Chuong: Housing Element Watchdog Check-in Agenda 

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- Which city(s) are you monitoring, and which chapter(s) if any are you coordinating with?

    - Fountain Valley

- Do you know if your city committed to a rezoning?

    - Going through the process right now, haven’t adopted yet 

    - What is the deadline for this rezoning?

        - Doesn’t know deadline, submitted late so far 

- What policies did your city commit to enacting? (If no, ask if any city-owned sites are on the site inventory.)

    - ADU zoning expansion 

    - Not aware of any others 

- If rezonings or policies have been introduced, do you know what the timelines and local processes are for passing? What progress has been made?

    - No dates 

- When are the upcoming public hearings or housing element updates?

    - Not aware 

Omar planning director opens the presentation with RHNA numbers and what needs to be done and goes over the high level details of what the proposed housing element is. Omar and Colin had stated that they received an HCD review letter stating that they need to address just two more things:

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- AFFH

- Building Constraints for MH

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I don't have a copy of that letter so I can't review it.

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They said they will update the housing element and proposed that the city council adopt it.

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Some discussion amongst city council and one of them makes a remark that if one of the sites do no pan out, we will have to rezone to make sure we still have capacity. One of them is skeptical (rightfully so) that one of the sites (South Park) zoned for 1100 is supposedly going to be 50% affordable.

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I made public comment about how we need to rezone for more (including missing middle) and that the No Net Loss Buffer is something the city should acknowledge. They currently have 0 housing units as a buffer for moderate income category and less than 1% buffer on the lower income. Pointed out that they should look into Culver City which has a greater than 150% surplus capacity. Without rezoning, by adopting this Housing Element, they are committing to rezoning in the future again shortly.

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Someone commented about how committing to the inclusionary rate of 15% should not be included in the housing element. Instead they urged that they only commit to "studying" rather than "implementing". They stated that to reach the lower income numbers with 15% inclusionary rate, the city will need to commit to 20,000+ market rate units. City Council seemed not to be happy to hear that.

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Public comment closed.

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Council Member Kim Constantine makes a comment about how we should rezone more sites for "planning purposes" such that we have a buffer. She proposed making the bowling alley a housing site. Consultant responds that it needs to have property owner interest. 

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Eventually the City Council adopted the housing element 5-0

Consultant Colin from Placeworks and Omar (Building Director) gave a presentation on the high level overview of the housing element.

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Planning commission is starting to realize that they may need to start zoning for more since the surplus capacity for many of their categories are very low. Lower income has <1% buffer, moderate has 0 unit buffer. Overall buffer is <6%.

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Planning commissioner Mary-Ellen Esquer rightly so was skeptical that some R5 (high density) zone sites would actually be built to 100% affordable. Consultant explained that state law allows you do make that call if it's zoned the right amount. I think the consultant were referring to the Mullin density.

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Mary-Ellen asked why they don't go above the 15% inclusionary rate. Consultant explained that going above 15% requires substantial evidence that HCD will look for as to why that will not hinder housing production.

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I think they are starting to understand that they will have to start zoning for more capacity once they realized that they are going to have to rezone anyways if capacity falls during the planning period.

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Mary-Ellen Esquer is still somewhat someone who does not want the apartment buildings to be built but understands that the state has mandated them. She seems to want to appeal to the public and not have too many people living in the new sites. For example, she prefer that if we have 100 units of housing, that they all be 1 bedroom, rather than 3 bedrooms because in her head, there would be less people in each unit. Her rationale was that the public wants less people and less traffic.

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And she asked if we could try getting more condo oriented development since renters tend to not care about the community and lay down roots. Renters tend to live there for 1 year and leave. 

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Other commissioners went off on a tangent about how housing prices are caused by investors buying up homes and doing nothing with them. Complaints about VRBO and Airbnb. It shows that there is a lack of understanding of supply-demand economics.

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Azzam Saad, Vice-Chair, seems to be the only voice of reason and understands that it is all about supply and demand and that we shouldn't try and do the guess work of what the market wants.

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I gave my public comment and reminded them that HCD strongly recommends that we keep at 15-30% buffer on all income categories and their surplus capacity does not meet that.

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Afterwards I spoke to the Placework consultant (Colin) and Building Director(Omar). The consultant still seemed salty about the "large RHNA mandate". And the consultant seemed convinced that their ADU estimates which is 38% higher than the safe harbor method, will be okay with HCD. It seems like HCD has been giving them the OK on that. 

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From speaking to them, it seems like they and the planning commission would never consider missing middle housing and touching R1 zoning would be blasphemy.

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It will be interesting to see what they try and do.

This meeting was to discuss two options.

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1. Keep the existing max density of 100du/arce

2. Reduce the max density to 65du/arce

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For some context, there was some major pushback when City Council approved the Slaters investment property. The City Council asked to have a proposal to reduce the density. This meeting was to discuss the draft housing element and also to vote on the above proposal.

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I made comment about how choosing option #2 would reduce the feasibility of a development happening especially combined with the affordability requirements. Some other comments complained about parking. One of the GPAC members Michael Vo made a great comment about having an open mind to people who wants to live in Fountain Valley and do not depend on parking. 

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Option #1 was ultimately voted to hold and stay. The only member I heard vote no was Kim Constantine which is expected.

Elizabeth Hansburg let me know about this meeting. But this is also publicized on the city's website and Kim the city council member shared it as well.

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This meeting was in regards to the Slater housing site. Elizabeth has a good fact sheet about the details of the project. I was not able to catch most of the meeting but was able to catch the tail end.

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We had 3 votes for yes (Michael Vo, Ted Bui and Glenn) with the Mayor and Kim Constantine voting no. The project was approved 3-2.

