As more and more people choose to call the North Bay home, local governments struggle with where to house them all.
Marin Community Foundation
The words “Marin” and “affordable housing” aren’t often heard in the same sentence. But recently, the mere possibility of a new, low-income housing project in this wealthy county grabbed headlines around the world. Ever since filmmaker George Lucas announced in April that he may sell his Grady Ranch property in San Rafael for development as affordable housing, a local philanthropic agency has been fielding questions about its role in the land’s future.
Marin Community Foundation (MCF) is one of the largest community foundations in the country, with holdings of more than $1.3 billion. MCF manages more than 400 separate philanthropic funds, investing and accounting for the money while helping donors make grants in the areas that matter most to them, whether locally, nationally or internationally. It also acts as an umbrella organization for the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, the Buck Institute for Education and the Marin Institute.
Established in 1986 with major funding from local philanthropists Leonard and Beryl Buck, MCF’s mission is to encourage and support charitable giving toward a wide range of goals, including affordable housing, education and the arts. It funds policy research to support planning on a city level, assists advocacy groups working on affordable housing goals and aids in homelessness prevention efforts in the region. MCF also partners with local nonprofit developers, such as Eden Housing of Hayward and EAH of San Rafael, by funding predevelopment studies and providing loan or grant money for low-income housing construction, with more than 2,600 apartments and homes built to date.
Dr. Thomas Peters, president/CEO of MCF, says donors often site a desire for economic and racial diversity and environmental concerns as their primary reasons for supporting affordable housing. He notes that a study commissioned by MCF in 2011 found that 60 percent of Marin’s workforce commutes to the county from somewhere else. This not only affects the face of Marin’s population, but also its traffic congestion and air quality.
It was MCF’s long-term experience working on these issues that led to its involvement in the Grady Ranch property. Lucas had been working for many years to expand his company’s base in Marin, now located on Skywalker Ranch, by building a studio facility on his adjoining Grady Ranch property. In the midst of continued protests from homeowners in Lucas Valley and a protracted county approval process, Lucas abruptly announced that he was pulling the plug on the plan. In a brief public letter, he mentioned his hope that the property can be used for low-income housing and later announced plans to work with MCF to explore his options.
Some saw this as a backhanded swipe at the neighbors who protested the studio’s expansion, but Peters believes Lucas’ intentions were good. “Almost immediately, it was very clear to us that Mr. Lucas and his top people [at Lucasfilm] were earnest and genuine in their interest to see the land developed for affordable housing, most likely for senior housing,” says Peters. “He’s had incredible conviction that this is the next best use for the property.”
Peters says it’s still too early in the process to say what will happen, but MCF staff will have access to the land and all previous land use studies to make their recommendations. “This is a unique situation in all ways,” he says. “We’ll be working with housing experts to answer the bottom-line question: Is there a high-quality, environmentally sensitive, financially feasible, affordable housing project that can be built here?”
Burbank Housing
Burbank Housing of Santa Rosa is another organization that’s had consistent results in bringing affordable housing to the North Bay. Founded in 1980, it’s developed almost 2,800 rental units and 760 for-sale homes, almost all of which are located in Sonoma County. The group wears many hats, from choosing the appropriate sites, securing funding, acting as project manager and managing rental properties.
John Lowry of Sebastopol first started working with Burbank Housing in 1984 and has been its executive director since 1998. He says that while the organization’s goals haven’t changed, recent trends in funding and valuation have sharply restricted what it can do.
Eligibility for low-income housing is generally based on data from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and varies by county. Most of Burbank Housing’s rental units are targeting people earning up to 60 percent of the median income, with for-sale housing targeting those earning 50 to 80 percent.
Lowry says that, in 2010, the median income for a family of four in Sonoma County was $80,400. Put into perspective, 60 percent of Sonoma’s median amounts to $48,240, or two wage earners averaging $24,120 per year. While some of Burbank Housing’s units are reserved for people with special needs or seniors living on Social Security, most residents are employed and part of the local workforce.
