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.
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