Agenda packet — Concord City Council, January 17, 2023 (part 2 of 3)

Prevent Displacement around Ellis Lake Park!
¡Prevenir el Desplazamiento alrededor del Parque Ellis Lake! We, Concord residents, businesses, and organizations, call on the Concord City Council to pass meaningful Anti-Displacement policies NOW, including Rent Control and Just Cause, to keep Concord families safe in their homes while improving our parks. We should not have to choose between staying in our homes or having a beautiful Ellis Lake Park.

Nosotros, los residentes, negocios y organizaciones de Concord, insistimos que el Concejo Municipal de la Ciudad de Concord aprueben políticas significativas contra el desplazamiento AHORA, incluyendo el Control de Renta y Causa Justa, para mantener a la familias de Concord seguras y en sus hogares mientras mejoran nuestros parques. No deberíamos tener que elegir e
ntre permanecer en nuestros hogares o tener un hermoso parque de Ellis Lake.

First Name ~ Nombre Last Name ~ Apellido
Zip Code ~ Código Postal Organization/Business Affiliation Organización/Afiliación de Negocio
Would you like to stay informed about this campaign? Please provide your phone number or Email below ~ ¿Quisiera mantenerse informado(a) sobre esta campaña? Por favor proveer su Número de Teléfono o Correo Electrónico a continuación.
https://bit.ly/3tR6DXF
Luis
Garza
94520
DLSA
No. Thanks

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Nosotros, los residentes, negocios y organizaciones de Concord, insistimos que el Concejo Municipal de la Ciudad de Concord aprueben políticas significativas contra el desplazamiento AHORA, incluyendo el Control de Renta y Causa Justa, para mantener a la familias de Concord seguras y en sus hogares mientras mejoran nuestros parques. No deberíamos tener que ele
gir entre permanecer en nuestros hogares o tener un hermoso parque de Ellis Lake.

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Nosotros, los residentes, negocios y organizaciones de Concord, insistimos que el Concejo Municipal de la Ciudad de Concord aprueben políticas significativas contra el desplazamiento AHORA, incluyendo el Control de Renta y Causa Justa, para mantener a la familias de Concord seguras y en sus hogares mientras mejoran nuestros parques. No deberíamos tener que ele
gir entre permanecer en nuestros hogares o tener un hermoso parque de Ellis Lake.

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Nosotros, los residentes, negocios y organizaciones de Concord, insistimos que el Concejo Municipal de la Ciudad de Concord aprueben políticas significativas contra el desplazamiento AHORA, incluyendo el Control de Renta y Causa Justa, para mantener a la familias de Concord seguras y en sus hogares mientras mejoran nuestros parques. No deberíamos tener que ele
gir entre permanecer en nuestros hogares o tener un hermoso parque de Ellis Lake.

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Nosotros, los residentes, negocios y organizaciones de Concord, insistimos que el Concejo Municipal de la Ciudad de Concord aprueben políticas significativas contra el desplazamiento AHORA, incluyendo el Control de Renta y Causa Justa, para mantener a la familias de Concord seguras y en sus hogares mientras mejoran nuestros parques. No deberíamos tener que ele
gir entre permanecer en nuestros hogares o tener un hermoso parque de Ellis Lake.

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Nosotros, los residentes, negocios y organizaciones de Concord, insistimos que el Concejo Municipal de la Ciudad de Concord aprueben políticas significativas contra el desplazamiento AHORA, incluyendo el Control de Renta y Causa Justa, para mantener a la familias de Concord seguras y en sus hogares mientras mejoran nuestros parques. No deberíamos tener que ele
gir entre permanecer en nuestros hogares o tener un hermoso parque de Ellis Lake.

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Nosotros, los residentes, negocios y organizaciones de Concord, insistimos que el Concejo Municipal de la Ciudad de Concord aprueben políticas significativas contra el desplazamiento AHORA, incluyendo el Control de Renta y Causa Justa, para mantener a la familias de Concord seguras y en sus hogares mientras mejoran nuestros parques. No deberíamos tener que ele
gir entre permanecer en nuestros hogares o tener un hermoso parque de Ellis Lake.

