Gilroy
– Profit, growth and affordable housing – a delicate balance
Gilroy officials have yet to master. The city’s housing market has
come up heavy on the first two ingredients and short on the last,
with the city’s incentive-based approach doing little to promote
the types of homes within the means o
f firefighters, teachers and other low- and medium-income
earners.
Gilroy – Profit, growth and affordable housing – a delicate balance Gilroy officials have yet to master. The city’s housing market has come up heavy on the first two ingredients and short on the last, with the city’s incentive-based approach doing little to promote the types of homes within the means of firefighters, teachers and other low- and medium-income earners.
City officials are now taking tentative steps toward evening out the mix as part of the Neighborhood District Policy – a set of guidelines that will govern 1,400 acres that make up the vast majority of land earmarked for new homes.
The policy recommendations, approved by planning commissioners last week, mesh with the city’s traditional goals of encouraging appropriately scaled homes, keeping development within reach of existing city services and promoting neighborhoods with mixed housing types.
Councilman Bob Dillon served on a task force that spent 18 months putting together the recommendations. The task force included citizens, developers, landowners, and affordable-housing advocates.
“It was a good solid plan that had input from all parties,” Dillon said. “Not everybody got what they want and that’s usually the sign of a good compromise.”
The policy departs from traditional practice by requiring at least 10 percent of homes in each neighborhood to fall in the affordable housing category.
In recent years, the city has pursued an “incentive-based” approach to affordable housing through the Residential Development Ordinance, the city’s main growth-control measure. Under the RDO process, developers compete for a limited number of home-construction permits. The current 10-year benchmark stands at 3,450 homes. That figure includes building permits for 2,550 market-value homes and 900 permits for affordable housing, senior housing, affordable senior housing and small projects of 12 units or less. Councilmembers exempted those 900 units from the permit competition in the hope that developers would jump at the chance to bypass the RDO process.
But the numbers suggest that incentives alone have failed to work. The city, now in the second year of its 10-year growth plan, has seen all but 191 of the 2,550 market-rate units snapped up by developers. Of the 900 exempt units, more than 700 remain. And that figure includes more than 600 affordable housing units.
The neighborhood district policy seeks to correct the imbalance without crossing the threshold into “inclusionary zoning,” a phrase that makes most developers wince. Such zoning requires each project to contain a percentage of affordable housing.
The city’s neighborhood district policy only requires that a neighborhood have 10 percent of its homes priced at affordable rates. Combined with a proposed increase in the number of homes allowed per acre, officials hope the requirement will spur a greater number of smaller units naturally priced at lower levels.
“You’re going to get housing diversity through the mixture of unit types,” City Planner Melissa Durkin predicted. “If you have apartments and condominiums, those probably will meet our low-income housing requirement. My hope is that that is how we’re going to meet this requirement.”
But the success of that approach could vary by neighborhood.
For instance, the proposed 1,000-home development known as Glen Loma Ranch represents a single neighborhood in the southwest quadrant. All of the land is undeveloped and controlled by a single developer. Implementing policy recommendations on that site would pose far fewer challenges than in north central Gilroy, according to officials. That neighborhood, located just south of Buena Vista Avenue, contains 277 acres of land split into 119 separate parcels.
Under such conditions, it remains unclear how the city will enforce the 10-percent requirement without clustering low-income homes within neighborhoods or relegating them to the last-available lots.
“The biggest issue is how to deal with the fragmented parcels in the undeveloped areas,” said Bill Reimal, a local developer and task-force member. “It’s going to give the city an opportunity to do a lot better planning as far as building neighborhoods, instead of piece-meal developments.”
For the moment, the delicate balance officials have brokered between private development interests and affordable-housing advocates appears to be holding. But the fissures remain visible.
“I think it’s a good plan, but I think the city’s plan needs some work so that it can be utilized by the building companies,” said Skip Spiering, a local developer and task-force member. While acknowledging the need for concessions when using “blanket zoning,” he stressed his opposition to any use of inclusionary zoning.
“(The 10 percent) should definitely not be put on each (development),” he said. “It has to be an overall (measure).”
Spiering said the city and nonprofit agencies must continue to shoulder responsibility for developing housing for the lowest income levels.
Dennis Lalor, head of South County Housing, said his group would continue to help fill that void, but he saw the 10-percent baseline as an important first step in a new direction.
“Within the neighborhood districts, I would like to see that we have as much of a choice as possible,” he said. “Ten percent is a start.”
City staff added the requirement at the request of city council members in January, after the task force signed off on the policy.
“Because we want to make sure that we have solid backing, we are going back to the task force because we feel that this is a strong enough departure from their recommendation,” City Planning Manager Bill Faus said. The group will likely meet in the next week to review the amended policy. If the group signs off on the plan, it will pass on to city council for approval; if they make any significant changes, the policy will return to planning commissioners before councilmen vote on it.
But the real test of the neighborhood district policy will come in the years ahead, as officials continue working with developers, affordable-housing advocates, and other stakeholders to hammer out specific plans for each neighborhood.
“In reality, because some parcels build out and some property owners are certainly not interested in selling, you’re not going to always achieve (a perfect balance),” Faus acknowledged. “We’re shooting for the stars and if we hit the moon, that’s okay.”
Planning Gilroy’s future
The policy would mandate that certain neighborhoods have at least 10 percent of homes priced as affordable. The policy guidelines would also:
• Increase number of homes allowed per acre
• Mandate a mix of housing types
• Establish architectural guidelines for homes
• Require traffic and sidewalk standards
