Healdsburg residents worried about lack of affordable housing, poll finds

In Healdsburg, the priciest real estate market in Sonoma County, it’s probably not a surprise that housing tops the list of concerns for residents.

A new poll found that more than seven in 10 Healdsburg residents are worried about the lack of housing for working families.

Asked to rank the most pressing issues facing the city, housing costs and lack of housing options rose to the top in a city-commissioned poll conducted last month that also shows support for loosening the city’s growth management restrictions to create more homes for the middle class.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find a home under $600,000,” Mayor Tom Chambers said Thursday, adding that a married couple making $120,000, or about 160 percent of the Sonoma County median income, could not qualify to buy in Healdsburg, based on conventional lending guidelines.

A family of four making the median income of $76,900 can only afford a home costing $311,000, according to Healdsburg housing data. The median cost of housing in town and its immediate environs was just over $805,000 in 2015, according to The Press Democrat’s monthly housing report, compiled by Rick Laws, international vice president at the Pacific Union real estate firm. That topped the next-priciest area, the Sonoma Coast, at $740,000.

On the City Council and around the community, “We’re all on the same page. We want more housing for people who live and work in our community,” City Councilman Shaun McCaffery said.

Currently, only about one-third of the people who work in Healdsburg live in town, a figure that is considered less than desirable for a cohesive community.

City officials talk of a “missing middle,” or a lack of housing supply in between market-rate homes and state-defined “affordable housing,” which is subsidized and has controlled costs designed for very-low, low- and so-called moderate-income people, making less than 120 percent of median income.

There are some affordable housing projects on the horizon that could create more than 200 dwellings overall - on parcels owned by the city on Grove Street and West Dry Creek Road, as well as a 14-acre site donated by the developers of the future Saggio Hills.

But those units may be years away from completion. And they still would not be available to families with income too high to qualify, but who make too little to afford anything in Healdsburg.

To address that so-called missing middle, city officials are looking to put a measure on the November ballot, asking voters to loosen the city’s 16-year-old growth management ordinance, which restricts the number of new homes to an average of 30 annually. Government-assisted, affordable housing is exempt from the growth cap, per state law.

The intent of the ordinance approved by voters in 2000 was to create slow and orderly growth over time, but critics said it ended up favoring the creation of pricey, single-family homes.

City housing committees over the past few years have been studying the best way to modify the growth ordinance to enable the construction of more apartments for middle-income people, trying to strike a balance that doesn’t appear to tip the scale toward excessive development and loss of small-town character.

The recommendation is to ask voters to allow an average of 45 new units to be built per year - roughly a 1 percent growth rate - over a housing cycle that would be re-evaluated every eight years.

But the City Council also sought to gauge voters’ attitudes toward a ballot measure and the $20,000 poll found a good likelihood that one would pass. It found 75 percent of residents in favor of updating the growth ordinance to address the city’s housing needs. And 86 percent of respondents support dedicating a portion of the new housing units to middle-income and working families.

The poll, conducted by FM3 Associates, surveyed 366 likely voters and has a margin of error of approximately 5 percent.

Jim Winston, the author of the city’s existing growth ordinance, said some of the questions were misleading and the pollsters should have mentioned that affordable housing is exempt under the city’s growth cap.

Winston said that under the changes being contemplated, 360 new homes could be constructed immediately, a number he considers far too many. He wants to see no more than 135 new homes built over a three-year period.

Warren Watkins, head of Healdsburg Citizens for Sustainable Solutions, said the poll downplayed the number of residents who said too many out-of-towners are displacing long-term residents. He noted that 71 percent of respondents said it was either an extremely serious to somewhat serious problem.

City Council members said no poll is perfect, but expressed approval with the results.

“This gives me some hope that we can actually make a (growth management) amendment and present it to the voters and have it pass and it will have a positive impact on the community,” Councilman McCaffery said.

You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com. OnTwitter@clarkmas.