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Nosotros, los residentes, negocios y organizaciones de Concord, insistimos que el Concejo Municipal de la Ciudad de Concord aprueben políticas significativas contra el desplazamiento AHORA, incluyendo el Control de Renta y Causa Justa, para mantener a la familias de Concord seguras y en sus hogares mientras mejoran nuestros parques. No deberíamos tener que ele
gir entre permanecer en nuestros hogares o tener un hermoso parque de Ellis Lake.

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Nosotros, los residentes, negocios y organizaciones de Concord, insistimos que el Concejo Municipal de la Ciudad de Concord aprueben políticas significativas contra el desplazamiento AHORA, incluyendo el Control de Renta y Causa Justa, para mantener a la familias de Concord seguras y en sus hogares mientras mejoran nuestros parques. No deberíamos tener que ele
gir entre permanecer en nuestros hogares o tener un hermoso parque de Ellis Lake.

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1 Sage, Aaron
From: Alex Werth <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2022 4:21 PM
To: Sage, Aaron; Gentry, Mindy; Asha Bleier; [email protected]; Aliano, Dominic; Hoffmeister, Laura; McGallian, Tim; Obringer, Carlyn; Birsan, Edi; Planning Commission Public Comments; City of Concord
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Failure to Incorporate Public Comment into the Revised Draft Housing Element “EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not follow guidance, click links, or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.”

Dear Concord Housing Element Planning Team, City Councilmembers, and Planning Commissioners,

On behalf of the Raise the Roof Coalition, I'm writing to submit the attached letter (with separate attachment), which details our deep concerns about the planning team's failure to meaningfully incorporate the outpouring of public comment on the need for more effective tenant protections -- in particular, rent stabilization and just cause eviction protections -- in Concord's 6th Cycle Housing Element. We will be submitting another letter in the coming weeks that responds to what we collectively see as the inadequacies of the planning team's responses to the recommendations submitted by 37 community-based and community-serving organizations on June 27th, 2022. However, we felt an immediate need to point out that, while the overwhelming majority of written comments received called for stronger tenant protections (83%), these requests were summarily ignored due to the political opposition of three out of five City Councilmembers -- a reason that runs counter to State requirements for public participation and affirmatively furthering fair housing.

We look forward to continuing to engage in this process to ensure that Concord's Housing Element takes meaningful steps to address increasing displacement and homelessness among low-income renters and members of protected classes.

With appreciation,
Alex

--
Alex Werth | Policy Manager
East Bay Housing Organizations
413-222-8880 (cell) | [email protected]
538 9th St. Suite 200 | Oakland, CA 94607
Pronouns: He/Him/His

Browse EBHO's educational resources in The Study Room. Now updated and expanded for 2022! Attachment A - Ellis Lake Park Petitions.pdf
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be displayed. The f ile m ay have been m ov ed, renam ed, or deleted. Verify that the link poin ts to the correct file and location.

Raise the Roof Response to Concord Revised Hous...

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August 12, 2022

To: Aaron Sage, Principal Planner
Mindy Gentry, Planning Manager
Asha Bleier, Consultant Project Manager, Dudek
Elizabeth Dickson, Planner, Dudek

Dominic Aliano, Mayor
Laura Hoffmeister, Vice Mayor
Carlyn Obringer, Councilmember
Tim McGallian, Councilmember
Edi Birsan, Councilmember

Jason Laub, Planning Commissioner
Mark Weinmann, Planning Commissioner
Raymond Barbour, Planning Commissioner
John Mercurio, Planning Commissioner
Craig Mizutani, Planning Commissioner

Cc: David Zisser, Assistant Deputy Director, HCD
Melinda Coy, Land Use and Planning Manager, HCD

RE: Failure to Incorporate Community Input on the City of Concord’s Draft 6th Cycle Housing Element

Dear Planning Staff, Consultants, City Councilmembers, and Planning Commissioners,

We, the members of the Raise the Roof Coalition, who serve and work alongside the most vulnerable residents of Concord, write to follow up on the comment letter that we submitted on June 27th, 2022 regarding Concord’s Draft 6th Cycle Housing Element. In that letter, we–along with 28 other community-based and -serving organizations–called upon the City of Concord to revise the Draft Housing Element to include effective tenant

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protections, increase funding for affordable housing and community land trusts, and affirmatively further fair housing by promoting desegregation of exclusionary areas.