The organization relies on a variety of federal grants and programs to fund development, with monies often distributed through counties and larger local governments, as well as private funding arrangements. With the closure of California’s redevelopment agencies in April, funding for affordable housing will be significantly reduced.
“At this point, the largest single source of financing for affordable rental housing in the United States is the low-income housing tax credit program,” explains Lowry. The federal government gives these tax credits to qualified developers, who in turn sell them to investors to earn money toward a specific project. Not just a tax deduction, these credits reduce an investor’s tax liability on a dollar-for-dollar basis.
Burbank Housing has also been a local leader in mutual self-help housing as a means of constructing for-sale affordable housing in the area. With mutual self-help developments, homeowners are actively involved in most aspects of building their own homes and those of their neighbors, with Burbank Housing acting as project sponsor and general contractor. The staff trains and supervises the homeowners, with experts called in for certain tasks. As part of the program, homeowners are often eligible for favorable mortgage financing through federal and state programs.
“Not only does this program create a community, but I think for some people it’s a transformative experience,” says Lowry. “People who maybe never saw themselves as homeowners or never had the opportunity to build something go through a kind of a personal transformation.”
Lowry believes the mortgage debacle of the last decade shouldn’t leave people with the idea that homeownership is just for the wealthy. “A lot of companies took advantage of people’s desire to be homeowners and gave them loans they couldn’t possibly pay back,” he says. “It gave people the idea that you couldn’t provide homeownership to lower-income people unless you tricked them, and that’s just not true. It does take resources, and sometimes subsidies, but I know it’s possible to put together a package for a low-income family to finance a home. We’ve done it many times.”
The role of city planning
Local governments, which have long played the role of conduit in bringing funds to affordable housing projects, have seen many of those funding sources dry up in the last few years. These cuts have meant that city and regional governments have had to get more creative in how they encourage support for local housing goals.
One example is the use of city planning to encourage certain types of development around the future Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) train stations. The North Santa Rosa Station Area Specific Plan addresses the 987-acre area located within a half-mile radius of the future North Santa Rosa SMART train station, on Guerneville Road in Santa Rosa, near Coddingtown Mall. It’s a policy document that provides design guidelines and development standards, with no funding attached for development or rehabilitation of sites, but it gives a glimpse into what the city sees as the future of transit-oriented development.
Thanks to a funding grant from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), city planners working in Santa Rosa’s Community Development department have been working with private firm Pacific Municipal Consultants (PMC) since 2011 to generate policies that support specific goals, namely “increasing residential density; promoting economic development; improving pedestrian, bicycle, auto and transit connections between the station and adjacent destinations; and enhancing the aesthetics of the area.”
City staff has conducted five community workshops since 2011, gathering feedback on what citizens, business owners, environmental groups and other city boards feel about the proposed plans for the area. Some respondents cited concerns about high-density and increased traffic congestion, while other residents welcomed the potential growth.
The city is hoping that this sort of long-range planning helps support SMART ridership and the neighborhood as a whole. The Specific Plan identifies zoning and land use changes and improved “multi-modal circulation” (aka alternative means of travel, such as bicycle and walking paths). With the proposed land use changes, planners estimate the area could grow by an additional 1,714 housing units and add up to 433,400 square feet of office, retail and other commercial space by 2035, bringing 5,225 jobs to the area.
Santa Rosa already adopted a similar plan, the Downtown Station Area Specific Plan, in 2007. At that time, it introduced two new land use categories, which allow for increased housing densities that are specific to station environs, including the north Santa Rosa area. Prior to the station planning, 30 units per acre was the highest density allowable in Santa Rosa. The two new categories allow the possibility of between 25 to 40 units per acre, or for 40 units or more per acre with no cap. Currently, Burbank Housing is in predevelopment on several proposed new developments in Santa Rosa, including 93 senior apartments next to the downtown SMART station in Railroad Square, partnering with New Railroad Square Associates.
Competing visions in Napa
Along the banks of the Napa River lies a vacant industrial site, once home to Oregon Steel Mills’ Napa Pipe plant. The plant closed in 2004, and the 154-acre site was purchased by Napa Redevelopment Partners for $40 million the following year.
