Golis: Should environmental rules be changed for low-cost housing?

At this late date, no one pretends that California communities have done enough to promote housing for people who don’t make a lot of money.

The evidence is all around us - an apartment vacancy rate that is the functional equivalent of zero, sky-high rents, people living on the streets, families living in cars or in sub-standard housing.

“For decades, California’s local communities - particularly coastal communities - have built too little housing to accommodate all those who wish to live here,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office opined in May.

As we should, we celebrate the creation of new jobs, but we need to start talking about where these folks are going to live, too. In the Bay Area, job growth has far outpaced new home construction.

When you’re paid, say, $12 an hour - $2,080 a month - what do you do when the average apartment rent in Sonoma County is approaching $1,700 a month? Pay the rent and you end up with $380 for everything else - food, clothing, health care, utilities, everything.

Given the cost of housing in Sonoma County, any household that earns less than $40,000 a year is said to be “very low income” - and now you know why.

In 2015, Press Democrat Editorial Director Paul Gullixson asked Gov. Jerry Brown about the cost of housing, and the governor replied: “The problem is you people don’t want housing up there.”

Now we can guess that the governor had a solution in mind - a proposal that would exempt certain projects from additional review, including lawsuits filed under the auspices of the California Environmental Quality Act.

Under the governor’s “by-right” plan, any multi-family housing project that includes low-income units and is located on a site zoned for multi-family housing could proceed to construction, free of additional hometown or neighborhood efforts to delay it.

About the proposed exemption, the 2016-17 state budget analysis explains: “This would help constrain development costs, improve the pace of housing production and encourage an increase in housing supply. “ (The legislation would also provide additional monies for homelessness and affordable housing projects for the mentally ill.)

It’s no surprise that locally elected officials and environmental groups are unhappy about it. The Sierra Club has urged members to write in opposition to a plan that “allows developers to bypass environmental protections and run roughshod over local governments and the public.”

The League of California Cities urged its members to send letters that declare, “Eliminating opportunities for public review of these major development projects goes against the principles of local democracy and public engagement.”

For opponents, the problem remains: When it comes to providing decent and affordable housing for people who don’t have a pile of money, there’s an emergency in progress, and no one has yet stepped forward with a better idea.

The new state budget allocates $400 million for low-income housing projects, but the money is contingent on the governor and the Legislature agreeing to language to implement the governor’s proposal.

As the negotiations proceed, lawmakers will be pressed by local governments and environmentalists to resist the governor’s plan. In addition, labor unions want the program to require prevailing wage rules for any project that takes advantage of this fast-track approach.

Over the past two years in Sonoma County, there’s been lots of talk about low-cost housing. On Tuesday, the Santa Rosa City Council is expected to declare a homelessness emergency. The Santa Rosa council also has put in motion stop-gap measures, including a moratorium on rent hikes.

Voters in Healdsburg, meanwhile, will be asked in November whether they want to modify a 16-year-old ordinance that imposes strict limits on new home construction.

Progress is otherwise slow. In plain fact, government can’t cancel out the market forces that are the largest determinant of housing prices.

Plus, elected officials (and many of their constituents) struggle to reconcile the conflict between wanting to provide housing for working people and wanting to keep things as they are.

Many city council members and county supervisors were elected with the support of groups that remain less than eager to see a rush of new multi-family developments. Meanwhile, every new project seems to encounter opposition from its neighbors.

No one pays much attention when a site is zoned for multi-family development. They become engaged - sometimes, enraged - when an actual project comes into view.

For elected officials and interest groups, it turns out, it remains a whole lot easier to talk about the importance of affordable housing than to do something about it.

In May, Carol Galante, a professor of urban policy at UC Berkeley, told the Los Angeles Times: “Where this is going to help is with those cities who have already given lip service to higher-density zoning, but perhaps don’t really intend to see it through all the way.”

When it comes to shelter for people of modest means, the governor has concluded that most local communities are incapable of overcoming their ambivalence about new housing. Local governments and interest groups could prove him wrong, but they haven’t yet.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.