 I just stopped correcting people. I don't. That's how my life's going to fall. Welcome, John. Thank you. How are you, Lee? Very great. Everything all right for you? Yeah. Have you had children too recently? Not recently. Seems to be a trend in our community. Hi. Good to see you, too. I was just so excited to see you. Been seven years from you. We had a good chat. Yeah, it's all good. Well, you probably remember some of it. All right. Welcome, everyone. I'll call the April 20th meeting of the Planning Commission to order. Tests, could we have a roll call? Commissioner Conway. Commissioner Conway is absent with notice. Dawson? Absent with notice. Gordon? Here. Maxwell? He's absent with notice as well. Kelvie? Present. Paul Hamas? Here. Kennedy? Here. Thank you. Are there any statements of disqualification from Planning Commissioners on the agenda tonight? Hearing none, let's move on to the approval of minutes of March 16th, 2023. I'm pretty sure three of us were here. Is that enough to approve these, or should we sit on it? We could continue it, too. We should probably continue. Let's continue it just to make sure we have four. I don't remember the rules on that one. All right, so tonight we have one item of general business. It's a presentation from staff on the sixth cycle housing element, and I'm pretty excited to see this. Thanks for all the good work, and we'll hear from staff first. Yeah, go for it. Oh, that's my delay on the internet. All right, thank you very much, commissioners. I'm Matthew Benoit. I'm actually going to let Inez. All right. Welcome Inez. We're all going to look at the speakerphone on the DS here when you speak, so thanks for joining us. Perfect. Thank you, Matt. Good evening, Planning Commissioners, and thank you for allowing me to call in tonight. Can you all hear me? All right, by the way. Sounds good. Very well. Perfect. All right, so tonight we have an informational presentation to update you on the status and the progress of the housing element update, and then we'll look to you for feedback and comments following the presentation. And can we go to slide two? So on the agenda tonight, we'll give you a quick update or summary of the housing element background, what it entails, and what sections are included throughout the document. We'll go over the RENA members, the figures, and go through the different strategies for addressing this RENA. We'll also go through some of the housing goals identified in the element, some of the updates that we've recently made to it as well. Then we'll go through some community engagement efforts to date, opportunities for feedback that are currently available to the public, and then go through next steps and upcoming meetings. And slide three. So what is a housing element? It is a required chapter of the city's general plan, and it is the only chapter to require certification by the Department of Housing and Community Development, otherwise known as HCD. And this is to make sure that the element is compliant with the many housing state laws. And the element is it projects housing needs by income categories, and identifies goals, policies, and programs, and objectives to address those needs and guide future housing growth for all income levels. Slide four. Our current draft housing element includes two chapters and eight appendices. The first chapter is an introduction. It introduces the elements and provides a breakdown of some of the requirements for it. Chapter two is, in some terms, the most important chapter, the most important section of the document as it establishes the policies and the objectives that the city will implement over the next eight years to meet its housing goals and address housing needs throughout the community. Appendix A is a summary of community engagement. It includes all the efforts that we've done throughout the process, and it's continuously updated as more meetings and outreach is conducted. Appendix B is a review of past performance, and so this looks at the fifth cycle, the current housing element. Sorry, I'm getting some feedback. That was us. We just meted. Oh, no worries. All right, so Appendix B, it's a review of past performance, looking at how the city has accomplished its current programs and policies, and it looks to see if the program should be continued on specifics, if they were successful, they should be modified based on updates to state law, or if they were successfully completed or discontinued. Appendix C is a housing needs assessment, and so this looks at the city's demographics and housing stock and looks for any potential gaps. For example, if we identify a high senior population that's low senior housing units, then we would need to address that through the policy plan. Appendix B, the Fair Housing Assessment, this is the newest requirement for this sixth cycle. It looks for any issues with fair housing practices in the city, and looks to see where particular communities are located, if there's any concentrations, any segregation, and ways for this housing element and the sites identified to address any potential issues there. Appendix E is a housing constraints. We look at a number of different constraints through this section, including non-governmental, which is looking at, for example, the cost of land, construction costs, and other outside constraints that the city doesn't necessarily have control over, but still affect housing development. And it also looks at governmental control. So, for example, the cost of applications, review time, seeing where the city can further facilitate and promote housing through its own processes. We have Appendix F, which is looking at housing resources. So, this is particularly relating to special housing needs groups, what resources are available to them in the community. So, seniors, low-income households, persons experiencing homelessness, what resources are available for them to access shelter and seek and access affordable housing. We have Appendix G, which is, part of our presentation tonight is the Housing Sites Inventory, and this is the section that identifies exact strategies and parcels to meet the city's regional housing needs allocation. And then lastly, we have Appendix H, which is a glossary of terms used throughout the documents. And slide five, please. So now, before we get into the details of what's included in the draft six-cycle housing element that's currently available online now, we did want to highlight the city's accomplishments in the fifth cycle. As you see on the table, the city was allocated a total of 747 units to plan for between 2015 and 2023. And the city successfully permitted 1,664 units and met the rena at all income levels. And I'd like to particularly draw your attention to the low and very low income category where the city exceeded its goal at 109% for very low and 367% for low. This is an increase from what we reported during the second community workshop on April 4th. This is due to two projects receiving their building permits on April 13th. And those are 314 Jesse Street, which provided 48 affordable housing units for mentally disabled and formerly homeless households. And riverfronts at 418 to 428 Front Street, which will bring 175 units, including 15 affordable to those making 50% of the area median income and five units affordable to those making 80% of the area median income, plus some ground level commercial space as well. This is a significant accomplishment. There isn't many jurisdictions throughout the state that have met this fifth cycle rena. So this is something that the city should be very proud of and something that we're looking to achieve once again during the sixth cycle. Can I pause you there before we move to six to just emphasize how awesome that is and like how much work went into that from our staff, our community, the people that sat in this room. This is great. So I just want to acknowledge that. We get so upset about, we're not doing enough, but this is huge and great. So just wanted to inject that. I'd add appreciation to the commission's work. You know, the commission saw many of those projects and so I appreciate you all volunteering your time to help make that achievement possible. Thank you. And the developers who actually build the building, let me throw that in there while we're appreciating everybody. Absolutely. I mean, they're a huge partner and we certainly couldn't do it without them. All right, so for site six, looking towards the sixth cycle, we have, the city has received a significant increase in units is now for these next eight years, 3,736 total units with a breakdown as you see on the screen. And as we'll go through in a number of slides, the city is already looking to achieve a number of these through projects that are currently in the pipeline. Slide seven, as part of the housing on the updates, the city is required to identify exact sites or parcels that have the capacity to accommodate this arena. And in assessing the sites, the city must affirmatively further fair housing. That's that new requirement for this cycle. And this means that the sites, particularly ones that can accommodate low income cannot be located within the same area. They must be equitably distributed throughout the community in areas that have close and convenient access to community resources, services, employment opportunities, public transportation and beyond sites that have access to utilities as well. So this may result in the sites being located in more concentration in certain areas, but overall it must be equitably distributed throughout the community. So they can't all be located in one neighborhood, for example, slide seven or eight, excuse me. So now to get into the strategies, the city is able to account for units gained for these four strategies here you see on the screen. The first is projects in the review pipeline. And so this includes projects that are currently in planning review or that have received approval, but have not yet hold those building permits. The next is projected AD youth. And this is based on the city's past performance since 2018. We're able to take the median number of units permitted since 2018 to now and allocate that per year for the next eight years. And so you'll see in a few slides that this adds up to quite a number of units as the city's made good progress in the past few years. The third strategy is sites that are currently zoned for residential and are vacant. And so they therefore have that ability to accommodate those additional units. And then the fourth is infill opportunity areas. And so we've identified a number of different strategies or a number of different areas where there are sites that can accommodate new units with the existing zoning. If we can go to slide nine. So these infill opportunity areas include sites in the downtown along five corridors, as you see listed on the screen, four church properties, and then a number of sites for considering in that other sites category. The areas identify sites that are either vacant, considered underutilized. And so this means that the improvement value is less than the land value or that have developer property owner interest. Our five listed corridors recently underwent rezoning to bring the sites into compliance with what the general plan already permitted, which includes higher density residential development as well as mixed use developments. And so we're including the capacity from these reasons on these sites. We also identified four particular churches throughout the community that have the existing zoning permitting residential development. And that also have the space available for future development. And the remaining sites in the other category are included following requests from property owners and developers by tenant. So that's again, the affordability breakdown of these strategies. I'll prep this by saying that these are the same values as those that are included in the staff report. Just this table is shown in a different format. And the format also may look different than what is included in the public review draft as we have one made certain site edits which we'll go over in the next few slides. And then two, we've reorganized the table for clarity purposes, making sure that it's a bit more clear. So to walk down through the table, we see at the top, we have our six cycle renum. And then the first category is pipeline projects. So here we have projects that are being reviewed by the city, totaling 2,730 potential units. And there's an additional, a little over 1,000 units from a few projects that have been approved by the UC Regents on the UCSC campus. And so with these pipeline projects alone, the city is able to meet the rena for the very low, low, and above moderate income categories which alone is fantastic. So then we continue making our way through the table with what's currently permitted throughout the city. And so the first is those projected ADUs. And so as I was mentioning, the city is able to use its past performance to project out that potential development. And so