Rohnert Park may sell properties for apartments

Rohnert Park would sell four vacant buildings now earmarked for affordable housing, including its old City Hall, under a plan the City Council will be asked to approve on Tuesday.

Selling the buildings -#8212; three of which make up one block of Avram Avenue -#8212; would allow private developers to turn them into market-rate housing, city officials said.

"The market right now is really tight for apartments in Rohnert Park. We have a lot of students, we have a demand for apartments, and we think this would stimulate that development," said City Manager Darrin Jenkins.

Affordable housing advocates criticized the idea.

"I understand why they're making this decision but it feels very shortsighted," said Paula Cook, president of the Sonoma County Housing Coalition's consensus council, or managing body.

There is room for 50 to 60 apartments on the three combined properties that stretch from Commerce Boulevard to the current City Hall, Jenkins said.

The properties -#8212; and one other, an old fire station on Southwest Boulevard -#8212; were bought in 2008 and 2011 by the city's redevelopment agency. The agency issued bonds to finance the purchases, for $5.1 million all together.

But in 2011, the state eliminated redevelopment agencies and the city lost the ongoing financial means to start and support housing projects. All the sites are vacant and increasingly run down.

If the city pays off the financing bonds, it will be free of the bonds' covenant that the properties be used for low- and moderate-income housing, said Linda Babonis, the city's economic development manager.

That, she said in the staff report, "will consequently have greater potential to generate increased property tax and sales tax revenues for the city."

But Cook said abandoning affordable housing possibilities will hurt both the city and low- and moderate-income people.

"Rental prices are exorbitantly high right now and probably are going to stay that way for the foreseeable future," she said, "so we're pricing out families who are not going to be able to afford market-rate housing."

Also, Cook said, the city is curtailing its ability to meet its own affordable housing needs in the future. It will have to go out on the open market to buy future affordable housing sites, or subsidize developers to build it, she said.

"If they want more affordable housing, they're going to have to pay one way or another," she said.

Vice-Mayor Amy Ahanotu said the city cannot afford to maintain vacant property that it is getting nothing from. But he acknowledged a need for affordable housing and said the city should consider requiring it be included as part of any apartments developed on the properties.

Also, the city is working on a plan to turn over to the Sonoma County Community Development Commission five houses that until recently were used for transitional housing.

Under the tentative plan, a Petaluma nonprofit, the Committee on the Shelterless, would then revive some sort of short- or long-term housing program on those properties.

Commission staff have been examining the proposal, and the properties, for almost a year. They have concluded the deal would likely work out, but there are questions about how state law would govern the transfer of the properties, said John Haig, the county's redevelopment manager.

"At this point we don't see any red flags," Haig said. "Assuming that nothing upsets the apple cart, I would expect a favorable outcome."