San Jose

San Jose as been steadfast in their refusal to upzone single-family neighborhoods.

The city’s Housing Element included dozens - probably hundreds - of sites where high density was assumed (and was mandated by city rules) even though development on the sites could not possibly have generated revenues to make them viable. These represented tens of thousands of bogus homes in the Housing Element site inventory. 

I personally pointed out this situation to HCD at least twice, once in a meeting set up by other housing advocates to give advocates a chance to speak to HCD staff, and once at a meeting with HCD staff that we at San José State requested. Yet the sites were approved. 

OPPORTUNITIES FOR UNSUBSIDIZED AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Work for San José State’s real estate development graduate program indicates that it’s fairly straightforward to build at up to 25 units per acre for $350 a square foot. It Is thus straightforward to build moderate income housing using wood frame, modular, or manufactured housing methods at up to such densities (possibly up to 40 units per acre, though this may be more difficult). It appears that construction using such methods could fairly easily provide housing for members of the middle class. Indeed, since the submission of the city’s Housing Element, lower-cost construction using wood frame, medium-density modular, and manufactured housing has been thoroughly demonstrated in construction of ADUs in San José.

The city’s Housing Element included essentially no housing sites at densities where wood-frame, mid-density modular, or manufactured housing technologies could be used even though the uneconomic nature of dense housing in most of San José had been discussed with HCD. The city’s 2011 General Plan actually includes 2,726 acres designated as “growth areas” for which the planning needed to create the contemplated “urban villages” has never been done. When I have asked city planning staff why this work has not been done, they have said it was because the city has not allocated funds for it. However, they have added that the lack of developer interest under current city requirements is another reason they have not written the plans. We can say with certainty that developer interest would be much greater if HCD had required sites that were economic, and thus the city had been required to allow sites where lower-cost construction methods were permitted.

The sites in the site inventory that HCD accepted totaled only 1 sq mi in a city of 181 sq mi. 

Teachers and the middle class as a whole cannot afford the more than $1,000,000-a-unit costs of highly dense housing. HCD should have recognized that a Housing Element and a site inventory including only such sites would result in the promised housing not being built. 

A note on the necessity of using medium-density sites

Some housing advocates are under the impression that we don’t have room in the Bay area for homes at under 40 units per acre. But this is not true. While we certainly don’t want our land filled with traditional tract homes, which were often built at six to eight units per acre, homes to house a million people would take up only about 2% of Santa Clara county’s land at 25 units per acre. And their construction cost per square foot could be very close to the cost of building traditional tract homes. We really can and must make space for them. 

There are no housing related items in the agenda

advocates met w/HCD last Friday (6/30) re San Jose's self-certified housing element. Reviewer sounds receptive to advocates' concerns on housing element, but it's hard to read tea leaves. San Jose removed some tenant protections from new HE.

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About half the city council is upset about getting frozen out of the process by staff.

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If council wants to regain control, it could form a subquorum subcommittee to assume control of the HE. But it's hard to know if council's policy preferences for HE would end up being better than staff's draft.

Very disappointing. The Housing Element draft does not contain any serious discussion of the constraints on housing development that have been created by San Jose's 2011 General Plan. Its treatment of other constraints is superficial and sloppy. And consistent with that plan, the site inventory includes just over 1 square mile of housing sites to be developed over the next 8 years in the 180 sq mi city. 

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But the meeting was all about congratulating the planners on such a great plan and on their concern for housing.  

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The planners seem to have worked seriously on a number of AAFH issues. But AAFH means nothing if San Jose continues to produce only a tiny fraction of the homes its people need. 

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This was a very anti-housing meeting. Although technically an informational meeting, it is clear the planners were encouraged to see continuation of the 2011 Plan's anti-housing approach as appropriate. They will do so until pushed to do otherwise.  I cannot make any of the selections below about the decision because they all imply optimism that is not really called for. 