we've assumed a total of 583 units to be developed as ADUs over the next eight years. For vacant residential land, we have 154 potential units there. We then have our five different corridors listed, Mission Street, Ocean Street, SoCal Avenue and Water Street and River Street. We have our church sites listed. We then have different sites located in the downtown area. And then we have 1,145 units from the downtown expansion plan area. This is currently permitted, currently zoned, sorry, these are units that may be developed currently based on existing zoning. So not looking at the expansion plan project. And I'll let Matt talk a little bit about that once we get to the table. And then we have the other sites which are smaller in total, only 32 additional units. And so in total here, we have, you'll see at the bottom, a potential for 8,272 units with the city's current zoning. And I'll note here that it's, you see a buffer listed on the very bottom row. And it's important for the city to include this buffer to make sure that we're not hitting a known as lost situation in which case if sites develop differently than what we've anticipated throughout this housing element, there is a buffer to maintain the RENA number throughout the next eight years. And so HVD recommends typically between 15 and 30% buffer. But in this case, through the city's existing zoning, we're able to show that we're largely able to to meet these percentages with 67% for the very low and low income category, 33% for moderate and 208% for above moderate. And Matt, I'll turn it over to you to talk through the expansion plan and the edits that we've made. Yeah, thank you, Anas. Yeah, so I just wanted to touch upon again a few key changes in the site's inventory that were made since that public review draft came out. If any of you had a chance to look at that already, this does look a little different. One big change is just in the reorganization of the table and how these areas are counted, and we really found that separating out between pipeline projects and then these projected units was really the best way to prevent any overlap or double counting of things. And it very clearly kind of shows what's already in our pipeline and has a better chance of happening versus something we're just using a projection to kind of give an idea of what could happen to the state. So that's one key difference. And then the corridors, we used to have the objective standards mix use designation on here as a separate category. And we really realized that there was already overlap between that and the corridor projects. So really those projects were just brought into these corridor categories, the correct categories that they were meant to be in. And there was a few instances where we did have to change the densities allowed based on if they were dropped into the corridor. They were supposed to have that corridor density. So those were a few of those changes. And then the big one is the downtown expansion plan area. And that really in this first draft, this public review draft, what we just, we put 1,200 units in there and we talked about it as a rezoning project. But really we thought a lot more about it. And HCD doesn't like uncertainty when we submit these things. And it was really, it was a much better way to go about just putting in the exact base capacity of the downtown area. And not, we didn't need those extra units. And we don't even know what those potential extra units are yet. It's still going through the process. We still need to do CEQA and come up with the exact zoning plan for this area. So there's unknowns there. And we could just use the base capacity right now and include that automatically in the site, in the site's inventory. And we've already done studies through test fits and market analysis to determine what that number of units is. And that's exactly, you know, 1,145. So that's our 1,200 in the public review draft was just kind of a guess to throw a number in there. And this is an exact number we can provide to HCD. So does it include the controversial 20 story building idea at this point? No, no, this is just the base capacity what someone could do right now based on our existing zoning on those sites. Thanks, Chair Kennedy. I'll just note a couple of things while I've got the floor here. One, that as Matt noted, we're looking at the downtown plan under current conditions and what could be developed in that area. You mentioned the additional stories. The current council direction is to have a maximum of 12 stories. And so to basically provide development standards that will ultimately, including with density bonus result in 12 story maximum building heights. And there are questions about that as we go through the density bonus because we don't always have control over that but we can put our policies in place to anticipate that that would be the maximum number of stories. And so that's what we're working towards now. I just wanted to put that out there since a greater number of stories was mentioned. The last thing that I will mention here is in this, in the above moderate income category where we've got the total number of units identified, HCD does not allow us to take credit for our inclusionary percentage. And so while those are showing as above market, we do have the 20% inclusionary that is at 80% of area median income. And so those units would actually be falling in the very low and low income. But again, as we've talked about this being a paper exercise and having to follow HCD's recommendations, we've got to have those in the above moderate income, the market rate income category now. But I think that's an important point when we're looking at those percentages and where those units fall in compared to what would actually happen on the ground as we develop with our current requirements for inclusionary housing. Thank you for clarifying that. I just brought it up because it was quite controversial. Sure. It's very clear, but it's a good reminder that we're looking at current zoning and not the future. Thank you. Commissioner McKelvie. Is that why in the table G1, the above moderate income is 1600 and something? Is that including the numbers that you're talking about as far as the units that are inclusionary units? It's quite a bit higher than the other categories. You don't have that in front of you, I guess. I see what you're saying, the 1600 in terms of our six cycle rena targets. Sure. You want to speak to that and the AMBAG process associated with it and then I can amend or update or probably won't need to amend. I'm just chewing on a lot of these numbers and I love it. It's brilliant that there's all this data in here. So there was a comprehensive process that we went through with AMBAG that looked at a whole range of factors and then divided up the regional allocations and Matt participated in that on a regular basis, monthly at least and oftentimes more than that. And so I'll let him give you a brief overview on that. That process for us began in 2020 at that point. The state had already done its studies and had given each council of governments which is AMBAG, that's our council of governments, gave them a number for each of these income categories and it was up to AMBAG to come up with a methodology and working with the jurisdictions in AMBAG, coming up with a methodology to divvy up those units for each jurisdiction. So there's definitely a lot of back and forth over the next year or so and then by early 2021, 2022, at that point they'd come up with a methodology and we received these numbers officially and they submitted it to the state and those numbers were certified. So those percentages that came through the units given to them from the state methodology and it's based on their studies on what's needed. So every income category is needed. Just one other question and I'm not sure which one of you might want to address it, but when we talk about the 12 stories kind of following on your question, are you saying that the 12 stories, the base density is lower and you're trying to estimate what the density bonus and the incentives might allow? That's kind of how you're getting to the 12 stories or is that, I'm not sure how that's being integrated? Our current direction from council is 1,600 units and 12 stories. So we are looking at what fits into that envelope. So you're trying to study that. The base density of something lower probably and then assuming there will be incentives. The one thing we're still working out is that 1,600 units would include density bonus. That's the direction we've been getting so far. So it adds a layer of complexity to what the actual base number is because it's really up to developers and how much they use the density bonus and what they ask for in terms of waivers and concessions and things like that. I was going to say I'll add a little bit to what Matt was highlighting about the Reno process so that the regional housing needs determination goes to association of Monterey Bay Area government. When they're dividing that up, they're looking at a number of things. They're looking at number of jobs. They're looking at transportation opportunities and public transit opportunities. They're looking at risks like wildfire and sea level rise and things of that sort. Those are key determining factors, I should say, with respect to the overall number. Then they looked at two primary factors to determine how the income categories were distributed amongst those total numbers. The primary factors that were considered were incomes and looking at percentage of population that are below or lower incomes and then second, racial distribution. If a city was substantially more affluent and more affluent than the average and they are wider than the average, then they would get a higher percentage of the lower income categories. Santa Cruz was pretty close to middle on both and fell slightly above the threshold on one and slightly below the threshold on the other, so ours are kind of middle of the line in terms of the distribution of income among the numbers. Some other cities had their numbers skewed more or less towards the lower incomes or higher incomes depending on those two primary factors. Anything else you'd want to add on that, Matt, or is that summarizable? That's good. I'm taking up a lot of time here. Those are great answers, thank you. You picked a real technical meeting to join us. Sorry. I just wanted to add one more thing on the sites inventory and the sites included in that. Staff report does mention that sites included in this housing element, if they were included in a previous housing element, that triggers an allowance for them to use a ministerial review. So that is something we looked at pretty closely. There's actually only four sites total that would trigger a ministerial review as we currently have in our proposed sites inventory. And one of those is a larger site that allows for affordable housing to be counted towards it in this process of HCD. So that's something to note. And given the number of sites that we have that are just for, are counted towards the above moderate income, there may be some interest from the commissioner or council to look at that more closely and consider do we want to add this site in right now and if it doesn't develop and it's added in the next time then it would trigger this ministerial process. So I think that is up for consideration still and we may see this, especially this above moderate income like percentage, buffer percentage that's really high right now. That could get lowered and move some of those above moderate sites from the inventory. Matt and I talked about this earlier. I was just reminded by what you just said, their strategy, like you only get two chances at it and then ministerial review. So I hadn't really understood that, understood that so I'll leave myself and that was really interesting. I'm just smiling, our town is so small, it's so personal, it's like five sites and we probably all know where they are. So that's just the nature of a small town. But do you want input from us on that? It doesn't seem like we need to. If you'd like to provide any direction or just broadly if you think if the percentage of above mod could go down and that's something that you're okay with. That was my first reaction. We can provide that. I think by Monday we'll be providing council with an additional memo that speaks to the commissioner comments tonight. So I feel like it's just optics but when I saw that 208 compared to the 67 I'm like what? So I think just on the political public end it might be nice to think about that a bit more. And something to remember too is that the HCD recommendation for this buffer is 15 to 30%, that's typical. We're glad that these are a lot higher than that. I think staying on the good graces of HCD throughout this process as much as possible is a really good thing and will help us out a lot in getting this expedited state. It's a significant approval process but it is a good point that. And I doubt that we're pursuing