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HOUSING ELEMENT WORKSHOP - May 13, 2008 at 1:00 p.m.
The Housing Advocacy Group and others will sponsor a Housing Element Teach-In during
this year's Affordable Housing Week (May 12-16). This Teach-In and Workshop will provide advocates and others concerned
about housing and development issues with information and tools to get better Housing Elements adopted
in all jurisdictions of Sonoma County (and elsewhere). The event will be held at California Human Development
located at 3316 Airway Drive in Santa Rosa (one block north of Piner), and will be free (donations to cover costs
of materials are welcome). An agenda and further information will be posted here soon.
Santa Rosa Station Area Development
The Railroad Square Area of Santa Rosa is a focus of controversy over future development
of the city's downtown. HAG, along with environmental and labor groups are pushing
for devcelopment which would be predominately residential, with a mix of affordable and
market rate housing units along with retail and commercial businesses on the ground floor,
The Chamber of Commerce and its allies want the area developed with tourist-oriented
businesses, including a large "food and wine" center and a big parking garage. See "Station Area Plan"
The current plan approved by the City Council includes over 3,000 units of new housing, 300,000 square feet of new
commercial and retail space, and 200,000 square feet of "civic" space. The plan doesn't specifically require any of the new housing to be affordable
to moderate or lower income people. HAG opposes development of the area as high-end condominiums and
town houses. Most of the new jobs will be filled with derate and lower income
folks. HAG needs your help to push for some affordable housing in the downtown area.
Many other cities are requiring at least 20% of new housing to be affordable to low and
moderate income folks. Please contact City Council members and tell them we
need affordable housing included in the plans for this key area.
Click Here for a sample
letter to send.
Cities Can't Keep Up with Need For Low Cost
Housing
``There's no secret that affordable housing
remains one of the key issues facing the county,'' said county Supervisor Tim Smith,
who doubts local government alone will be able to meet the demand. ``We're going to do
what we can locally, but without state and federal help, we can't do it.''
Tim Smith hits the issue on the nose. There's more that we can do locally-- including
nourishing the Sonoma County Housing Trust Fund and adopting jobs-housing programs in our
County's cities. However, we also need meaningful involvement at the state and federal
levels to solve our affordable housing problem in Sonoma County. A coalition of housing,
business, and environmental groups is calling for a $1 billion trust fund which would help
the market to produce new homes for approximately 250,000 individuals and families over 10
years. For more information, visit Homes
4 California .
Homeless Shelters
Under pressure from HAG and other homelss and housing groups, Santa Rosa
acquired a site for a homeless shelter at the old Army Reserve facility on Finley Avenue.
While the site is far from downtown Santa Rosa, and less than ideal for a shelter in
other ways, it opened in late 2004. The City then cancelled funding for the 175-bed
National Guard Armory winter shelter, so homeless persons now have 100 fewer
shelter beds as a result of this switch. Please contact members of the
Santa Rosa City Council (Lee Pierce, Carol Dean,Jane Bender, Veronica Jacobi, Susan Gorin,
and Mayor Bob Blanchard) and ask them to support more shelter beds and transitional
housing facilities for homeless persons in Santa Rosa.
Mobile Homes
Sonoma County has about 6,000 mobilehomes -- most of which are affordable
to moderate and low income households. Many seniors live in these parks.
The park owners have recently discovered a loophole in state law which allows
them to convert the parks to condominiums -- the spaces would no longer be
affordable, and many residents would be forced to move. Owners of four big parks--
Rancho Verde in Rohnert Park, and Country, Sequoia Gardens and Leisure in/near
Santa Rosa have hired a high powered LA lawfirm to push for approval of their
conversion plans, and have filed a $26 million lawsuit against the County.
But the County Board of Supervisors and the Rohnert Park City Council seem to be supporting park residents and
resisting the condo conversion efforts, the Santa Rosa City Council needs to
be urged to protect mobilehome residents.See this Blog
for more details. Please write or call Mayor Bob Blanchard and other City Council members
and urge them to support the residents of these mobilehome parks and oppose efforts to
convert them to condominiums.