We appreciate the planning team’s transparency regarding the comments received and relative thoroughness of its responses as well as the opportunity to review and respond to the Revised Draft. However, we remain deeply concerned that our recommendations were not meaningfully incorporated into the revisions and that the reasons given do not make sense from an empirical or policy perspective. As such, we intend to write a more detailed comment regarding the responses provided to the previous letter we submitted to share our deepening concerns with City and State stakeholders.

In the meantime, we feel an urgent need to comment on the planning team’s general refusal and failure to meaningfully incorporate the public input received from impacted community members and organizations that serve them, specifically regarding the need for stronger tenant protections. Rather than reiterate our arguments about why stronger tenant protections are needed from an empirical and policy perspective, we write to express our concerns about the process itself, including possible violations of State Housing Element law and guidance.

Under State law, Concord is required to make “a diligent effort...to achieve public participation of all economic segments of the community in the development of the housing element.”
1 According to HCD, a “diligent effort” means “going beyond simply giving the public an opportunity to provide input”; rather, community engagement must be “proactively and broadly conducted through a variety of methods to assure access and participation.”
2 Over the last year, Concord has sought–with some missteps and corrections–to realize this mandate. But it is not enough to merely record the input of low-income residents and members of protected classes if those ideas are then wholly disregarded. Indeed, the checklist that HCD will use to determine whether the City’s Housing Element complies with AB 686 (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing) states that Concord must “describe and incorporate meaningful engagement that represents all segments of the community into the development of the housing element, including goals and actions.”
3 By this measure, we maintain that the planning team has failed to meaningfully “incorporate” the feedback received from impacted residents.

Specifically, the planning team has not responded to and incorporated comments about the need for stronger tenant protections in a way that is commensurate with the scale of

1 Gov. Code 65583(c)(9).
2 HCD. April 2021. Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing: Guidance for All Public Entities and for Housing Elements, p. 21.
3 HCD, April 2021, p. 62.

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the comments received. As mentioned in our previous letter, of the approximately 800 residents who responded to the City’s Housing Element survey, large numbers named unaffordable housing costs (54%), sudden rent increases (52%), sudden lease termination (39%), lack of maintenance (37%), and eviction (35%) as the main causes of displacement in Concord.
4 Therefore, it follows that rent stabilization and just cause eviction protections were the main solutions identified by impacted community members and the organizations that serve them at almost every Town Hall, City Council meeting, and Housing and Economic Development (HED) Committee study session held as part of the Housing Element Update.
5 However, this is not a new conversation in Concord. Appendix G (Community Input and Council Actions on Tenant Protections and Displacement Since 2016) documents a torrent of public testimony on the impacts of the housing affordability and displacement crises on local renters as well as the need for rent stabilization and eviction protections.

Over the last six years, Concord has held 13 City Council meetings, 10 meetings of an Ad Hoc Committee on Rental Housing, and numerous HED meetings at which tenant protections have been discussed.
6 At these meetings, there have been speakers both
for and against rent stabilization and eviction protections. But according to Appendix G, the overwhelming majority have spoken to the severe burdens of trying to rent a home in Concord, and thus their support for these policies; out of 243 individual commenters and 438 comments, Appendix G shows that 63% of commenters and 64% of comments were in favor of tenant protections–in both cases, twice as many as those opposed.7

Public comment is only one of many ways that residents have voiced their opinions on these matters. According to Appendix G, in 2016, Father Ismael Guttierez of St. Francis of Assisi Church presented a letter signed by 2,500 members of the Catholic faith urging the City Council to pass policies to put an end to unjust evictions. 8 This outpouring of
community support was mirrored in 2021, when approximately 500 residents signed a petition calling for the creation of an anti-displacement task force to develop strategies, like rent stabilization and just cause, designed to combat gentrification in the vicinity of Ellis Lake Park (see attached). This request was denied; rather than create a task force, the City stated that the Housing Element Update was the proper time to consider anti-

4 City of Concord. May 2022. Draft Housing Element (2023-2031), p. F70. 5 City of Concord, May 2022, pp. F7, F8, F23, F24, F26. 6 City of Concord, May 2022, p. 396.
7 The complete data is as follows: 152 out of 243 commenters (63%) and 281 out of 438 comments (64%) were in favor of tenant protections; 77 out of 243 commenters (32%) and 140 out of 438 comments (32%) were opposed; and 14 out of 243 commenters (1%) and 17 out of 438 comments (0%) were neither clearly for or against.
8 City of Concord, May 2022, p. 401.

