Sonoma County seeks help identifying future housing sites

Sonoma County officials have issued an unusual plea for the public’s help addressing the housing crisis, asking residents to help identify vacant or underutilized properties that could be rezoned to allow landowners to build future projects.

Officials touted the approach as a way to engage the community in identifying housing solutions after last year’s firestorm wiped out more than 5,300 residences in Sonoma County.

“Housing is an extreme challenge that requires extreme actions,” said Tennis Wick, director of Permit Sonoma, the county’s planning and building department. “The government can’t just sit back and wait for projects - we need to engage the community as partners in the process.”

Wick described the proactive effort to seek such help from residents as a first for the county. It comes on the heels of a slate of policy changes intended to pave the way for the construction of more homes and denser developments.

“A lot of people may own land that’s either vacant or underutilized and not make the link to the need. We want to close that gap,” Wick said. “There are properties where (people) are wondering why it hasn’t been developed, and we don’t want to leave that as an open question. We want to engage with property owners to see if we can get them to develop it.”

Landowners or residents can go online to submit information about sites in unincorporated areas with water and sewer access that are near jobs, services and transit and that have the capacity for affordable housing, workforce housing or higher-density housing.

“We’ll look at it and see what it’s qualified for under the general plan and zoning,” Wick said. “We’ll use our knowledge to evaluate any constraints and opportunities on the site and then contact the property owners, if it’s not the property owners who contacted us, to see what the interest will be in developing housing.”

If the landowner is willing to develop housing, staff will offer free pre-permit applications and other incentives, like connections with professional groups, Wick said. Permit Sonoma would seek input from the community about any potential sites and conduct necessary environmental review. Any proposed projects would be subject to public hearings before the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors.

“This is not to rubber stamp,” Wick said. “We’re trying to better understand the opportunities that are out there when we apply the law and policies that are already in place.”

Supervisors this year loosened restrictions on granny units and created a category for so-called cottage housing, or clusters of smaller units. Other changes allowed for denser developments, simplified standards for multi-family housing and established a new zone for workforce housing while lowering other development hurdles.

Separately, Permit Sonoma staff members have reached out to property owners about developing housing and are continuing to seek out sites, Wick said. He touted as an example the former Estancia Apartments, a Larkfield-?Wikiup apartment complex that’s being rebuilt after the fires with a greater number of units and new affordable housing.

Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore called the engagement effort an innovative way to create much-needed housing and test out new policies.

“For us, making all these changes and being open to making more changes and reaching out to folks is our way of saying ‘We’re going to do whatever we can for our part of being a part of the solution,’?” said Gore, the board’s outgoing chairman.

You can reach Staff Writer Hannah Beausang at 707-521-5214 or hannah.beausang@pressdemocrat.com.