This was a city effort to conform to state requirements for public outreach in creating the Housing Element. They allowed public comment on a wide variety of "strategies." However, the most important point was that I was able to meet after the meeting with Michael Brilliot, head of long-term planning for the city. (Ruth Cueto, head of the Housing Element team, reports to him.) He said 1) the Housing Element will be developed based on the 2011 General Plan, with no significant changes. 2) That general plan has "capacity for 210,000 homes," so they do not expect they will need to make any changes to meet the RHNA goals. 3) The existing plan generally requires 55 units per acre, which requires Type 1 construction. Typically this results in prices in the $850,000 range for a 900 sq ft condo. Demand is limited at these levels, and therefore San Jose has been building very few unsubsidized units. However, Michael said the city's studies indicated that allowing stick built construction would not produce lower costs for buyers/renters, because developers would use the land to build townhouses that would sell for $1.4 million. 4) He argued that San Jose does not have room to build more housing than the current plan calls for. He did not make a strong data-based case.  

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I concluded the meeting was a charade, because the city has already concluded new construction cannot meet any significant portion of the needs of the people attending, but it did not disclose any of the data or conclusions that pointed in this direction.

This meeting was terrible. Either they are still very unorganized or they are going to try to put all the new housing at 55 units per acre or more in the 'urban villages.' 

Main Discussion: 84 participants (Milpitas, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara)

-Led by Paul Peninger, Baird & Driskell

-Basic overview of Housing Element process, timeline, goals, etc.

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Mountain View Breakout Room:

-21 participants

-Led by Ellen Yau, Senior Planner & Brandi Campbell Wood (Baird & Driskell)

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MV 2023-2031 Housing Element Goals:

-Accommodate MV’s RHNA of ~11,000 units

-Development capacity from recent Precise Plans, ongoing R3 zoning update

-Affirmatively Further Fair Housing (AFFH)

-Provide access to opportunity

-Address fair housing issues and constraints

-Coordinate with other key City housing initiatives

-Displacement strategy, R3 zoning update, federal assessment of fair housing

-Address local goals and needs

-Use data on local conditions

-Requires input from the public

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Discussion Questions:

*What’s working in our city/town?

     -new row houses and mixed use developments       

     -Mountain View is very supportive of affordable housing 

     -The city has been getting better about funding and approving non-profit affordable housing

*What are some of our key housing needs or challenges?

     -All the recent developments have been too short and had too much parking. 

     -Restrictive Zoning and community opposition to increased density

*What ideas, policies, programs, suggestions do you have to meet our housing needs?

     -1) Follow the Los Angeles model and have data driven calculations for the likelihood of development on inventory sites. 2) Upzone Old MV to AFFH

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Timeline:

March 2021 – March 2022: Community Outreach

March-Spring 2022: Work on Studies and Draft update

Spring 2022: Draft for Review

Fall 2022: Public Hearings with EPC and City Council

January 2023: Housing Element Adoption

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NIMBY comments:

“Neighborhoods are being forced to accept developments on the basis of .5 mile distance to transit. But transit is really barely existent or effective. Is the East Whisman precise plan no longer in effect?”

“We are running out of open space in Mtn. View. Seeing more and more exceptions were super high condos are in planning stage. These high rise condos are invading our modest neighborhood. I'm afraid with open spaces being developed, does the city looking at using eminent domain to buy up needed land to development?”

“The city has already taken away the Hetch Hetchy trail for development. I do not see how you can create 8209 new housing units unless you build higher. Mtn View has always been a modest town. Business giants like Google have destroyed our modest town. Google transport their own employees with private buses. Our public transportation is expensive and ineffective. Addtionally, people whom live outside the area are "penalized" havinf to drive into the valley with more and more toll roads. The government tricked the voters into thinking the increased tax for infrastructure was to build and fix roads. Instead, they built more toll roads!”`

This is the "Let's Talk Housing" series that the county is doing. Including staff from Campbell, Los Gatos, and Los Altos Hills, there were 46 participants before the three breakout rooms opened. I noticed that Mike Krey from the Campbell Planning Commission and the Mayor of Campbell, Liz Gibbons, were both there. In the Q&A, someone asked a question about "Critical Race Theory", and the hosts thankfully dodged it.