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displacement measures.9 So members of protected classes and their representatives have overcome the barriers to participation, once again, to reiterate their concerns as part of yet another public planning process; including the letter from 37 organizations, which we submitted, 54 out of 65 of the individuals or organizations who submitted comments on the Original Draft (83%) expressed the need for more robust tenant protections, including rent stabilization and just cause eviction policies.

These forms of community input all contribute to the “local knowledge” that Concord is required to consider in the development of fair housing policies. 10 So it is dispiriting to
see the planning team, at the behest of the City Council and City Manager, consciously and continuously ignore the solutions proposed by a large segment of the community in favor of policies that have no basis whatsoever in the public engagement process.

As a case in point, at a City Council hearing on June 21st, 2022, two individuals raised concerns about the location of short-term rentals (STRs) in their neighborhoods. Based on those two comments alone, the City Council directed the planning team to include a Program to regulate STRs as a means to address “displacement.” Since then, Program 24 was added to the Revised Draft because, according to the planners, “[t]he Concord community has expressed concern over displacement of tenants through conversion of conventional rental dwelling units to short-term rentals.”11 But this is plainly incorrect.

There is no mention of STRs anywhere in the Original Draft, including Appendix F (Community Engagement Summary) and Appendix H (Public Comments); there is no data that demonstrates the link between STRs and Concord’s displacement crisis in Appendix D (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing); and none of the written comments submitted in response to the Original Draft raise concerns about STRs in general or as a cause of displacement in particular.

By contrast, there is extensive data and community input that indicates the importance of rent stabilization and eviction protections as anti-displacement measures; indeed, at that same meeting on June 21st, 14 individuals spoke to the need for stronger tenant protections. But those policies were excluded from the Revised Draft because three out of the five City Councilmembers voted against them.12 By contrast, Program 24 (STRs) was immediately included because all five Councilmembers stated an interest in doing so, with Councilmember McGallian saying on the record that his personal “goal” was to “eliminate [STRs].”13

9 City of Concord, May 2022, p. 399.
10 HCD, April 2021, p. 24.
11 City of Concord. August 2022. Revised Draft Housing Element (2023-2031), p. 39. 12 See “Master Response #4.” City of Concord, August 2022, pp. H2-H3. 13 See video recording of Concord City Council Special Meeting, June 21, 2022, 2:27:37.

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The Housing Element is meant to be driven by the data on community needs and community input, not the personal and political preferences of five legislators. So we strongly request that you reconsider the public input received and revise Program 20 to include concrete and proactive steps to consider rent stabilization and just cause for eviction policies by 2024.

Sincerely,

The Members of the Raise the Roof Coalition

The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Contra Costa Central Labor Council
Central County Regional Group (CCRG) of First 5 Contra Costa East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE)
East Bay Housing Organizations (EBHO)
Ensuring Opportunity Campaign to End Poverty in Contra Costa County The Faith Alliance for a Moral Economy (FAME)
Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay
Monument Impact
Tenants Together
Todos Santos Tenants Union

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October 10th, 2022
To: Aaron Sage, Principal Planner
Mindy Gentry, Planning Manager
Asha Bleier, Consultant Project Manager, Dudek
Elizabeth Dickson, Planner, Dudek
Dominic Aliano, Mayor Jason Laub, Planning Commissioner Laura Hoffmeister, Vice Mayor Mark Weinmann, Planning Commissioner Carlyn Obringer, Councilmember Raymond Barbour, Planning Commissioner Tim McGallian, Councilmember John Mercurio, Planning Commissioner Edi Birsan, Councilmember Craig Mizutani, Planning Commissioner Cc: David Zisser, Assistant Deputy Director, HCD
Melinda Coy, Land Use and Planning Manager, HCD
2

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RE: Concerns with City of Concord’s Response to Comments on Draft 6th Cycle Housing Element
Dear Planning Staff, Consultants, City Councilmembers, and Planning Commissioners, On June 27th, 2022, we submitted a comment letter on the City of Concord’s Draft 6th Cycle Housing Element (“Original Draft”) in which we called upon the City to commit to policies that will affirmatively further fair housing in a manner commensurate to the severe inequalities identified in the plan. Specifically, we recommended that the City revise the Original Draft to include effective tenant protections, promote desegregation by upzoning exclusionary areas, and increase local funding for affordable housing and community land trusts. This letter was signed by 37 (now 38) organizations that serve and work alongside those residents who are most impacted by the city’s housing and homelessness crises, including low-income renters, immigrants, and people of color.