HCD pro housing designation as a city and that can make us eligible for additional points as part of grants. Having the excess buffer does get us points in that pro housing designation scoring as well and so that's something. There are two tiers and at this point we would be meeting the upper level tier so that we could get the additional points and that's something that we certainly want to maintain. Because I love that we're on the bleeding edge in a lot of these areas. Santa Cruz were first for a small city which is great. That's why I love living here. But this is a long game. It's seven years and seven years and we want to be calm about it. I mean is there a specific percentage that we could ride that line that met the optics and kept some control, the little bit of control we have as a city and met that goal of getting points? There is. I'd have to go back to the pro housing designation because I can't remember. Matt might remember off the top of his head. I'll venture a guess at what my recollect, at least at what my recollection is. Matt, do you recall? I can pull it up actually. To get the maximum amount of points through that, it's 120. This is written in a different way. This is the percent over already. So I know we're well above 150% right now. So roughly 50% more, right? Is how that would essentially... And so yeah, so we're well above that and we are going to be revisiting the overall inventory particularly for the above moderates and hope to be providing an updated memo to the council in advance of their discussion on Tuesday the 25th. So that is one of the things that we'll be looking at and if you have any additional feedback related to that, if any of you have any additional feedback related to that, that would be welcome and that is one of the considerations as you pointed out, Commissioner Nielsen, or excuse me, Gordon, that... Yeah. That... it can result in a loss of local control with respect to the ministerial approach. I'm sorry to correct myself to that pro housing designation. That's 125 to 150% for one point category and then the highest point category is 150%. Yeah, I just had a quick question more specifically about the ADUs. I know that in our conversations I got a lot of good information from staff. Thank you for that. And I was just curious, given that we're... for the housing sites inventory, we have like projected ADUs and sort of the affordability that they're going to be at and sort of a projection there and that satisfies HCD's concerns around housing sites inventory. I'm curious, is there a way to count those towards RENA without them being deed restricted or otherwise have a covenant for affordability? Is there a way to put out a survey and just say like, this is where the rents are at and count that towards our RENA goals or I guess just explain a little bit of the process around that? Yeah, thank you. So the way... the units that are counted towards our RENA every single year we... the Planning Division submits annual progress report to the state on our RENA and that was actually... you'll see the info item right after this actually is that item that went to council a few weeks ago and that's due by April 1st every year. So we submit our progress and that's for the previous calendar year. So the 2022 units were included in that report and as part of that we go back and we go and look through all the ADUs that were built for instance, all the units in general but including ADUs that received building permits and then we actually come up with... we can come up with a methodology to present to the state in how we count those units towards their affordability level. So it's ultimately up to us to determine how they're counted and that's accepted or not by the state and usually that's in the form of a survey that we do and then based on that survey we extrapolate that into the various affordability levels to the state. So that's what we've done in the past. It's pretty much set that and then that's one of those things too they're counted differently in the housing element sites inventory than they are towards the actual arena because again this is just showing the state we have the capacity and then the arena is the actual units that we're receiving and providing that information to the state so the state looks at them differently which is how they're counted. Great, thank you. Yeah, I was pleased to see those ADU numbers like kind of coming up given the three rounds we did so it was nice to see that working. I know this is going to be a really long meeting but since we're on this page and we're talking about these percentages and points and we all like to win and we're possibly adjusting some of these is was there a reason why like SB 9 and SB 10 aren't included in this as a consideration? Yes, the city hasn't seen any SB 9 development yet at that? I think there's one moving through the process right now. Yeah, we've got a couple moving through the process but yeah, they haven't I don't know that there's been any construction yet to the point where they've pulled building permits and to make the case with HCD. Yeah, I think it's got to have precedence even like there has to be precedence it can't be projection. They treat it like ADUs, right? Well, that's kind of why I was wondering. They look at the history and so to try to make the case. If we really needed a few more units I think we could have made the case HCD that this is fairly new legislation people are still getting their heads around it we might see some units in the next eight years certainly but for the sake of this exercise it was easier just to keep that projection off. And we do have a policy I know we've gone through a lot of iterations of policies but we have a policy regarding SB 10 that is still in there and looking at how we can expand opportunities utilizing SB 10 and what that what SB 10 is for those that may not be familiar is an opportunity to rezone and change the general plan and zoning of properties specified properties to allow up to 10 dwelling units and to be exempt from CEQA in making those land use changes it would the subsequent projects would still be subject to CEQA but just the ability to allow the 10 units on any given parcel through general plan and zoning changes would not be subject to CEQA so there's a policy that speaks to looking at how that can be utilized particularly to expand housing opportunities in areas that are more affluent or are wider so that we are affirmatively furthering fair housing and that's something that hopefully we'll be able to accomplish as we implement this housing element. And just while we're talking policies we can have policy in particular HCD more than ever is really looking for discreet policies that have a timeline and action associated with them so for this instance with SB 10 it's not just explore SB 10 it's bring to council options for amendments to the zoning code by this in this day the policy plan chapter there's a lot of kind of more incisive policies like that. Thank you. Continue the program here. Sorry. It's good conversation. I want to acknowledge that I blew it and didn't open oral communications so I'll do that after this item for the public, sorry about that. But continue. Perfect item to have these come. I'm going to continue just briefly touching upon a few more changes from the public review draft that people may have seen specifically related to the unit changes you'll see right here based on we took a few sites out and added one site in and that actually changed the numbers just slightly from what you saw previously the numbers on the bottom table there are what you saw in the previous table but I just wanted to call out that they changed just slightly based on the project that we added or the sites that we added and the sites that we removed so just quickly an overview of that we have a golf club drive sites we originally included those in the public review draft it was important for us to remove those largely because the general plan actually calls for an area plan to be done for these sites and there's a really good opportunity in this area to do a great area plan and really do something spectacular to bring housing to this site it's just that there's uncertainty in the timeline and what it will actually be done and given that we don't need these units and the general plan calls for this longer process to get units approved here we felt it important to remove these sites from the inventory at this time and they could be included if there's not a project this eight year cycle this is the kind of site that could be included in the next housing element sites inventory through in that cycle and then there's the county of Santa Cruz site we had had discussions several years ago with the county and there is interest from them in redeveloping this site with housing it's just one of those things that again we don't know when there's just uncertainty and when that will actually happen they're obviously still using it now and there had been discussions but there haven't been recently so even though it's a great site for housing and we do look forward to redeveloping someday the uncertainty level just necessitated us taking it out for now that's good progress that they're talking to you all and kind of the same with Antonelli pond site again there's there's been development interest in this site for quite a while however there's also there's been known concerns from the coastal commission about development on this site and development on this site in particular would require a local coastal program amendment so going through the coastal commission with that amendment and them being you know there's work to be done still with them on that and also there's sensitive species on this site too so there's an environmental process involved in this as well and again those things add up to uncertainty that's just not needed for this site's inventory so we took those three sites off and then one thing to mention as well our public review draft was actually supposed to include the existing library site and it was accidentally left off and then we had since had communications with our council subcommittee on the housing element and they preferred that the existing library site stay off the site's inventory and actually have the city's lot 7 added instead so that's reflected here that we don't have the existing library site included but we did switch it for adding lot 7 so those are the key changes since the public review draft that's based on kind of feelings for which one might be going first possibly that what did the subcommittee talk about do you remember yeah I would say it has to do with the politics of the library site and there's still discussions on how and how best to use that site going forward I don't think they've decided on housing for sure but I think there's a good chance both sites will be housing but at this time they decided that lot 7 would be the best alright Anas slide 14 you can take it away again still awake perfect thank you alright so now that we've talked a bit about the sites we'll move over to the policy plan and so chapter 2 includes a number of objectives that the city will implement throughout the 6th cycle and we don't have enough time unfortunately tonight to go through all of them so instead we'll just go through the 7 goals that each of the objectives are divided up into so the first one is to facilitate housing production that meets the present and future housing needs of Santa Cruz residents goal number 2 is to provide an increased and protected supply of housing affordable to extremely low and moderate income households goal 3 is to provide accessible housing and supportive services that provide equal housing opportunities for special needs populations including the unhoused and those at risk of homelessness goal 4 is to provide increased opportunities for low and moderate income residents to rent or purchase homes and can we go to slide 15 please we have goal 5 which is to improve housing and neighborhoods throughout Santa Cruz and in designated target areas while protecting residents from displacement goal 6 is the city shall seek to combat housing discrimination and do historic patterns of segregation and list barriers that restrict access to foster a more inclusive community and help achieve racial equity and fair housing choice and then lastly but not least is goal 7 which is to fulfill the city's housing needs while promoting an environmentally sustainable compact community with clearly defined urban boundaries that takes into consideration the existing and potential impacts of sea level rise climate change particularly on underserved communities and I'll add here that as we reviewed with a review of past performance the city's programs some have been distributed and kept throughout this cycle and then a number of additional programs have been added to meet updates to state law and to address our arena site strategies and slide 16 please as Mad was talking about we had some revisions to the site and we