Keith Rogal of Napa, a developer and co-owner of Napa Redevelopment Partners, says the purchase was a no-brainer. “There’s been enormous job and population growth in Napa County, and this is the largest piece of land that’s likely to be available for housing—smack dab in the middle of the jobs.” With four-fifths of a mile of riverfront property, he was also drawn to the area’s natural beauty and the opportunity to repurpose it into something useful.
The original vision for the Napa Pipe property included at least 3,200 housing units, consisting of higher-density row housing, such as apartments, townhomes and some stand-alone structures, in a mixed-use development incorporating shops, restaurants, office space, parks and other public spaces. When the environmental impact reports came back in 2009, they recommended that cleaning up and developing the site for housing was better than leaving it alone or as an industrial site, but at a revised density of 2,050 units, so Rogal’s team went back to the drawing board to craft a corresponding plan.
Three years and approximately 250 public meetings later, the project is still being debated. In a May ruling, the Napa County Planning Commission, with input from the county planning staff, voted to recommend that the Board of Supervisors allow a reduced amount of housing at the Napa Pipe site. That new proposal shrinks the project to 750 market-rate homes and 195 low-income rental units (for 945 total units) and drops the number of acres zoned for housing from 100 to 40.
Shortly after the announcement, Napa Redevelopment Partners asked to postpone previously scheduled June hearings so it could again rework its proposal in light of a pending deal with Costco. “We accept and embrace what the Planning Commission has said,” says Rogal. “These are the people charged with thinking about the future of the county, and our new proposal will essentially be for what they’ve recommended, which is to reduce the housing to just 40 acres of the site—or one-quarter of the total—and no more than 945 housing units, which is down 70 percent from the initial proposal.”
Three main additions will be added to the revamped plan: an eight-acre community supported agriculture (CSA) farm site, a 10-acre potential school site, and a Costco, to be located on the western portion of the site. Rogal projects that the Costco, the first in Napa County, will not only be a convenience to Napa Pipe residents, but also an enormous tax revenue generator.
“With 30 acres of parks, a daycare center, a CSA and a Costco and its pharmacy, there’s very little people would need on a daily basis that they couldn’t get onsite, which really reinforces the idea of an environment where cars are used less,” he says.
The Napa Pipe project has incited strong opinions throughout the Napa Valley, both for and against it, and news of its stops and starts have been a regular fixture in the local newspaper for years. The debate illustrates a deep divide in how residents envision the future of Napa County. Some see the project as a sign of unchecked growth in their peaceful community, a drain on water resources, a potential traffic nightmare or as simply unnecessary. Others believe it’s an opportunity to provide affordable housing to people, particularly the younger workforce, who are currently squeezed out of pricier areas, and to support development that leaves agricultural lands intact.
In 2008, voters narrowly rejected Measure N, a ballot initiative to adopt new growth limits in the county that some saw as a move directly against the Napa Pipe project. In 2010, another push for a ballot initiative to stop the project over potential groundwater use never materialized.
“There’s a misconception that Napa has had very little growth, and it’s simply false,” says Rogal. “Napa County has encouraged tremendous job growth and, as a result, we have approximately 29,000 inbound workers every day. Job growth has outstripped housing growth fourfold over the past decade.”
The project still needs to pass the Board of Supervisors, but Rogal is hopeful that an agreement can be reached. Workers are ready to begin the process of repairing the site immediately and beginning a slow roll-out of units, with Costco eager to start construction this year. “ We’ve been at it six years now, and we’ll be at it another decade or so,” he says.
Opening doors
When all is said and done, access to affordable housing affects all of us, from the business owners looking to attract skilled workers to the children who benefit from parents working near their homes and schools. “Safe and secure housing is so fundamental to the health and well-being of individuals and their families that it can’t be overstated,” confirms Peters. “It’s concurrently true that developing these environmentally appropriate, beautifully designed housing opportunities means you enrich the whole community with the range of people who move in and by being able to offer housing to people who are working and contributing to a local economy, but who’ve literally been driven away from where they work and, in some cases, grew up. I love it every time we open up one more door.”
