From: Ryan OConnell
To: Lara Weisiger
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Vote to adopt the Housing Element (Item 7-B) Date: Thursday, November 10, 2022 4:31:02 PM
City Clerk Lara Weisiger,
Dear Mayor and Members of the City Council,
I am in support of the staff-recommended draft housing element, and I would ask that the council vote to adopt it without modification. I also want to thank the staff for their hard work on this over the last 2 years.
I believe the current housing element provides a balanced approach to weigh all the city's goals with our requirements under state law.
The proposed zoning changes in the housing element are not only thoughtful to preserve much of Alameda's unique character but are necessary to meet our requirements under Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing and the balance of our RHNA.
As we have known since the 5th cycle housing element when we adopted a multifamily overlay and backed up by the letter from HCD last year, Article 26 of the City Charter violates state housing law and cannot be enforced.
Thank you,
Ryan OConnell
[email protected]
2719 Idaho St
Napa, California 94558
From: Alameda Citizens Task Force
To: Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft; Malia Vella; John Knox White; Trish Spencer; Tony Daysog Cc: Andrew Thomas; Allen Tai; Yibin Shen; Manager Manager; City Clerk Subject: [EXTERNAL] RE: Item 7-B-City Council Agenda Nov. 15, 2022-Housing Element, Zoning Amendments Date: Thursday, November 10, 2022 1:57:15 PM
Attachments: We sent you safe versions of your files.msg McDougall-9-13-22.pdf
City of Alameda Rental Units at Displacement Risk from Upzoning Buildings with Units 2 Through 6 per Building.pdf
ACTPBLetter9-26-22.pdf
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ACT
Alameda Citizens Task Force
Vigilance, Truth, Civility
RE: Item 7-B-City Council Agenda Nov. 15, 2022-Housing Element, Zoning Amendments
Dear Mayor Ashcraft, Vice Mayor Vella and Council Members Knox-White, Spencer and Daysog:
We are pleased to inform you that we have no objections to the site inventory in the draft Housing Element (HE). Our previous objection to Item 15 (b) has been resolved by the Planning Board’s recommendation to limit the number of additional dwelling units in an existing structure in the R-1 through R-6 zoning districts to four plus unlimited ADU’s. This provision now appears in the revised draft zoning ordinance at Secs. 30-5.11 and 30-5.18 c (1) (b). Inasmuch as the intent behind this amendment was to avoid density bonus eligibility which could subvert the limitation of additional units to the building envelope, we suggest that the wording of Sec. 30-5.11 should be changed to have the four additional units limitation apply to an entire parcel, not individual structures on the parcel.
We believe this site inventory provides complete compliance with the Housing Element Law RHNA and fair housing requirements, especially with the inclusion of the above-cited zoning ordinance sections which makes lower income housing development allowable in every residential zoning district in the city.
We continue to have strong objections to the provisions of the draft HE at Program 4 that propose specific housing density increases in the R-3 thru R- 6 zoning districts and the transit overlay which impacts all of our residential zoning districts.
The City Planning Department maintains that these upzonings, while not part of our RHNA obligation, are nevertheless required by HCD to meet the fair housing requirements of the Housing Element Law. They cite the November 29, 2021, letter from Paul McDougall, HCD Senior Program Manager, which is attached to the current Planning Department report in Exhibit 1. That letter, while stating that Article 26 of our Charter is in conflict with state law and should be voided, does not
state that such action is a condition precedent to approval of our HE or that the mass upzoning of the entire city is required. In fact, it even suggests that the overlay zoning district model that obtained our current certification could lead to HCD approval of our HE.
On Sept. 13, 2022, our Board member, Paul Foreman, wrote the attached letter to Mr.
McDougall asking him to clarify the HCD position on the above issues and pointing out that, “I reviewed the first 14 approved housing elements in the SCAG region. All these housing elements were approved in letters under your signature. None of them upzoned every zoning district in their city to allow lower income deed restricted housing. Many of them contain density limits far below Alameda’s 22 du/acre.” There has not been a response.
We submit that the HE should not include specific housing density increases in the R-3 through R-6 zoning districts and the transit overlay unless you get a clear written communication from HCD that this is a condition precedent to approval. We are cognizant of the risk of Alameda suffering one or more “builder’s remedy” projects if the HE is not approved by Jan. 31, 2023. However, HCD is required to respond to a city adopted HE within 60 days (Govt. Code 65585 (b) (3), so there is still time to attempt to clarify this issue with HCD with a special meeting scheduled before the end of November for final adoption. You have time for a full twelve-day notice of the same but could also justify a shorter notice meeting under urgency provisions of city and state law. We also are aware that the Housing Element Law requires that any proposed changes to the draft have to be noticed on your website at least 7 days prior to adoption. This could be accomplished by placing the notice in the published agenda for the special meeting.