also had a few additions to the policy objective as well and so there are four new objectives that you'll see in this newer version in comparison to the public review draft and so we'll walk through these four the first is objective 1.3S which is to streamline and reduce costs of building plan check for residential projects four or fewer units if the building plans have previously been submitted and approved by the city in the same building code cycle we also added objective 3.3L which is to work with partner agencies and advocate for expanded homelessness response services within the county and outside the city's jurisdiction jurisdiction and this is to further facilitate other neighboring communities to contribute in addressing homelessness throughout the region and then slide 17 we have objective 5.5C that's been added to establish a program that promotes the rental protections that are in effect and utilize a variety of means to distribute that information widely with a focus on getting information disseminated in lower income areas this is as part of our program to affirmatively further fair housing you'll see AFFH and that's what that stands for and then lastly we have objective 6.3C which is to apply for the AARP age-friendly community designation and assemble a standing committee of city staff to coordinate projects and operations that integrate the age-friendly community program pillars alright slide 18 so since the start of the housing element update process the city has put on a number of events and meetings and outreach throughout the community to really try to get as much engagement as possible the success of the housing element is really reliant on having a good participation and really getting feedback and input from the community so to go through this we had our first informational workshop in fall of 2022 where we started to engage the community we had some activities and started getting some feedback on people's thoughts on housing and potential needs and visions for the future we had a community survey as well that was available online and I think we had also made that available in hard copy particularly for tabling at some of the community events that we attended and so that included the lower ocean cleanup events the beach flats cleanup events as well and then the new of the community resources food distribution events and so as you see actually on the image to your right the table the tabling included these boards different stickies to to gather thoughts and input on on housing conditions throughout the city we have also been having some city council housing element subcommittee meetings that started off this past winter and that are ongoing we've released the public review draft on March 24th and had a second community workshop on April 4th to notify the community of the draft and to walk them through the information that's available in it as well as some of the sites and the programs as well and then we're having our meeting tonight and we will be having another meeting with city council next week on the 25th slide 19 and so as I mentioned we have the public review draft that is out it is available for feedback and input until April 24th and we do want the community to continue providing us with input past this date and we will continue to gather together that input and collect it by comments that are included or that are submitted after this date will not be may not be included in the first submittal draft to HCD we will continue to gather them afterwards and they will be included in a follow-up submittal but for this first draft if comments if the community wants comments included in the HCD submittal draft they have to be sent in by April 24th and so we have a feedback form an online feedback form that's available to organize comments by section on the draft and we have here this QR code for anyone that would like to have access to it right now I wanted to add here I think the staff reports as April 23rd so April 24th is actually the correct date as the final submission date for the comments to be included in that HCD draft so I just wanted to put that out there again and we will correct that I'm glad we're getting an extra day instead of taking one away Monday I just wanted to mention too we've already got a lot of good public feedback since the public review draft has been out and I forgot to mention this during our sites inventory discussions but we've already heard back from really engaged active community members that are on it and notice we made some mistakes like in our sites inventory it's like a density may have been wrong or we added units in the wrong location like for instance a 190 west cliff that project has 89 units and they're accidentally all attributed to low income when there's actually 10 low income units and then some moderate income units so we definitely acknowledge those mistakes and we're really glad people are catching those and we're going to be going through this all again too and making sure that's all buttoned up for the HCD just in the middle the last thing we want is HCD to get caught up on little things like that so glad everyone's catching them and we really appreciate the comments on this that we're receiving so far and then just one final note on possible changes that we'll see while we're talking about this as well is that the policies themselves NS and her team have been doing many many housing elements now the past couple years after we did the policies and submitted them to the public review draft and they're out there and NS has been really good about saying that's probably not discreet enough for HCD we've got a dial this in so another key thing we're going to be doing over the next couple weeks before that HCD is just looking more closely at our policies and we don't intend to drop any but there's definitely going to be changes in language and how we approach them as discreet as possible so those are just other changes you'll see thanks NS good well thanks staff that was an excellent presentation let's see if there oh we got more a couple more slides is that okay I'm not trying to rush you excuse me thanks I'll give me like a very visible signal when you're done I'll hand it back to it NS quick for I guess we lost NS that's okay I can keep going is that all right no it's fine we just have a few slides left just a quick summary of the community feedback we included an attachment of that feedback into the council report and I think it was also it went out to you today so you would have just seen it now but those are comments that we received as of yesterday just some key highlights on what we've heard so far more affordable housing development obviously concerns about water traffic parks parking you know that we've heard lots of interest in seeking state and federal funding to assist in our affordable housing development and addressing homelessness which is great something we're definitely a couple of our policies considering the design and bulk of potential developments downtown expansion and elsewhere our objective standards process that we just last year is possible recommendations for mobile homes for the effects of short term rentals there is interest in up zoning single family zones to allow multifamily development areas that we touched on this again but the tentative project schedule we have meeting today and then we turn it right around with the council meeting next week on Tuesday we have a reviewer but we really hope we have a reviewer that's engaged with us and is giving us feedback throughout that 90 days so we can start thinking about things and working on stuff but ultimately they did that full 90 day review and those comments around in August or again another submittal like September prior to that submittal too we'll be touching base again schedule does the the council subcommittee follow this all the way through in terms of I mean obviously it's going to council next week and then are they part of reviewing it or you submit it and then they kind of stick with it the whole time through comments because it doesn't come back right it's not coming back for to council our planning commission after this correct we will come back to planning commission and city council prior to certification of the document so there's certainly another chance to review it then and the interim after that that 90 day HCD review and we're having community workshops and things like that will be certainly open for there'll be those touch points still and the housing the council subcommittee on the housing element was formed earlier this year and we've probably had about one meeting a month now I think so we've touched base with them quite a bit which has been good and we'll probably continue finally we have a our second submittal to HCD would take place in the fall and again they have a 60 day review at that point which brings us to November city council in December for certification so certainly one of those things it's far away but it's already a very tight schedule so we thank you for everyone for getting their comments in and kind of moving you faster with us at this point but given those longer HCD reviews it's really key for us to get to reviews in before that certification that's why we're alright finally I can go thank you so much great presentation do we have more questions or would like to hear from the public and then we'll bring it back for more discussion is that good alright so we'll now open public hearing to hear from the public thank you for coming in person we appreciate it how many people want to speak roughly just show hands alright well you can have unlimited time but I'll cut you off if you ramble on too long alright please don't fill a buster John absolutely so thanks a lot for hearing me tonight and I think the city's done a great job on this for the most part I do have one issue that I think the city's been pretty aggressive and really very cooperative with developers trying to push housing and make it happen there's a lot of constraints a lot of obstacles, policy constraints and economic and other constraints to make this happen but staff I think is a bit to make it happen now I am an owner of one of the properties actually three properties in the golf club drive area so that was on the map I don't know if it's possible to put that up on the screen but if not you know these areas this 20 acre parcel or area has an area plan requirement but that area plan says it can go to 20 units per acre when that area plan is done area plans can take a lot of different forms there's no legal or state law requirement as to what area plan has to include contrary to specific plans you know back in prior to the 2030 general plan which was done in 2012 the area plan there called for the objective for an area plan called for 100 units I worked for years on that 2030 general plan that took about, tell me if I'm wrong Lee but I think it was 7 or 8 years to go through the process I attended 30, 40 hearings where this issue of golf club drive development was not the main issue but it certainly was talked about extensively and the objective is now over 350 units or it's 20 units an acre so 20 units, I'm saying 200 units you got some land lost and everything else density bonus might even be higher now the interesting thing is on page 2.8 of your staff report this talks about program accomplishments one of those accomplishments is a plan development project was completed in golf club drive that provided supportive housing for developmentally disabled individuals including one affordable unit they built 10 homes now there's 5 or 6 bedrooms in each of those homes there's 60 bedrooms roughly in that project it's clearly not just for developmentally disabled individuals it's for others as well and reasonably so those other individuals are paying for the cost to house those people and I have no complaints about this project we had issues at the time we worked them out but my point is that project was done and fitted the golf club drive area without an area plan now maybe it should have had one but it was done as a PD now that was the reason it was able to be done was because of the historical provisions and that was an exception that they use good for them that's great and that was again an example of how the housing excuse me how the planning staff is working with developers to make things happen that's good but my point here is that it happened without an area plan that doesn't mean I'm against an area plan but it's what kind of area plan we've I've owned this property for over 20 years we've been trying to develop this work with the property owners and area plans can be a generalized concept about what can go there or can be very detailed and very problematic and cost thousands and thousands of dollars so I would encourage you to think about I believe this requirement for an area plan has been a use the term in here a constraint to development not a facilitation of development this is exemplified by this project that got approved was fit nicely into the