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Kim was the biggest opponent to this project and was asking that they kick the project back to the planning commission since they "didn't do their due diligence".

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The concerns they shared was the usual, height of the building and number of parking spaces. There are going to be many other projects similar to this so I expect more pushback going forward.

This was a long meeting. Started at 6pm and ended at 10pm.

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This was a meeting about the Slater's project, which is one of the property sites listed in their draft housing element which has not been approved yet. The developer is planning a mixed used development with 270 units, 1.8 parking per unit and with 10% of the floor space dedicated to retail.

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Started off with the developer presenting the project. General Q&A from the planning commission, followed by public comment.

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Most of the public comment leaned towards 70% against. The biggest concern was about parking, traffic and how there is already little parking on that street.

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The commission voted 4-1 with Mary-Ellen voting no. She seem to be the biggest NIMBY of them all. They had one stipulation and that was to get a matrix of the mixed-used zoning codes of other cities so they can compare. They wanted to make sure their mixed-used zoning codes are somewhat similar to other cities (as if they are doing a good job). This analysis will be be attached as an appendix for the city council to review. At which point they will approve or reject.

The consultant went over what VMT was and what our proposed general plan shows. With more people there will be an increase of VMT, but there would be a decrease per capita.

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The consultant also went over traffic patterns for some of the major streets and they assigned grades between A-F and they want to make sure things are at least a D(?).

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Then the consultant went over different bike/transit improvements and asked the audience to vote between undesirable to very desirable. There were some comments of course from the audience about how these would slow down traffic or that seniors can't bike.

Colin, the consultant from Placeworks presented a couple of different designs and gathered feedback.

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Designs attempted to address how housing should look like when placed next to single family homes. It also brought up questions about parking and how parking should be placed.

Session opened up with Colin from Placeworks going over the affordable housing programs that Fountain Valley has and he survey the crowd on their opinions.

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Then he moved on to explain the RHNA requirements and impacts of failing to meet it. He also went over AFFH and what it means.

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He opened the session to questions. It was more of a Q/A and rather than a public comment session. I asked a few questions about whether they were concerned if their current placement would meet AFFH and if they would consider allowing duplexes in SFH zones. I forgot what they answered but they mentioned they hope to allow the ADUs to address the gap in sites.

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I asked the question about what happens if they don't find any developers for their potential housing sites and no one builds on it and if they would consider rezoning. Colin answered that the city only has the obligation to allow for adequate opportunity development. This one had me concerned cause "adequate" is a very subjective term. Though he did mentioned that if by 2029 , if they want to re-use the same sites, they would have to prove that it is adequate.

Zoom meeting and recording should go here afterwards https://www.fountainvalley.org/1284/General-Plan-Advisory-Committee

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The audio from the people in-person were terrible as they had microphone issues.

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Meeting opened with City Attorney Bill Curley describing the state as bold for overreaching. Describes residents as fighting to keep their neighborhood character, cities are facing a very hostile state government. Also city attorney of Mission Viejo. 

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A presentation on the possible commercial sites, describing in detail the number of arces and amount of units.

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Some comments from the council members which was a mixed bag of approving the plan. One mentioned that we should be reaching out to other businesses asking if anyone else wants to give up their space to build more housing. Seems like they wanted to spread out the density and not build anything higher than 4 stories.

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Some wanted to increase affordability requirements to 25%. Others noted that this would make it impossible for developers to build.

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Vote came up on the following two items below. At this point the audio was not discernible and it seemed they were voting yes/no on things that were multiple choice. So I don't think anything actually went to a vote. Many questions were raised.

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1.Vote on potential inclusionary zoning ordinance

a. 15% lower income

b. Some other percent

c. None

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2.Vote on draft land use plan /build for analysis

a. GPAC alternative 1

b. GPAC alternative 2

c. Plan revised per PC/CC Guidance on 03/31

d. other

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Seems like Fountain Valley still wants to fight against the state on the RHNA numbers. They acknowledge it will be a tough battle since other cities have fought and lost.

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General observation was that people against this made the comments such as

1. Increase in traffic.

2. Increase in parking

3. Ruins neighborhood character

Largely informational presentation. The City explained the basics and background of housing elements, and presented possible future development plans. Part of an ongoing general plan meeting. Numerous new housing plans and zones were announced.

Fountain Valley Joint meeting with Planning Commission and City Council. Presentation on how to address RHNA number through existing/proposed projects, ADU's, and mixed-use zoning.

The presenter (didn't catch exactly who it was after the Planning Director passed over the mic, but assume it was the PM from Placeworks) described the process of identifying a number of opportunity sites in 2019, which was narrowed to 7 sites. Based on the assessment of "realistic potential" development on these sites (30-60 du/ac for all but one, which used 15 du/ac), they would accommodate a bit more than half the city's allocation. To make up the difference, they want to count a large number of ADUs.

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They assess the theoretical capacity of the city at about 26,000 ADUs and want to assume 10% of that gets developed (~2,600), which struck me as... overly optimistic. Per the report below, this is 25 times the "conservative" HCD recommended methodology would yield (110)! They claim to have gotten an 'informal nod' from HCD on this, but have not confirmed that the state is ok with it.

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During the question time, the Mayor Pro-Tem asked if they could just upzone existing multifamily  properties. The Planning Director said the state wouldn't buy that as feasible.

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On the bright side, the Planning Director did say that 'complying with state mandates' is the top priority in updating general plans.

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Report on evaluation of ADU potential document available here:  https://www.fountainvalley.org/DocumentCenter/View/12435/FountainValleyADUEvaluationHE20201015