SEE HAG'S BLOG FOR THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS AND LEAVE US FEEDBACK
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HAG
is the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group. We were started in 1998 by
people concerned about the lack of affordable
housing in Sonoma County, and the lack of housing and shelters for homeless
people, persons with disabilities, farmworkers, seniors and others. |
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Rents
have increased dramatically in recent years. The median price of a home
in the County is well over $500,000. Very few houses sell for less than
$400,000 in the County, yet almost none of the owner-occupied housing built
in the last 5 years is priced so as to be affordable to low and moderate
income families. Families in rental housing often must pay more than half
of their total income for rent/utilities, which means there is not enough
money left to pay for food, transportation, clothes, health care and other
necessities. It is common to see two or three families sharing an apartment.
Wage earners, including retail clerks, production workers, government employees
and construction workers are often forced to live far from their jobs and
commute to work due to the high cost of housing in the County. Even though
there is very little affordable housing being built in Sonoma County, local
governments continue to push for new industries, new retail malls, and new
jobs which will further overburden the County's scarce housing resources.
Sometimes local opposition, based on fear,
bias and ignorance, complicates the development of lower income housing.
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Accountable development has been very successful in building livable neighborhoods in cities around California. Based on the premise that California needs development that brings good jobs, affordable housing and reliable neighborhood services, accountable development efforts focus on ensuring that publicly subsidized projects benefit the whole public.
Projects in Los Angeles, San Jose, and elsewhere have included developer agreements to provide increased afforable housing, often at deeper affordabilities. See
California Partnership for Working Families for more information.
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We work
with other groups, including environmentalists, church groups, seniors groups,
homeless advocacy groups, labor unions and housing developers to get our
city councils to approve more affordable housing. We organize demonstrations
to get homeless shelters. We lobby our city and county governments to have
better planning laws that will encourage affordable housing. We push for
better housing laws in the California Legislature. We work to increase public
awareness of the housing crisis, and to combat prejudice in our communities
against housing for lower income households.
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Contact
Us by e-mail or call us at 780-1585 and tell us how you'd like to help.
We need people to come to city council hearings on affordable housing projects,
senior housing, homeless shelters and housing for persons with disabilities.
We need people to talk to, write or call their elected representatives about
affordable housing. And we strongly encourage people to VOTE for candidates
for public office who are willing to put housing for people -- all the people
-- ahead of housing for profit. |
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Building
housing for lower income households requires land and funding. Cities in
Sonoma County are required to identify and zone adequate sites (land) to
meet their need for housing for all income types, but in many areas, there
are no sites for affordable housing. The Housing
Element for each city should also set out programs to meet the city's
need for housing for seniors, persons with disabilities, farmworkers and
homeless persons. HAG and the groups it works with are lobbying all cities
in the county to provide more sites for affordable housing, and to develop
ways to provide funding for affordable housing. To generate additional funding,
HAG is urging cities to adopt a "Jobs-Housing
Linkage Fee"which requires businesses which are expanding or relocating
to Sonoma County to provide funding for affordable, lower income housing
for their new employees. |
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HAG has helped win approval
for construction of hundreds of new affordable housing units in all parts
of Sonoma County. HAG has worked with Santa Rosa officials to get new
homeless shelters approved and funded. and expect that the County will
soon also provide additional shelter facilities as a result of some of
our efforts. HAG has successfully filed lawsuits
against several jurisdictions in Sonoma County (and against the County
itself) to require them to provide more sites for lower income housing
and to support programs for building the housing. We have worked with
our legislators Senators Wes Chesbro and John Burton, and Assemblymembers
Pat Wiggins and Joe Nation to pass legislation which prohibits discrimination
by cities against persons with disabilities in land use and zoning matters.
(SB 520
- Chesbro) And we have forged a landmark
agreement (which was signed 8/10/2000)
with environmental and labor groups in Sonoma County to work together
to promote development of affordable housing in the urbanized areas of
the County while resisting efforts to develop housing in agricultural
and open space areas. Most recently, HAG worked successfully for the passage of a package of progressive countywide housing policies designed to encourage production of affordable housing units in the unincorporated areas of Sonoma County.
If you would
like to help us ensure that all persons in Sonoma County have a decent,
safe and affordable place to live, call us at 707 780 1585 or e-mail to
hag@hagster.org
Last Update: April 18, 2008
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