whole golf club drive area in a corner it doesn't preclude other development and I would argue that we we are the sole remaining property owners who want to move forward with the project the other two are somewhat uninvolved there's errors it's very complicated it's a very kind of a problem to get them going but so I just want to encourage you to not exclude these in fact they were included in the first round of this report of two of the lots and at that point I was like well I was assumed that the others were just a accidental omission there's six total parcels two are included four were excluded this time around there were three included I'm not sure if it showed up in your report or not so I thought okay well it got really confusing I think at one point the issue is that it was considered to be a appropriate group of properties to include in the housing element and I don't see why there's any motivation to take it out at this time I think there's a lot of motivation to include it so thanks for your time and here for any questions or comments. Thank you. Good evening my name is Ralph Asanenfeld I think I know a few of you up here certainly the staff and so let's go on and Chair Kennedy I have been involved in housing element policy now for a couple years through my day job working with with stakeholders across the state and ensuring cities have compliant housing elements I work for an organization that has filed lawsuits against multiple cities that don't have compliant housing elements I don't anticipate that we'll be doing that here in Santa Cruz because we have a dedicated staff that is working hard to make sure that we do have a compliant housing element and we already have a pretty good zone capacity in the city we're not anticipating doing any rezoning but there are a few things that I think we could strengthen to make sure that we achieve the objectives that the state has for us the two big buckets of well housing elements are complicated first I'll talk about the stuff on the inventory and then I have some recommendations for policies with regards to our site inventory and our pipeline projects between the projects that are in the pipeline and the university we are basically expecting to leave our entire objective which is pretty cool but for that to be a reality we need to make sure that it actually happens and the city doesn't control directly what the university does on campus we don't have land use authority there but we have been able to to stall projects with litigation I believe the city on multiple occasions has sued the university over student housing projects and over water issues and I just really encourage the city to make a firm commitment through the housing element process to not be that barrier to promise not to sue the university over things that would stop the plan housing that the university is committed to bringing on campus in addition to that the pipeline projects I do have some recommendations that would help clarify for the public's benefit where those projects are in the process it wasn't really clear looking on the site inventory for those projects that are listed as pipeline projects how many of those have already been entitled how many of those have submitted preliminary applications full applications so seeing more specific dates like when the application was filed when the project was entitled that sort of thing would help a lot and help make sure that we're not including projects that are basically dead already I think there was at least one project on that list that I believe has had entitlements expire and I just want to make sure that we're not including projects that are basically already dead and no longer feasible but for projects that are still alive that still are in the pipeline which we want to encourage HCD does typically recommend that cities try to facilitate those projects in some way through streamlining processes I'm not sure exactly what that could look like for our city but one of the programs that we're looking at for small projects is streamlining the building permit process maybe there is something similar that the city can do for these pipeline projects or maybe even some sort of ministerial approval process or reduced hearing process I don't know but the point is I think if we want to see those projects come to fruition we need to do whatever we can to facilitate seeing those projects through to the finish then with regards to the rest of the sites that are on the site inventory it's helpful for folks to understand that these are already sites that allow housing now we're not proposing to do any rezoning and what's being the sites that are listed essentially are just it's just a a record a public record of what an easy to reference plays of what essentially we can already build on our land with our existing general plan and existing zoning so when folks see that some particular site is proposed to or is listed on the site inventory is being redeveloped or potentially redeveloped every parcel in the city is potentially able to be redeveloped it's just a matter of whether or not that's feasible some cities like Los Angeles have come up with this probability of development analysis where they have a formula that they apply where they look at what the zoning is and what the likelihood of development for similar size projects based on what's available on what the land use on that site is and they do that across the city and and for the city of Los Angeles they actually realized that they needed to add more zone capacity we haven't done that analysis so it's a little unclear if we were relying on our site inventory what the realistic expectation of producible units is we can see on our list on the site inventory we can see the expected unit number is say 30 or whatever but that doesn't necessarily factor in the likelihood that those 30 units are actually going to be produced it's like the legal number that they are legally allowed to be produced so I think maybe a more thoughtful way of analyzing the site inventory would be looking at what the likelihood of development of all of these units actually is and it would give us a more realistic idea of what the feasible number of housing units produced being produced during the planning period would be a couple of other things I wanted to point out are that there are very few sites on the site inventory now that are city-owned sites that are service parking lots there's a lot of communities interest and support for redeveloping our service parking lots for affordable housing and it would be I think really popular if the city committed to redeveloping our city-owned sites in the housing element so not just listing lot 7 or maybe adding lot 3 and lot 6 and 8 and 16 and maybe the current library site but also having dates certain like a proposal to council or something to have a plan to redevelop those sites I think would be moving in the right direction for creating affordable housing the other thing I wanted to mention was the density limits on the site inventory are a number that is larger than you defined in the general plan land use element and in most cases that's because we don't really have density limits for small units for one bedrooms and studio apartments and SROs or flexible density units but we do have a density limit for larger family size units larger than a one bedroom we do have a limit in our general plan for the number of those units that can be built on a parcel and it just seems wrong, uncomfortable that we are facilitating smaller units for students and for young people and working folks who need smaller units but we're not facilitating or incentivizing the way we are for those units for families and we hear repeatedly that family size homes are a major need here in Santa Cruz I hope that we look at how we can facilitate more housing for families maybe that would include just eliminating the density limit overall in the general plan and just using the floor area ratios like we do for the smaller units for the family size units also SRO, if I really value your comments I just don't want to keep going on and on I'm sure staff would love to hear all these and work with you so if you want to just sum it up, again I truly respect your opinion here that's basically about it there are lots of advocates who have lots of good ideas I won't get into some ideas about tenant protections and rental registries and things like that but we can follow up with some email correspondence about lots of other areas it's a nice open-ended process that's still rolling so keep plugging in okay I was just going to say I really appreciate a lot of the leading to sort of your kind of implying a couple of ideas that sound really interesting to me I'd be happy to correspond with you about it some of the process things that are mentioned in the report a discussion at some point or some correspondence with planning about the process itself removing constraints in the process one other big picture thing I wanted to mention is we have a lot of zone capacity but we still need to double our rate of production compared to what we have been doing in order to hit our rena numbers and so we should be thinking about how we can facilitate that increased production within the planning period and thinking about programs that can help us do that and then in terms of affirmatively furthering for housing there's a lot of ideas in the graph policies that are really good and we should do all of those things and I'm here to always continue to advocate for more apartments in our low density neighborhoods where the highest opportunity are and apartments are for people of all walks of life more apartments all across the city thanks for coming appreciate it thank you I just wanted to start saying thank you to everyone for what I'm sure like dozens or hundreds of hours that were put into all of this the planners and the commissioners I wanted to talk about a few things so first on this note about ADUs I would really encourage all of you to go maybe visit some of the ADUs that are open for rent these are really really small units like the last speaker was just referencing the idea that we need family housing this is not big enough for a family it's not going to address families needs it's not big enough for a student it's great any housing is an improvement the focus on ADUs is a bit of a concern and it feels more like that's an opportunity to just create a new revenue source to extract things from students for landowners than it is a way to really address the housing crisis long term with reference to the housing element plan one thing I saw that I was curious about that maybe the planners can speak to is the extremely low income category I know that that's not required I think in a housing element or at least not included in the RENA numbers but I did not see any ELI specific policy recommendations which struck me as concerning I did note that the element talks about how the standard practice is to assume that 50% of what you're given as very low income from RENA will be ELI but the numbers given or the data given within the housing element show that extremely low income renters outnumber very low income renters by a factor of 2 to 1 so if the planning documents are assuming that we need just half of these very low income units to specifically be extremely low income it seems like we're not adequately planning for the actual demand of extremely low income renters I was curious if maybe somebody could speak to that and speak to some specific policies that might encourage rent or the production of rental units for extremely low income renters specifically with respect to preservation I was excited to see a right of first refusal recommendation including in the housing element I'm curious whether there's any other recommendations that would make that right of first refusal more meaningful allocating funding specifically to allow the acquisition of those properties because it's great if you can buy the property to have first call or first dibs on that property but it's only meaningful if you can actually afford to acquire that property and I'm not sure that the city is in a place where whether it's the city or it's the groups that the city might partner with we're actually able to acquire and preserve that affordable housing I was concerned by the section about protections and wanted to maybe encourage the planning commission to consider that one of the goals under the protections was I think 4.1 it aims to assist at least 50 renters with rental assistance covering last month's rent and a security deposit that was it that seems like a really underwhelming goal 50 people is not a lot during the entire housing cycle it seems like we could be doing more and 6.1 seeks to improve the use of housing choice vouchers but one thing I was curious about is how many of those vouchers are already going unused as we speak I know that in the state of California a substantial share of vouchers go unused because people cannot find the housing so increasing