Close to Home: Don’t blame lack of housing on growth ordinance

The Healdsburg City Council and pro-development forces intend to blow enough smoke in voters’ eyes so that they’ll believe the city’s growth management ordinance is behind the high cost of housing in Healdsburg.

The ordinance was passed by an overwhelming majority of Healdsburg voters in 2000. Through Measure R on the Nov. 8 ballot, the council wants to overturn a mechanism of orderly growth and place all growth decisions into the hands of just three council members. That’s not OK.

Let’s look at a few of the facts:

Affordable housing, by state law, is exempt from the growth management ordinance and always has been, so to try to tie the lack of affordable housing to the ordinance is deceptive.

All nine Sonoma County incorporated communities suffer from the same lack of housing, particularly affordable housing. In fact, it’s a Bay Area-wide challenge. If the cause were with the ordinance, cities without growth management ordinances would not suffer the same conditions.

Healdsburg actually has done a fair job with affordable housing. Four hundred thirty-three new affordable housing units have been built since the mid-1980s. Of that number, 312 were built after the growth management ordinance was instituted. (Remember also, the city of Healdsburg was sued for lagging in its commitment to build affordable housing in about 2003.)

The council’s plan still calls for 70 percent market-rate housing. Market-rate housing is not going to offer housing to middle-income residents. Instead of blaming the growth management ordinance, city leaders should look to themselves and their support of the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce in making Healdsburg such an outstanding destination city. It isn’t the growth management ordinance that’s been “too successful.” It has been the selling of the city by those intent on bringing in tourists, as well as people who want to have second homes here. How many “top of” lists can Healdsburg make?

Of course, Healdsburg is a wonderful place to live, so why wouldn’t other people be willing to snap up housing in our piece of paradise? However, we choose to demonize neither tourists nor owners of second homes. Heck, we even like the revenue in transient occupation tax visitors bring to Healdsburg, along with the benefits those funds offer to residents.

As long as Healdsburg has its temperate climate, wonderful wines and fabulous foods and farms, it will continue to suffer from the pressure its desirability puts on the housing market. According to Healdsburg’s own housing element assessment, there are just over 600 buildable parcels left in Healdsburg. We could choose to build out nearly all of the buildable land in Healdsburg in the next six to 12 years (see the council’s new Housing Action Plan). Then where would we be? The next place the pro-development community would target would be urban growth boundaries, because nothing less will satisfy them.

We’ve heard people saying, “But if we could just build 80” or 40 or some other number of apartments, it would solve the problem. Leaving apart the question of scale for a small city like Healdsburg, we have only to look to Windsor just to the south to understand that even while building 387 apartments and townhomes, the projected price of those rentals will be between $2,100 and $3,300 a month. Prices like those are unlikely to ease housing challenges for local retail clerks, medical assistants and fieldworkers.

We simply cannot build ourselves out of this challenge.

No on R is endorsed by the Sonoma County Democratic Party, Sonoma County Conservation Action, Service Employees International Union 1021, Citizens for a Better Sonoma County, Healdsburg Citizens for Responsible Growth, Healdsburg Fair Rent Group, and Healdsburg Citizens for Sustainable Solutions.

Please, don’t let pro-development smoke blind you. Vote to keep our growth management ordinance in place. Vote no on R.

Jim Winston helped draft the Growth Management Ordinance in 2000. Ann Carranza is a freelance writer and photographer. Both are Healdsburg residents.