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When asked what happens if a city doesn't have enough zoned capacity, the hosts said some very handwavey things about repurposing commercial space, and danced around the idea that a city would have to make more capacity. Disappointing. It's like they don't believe that HCD will actually bring the hammer down.

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We're also told that the county has built enough market-rate housing, but the lack of affordable housing has driven up rents. (This is not how housing works, aargh.) There is no mention of why market-rate housing isn't affordable to most people. Jobs don't pay enough to "let them compete in the housing market".

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When asked for one word to describe our vision of the future of our city, most people wrote "affordable", "inclusive", or "diverse", but two people wrote "non-dense" and "ban on parcel splitting", and Liz Gibbons wrote "non-political", which is a pleasant aspiration. We then went into our breakout rooms, by city. (I'm in the Campbell room.)

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The Campbell room had 11 people, of whom two were city staff (Rob Eastwood and Stephen Rose), three were city officials (myself, Mike Krey, and Liz Gibbons), and one a facilitator (Joshua Abrams), leaving five regular civilians. The City touted its updated ADU standards, the (incomplete) objective standards work, a program to educate homebuyers and getting REAP/LEAP grants. Not impressive. They point out that we should be at 75% of our RHNA 5 numbers, but we're at 4%/3%/11% for VLI/LI/MI. But 391 market-rate units is 118% of our allocation!

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Staff points out that our allocation is larger, will require larger densities, and will make site reuse harder. Showed us some visualizations of densities from 3.5 du/ac up to 28+, which is currently illegal in Campbell. By the time they finished presenting, it was 7.

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Things that people appreciate about housing the way it is: walkable, "family-friendly"/"safe", walkable, diverse. Gibbons: "a collection of diverse neighborhoods" with diverse housing types. Things that people don't like: expensive, hard to develop--long, arduous process to work with the city (Scott Cooley), not enough affordable housing, difficulty selling SFH homeowners on affordable housing. I actually heard someone saying that self-driving cars need less parking, so we should plan for less parking.

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I focused on removing discretionary rules which people have to beg around, like parking. The rules that make missing middle housing illegal. When someone complained about parking shortages, I suggested residential parking permits, since we already have those in at least one neighborhood, and they're popular. People are concerned about parking, and I don't know if they think that can be solved without keeping density low.

General Meeting led by: Paul Peninger, Consultant of Baird & Driskell; 81 participants; Staff from Cupertino, Monte Sereno, Saratoga, Los Altos;

Los Altos Breakout Room led by: David Driskell, Baird & Driskell; 13 participants;

Guido Persicone (Planning Manager, Los Altos)

APR Presentation. In CY '20, San Jose constructed 34% of their planned annual target (which breaks down to 44% MR, 28% AFF), leading to a cumulative 53% total for the current RHNA cycle (breaks down to 99% MR, 21% AFF). Between '19 and '20, there was a 43% drop in construction.

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Councilmember Mahan (suburban district, but new to council; business-focused) asked if the Housing Department is doing proper cost-benefit analysis, to see if the initiatives done are effective. Staff does basic checks, but will be doing more in-depth examination in this year's workplan.

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Councilmember Peralez (Downtown, likely mayoral candidate; labor-focused) asked what's leading to low affordable production. Staff reports that getting tax credits for projects is hard, mainly because of high construction costs (compared to SoCal) and lack of enough transit coverage in high opportunity areas; general complaint that state does not provide enough funding for cities with large affordable housing requirements. Ongoing work on an Affordable Housing Siting Policy may also be leading some affordable developers to wait. Meanwhile, the Planning Department now has a dedicated planner for affordable housing projects.

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Mayor Liccardo (termed out in 2-4yrs; business-focused) comments that most if not all cities fail their RHNA targets, wonders if there's appetite for legislative changes to TCAC. Staff notes that since Treasurer is an elected position and SoCal is benefiting from the current arraignment, it'll take obvious NorCal-SoCal differences to change the current setup. Mayor also wanted to know if current entitlements that aren't going forward due to the current economic situation (esp. high vacancies) can be addressed, as well as expediting work to allow school districts to have greater say in creating housing.

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Public comment was scattered tonight, with "the usual suspects." Staff report was accepted as-is.