Santa Rosa to consider fixes for housing crisis

In February, the Santa Rosa City Council agreed that one of its top goals would be to address the affordable housing crisis.

Five months later, it still hasn’t done much about it.

That could change today when the council will be asked to make some hard choices about how it wants to tackle the problem.

“This is sort of the first serious step in having the council make tough decisions about priorities,” Mayor John Sawyer said. “This is our opportunity to bite the bullet and move forward as a group with the things that four votes decide to move forward.”

The council has asked city staff members to present a range of options for how to deal with a historic housing crunch, where rents have gone up by 30 percent in three years and low-income residents are seeing their options quickly dwindle.

Ideas include instituting rent control, fast-tracking new apartment complexes and slapping an affordable housing fee on businesses of more than ?10 people, known as a commercial linkage fee. City Manager Sean McGlynn has listened as council members in recent months have proposed those and a host of other possible solutions. Now he’s putting it back on the council agenda and asking them to make some decisions about what he and his staff should work on first.

In the mix are projects including reunification of Courthouse Square, which along with rent control McGlynn wants decisions on first, and pressing subjects that McGlynn says can wait, such as potential regulation of vacation rentals and a call for union rules on large city construction projects.

“We’re having to reprioritize to really get some things into a conversation,” McGlynn said. “This is about scheduling the time so we have can a full, open, transparent conversation.”

In many ways today’s meeting is simply a matter of scheduling. No policy decisions will be made. But by fast-tracking some affordable housing approaches and pushing back or passing on others altogether, the decisions could prove far reaching.

McGlynn has proposed a series of study sessions over three months, each taking a deep dive into proposed solutions and asking the council whether it wants to implement each approach.

The commercial linkage fee is proposed for Aug. 18. Rent control, perhaps the most controversial approach, is slated for Sept. 1, with housing voucher discrimination coming two weeks later.

On Oct. 20 there is a session touching on in-lieu housing fees, streamlining of transit-oriented projects, and requiring some developers to set aside 20 percent of units as affordable.

A Nov. 3 session would focus on dedication of post-redevelopment funds to housing, streamlining building permits, and fast-tracking low to moderate income multi-family housing projects.

It is far from clear that the council will accept McGlynn’s proposed shift in priorities.

Rent control has already shown itself to be a divisive topic in Santa Rosa. Councilwoman Julie Combs’s failed effort last month to impose a temporary moratorium on rent increases of more than 3 percent sparked a passionate debate about the value of such regulations.

Sawyer, the former owner of a longtime downtown newsstand, said he would rather focus on measures that boost the housing supply instead of imposing rent restrictions on the city’s limited stock.

“For me, nothing is going to solve the housing problem like inventory,” Sawyer said. “That’s where I would like to start the conversation.”

As he sees it, the city is paying the price today for not allowing more robust housing growth 10 years ago. He sees the downtown as the best place to place significant inventories of new housing units because it’s where buildings can rise to 10 stories or higher.

“We’re the fifth largest city in the Bay Area. I want to see cranes swinging in our downtown,” Sawyer said.

Combs said she agrees that a wide range of additional inventory is needed in the city, including market rate, workforce, and affordable housing. But she noted that there are 3,000 units already approved and unbuilt, some of them affordable units that need “gap funding” in the form of subsidies to make them viable projects.

And even if new market rate or affordable complexes are approved today, they’ll take several years to get permitted, constructed and on the market. In the meantime, the city also needs to protect current renters with what she calls “rent stabilization.”

“The children who’ve grown up here and work here should be able to live here,” Combs said. “I don’t believe we can only build our way out of this problem.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.