleen Kane, executive director of the county’s Community Development Commission.

“These (provisions) require affordable units to be built on site, or fees to be paid into the County Fund for Housing,” she said in an email.

Kane said the fund has collected in the past decade $12 million in fees, which have been used to build and preserve affordable rental units and mobile home spaces, as well as pay for various homeless services, including transitional housing for homeless veterans.

“Whether the units are built on-site or through payment of fees, these requirements have been a great resource in expanding the affordable housing supply in the county,” Kane said.

Some cities, including Santa Rosa and Sebastopol, also collect similar fees to assist with building affordable housing.

Santa Rosa charges developers 2.5 percent of the sales price of a new home. For apartments, it’s based on the unit’s square footage.

“We’ve heavily relied on the collection of those fees,” said Nancy Gornowicz, the city’s Economic Development and Housing manager.

In 2013, the fees generated about $357,000.

Gornowicz said developers can then borrow the money at a low interest rate and use it to leverage state and federal resources to help pay for housing projects. “City funds are very key, especially in today’s financing model,” she explained.

The city of Sonoma currently requires development projects of five or more units to include some low- to moderate-income housing. However, the so-called inclusionary requirement doesn’t apply to smaller projects and single-family homes.

“One could agree that the inclusionary requirement isn’t really fair,” Goodison said. Impact fees would level that field.

Cook said the city also will be exploring whether to expand the inclusionary requirement to smaller housing projects and single-family homes, giving them an opportunity to pay an “in-lieu” fee that would assist with building affordable units. Sonoma also is exploring whether to allow residents to rent out rooms in their homes, which officials say will help senior residents stay in their homes and alleviate some of the housing need.

Still, the city faces another challenge: space. It’s two square miles and surrounded by ?environmentally protected lands, which doesn’t leave much room to build, Cook said. Plus, he added, there’s little support in ?the community to build vertically.

“We’re trying to figure out ways in keeping rents low for residents in Sonoma,” he said. “We are a small city. It’s difficult.”

You can reach Staff Writer ?Eloísa Ruano González at 521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@pressdemocrat.com. On ?Twitter @eloisanews.