We certainly can understand that a majority of the City Council may choose as a matter of policy to include these upzonings in the HE, thereby ignoring the expressed will of a substantial majority of Alamedans. Our multiple letters advised you in detail of our belief that these open-ended upzonings of over 16,000 parcels will put our historical housing inventory at risk, and result in gentrification, with current tenants replaced by non-rent controlled market rate units. Our research shows that there are over 4,000 rentals with two to six units in the residential districts proposed for upzoning, with 75% in the most vulnerable area, the transit overlay. See the attached report, City of Alameda Rental Units at Displacement Risk from Upzoning Buildings with Units 2 Through 6 per Building.
These upzonings also include reduced yard space requirements that threaten our beautiful greenhouse gas absorbing urban forest. The recent Council action abolishing off-street parking minimums exacerbates congestion in the neighborhoods.
For a detailed discussion of our position, we refer you to the attached Sept. 26 letter sent to the Planning Board with copies to you. We have also provided you with a letter from our attorney, Michael Graf, and a report from architectural historian, Kara Brunzell. We also will be presenting the Change.org petition in opposition to these upzonings which, as of this writing, has been signed by 986 Alameda residents.
Our previous letters have also objected to the unlimited density proposed for the NP-R and NP-MU zoning districts and the unlimited density and increased height proposed for the Park/Webster and Stations districts. For details on these matters, we refer you to the various letters on the subject directed to you by the Alameda Architectural Preservation Society, which we fully support.
Sincerely,
Alameda Citizens Task Force
By: Paul Foreman, Board Member & Authorized Correspondent Dear Mr. McDougall:
You have approved a draft of the Alameda 6th cycle Housing Element. Site Inventory Item 15 (b) projects 160 units toward our RHNA to be drawn from our non-vacant R-1 thru R-6 zoning districts limited to the addition new units within the walls of existing structures. However, the draft Housing Element, separate and apart from the site inventory, also incudes as part of Program 4 the amendment of the ordinances governing these districts to allow for broad increases in density far beyond the limits of Item 15 (b).
Our Planning Director maintains that this is required by the fair housing provisions of the Housing Element Law (HEL) that every zoning district in our city provide lower income deed restricted housing. I see no such requirement in the HEL. I believe that it only requires that lower income housing availability not be limited to low opportunity areas but also be made available in higher opportunity areas. I believe our site inventory clearly complies with that requirement.
To support my interpretation, I reviewed the first 14 approved housing elements in the SCAG region. All these housing elements were approved in letters under your signature. None of them upzoned every zoning district in their city to allow lower income deed restricted housing. Many of them contain density limits far below Alameda’s 22 du/acre.
Please understand this is not about Article 26 of our Charter. Any metropolitan city with zoning districts providing for less than 30 du/acre presents the same issue. It is about whether the HEL requires the broad upzoning proposed in the draft housing element. I certainly can understand that a majority of our city council may choose as a matter of policy to upzone the entire city to allow deed restricted lower income housing. My problem is that our Planning director is presenting this as a mandate from HCD, thus leading our Planning Board, City Council and Alameda citizens to believe that they have no discretion in the matter. I think the citizens of Alameda have a right to know if HCD is mandating this broad upzoning and, if so, why at least 14 other cities in California were not so mandated.
You have not responded to any of my previous letters. I hope this will be the exception.
Sincerely,
Paul Foreman
City of Alameda Rental Units
At Displacement Risk From Upzoning
Buildings With Units 2 Through 6 Per Building
REPORT ON NUMBER OF ALAMEDA RENTAL UNITS AT RISK FROM UPZONINGS
I compiled this report from a list of all registered rental properties provided to me by the City of Alameda. The list was not segregated by zoning districts but indicated addresses and the number of rental units at each address. I used the City of Alameda provided zoning map and Transit Overlay map to determine the addresses that were in the at risk zoning districts. The report includes only those addresses that place them within the proposed transit overlay and/or in the proposed upzonings of the R-1 through R-6, NP-R and NP-MU zoning districts. Addresses that had only one or more than six rental units were not included because of the relatively low risk of buildings in those categories having high development potential and the amount of time it would take to include them. Including these addresses would have required examination of over 2000 addresses to determine if they are in the at risk zoning districts.