As noted in the follow-up letter submitted by the Raise the Roof Coalition on August 12th, 2022, we were deeply disappointed to see that the City failed to address these concerns in its Revised Draft, thus disregarding the preponderance of empirical data and community input that pointed to the need for more meaningful action to stem the tide of displacement harming members of protected classes in Concord. Moreover, we found the City’s stated reasons for refusing to incorporate public comment on the need for stronger anti-displacement and fair housing measures to be insufficiently responsive to our comments and/or logically unsound.

Therefore, in this letter, we’ve provided a point-by-point reply to the responses included in Appendix H of the Revised Draft (pp. 30-44), which are colored purple. Our remarks are organized according to the three recommendations made in our original letter.

1. Include Clear Commitments for the City Council to Consider Local Rent Stabilization and Just Cause Eviction Protections by 2024 “See Master Response #4.”
The City responded to the clear and overwhelming call for rent stabilization and local just cause eviction protections to be included in the plan by stating that the City Council feels that existing policies and programs “may be sufficient to address community needs and should be allowed to operate and have their effectiveness measured before further actions are taken.”1 Those policies and programs include the Tenant Anti-Harassment 1 City of Concord. August 2022. Revised Draft Housing Element (2023-2031), pp. H2-H3. 3Page 582 of 670
Ordinance, Multifamily Rental Housing Inspection Program, Rent Registry, and Rental Tenant Protection Program, which provides for written leases, minimum lease terms, and relocation assistance when the tenant is subject to a no-cause eviction.2 These measures are an important part of maintaining safe, healthy, and stable homes for Concord residents. But they have little to do with the data and public input documented in the plan.

The Original Draft clearly and correctly states that “displacement due to economic pressures” is the primary contributing factor to fair housing problems in Concord.3 As median rents have increased by over 44% since 2010,4 outpacing the growth of renter incomes, a majority of tenants have become forced to pay too much in housing costs.5 This means that renters–who are disproportionately low-income, Black, and Latinx6–are structurally vulnerable to eviction and displacement, as landlords seek to replace lower- income tenants, who are now more likely to fall behind on rent, with higher-income ones who can afford the higher rents. In simple terms, rents have risen to unaffordable levels, causing displacement in ways that exacerbate racial, economic, and gender inequities and homelessness in Concord.7 (According to Contra Costa County’s most recent Point in Time Count, 23% of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness named eviction or foreclosure as the main reason they became unhoused.8 At 35%, Contra Costa saw the largest increase in homelessness of any county in the Bay Area.9) This much is clear. What isn’t clear is how the policies and programs identified by the City will meaningfully redress these harms. How, for example, will a rent registry, one- year lease term, or housing inspection address the core issue–the structural mismatch between market rents and the incomes of members of protected classes?10 The City continues to assert that they will. But this is based on speculation, rather than data. 10 The one possible exception is the anti-harassment ordinance. However, anti-harassment measures aren’t fully effective unless they’re paired with rent stabilization and eviction protections. On their own, anti-harassment protections aren’t enough to protect renters from displacement, as landlords who might have resorted to harassment to replace their tenants can use unaffordable rent increases and pretextual evictions as alternative means to remove renters from their homes. 9 Lauren Hepler, Sarah Ravani, and Yoohyun Jung. May 16, 2022. “Homelessness Surged 35% in One Bay Area County. Here’s What New Data for Each Region Reveals.” San Francisco Chronicle. 8 Contra Costa County Department of Health Services. 2022. Homeless Point-in-Time Count & Survey Executive Summary, p. 2.
7 While it isn’t discussed extensively in the either Original or Revised Draft, the gender inequities of the housing crisis are thoroughly documented in a recent report from the Gender Equity Policy Institute, which was written at the behest of the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development. Gender Equity Policy Institute. August 2022. Gender & Housing in California: An Analysis of the Gender Impacts of California’s Housing Affordability Crisis.
6 City of Concord, May 2022, p. D63.
5 City of Concord, May 2022, p. D67.
4 City of Concord, May 2022, p. B16.
3 City of Concord. May 2022. Draft Housing Element (2023-2031), p. D81. 2 City of Concord. 2020. Residential Tenant Protection Program Fact Sheet. 4Page 583 of 670
Allowing yet more time to pass while low-income families and residents of color are forced out of their homes and, in some cases, into the streets so as to evaluate the effectiveness of the City’s existing policies would be to willfully and knowingly allow these harms to continue unabated.