efforts to provide housing choice vouchers doesn't seem like a meaningful solution if we don't have a place to use those vouchers and another thing I didn't see there and that you might know if you're a renter or if you're seeking rent is that there continue to be quite a few rental listings where illegally there is a statement that they will not accept section 8 vouchers or housing choice vouchers which is not allowed in California law is my understanding but continues to be a problem at least in my experience looking for a rent rental units in the city of Santa Cruz so I'm curious whether that's been explored and whether there are policy recommendations that can improve enforcement of source of income discrimination laws this is more of a question but I was curious about supportive housing specifically and whether there's an attempt to measure and address the specific needs for supportive housing doesn't seem like Rena provides that would be curious I saw it mentioned in the housing element but not with any specificity and finally I wanted to talk about the community feedback and the portions regarding rental protection so I know we're past most of the community feedback portion of the housing element but I did want to express some concern it seems like an incredibly small and non-representative sample somehow renters constitute only 40% of the respondents when an accurate sample of Santa Cruz would be well above 50% renters so I would encourage you know if there's anything that could be said or done for future housing elements and future cycles to really try to increase engagement with the community and create a more representative sample and then I was surprised I did see quite a few comments about the need for rent control provisions that would protect renters just cause evictions that are listed in the housing element but didn't show up on the slides today I saw that there were calls for instance like there's a graph it shows exactly what people were saying they most needed ADUs are like half the level of things like just having more multi-family housing and affordable housing generally so it feels like the focus that we're hearing or that I heard today is maybe not the same as the focus of the actual community feedback and regardless of the community feedback it's great that we are building more affordable housing and that we have the stuff down the pipeline it will be years until a lot of that housing is available those of us who are renting we need some kind of protection right now because housing that's affordable five years from now or two years from now doesn't make a difference for me or anyone else who needs affordable housing today when we get up tomorrow and so every day until that housing becomes available is another day when we're forced to make hard choices about what we can afford and which necessities we will go without and it is another day in which we are at risk of being unable to stay in Santa Cruz so I would just really encourage the consideration of some more explicit policies regarding renter protection and tenant protection thank you very much for your time those are great comments you're not my name is Julianne nice to meet you thank you I appreciate hearing your voice it's not often heard in these chambers thank you I appreciate it and then staffs available and you know can follow up on all those good when anyone else in the public like to speak on this item seeing none thanks everyone for coming out we'll bring it back to the commission for some more discussion unless staff would like to rebut anything or respond or we can do that later I'll respond to a few things I first wanted to thank the members of the public for speaking there's some really great things that were identified and some things that will certainly be taking into consideration as we're both making recommendations to the council and then putting out with our drafts to Housing and Community Development, the State Department of Housing and Community Development early next month there were a few things I just want to speak to Rafa commented on the ability of projects of sites to develop as they are now and if a site is not included on the inventory then that also doesn't preclude it from developing as housing and I just want to be clear about that that if a general plan designation and zoning just a general plan designation under current state laws allows for housing development then whether it's on the inventory or not it has the ability to proceed and there are some instances where there are things that need to be done in advance of that like an area plan in some instances for a couple other site areas that we're talking about with respect to ADUs they are an important component of how we proceed with increasing the number of units particularly in high opportunity areas I do think it's important to point out that in terms of the other numbers in here they are a relatively small percentage yet they're important in that they can integrate individuals into those high resource areas and so they're one component they're not the only component by any stretch there were some questions about extremely low income and about supportive housing and one of the things that we as a city have been very successful at is both streamlining and facilitating supportive housing projects and working with and through our economic development and housing department actually producing those units and that's a big reason why we've met our rena targets for this last cycle as far as the streamlining goes we've utilized AB 2162 which allows for 100% affordable housing projects that have a 25% supportive housing component for individuals with disabilities or those experiencing or at risk of homelessness to proceed through a process meaning they don't have a discretionary review their process typically is just confirming that they meet all of the objective standards that is sometimes done through a design permit process but not through a public hearing but one that would allow them to essentially not have to go through CEQA and to have a much higher level of certainty in the process. The state requires that that's done for projects of 50 or fewer units we have brought information to the council and the council has supported the facilitation of these types of projects on a number of instances and that has gotten us the Jesse Street project that was referred to earlier by Inez that helped us achieve our rena targets in every income category this past week or so and then also we had Pacific Station South that the city is constructing 70 affordable housing units there plus space for D&T and community health foundation we've got Pacific Station North where that's done the center Cedar project the private project with 65 affordable units next to the Red Church the Calvary Church that utilize that so we're really looking at ways to facilitate that the production of those supportive housing units and when we're going for those and talking about the production there when we're going for those tax credits those are often also requiring or looking at getting additional points for targeting those extremely low income and so that is an important component we've got other projects that are looking at that as well with the 120 permanent supportive housing units that are going in Coral Street and so that is an important component and I think it's a fair comment to say let's look at how we can also make sure that we're not forgetting that ELI component and having that lost in the VLI the commenter is correct the rena numbers that we look at don't segregate out the extremely low income and the very low income so on our annual reporting which you'll hear as your next item that isn't distinguished and that doesn't mean that it's not an important component and so I appreciate the comments from the commenter there one more point on that too Lee so I think what Lee was getting at as well is that that supportive housing which we do talk about a lot in our policies and in the housing element does count towards extremely low we just we don't explicitly say extremely low so I think it's a really good point you know we might want to say that explicitly somewhere in the policies to mention that and a few other points so the state in our next annual progress report does actually will now require cities to report on extremely low it won't it'll still be counted towards the very low units but I think the state is getting more interested in how many of those extremely low units are being produced and so they're going to start collecting data on that starting in next year's new progress reports which I think is exciting and it kind of coincides with AB 2011 which just passed last year into effect on January 1st this is the bill that if a project meets certain affordability requirements it's allowed to develop residential on a commercial property and one of those residential requirements is actually extremely low so the state is looking more seriously at figuring out ways to specifically add extremely low income projects or extremely low income units to projects it's definitely worth noting our housing element I think one other final thing that I'd add there was a comment from Rafa regarding the promotion of not just small units but also larger units and that is something that I think we should look at I mean there have been a lot of things that have helped us to a lot of policy changes and code changes I would say that have helped us move towards promoting smaller units and looking how we can do that for larger units I think is also important I think an important thing to note there is that while some of those smaller units like SROs single room occupancy or flexible density units don't have that density limitation and we allow for higher density for studios and one bedrooms as well the dwelling units per acre is typically not applied so that general plan limitation typically isn't applied because we're typically seeing mixed use developments and then the floor area ratio becomes the limiting factor and I think one of the benefits of that is that if there isn't a limit on the number of units that developers who are seeking to do the two and three bedroom units because the developers do look at the market as they're proceeding and they can see the pipeline projects that we have which do include a fair number of smaller units and so we've actually been getting some developers kicking the tires and saying hey we're seeing the pipeline and want to see these larger units but I think that what we will likely see and we'll see how this plays out but I expect some of those two and three bedroom units will be smaller two and three bedroom units because it'll be limited by the floor area ratio and so the smaller two and three bedroom units they can get more of them if they're smaller versus having the larger two and three bedroom which they would have fewer of so I think that's one of the trends that we'll be seeing that's one shaped by the market but the comment is a valid one that it's really all unit types that we need to make sure that we're facilitating and I think the parking changes are one of the ways that is also going to help because we've been changing our own codes and the state has also stepped in with AB 2097 that your commission saw recently and that the council is considering as well and that's limiting the ability for the city to require parking and so that's going to also I think help facilitate some of those larger units awesome I'm glad to hear two and three bedrooms are coming there's been a lot of SRS alright so now's the time where we take a deep breath and then bring it back to the commission it's not even nine o'clock you know we're doing okay but we're just giving advice to staff so we can do emotion if we want or we could just talk and these guys can take notes what do you all want to do just an open discussion I have a couple of comments however you want to go on it we'll have any comments and if someone's moved to make a motion we can do that Mr. Sonnenfeld's comment housing elements are complicated yes between the city and UCSC all the arena requirements are currently projected to be covered which is a great result I can't this was a surprise to me when I saw these numbers and I can't believe it, it's wonderful but I think that you know I think the thing that's not being discussed and there's some policy statement in the element regarding removing barriers and barriers in my view I've been here many years barriers are often outside of the process of the actual regulations, the rules it's often what comes as part of the discretionary process and that is that work for many many months, years with staff to develop a project according to the regulations and get a positive staff report recommending approval and then the wheels come off when you get to a public hearing and I've often wondered if there's some way that I don't have the number in front of me one of the elements was one of the element policy suggestions was about the approval process and I wondered