The report segregates the included buildings as either in or out of the proposed transit overlay in separate categories for 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 unit buildings and provides both the number of buildings and number of units in each category. The summary provides the total number of rental units in each category segregated as in or out of the transit overlay.
Submitted by: Dorothy Freeman
Two Units Per Building
In Transit Overlay
Zone: R1 14 Total Units 28
R2 54 108
R3 16 32
R4 223 446
R5 58 116
R6 8 16
TOTAL 373 Total 746
Outside Transit Overlay
Zone NP-MU 2 Total Units 4
NP-R 8 16
R1 35 70
R1 4 8
R2 34 68
R2 8 16
R3 10 20
R4 34 68
R5 6 12
TOTAL 141 282
Three Units Per Building
In Transit Overlay
Zone NP-R 1 Total Units 3
R1 6 18
R2 9 27
R3 6 18
R4 133 399
R5 39 117
R6 3 9
TOTAL 197 591
Outside Transit Overlay
Zone R1 10 Total Units 30
R2 13 39
R3 2 6
R4 44 132
R5 3 9
R6 1 3
TOTAL 73 219
FOUR Units Per Building
In Transit Overlay
Zone R2 3 Total Units 12
R3 4 16
R4 174 696
R5 47 188
R6 6 24
TOTAL 234 936
Outside Transit Overlay
Zone NP MU 1 Total Units 4
NP-R 2 8
R1 8 32
R2 2 8
R3 2 8
R4 44 176
R5 1 4
TOTAL 60 240
FIVE Units Per Building
In Transit Overlay
Zone R1 2 Total Units 10
R4 64 320
R5 24 120
R6 5 25
TOTAL 95 475
Outside Transit Overlay
Zone R2 2 Total Units 10
R3 1 5
R4 21 105
R5 2 10
TOTAL 26 130
SIX Units Per Building
In Transit Overlay
Zone R2 1 Total Units 6
R4 45 270
R5 15 90
TOTAL 61 366
Outside Transit Overlay
Zone NP MU 1 Total Units 6
R1 2 12
R4 12 72
R5 1 6
TOTALS 16 96
Summary of Total Units At Risk
In Transit Overlay Outside Transit Overlay Total Units Two Units Per Building: 746 282 1028
Three Units Per Building 591 219 810
Four Units Per Building 936 240 1176
Five Units Per Building 475 130 605
Six Units Per Building 366 96 462 Totals: 3114 967 4081
ACT
Alameda Citizens Task Force
Vigilance, Truth, Civility
Dear Planning Board Members:
This letter supplements our Sept. 10 letter now filed to Item 7-A of your current agenda and responds to the Planning Department’s (PD) report attached to Item 7-A. We submit that your role is to review the proposed Housing Element (HE) and zoning amendments to assure that we adopt a land use plan that addresses state law while still protecting the vital interests of our citizens.
1. HE Fair Housing Requirements & Program 4: We agree with the PD statement that “the Measure A prohibitions… are fundamentally contrary to State Fair Housing Law”.
That is why ACT did not object to the 5th cycle HE which upzoned about 100 acres of vacant land resulting in the construction of over two thousand new units with projects in progress that will double that number. Therefore, the claim in the PD report that the Measure A densities are, “citywide, and are embedded in every zoning district in Alameda.” is patently untrue. Moreover, ACT has voiced no objection to any of the upzoning proposed in the proposed HE other than the R-1 through R-6 zoning districts.
We see no legal or practical requirement that the prohibitions of Measure A require the broad upzoning of every residential district in the city. At your Sept. 12 meeting you asked whether HCD has advised that they will not approve our HE without this broad upzoning. Mr. Thomas responded in the affirmative. We concluded that such an important conclusion should be validated by the original source, so this writer sent the attached email (Word doc. copy) to Paul Mc Dougall of HCD on Sept. 13. There has been no response.
Lacking a response from HCD, we implore you to treat this as a local discretionary policy issue as to whether this broad upzoning is appropriate land use planning. This would be subject to HCD review, so nothing would be lost if you recommend a HE without this element.
2. The Appropriateness of Program 4: The Program 4 upzoning proposal contains two parts concerning the R-1 through R-6 zoning districts. The first part is the upzoning specifically related to Site Inventory Item 15 (b), which provides for adding additional dwelling units within existing building envelopes. This is an arguably appropriate land use policy. It provides additional dwelling units without impacting the outward appearance of structures and provides for needed smaller units. Moreover, it allows and projects the construction of lower income deed restricted housing in every residential district in the city. However, we continue to suggest development be limited to four added dwellings per parcel and requiring at least tandem off street parking for one car per new unit.