Whether in one year or ten years, these measures are unlikely to address the displacement crisis because they aren’t specifically designed to do so. Rather than require vulnerable residents to wait for the efficacy of these measures to be studied, the City should present concrete research and data demonstrating that the policies and programs preferred by the sitting City Councilmembers are likely to stop displacement due to economic pressures in the first place. If no such data exist, then the City should commit to evidence-based policies proven to prevent displacement, such as rent stabilization and just cause eviction protections. “Program 20 explicitly addresses residential tenant protections.” In our original letter, we stated that the data provided in Appendix D (Assessment of Fair Housing) clearly demonstrate that the policies included under Program 20 (Residential Tenant Protections) have failed to meaningfully mitigate displacement during the 5th Cycle. Indeed, the harmful and disparate impacts of displacement have only grown worse over the course of the current planning period, when many of these measures were in place. To reassert that Program 20 already provides tenant protections is to ignore the essence of our original comment–namely, that the City’s current tenant protection program is evidently incapable of addressing the full scope of the problem.
“Several program objectives have been revised to strengthen anti-displacement strategies, including Programs 10 and 24.”
The City added reference to a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA)/Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) under Program 10 (Homeownership Assistance).

We applaud and appreciate this addition, as TOPA/COPA can serve as a valuable tool to stabilize low-income communities by converting rental properties from speculative commodities into permanently affordable homes and, in some cases, asset-building opportunities for residents of color who’ve been systematically denied homeownership opportunities.
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As drafted, however, Program 10 remains inadequate to address our original concerns.

First, Program 10 only commits to study “best practices” in TOPA/COPA policies by the end of December 2026.11 This objective is neither concrete nor timely enough to prevent the displacement of members of protected classes. Moreover, it doesn’t meet the basic statutory requirements for Housing Element programs, which must ensure “beneficial impacts…within the planning period.”12 Second, by filing this item under Program 10, the City indicates that it intends to pursue TOPA/COPA as a homeownership, rather than an anti-displacement, strategy. These two are not identical; as we remarked in our original letter, it’s clear from the City’s own data that, while important, homeownership programs are incapable of addressing Concord’s displacement crisis at the scale documented in Appendix D.13 This category error could be remedied, in part, if the City were to follow our previous recommendation to create a stand-alone Program “dedicated to proven, effective, and immediate anti-displacement strategies.” In addition, the City added Program 24 (Short Term Rentals) to the Revised Draft. Short term rentals (STRs) can contribute to the displacement of low-income renters if property owners, compelled by the promise of higher profits, convert large numbers of affordable rental housing units into STRs. As described in detail in our August 12th letter, however, this item was clearly added to the Revised Draft to satisfy the political preferences of the Concord City Councilmembers, rather than empirical data or community input. There’s no mention of STRs at any point in the Original Draft, including Appendix F (Community Engagement Summary); there’s no data that demonstrates a connection between STRs and Concord’s displacement crisis in Appendix D; and none of the written comments on the Original Draft raise concerns about STRs in general or as a cause of displacement in particular. (Out of hundreds of verbal comments throughout the public engagement process, only two mentioned STRs.) This stands in stark contrast to the overwhelming support, including from 54 out of 65 (83%) of the individuals or organizations who wrote comments on the Original Draft, for data-driven anti-displacement measures, like rent stabilization and just cause eviction protections. To be clear, while we agree that large- scale conversion of rental housing to STRs can contribute to displacement, we find the statement that “[t]he Concord community has expressed concern over displacement of tenants through conversion of conventional rental dwelling units to short-term rentals”14 to be disingenuous and deceiving.