if there's some way that in the discretionary process approval could be treated as a presumptive approval and the bar for turning it back after that could be raised a little bit just because just as you have to do with a when you're asking for a variance there are very specific findings that have to be made and they're not just kind of anecdotal or that kind of thing that's one thing that would address some of what I think Mr. Salmanfeld was saying and what this policy element mentioned I'll just address one other thing that Julian said the ADU regulations when you talk about unit size as you were addressing just now the state level allows multifamily sized units to be built I've done a lot of affordable housing according to HUD standards and you're doing 800 square feet in HUD money that's a lot of bedrooms and that doesn't mean that the property owners are going to decide to build that and so I think that I don't think any well I don't know maybe people want to get into mandating minimums rather than maximums but I think that that's a big part of the drag on it is that someone has to propose it, pay for it, build it and that's really kind of up to the market and the property owners so that's my riff on a couple of points good comments I like it anybody want to go next alright Mr. Volamis okay thank you to staff for that good report I'll just start by saying that you know meeting the fifth cycle goals I don't know a little bit newer to the senior I don't know if the city's ever done that so meeting the fifth cycle goals that's huge I mean it's quite an accomplishment so I think that our planning staff has a lot to do with that so that's a huge win you know the sixth cycle it's going to be a heavy pull and you know with the number of units that we have I think that we're going to need as many things in our tool belt to accomplish this as possible and that's one of the reasons that I really love the emphasis on the ADU JADU production that is like gradually increasing you know in my discussions with staff there's probably a number of reasons for that but I think that this is a really good focus for a lot of reasons but one of the best reasons I think is that you know SB9 projects are not panning out quite as much as originally thought and so we have a lot of developable developable developable land sorry in high opportunity areas that are largely demographically homogenous right and so if we're looking to further fair housing in these areas I think that the development of smaller units in people's you know large backyards is not a bad way to go and you know aside from that I think that you know smaller units like this wall I do recognize the need for family size units that is a great need I think we're all well aware of the realities when it comes to the housing situation in single family rentals like for example when I was in college like you know 15 20 years ago we were packing you know 10 12 people into a four bedroom house and I think that that's somewhat the situation here when it comes to single family rentals on the west side especially you know closer to UCSE and so to relieve some of the pressure on that overcrowding I think that you know some of the smaller units are serving a purpose there and ADUs, JADUs, things like that can serve that purpose so I would just encourage breaking down barriers as much as possible for that like for example I know that the state has removed owner occupancy requirements temporarily and it seems to me that you know given the ADUs are continuing to enjoy a pretty high degree or at least increased degree of applications I think it's probably likely that the state might adjust that if not in perpetuity then to kind of extend that so maybe there's a way to include that with existing property owners or maybe once a property changes hands or something like that I know that there's some deed restrictions on owner occupancy requirements for those types of building projects but maybe there's a way to tweak that so people don't get left holding the bag once they do develop an ADU I do think also potentially revisiting the incentive program for landowners to deed restrict their ADUs might be worth a good shot in my understanding it can take a good while to pay off an ADU to break even and you know that is probably even more true today with rising construction costs with increased interest rates capital is just more expensive it's more expensive to put these units up and so maybe creating a little bit more of a streamlined process around that somehow I did learn that by waving ADU fees under the current program that what that does is it triggers prevailing wage and so whatever at least that's my understanding whatever savings you are getting from the waving of fees you're getting hit with prevailing wages and not against prevailing wages I'm absolutely for them but just in terms of creating an incentive for landowners to provide housing benefits and to make major investments in their own property there may be a way to tweak that somehow I don't have any good solutions to that but just wanted to make that comment and then last but not least just continue breaking down barriers for section 8 voucher holders I completely agree that the amount of people that have vouchers versus the amount of properties that will take them there's a big disconnect there and so my understanding is there is somewhat of a marketing program through the county that provides funding for lost rent or damages or things like this to kind of alleviate this idea that sort of equates rental subsidy with undesirable tenant behavior so you know I think that's a false narrative myself and I think that the section 8 program is a no-brainer for people that are looking to to collect market rate rent that's guaranteed by the government so I would just that would be my comment on that just to marketing that and continue finding a way to reach homeowners to kind of increase the likelihood that they'll take those so I think that's pretty much it thank you guys alright good comments Mr. Gordon thank you this I know it's a huge amount of work and so and a lot of pressure and timing and all those things so thank you I'm gonna just mention something about the SB 9 and removing barriers because we just kind of unearthed that if you build more than one unit then it like you know you can do two duplexes on an SB 9 but if you build more than one unit then other one has to be affordable so that's 50% which isn't really required on any other development and so that could be part of what we're seeing as a barrier so we're still trying to get some answers on specifically and there's apparently in loophies that you can pay but you know it's not it's already hard enough for it to pencil and some of these properties are more unicorns you know like not every property fits that but there are definitely some local barriers that we're running into in regards to SB 9 that maybe we should look at a little bit more closely if we want to utilize that particularly in properties that could utilize it closer to UCSE so then a couple of other things that are more like optics because you know we sort of started to talk about that a little bit about percentages in you know income level percentages and I think it actually came up in another planning commission meeting in regards to the front and water street development about transparency you know that we particularly here everybody that I'm sitting next to really does you know support housing and we also want a diverse community but we also like I think value transparency and as we're sitting up here community members that we have to you know communicate with about passing some of these projects and so then the narrative that we hear a lot is it doesn't pencil and you know if we add too many affordable housings or and you know we are using the base density you know for affordable housing units and not requiring them above that and I feel like one of the things that came up is being able to see those numbers you know I know that it would be very difficult to analyze them but from an optics standpoint I wonder if there's the possibility of finding a way where we can actually have that be something that we look at you know that that is because there are a lot of things that I hear from the community of like well we're streamlining this and we're doing all these things or removing a lot of barriers and that those are intangible costs to developers and so shouldn't we you know require that they actually hit 20% after bonus versus the what pencils out to be closer to 13 and I've been seeing and so I guess I'm just bringing that to you because I hear that a lot and so if there was some way optically that we can show the community that we're you know that we are trying to support the developers and also you know and I don't know how we can do that I mean I've been thinking about it and we can keep talking about it but it does keep coming up and so if there's a way that we can be transparent we can really see those things I know you can move numbers and all those things but there may be a way and then with that I think just optically you know as we're talking about some of these developments and possibly displacing people that's something that's come up you know quite a bit and a lot of the public comment and you know if there was you know I mean I know there's a community things to death but some way that we could you know analyze the real outcome you know versus just having sort of performative things that we list that we'll do is there something that we can actively do when a development comes into play that may have a significant impact if there's something that we could assess or subcommittee that we could check in with just again optically from the community standpoint like that we're looking at that aspect as well as meeting Rina numbers and you know all the other things that we're trying to do so I don't know if I made myself clear but those are a couple thoughts so thanks that made sense to me those are good thoughts are tests ready to put that link up for me pretty soon so I've got a couple comments three little quick ones and then kind of one more extensive one I'm thinking back to 2016 where if I remember right we built one affordable unit that was my saddest planning commission meeting like I cried that night and that sucked so it makes me so happy to see all this growth since then there were a lot of things that went into that it's a long story but right on this is great I want to salute the public outreach process like I really read through that entire section is just so interesting because all of my assumptions about that neighborhood or this neighborhood when you read what people say it like they're all wrong so I just want to recognize how hard it is to get input from everybody and what I saw was a really rich process and working with different communities at their level with different styles so thank you for doing that I know that it's hard and I just as long as we're continually improving that I'm happy yes then I get to the big thing and I put up the city council district map I love this mapping there's a whole section of the report there right where it goes through like income inequality to do this one after the other and I'm pretty visual myself and I just love how these maps put the inequality right in front of us so I just wanted to kind of throw up some ideas that are big ideas see what other commissioners think and then see if we want to recommend something council or not so I want to see this rena data on this map and here's why because this map is a less racist and more equitable way to organize our city council you know that's what we learned when we were sued and then pushed all these little pieces around and that's fantastic we should just put that straight into zoning I mean I know we are but let's do it more directly because as we know zoning is by conception and application racist in my opinion you know Berkeley research this it's true so we need to think every minute about correcting that up here and I think this might be a fun and interesting way to look at the data that might help that goal because each of these districts is more diverse you know economically racially in all different ways so then I don't think this is about council politics I think this idea would be about the citizens my you know fellow people who live in this town I'm in district three right there and you know we are the ones who are accountable for producing enough housing in our district for my mom when she needs it the kindergarten teacher of my son who left after one year because she couldn't get a place and was driving for Marina every day you know so I think we could focus the citizens on these goals whether they're met or not it would make the decisions local and as a joke you know everything is about being local in this town right so it would make it more local it's so easy to say I don't care about what happens on the other side of town and you could reduce that even further to focus everybody