On Sept. 29, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law 15 bills addressing California’s housing shortage.
By streamlining the approval process for development applications, encouraging sustainable housing districts through zoning incentive payments, increasing and enforcing housing element requirements, placing a bond on next year’s ballot for more veteran and affordable housing funding, and making it easier for homeowners to construct second or accessory dwelling units, every city will be impacted.
We have a paradox in Pleasanton.
In a recent community satisfaction survey, 61% of residents stated that providing affordable housing for working families is important; yet, an equal amount are also concerned about the pace of development and associated traffic impacts and overwhelmingly want to retain our small-town character.
How do we manage this paradox? To ensure state and regional planning efforts don’t redefine our small-town character, the following pillars should frame our housing policy.
Growth Management Ordinance: Our current ordinance limits us to 235 residential units annually. We must adhere to this but need to think creatively about workforce and elderly housing within the confines of growth management.
Encourage accessory dwelling units: To protect single-family neighborhoods from higher-density developments, we can encourage accessory dwelling units to provide our kids and grandparents with compact and affordable places to live.
Plan future development near transit stations: The state-mandated Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) identifies the total number of affordable housing units each jurisdiction must accommodate. For the 2023 RHNA cycle, we could specify new housing be built only where transit, bike and pedestrian infrastructure exists; for example, near BART stations.
Sustain strong design and development standards: Strong standards ensure that design guidelines maintain our look and feel.
Strengthen local Affordable Housing Ordinance: We should strengthen our current ordinance so that affordable housing is built with all new multi-family housing. Often, developers choose to pay in-lieu fees instead of building affordable units, and we can strike a better balance. We recently tasked the Planning and Housing commissions to jointly address these issues soon.
Ensure infrastructure needs: Development impact fees provide resources for infrastructure — transportation, schools, water — and haven’t been adjusted since 1998. We should update these fees to ensure our infrastructure needs keep pace with any new development. And our planning efforts with the school district are keeping us on track for when we will need to build another school.
We know from past experience that we must adhere to state housing mandates, and yet we must also do everything we can to control our housing decisions in our own community.
With this framework and proactive planning in advance of any new housing requirements, I am confident we will be able to address the housing shortage and demonstrate to our residents and the region why we call ourselves the “City of Planned Progress.”
Editor’s note: Jerry Thorne is completing his third two-year term as mayor of Pleasanton after serving seven years on the City Council. A retired corporate executive with more than 40 years in the private sector, he also served for 10 years on the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission.