The second part of Program 4 allows density increases of 30, 40, 50 and 60 du/acre respectively, in the R-3 thru R-6 zoning districts and unlimited density in all six districts for parcels within ¼ mile of a good commuter service bus line. These broad provisions will allow developers to demolish existing structures and replace them with much more densely populated buildings or add additional structures on current yard space and will not constrict developers from aggregating contiguous parcels to create even larger structures.
The PD report argues that if development becomes too excessive downzoning can be adopted. However, state law requires any downzoning to provide for the upzoning of other sites so that there is no net loss, making downzoning problematic.
More importantly, the PD totally ignores the impact of these massive changes on the people already living in these fully built-up districts. Some owners may get a financial windfall from having their property upzoned, thus increasing land value, but others will find the physical character of the neighborhood in which they invested a good part of their lives significantly changed in both structure and density. However, the greatest challenge will be faced by current tenants in these neighborhoods. This will be treated in our discussion of displacement below.
3. Displacement of Tenants: The risk of displacement of tenants will occur in the 15 (b) part of Program 4 because providing more units within an existing building envelope may require reconfiguration of existing units, thus demolishing those units. The risk of displacement will be much greater in the broad upzonings of part 2 of Program 4 as demolition of existing structures and replacement by new denser units will be allowed.
The PD report conveniently predicts, “that most residential property owners will build additional units in their backyards, basements and attics to avoid the financial costs of moving their household or eliminating monthly rental income from rental units.” This is pure speculation unsupported by any data or expert opinion. In addition, development inside an existing structure is allowed by part 1 of Program 4 and backyard development could be accomplished by expansion of ADU allowances. Thus, the demolitions allowed by part 2 of Program 4 are unnecessary and jeopardizing tenants.
The PD report cites Programs 8, 9, 13, and 14 that they believe mitigate the displacement risk. A reading of these programs reveals that only Program 14 guarantees such replacement housing but limited to the lower income groups. Not a shred of evidence has been produced that any current R-1 through R-6 tenants fall within those categories.
The PD report also claims that our current Fair Housing and Tenant Protection Ordinance has strong protections for tenants. Generally speaking, it does. However, since it was adopted when no displacement of tenants by new development was anticipated it has very weak protection for these displaced tenants. It guarantees no support other than dislocation payments, leaving it to the displaced tenant to fend for themselves in a very tight rental market. They may need to leave Alameda to find affordable housing. These innocent tenants will often be replaced by tenants able to pay the higher cost of the new units, thus gentrifying these neighborhoods. See the detailed discussion of displacement in our Sept. 10 letter filed to Exhibit 1 of your current agenda.
The PD’s minimization of the displacement issue is consistent with the treatment of the issue in the General Plan 2040 EIR at PDF page 119 where it is asserted that no consideration of mitigating tenant displacement is required. Clearly there is no support for this conclusion. Before adoption of the HE and zoning amendments a supplemental EIR is required to mitigate the broad impacts of displacement as described by Dr. Rajiv Bhatia in ACT’s August 21, letter to Andrew Thomas, filed to Exhibit 1 of Item 7-A in your current agenda.
We do not know how many tenants will suffer this fate, but regardless of how small or large the number, the risk is very real and the lack of a guarantee of replacement housing is unconscionable.
We are reminded of the 2005 Harbor Bay Apartments scenario when 380 tenants received no-fault eviction notices to allow for upgrading of these low cost units to market rate rentals. Our city council, to their chagrin, could do nothing to stop it, because no ordinance was in place to protect those tenants. That city council may have had no reason to anticipate such radical action, but in the current case you are forewarned and should not be lulled to sleep by the PD’s rosy projections. You need to insist that any tenant displaced by this new development receives comparable replacement housing before they leave their current unit.
In addition to the enumerated items above, please note the suggestion contained in our Sept. 10 letter filed to Item 7-A in your current agenda that consistency requires that limiting upzoning to allowing additional units within existing building envelopes also apply to the small North Park Street NP‐R and NP‐MU zoning districts .
Regardless of your final recommendations to the City Council we thank you for your contribution of so much time and energy on a volunteer basis. You are all real credits to the community.
Sincerely,
Alameda Citizens Task Force
By Paul S Foreman Board Member and Authorized Correspondent.