on to it and then finally and obviously politically make our mayor and the council members really accountable for their share and it would be really clear who is or is not doing their part you know after the end of this cycle so I don't know there's some downsides we don't want to be specific you know we don't want to be pointing Pete's house is going to be developed at because that's weird but I just want to pitch this thought and get some feedback and see if this is something we could talk about recommending the council so are you talking about like equally spreading the rena goals across the districts or that's a great one and we had an email exchange about this not equally equitably right and I don't know what that means you'd have to figure that out here I was going to say can you my premise is that the redistricting kind of started that a bit you know but I hear you like I thought it would all be figured out and what's equal and I don't know I mean well there's this like east side west side thing oh the west side is not doing enough UCSC is not doing enough so conceptually I think it's interesting I mean I would look to you I mean District 2 has I mean there are districts that have more opportunity than others so I'm wondering about that because there's like a whole rezoning thing that would need to potentially be addressed in that but also I mean I think right I mean like District 2 for instance is just much more opportunity for multi residential housing and um I guess 3 and 6 might have more SB 9 opportunities there's barriers and there's no barriers in District 2 so how would we how would that lay out? It's a good point I mean I was thinking driving down about when you do like fundraising and you make that big and it's gray and then you like start painting back in the day we did it with but that's all it would be you know here's how much you could do and I hear you and like those are all good next steps but my thought was just like bring what's here to the surface got it so it's like got it here's what we need it's optics okay got it and as far as SB 9 goes I think 3 and 6 have a lot of smaller parcels in town so I think on average it would be less likely there for SB 9 to be proposed there and it would be more likely maybe where I live in 1 or obviously 2 with the the medium density and the multi-unit low density zones that are already there maybe 4 but I definitely think that exists now probably lends some totally more to others I'm reflecting back on the corridor process and you know 2 is kind of like got 2 corridors it's just the geography I live right around the corner from 831 and I'm all for it the the idea of the in the I think in the element it does talk about it does remarkable mapping of demographics of income of housing people that feel at at risk with their housing some of it was surprising to me but I think that it really does show that there's a both an ethnic and an income distribution that can help inform target things I think that's what you were saying before recommendations in the element yeah but I think it's an interesting idea I'd be interested in hearing more I'm not sure if how to go about doing that could direct staff to return with a report on what equitable distribution of housing across the districts would potentially look like maybe with some options would be we could do something like that I think there's a lot lot more to know before you know committing to any type of plan on that I love the intention I just you know the specifics I think would be really important here because yeah there are major constraints and differences in between the districts in terms of what's possible I think it would be interesting to contrast that map zoning map only because talking about something like SB 9 like carpet bombed R1 everywhere on the map and that is that is every district and so you kind of think that it could be applied if people chose to do it goes back to the point I made earlier about might not choose to build large well I don't know I hear you but I feel like that's a bit more restrictive and like we've had the conversation I wouldn't certainly want to slow things down by bringing this back and we already have a council subcommittee and council so do you guys want to respond or what do you think of this idea yeah thank you so first of all it's something we are working on and we will get into the states certainly it is an overlay of the units based on the council districts sweet so that will be in the submittal depending on if there's changes to the sites inventory in the next couple of days before council we'll see how long that kind of takes us to rework the numbers figure that out but it's going to be something that will be in our submittal and kind of the points I raised earlier commissioner I think one tricky thing with this I think you're intense really good and there's definitely an AFFH you know permanently furthering fair housing component to that idea and to have a distribution of units throughout the city and especially in higher resource areas is really important and it's really the housing element in the sites inventory becomes quite a balancing act in that regard you look at like our downtown technically based on based on demographic data that's not a highest resource area in the community like the west side for instance would be a higher resource area but when you're thinking about highest and best place to develop the most sustainable place to develop that's still going to be downtown it's more transit rich it's more amenity rich it's more service rich so that balancing act is really tricky I think you're in addition just the zoning map that's naturally going to pull more units these nodes of activity the corridors in the downtown will attract more development and that falls outside of the council map so it's pretty tough to exactly distribute that but I think the intense definitely a good one you might be the only one who goes on the rena scoreboard you know it's like looking to see how the beach is doing and stuff they're not doing well alright well thanks for the feedback I am alright with just passing this on is that alright with everybody I think it also might be interesting to also focus maybe on like the top 5 census tracks that are the most homogenous or the most affluent or something like that too that could be a good way to do it so I'm sure well I don't know that'd be interesting I don't know I want more information it's an interesting prospect well thanks for listening I just think about those citywide things and how important our work is good well I'm missing our other three commissioners too as we receive input I know everyone can't make every meeting but great so staff I think that's the input you need any other questions for us more direction needed no questions or direction I think I'd just wrap this up by reiterating this is first off thank you all great feedback from the commission and from the community really appreciate the participation and depth of the conversation I wanted to remind everyone that we are doing a very quick turnaround on this and we're going to the city council this coming Tuesday the 25th and our goal is to summarize a lot of what we've heard here tonight and get that to the council we have a meeting with the council subcommittee tomorrow and so we're targeting taking feedback from that as well as the feedback we've heard tonight and getting a supplemental memo out to the council so that the full council can consider the comments that have been heard so we'll plan on getting that out on Monday and then we will be and all of our other comments now exactly where do you guys sleep? so thank you and yes we are still accepting comments and even after the this comment period and as commented that you know we might not be able to consider those comments as part of our first resubmittal as our first submittal to HCD and you know we will try to even you know consider whatever we get up to that time but you know there's a point where like we've got to put a bow on it and send it away but that doesn't mean that we're not continuing to accept comments so we encourage the members of the audience and those listening online and your friends and family members so I'll take a look at this this is a really important document and to the extent that we're gathering that additional feedback it's just going to make it a stronger approach for us meeting our housing goals over the coming eight years great well that's exciting I'm feeling a bit old this is my second housing element but I was there at the end of the general plan to John good so we got a pause I forgot to do oral communications it's kind of dumb but this is the time for anyone in the public to talk to us about an item that's not on the agenda if they would like to see none we can move on to the informational item I don't have a presentation for that we just got rid of it would you like to talk about it a bit still I'm happy what I understand of it great I mean I think the main point we really hit on in the previous presentation is that in 2022 which that annual progress report touched on we had not yet met all of our rena targets we were just missing that very low income category the report did speak to the likelihood of hitting that soon and we've now hit that as of last week one of 6% or so of communities in the whole state and even of that not many of those have the amount of this cycle rena units that we had so it's especially impressive I think hopefully something we continue going forward in the 6th cycle and with that too one exciting thing on that as well as the fact that we've now hit our this cycle targets as of July 1st we can start counting units this year actually towards our next cycle even though our cycle doesn't officially start until certification in December we can start counting those units already the state gives you a buffer that's especially helpful all the units that we're now going to be approving later this year and still get counted towards rena and in addition that makes us exempt from SB 35 from the time we meet our rena until mid-cycle so the next four years starting January 1st we would be exempt from SB 35 and at that point there would be another even though the state reviews those annual progress reports annually it actually only looks at that SB 35 calculation every four years so at that point it would make that determination and it's prorated so after four years if we've met over half of all those rena targets that we showed then we would be exempt again and there's different triggers there's two pieces to that one is if we're if we're not meeting our above moderate then SB 35 would kick in if a project only met our inclusionary requirement but if say we've met our above moderate income but we haven't yet met our low or very low then SB 35 would kick in on a 50% affordable projects such as SB 35 as it should thank you all right so with that we're at the end of the meeting we don't have any subcommittees going or advisory body oral reports nor items referred to future agendas Lee do you want to just take a quick look at schedule or tell us give us a general update on things? Sure happy to so the next I've mentioned the housing element going to the council at this meeting on the 25th we also have the second reading of the parking considerations associated with AB 2097 that the planning commission heard a month and a half or so ago and then we also have the 530 front street project that the commission heard also about a month ago is going to the council this coming Tuesday on the 25th the planning commission also provided feedback on the Coral Street visioning report and that is headed to the following council meeting on May 9th looking at the planning commission's upcoming schedule we have the state mandated planning commission review and determination of general planning and consistency for our capital improvement program that is annually something that you all see and comment on that is currently targeted for the first meeting in May and that's May the 4th that's currently the only item that we have on that agenda it is dependent upon getting through various other subcommittees that we have and that is the second meeting in May which would be the 18th so we will keep you appraised if there is something that is targeting that meeting but right now we don't have anything targeted for that. Okay. Typically this time of year we email you all our vacations and stuff for summer do you want to comment on that? Also, if you've got conflicts and you're going to be out of town for any other meetings that is helpful if we understand there isn't going to be a quorum for a meeting so that if we're noticing and preparing and leading up to that we can move things around either have a special meeting or push something out if it's not time or units this year you guys come on just a test sounds good alright with that I will adjourn this meeting thanks everybody have a nice night. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Great work. I'm blown away.