Healdsburg seeks to clear the way for construction of more affordable homes for sale

Healdsburg City Council advanced its plan to seek voter approval to allow homebuilders to construct more income-restricted housing to sell through a second amendment to the city’s growth management cap in two years.

The council fine-tuned the ballot measure’s language Monday before unanimously supporting the proposed update to the growth ordinance. If passed by voters in March, the amendment would permit as many as 50 rental homes already allowed and intended for middle-income families to instead be built for sale.

The rental properties, which voters exempted from the city’s 30-unit average yearly residential growth cap in 2018, are geared toward individuals and families with annual earnings in the 120% to 160% range of the area’s median income.

For an individual, that equates to between about $78,000 and $104,000 per year, and between $112,000 and $149,000 for families of four.

Once finalized by council on Nov. 18, the ballot measure will offer voters the chance to allow converting some of those rental-only units into properties that can be bought and owned.

“That’s actually really exciting,” Mayor David Hagele said. “I think that’s going to do what we’re trying to do here, which is get additional units (built) in Healdsburg.”

Healdsburg is one of Sonoma County’s priciest real estate markets, and the city has worked to find ways to keep its local workforce living in the community. But that’s been increasingly difficult as home prices and rental rates have continued to increase, with the median monthly rental rate reaching $2,950 and the median sales price of a single-family home at $799,000 through September, according to San Francisco-based online real estate information site Trulia.

The new amendment to the growth management ordinance, which voters approved in 2000, would allow developers to provide more of the homes they build each year to go to groups such as longtime locals who are being priced out of Healdsburg and people looking to buy their first home, said Stephen Sotomayor, the city’s housing administrator.

Rather than merely putting more market-rate housing stock up for sale, however, the income-restricted homes also would help fill a gap in housing affordability that the city previously identified as the middle-income level missing from the market.

“The community has really been wanting to see more younger families. They want to see more people who live and work here,” Sotomayor said. “You’re not always going to be able to do that with pure rentals. So any place that we can get more for-sale is good. In that moderate range, we’re only opening up another avenue and we’re not closing anything.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin Fixler at 707-521-5336 or kevin.fixler@pressdemocrat.com.