Further, Program 24 is written in such a way as to limit any potential positive impact on members of protected classes. First, like Program 10, it merely commits to study “best practices” in STR regulations by the end of 2026. Second, it states that, if STR policies 14 City of Concord, August 2022, p. 39.
13 City of Concord, May 2022, pp. A5-A8.
12 Gov. Code § 65583(c).
11 City of Concord, August 2022, p. 24.
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are adopted, then the City will conduct “intensive, bilingual [Spanish/English] outreach” among tenants in the Monument Corridor and include such information in its materials on tenant protection policies.15 However, this implies that the City sees STR regulations as tenant protections, when, in fact, they simply govern when and how property owners can use their units for short-term tenancies. This is another category error that makes it seem as though the City is committing to stronger anti-displacement measures without actually working toward meaningful tenant protections.

Thus, in contrast to the City’s claims, the revisions made to Programs 10 and 24 are unlikely to address the “displacement due to economic pressures” identified in Appendix D as the primary contributing factor to fair housing problems. “Programs 2, 6, 9, 10, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, and 24 all include objectives that directly or indirectly address displacement risk.”
We’ve already outlined our concerns regarding the inadequacy of Programs 10, 20, and 24, and we explain our concerns regarding Programs 9, 17, and 18 in the next section.

This leaves the following programs to be examined in more detail:
○ Program 2 (Addressing Constraints to Development): This program is meant to make it easier to develop new housing, including for people with extremely low incomes and/or disabilities. But it merely lists policies that will speed up housing development in general, not affordable or special needs housing in particular. In the absence of targeted strategies to incentivize subsidized versus market-rate housing and protect tenants from the effects of gentrification, encouraging new development is likely to increase displacement, rather than reduce it. ○ Program 6 (By-Right Development): The same applies to this program, given that a developer would only need to provide 20% affordable units–a low threshold–to receive streamlined approvals.
○ Program 12 (Inclusionary Housing): While we support efforts to implement and strengthen the City’s inclusionary housing policy, we’re concerned that allowing moderate-income units to meet inclusionary requirements will cause developers to prioritize building units for these households. This would increase gentrification pressures (for a family of four, moderate-income households can make anywhere between $110,000 and $171,000 per year16) while reducing the production of 16 City of Concord. 2022. Maximum Income Limits.
15 Ibid.
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new affordable units for people with the lowest incomes, who, as demonstrated in Appendix D, are most rent burdened and thus most vulnerable to displacement. ○ Program 19 (Replacement Requirements): This program is meant to ensure that demolition resulting from new development doesn’t lead to a loss in the number or affordability of rental housing units, or displacement of low-income tenants, in conformance with SB 330 (2019). While theoretically important, it’s clear from the City’s Annual Progress Reports that Concord hasn’t been the site of considerable new development; as of 2021, it had only permitted enough units to meet 16.4% of its 5th Cycle Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA).17 It thus follows that the City didn’t document evidence of demolition as a cause of displacement in its Original Draft, as compared to displacement due to economic pressures. Further, as contemplated, Program 19 merely commits the City to provide education and enforcement around existing State law. However, SB 330 doesn’t go far enough to prevent loss of affordable housing capacity and ensure the displaced tenants have a meaningful right of return. The City should thus commit to develop more robust demolition protections. It has clear legal authority to pass regulations on the demolition of residential dwellings that are “more protective of lower income households, [require] the provision of greater number of units affordable to lower income households, or that [require] greater relocation assistance to displaced households.”18
In sum, in contrast to the City’s claims, Programs 2, 6, and 12 could actually increase displacement by accelerating market-rate and/or moderate-income development while undermining the provision of affordable housing for those most at risk of displacement. Meanwhile, Program 19 merely commits to the minimum requirements under State law to discourage demolition-induced displacement, a relatively rare occurrence.
“Programs 9, 10, 17 and 18 are intended to supplement other tenant protections and anti-displacement strategies, rather than serving as the City’s primary anti-displacement strategy.”
The City provided this statement in response to our concern that Appendix D identified programs, e.g. Middle Density and Homeownership Assistance, as anti-displacement strategies despite the lack of any data linking them to Concord’s displacement crisis in the Assessment of Fair Housing. If the City doesn’t see these programs as its “primary” 18 Gov. Code § 66300(d)(3).
17 California Department of Housing and Community Development. 2022. Housing Element Implementation and APR Data Dashboard, Slide 10.
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anti-displacement measures, then we ask that it stop categorizing them as such, since doing so seems calculated to make it appear as though the City is committed to a large number of anti-displacement policies when it has intentionally avoided tenant protection policies with the most direct evidentiary basis in the Assessment of Fair Housing. This further begs the question: What is the City’s “primary anti-displacement strategy”? In our original letter, we requested that the City create a program dedicated to data-driven and immediate anti-displacement measures, rather than cobbling together many programs that are only tangentially related to the main problem identified in Appendix D–namely, “displacement due to economic pressures.” The City didn’t address that request in the Revised Draft, so we reiterate it now.

