This is to document Santa Cruz YIMBY's success with the Capitola housing element advocacy. Capitola recently got their housing element certified, thanks in part to SC YIMBY's push to get them to make more meaningful commitments to change. Specifically:

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In Capitola, YIMBY advocated for:

• Explicit commitment to facilitate and monitor Mall redevelopment 
• Addressing constraints, including higher density, increased height to facilitate development in commercial zones (including the Mall), and reduced parking requirements 
• More for Affirmatively Further Fair Housing (AFFH), esp additional programs to encourage missing middle housing
• Additional programs to incentivize lot consolidation 
• Increased use of objective standards 
• More support for transit-oriented development 
• More intra-cycle reviews 
• Better analysis of non-vacant sites for probability of development, especially for low-income housing
• Realistic sites on the site inventory, including removing state sites.

In the Housing Element, Capitola:

• Added a program focused on Mall redevelopment, including increased total units from 627 to 1,777 for the Capitola Mall redevelopment, and increased height for the Capitola Mall parcels to 75’, excluded parking garages from FAR calculations and committed to monitoring the mall redevelopment and developing alternative strategies, including rezoning if not achievable. 
• Added commitments and deadlines for their review and revision of development standards for residential development, including lower parking requirements and higher density residential zones. 
• Added multiple programs for missing middle housing: Religious Facility Housing, SB9 Support, and housing on public/quasi-public land.
• Added additional sites with lower income housing to inventory; removed state sites.
• Committed to objective development standards for mall redevelopment and in their Incentives for Community Development. (As part of their implementation, they have been removing subjective language from their proposed zoning amendments. )
• Added commitment to work with AMBAG in the 2050 MTP/SCS (scheduled for June 2026) to designate the Capitola Mall as a planned high-quality major transit stop 
• Committed to incentivizing the development of affordable housing on commercial sites along transit corridors 
• Removed their obsolete Affordable Housing Overlay
• Added site analysis to support probability of redevelopment including for lower income housing.
• Added additional sites along transit corridors.

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Submitting this form because of the lackluster Housing Element that HCD approved. All new rezones are 50% inclusionary. The City cited evidence from nearby jurisdictions of housing projects being approved, but those other cities have HCD pro-housing designation and much larger zoning capacity.

HCD has certified Scotts Valley's awful housing element draft. April 2nd they got the golden letter, after public comment closed on the HE draft on March 27th. The latest HE doesn't address any of the issues raised in HCD's previous findings letter. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q4uBD5NR1rTEHmyrHlaY3q2vlgrOgWfw/view?usp=drive_link

Here's a link to HCD's bullshit finding of compliance for Scotts Valley's HE draft: https://www.scottsvalley.gov/DocumentCenter/View/4811/HCD-Letter---received-04022024

SCC staff are insulating their work from council. May be an attempt to minimize the work necessary to implement the housing element.

I attended the workshop. It looks like a lot of other YIMBYs did too because there seemed to be way more comments complaining about the lack of housing and cost of housing than the typical "we like Scotts Valley like it is" comments that often happen. The city/consultant are planning on submitting their first HCD document in December just before the statutory deadline and are counting on a "120 day grace period" to get everything resolved.

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The RHNA requirement for Scotts Valley jumped from 140 total units last cycle to 1,220 units this cycle!

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The timeline they'll be working on is they'll have a plan comm/city council sesh, 2nd workshop and public review draft in the spring. Then another planning comm/city council study sesh in the summer and submit the first draft (maybe the consultant submitting a draft to the city?) in the summer, then in Winter 2023/2024, they'll have adoption hearings.

Item 3 passed and three councilmembers expressed importance of minding state's authority. 

Ambag approved a rhna methodology. 

- Selection of draft RHNA Methodology + continuation of public hearing to be deferred until December 8th special meeting

- AMBAG (finally!) brought incorporation of AFFH factor into methodology to board - no action was taken on it, but majority of board of directors were in support

- Salinas Valley jurisdictions (namely City of Soledad) would like to see farmworker housing set aside incorporated into methodology

- Water constantly being brought up as a concern by Monterey Peninsula jurisdictions