With growth limits eyed for revision, Healdsburg housing debate heats up

As the father of Healdsburg’s growth management ordinance, Jim Winston is understandably nervous with the tinkering underway to ease the restriction on the maximum number of new housing units that can be built every year in town.

In Healdsburg, one of the priciest housing markets in Sonoma County, city leaders are trying to find ways to create more affordable homes. But they see the ordinance, which limits the number of new dwellings to an average of 30 per year, as an impediment in need of revising if the city wants to make inroads on the housing problem.

Winston, who wrote the ballot initiative approved by voters 15 years ago, worries the measure could be gutted, leading to “an explosion of growth” in the town of almost 12,000 population.

And if the proposed revisions - likely to be presented for voter approval in 2016 - go too far, he vows to fight it.

“On a personal level I feel as if this (growth maintenance ordinance) is my child and I’m going to do whatever it takes to protect it,” said Winston, a retired businessman who heads up Healdsburg Citizens for Responsible Growth.

The growth measure was approved by voters in 2000, in response to concern over larger housing projects like Parkland Farms built on the city’s periphery.

Facing housing shortage

But City Councilman Eric Ziedrich said the ordinance has created a significant shortage of housing, contributed to the escalation of real estate prices, and turned Healdsburg into “a playground for the entitled rich.”

Because of the low number of new dwellings allowed each year, he said it produces mostly expensive single-family homes, making it almost impossible to build multifamily, higher-density projects and the so-called workforce housing that everyone seems to agree is so badly needed.

“The door is shut before it’s ever opened. For the 40, 60, 80 units, the door is closed before we can ever discuss it,” he said.

Winston believes the ordinance is being unfairly blamed for the paucity of economical housing in Healdsburg, pointing to figures that show the city has never hit the growth limit since it was imposed. He also contends that larger apartment complexes are out of scale for Healdsburg and that smaller ones could be scattered around town.

The Healdsburg City Council established the housing committee that Ziedrich leads after a clamor over recent high-profile evictions and steep rent increases - including those for 21 Latino families in a low-income apartment complex where the new owner is fixing the dilapidated property and in some cases planned to more than double the rent.

The evictions, which led to packed City Council meetings this summer with residents demanding action, highlighted the dearth of available affordable housing in Healdsburg. Vacancy rates in the rental market are “extremely low or nonexistent,” according to a 2014 city housing study.

And housing prices in the Healdsburg market - including outside city limits - were the highest in Sonoma County for the first half of 2015.

Home prices jumped 31 percent to a median $899,000 for the first six months of this year, compared to last year, according to The Press Democrat’s housing report, which is compiled by Pacific Union International Vice President Rick Laws.

Amplified issue for city

Richard Butler, a food service manager who was appointed to the housing committee, said Healdsburg is in danger of losing its heart and soul, and its diversity, if working, middle-class folks can’t afford a home there.

He and his wife, Adrianne, a massage therapist, and their two boys, ages 6 and 9, have lived in a two-bedroom rental for several years. They would like to buy a house someday in Healdsburg, but feel priced out of the market.

“We are part of the face of what is the big challenge in Healdsburg,” Butler said.

“It’s not just Healdsburg. It’s everywhere,” he said of the affordability crunch. “It’s amplified in Healdsburg because this is such a desirable place to live and there are so few places.”

City officials and consultants have been focusing for a couple of years on the need to amend the growth management ordinance, especially to achieve more workforce housing - defined as affordable to those who provide vital services in the community, such as teachers, firefighters, police officers and restaurant and hotel workers.

Ziedrich said the tight growth cap has led to “an overabundance of only those seniors or retirees that can afford to live in a very affluent enclave.”

Consultant Jim Heid, who facilitates the housing committee meetings, said the current growth ordinance doesn’t differentiate between an allocation for a 400-square-foot studio and a 5,000-square-foot mansion.

“It’s very hard to build housing that isn’t terribly expensive in town if you can only build one at a time,” he said.

“Healdsburg has growth control, even though it’s called ‘management.’ We want to create a true management ordinance,” Heid said.

Mayor Shaun McCaffery, a member of the nine-member Community Housing Committee that is studying how the ordinance should be amended, said the group isn’t out to eviscerate it.

“The intent is just to allow it to be more flexible,” he said.

“It wouldn’t be too growth intensive,” he said of some of the tentative changes under discussion. “At the same time, it would allow for a burst of housing, which is typically how housing is built in an efficient manner. We build a lot of houses at the same time to make them more cost effective.”

The committee is holding an open house from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 10 at the Healdsburg Community Center to allow residents to offer their input on what they think a potential ballot measure should look like. To make it easier for families to attend, there will be free food and activities for children.

By November, the committee is expected to make a recommendation to the City Council, which could place a measure before voters in June or November 2016.

Concerns about revisions

Winston, who attends all the housing committee hearings, has proposed relaxing the cap to allow an average of 45 units per year - instead of the current 30 - with more than half assigned to multifamily rental apartments.

But he doesn’t like what he has been hearing at the committee meetings, including suggestions he believes could result in 300 units being built in Healdsburg in the first year alone.

In addition to allowing approximately 50 market-rate units per year, committee members are talking about doling out an additional 218 building allocations unused since 2000.

“They want to claw back, or recapture unused building allocations over the past 15 years,” Winston said disapprovingly, adding that there also is talk of “clawing forward” or borrowing from future building allocations for special projects.

“They’re coming up with things that are pretty much dead on arrival,” he said. “Growth has to occur slowly, so it can be absorbed and infrastructure can keep pace. What that equates to is small-town character.”

Winston, who lives almost a mile outside city limits, has sometimes been viewed as interloper, and although his support for a revised ordinance would be helpful, city officials don’t seem to view it as crucial.

“Whatever Jim Winston feels at this point is no more relevant than any other resident of Healdsburg. Whoops, I forgot he doesn’t live here,” Ziedrich said.

Winston points out that under the existing ordinance, affordable housing units that are built for low-, very low- and moderate-income households are exempt from the growth cap.

But funding for many of those projects was derived from redevelopment programs that were dissolved by the state.

There is another mechanism to create affordable housing, which Healdsburg, like many cities, has in place. It requires developers to construct, or help pay for, affordable or income-restricted units when they build projects with seven or more dwellings. But a tight growth cap can translate to fewer new affordable units.

“Although the GMO does not directly impact affordable-housing construction, it certainly impacts the financing for affordable-housing construction, which is done through regular housing construction,” Mayor McCaffery said.

But Winston noted that nearly all cities in Sonoma County are wrestling with the same housing squeeze, including cities with no growth limits.

Also, since 2000, developers in Healdsburg have built less housing than allowed under the city’s growth ordinance.

Between 2001 and 2007, residential building permits averaged 16 units per year for market rate units and 27 per year for both market rate and affordable units. Between 2007 and 2014, the average was 20 units per year.

But Ziedrich said that picture is skewed.

“You have no idea looking at those numbers what the true demand for housing is and what it will be,” he said. “The real question is how many projects never came before us because of the GMO.”

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