2. Promote Integrated and Balanced Living Patterns by Rezoning Exclusionary Areas
“See Master Response #5...Several commenters have expressed concern regarding language in Appendix D…which indicated that ‘identification of moderate- and above moderate-income sites in [the central/western] area…will reverse the patterns of segregation…by promoting the area as a mixed-income neighborhood.’ However…the sites inventory has little if any effect on actual project income levels.” To start, we find the City’s claim in Master Response #5 that the Sites Inventory “should not be understood as ‘encouraging’ any particular project type” to contradict the premise and purpose of Housing Element law in general, and the Sites Inventory in particular. To the contrary, we believe that the City should work proactively to make sure that the sites identified for a particular income level are developed as such within the planning period to meet the city’s growing housing needs and affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH).

While it may technically be true that including a parcel in the Sites Inventory doesn’t guarantee that it’ll be developed for a particular income level, in Concord, it’s empirically true that the preponderance of high-density sites identified for new multi-family housing have been pursued for market-rate development that serves higher-income households.

The tables in Appendix 1 to this letter show which of the recently permitted development projects, as outlined in Table 2 of Appendix E (Sites Analysis), are located on land that was included in the Sites Inventory of Concord’s 5th Cycle Housing Element. It reveals that, of the market-rate units in the development pipeline, nearly 70% were included in the previous Sites Inventory. It also reveals that, of the high-density sites included in the previous Sites Inventory, five out of seven (amounting to 82% of the units permitted on these sites) have since been permitted for market-rate housing–almost all of them in areas that are sensitive to gentrification and displacement. Indeed, across all recently 9Page 588 of 670
permitted developments, the vast majority of market-rate units (90%) were permitted in sensitive communities.

This implies that inclusion in the Sites Inventory is strongly correlated with development activity, and that high-density zoning–which in Concord is over-concentrated in sensitive communities and under-concentrated in exclusionary zones–is also strongly correlated with market-rate development that’s likely to increase gentrification pressure. Thus, the City’s comments on this issue disregard empirical data on development patterns, including the ways that uneven zoning patterns across lower- and higher-income neighborhoods, and a lack of affordable housing resources, tend to steer market- rate development into communities where it increases displacement pressures, rather than equitable development outcomes.
“This section of Appendix D has been revised as follows: ‘The Sites Analysis’ identification of sites in this central/western area does not exacerbate patterns of segregation, because: (1) the Sites Analysis is merely an indicator of capacity for new development but does not itself influence or determine what income levels the market will ultimately provide; (2) the programs of the Housing Element will help to reverse and improve patterns of segregation throughout the community…by strengthening tenant protections, incentivizing the production and preservation of deed-restricted affordable units, targeting investments grants funds and outreach to the R/ECAP, and leveraging and advocating for more affordable housing funds…; and (3) the Housing Element Update will increase opportunities for medium and high residential densities in areas with access to resources, outside of lower-resource areas, through the rezoning program in Objective 8.6.’”
The City responded to our comment by striking the most concerning language from p.

D36–that is, the claim that encouraging housing for Whiter and wealthier residents in the Monument Corridor was a means of “integrating the community”19–but it didn’t do anything to address this issue in the Sites Inventory. While the language and logic presented in the Original Draft is telling, the actual inclusion of moderate- and above- moderate income sites in the city’s lowest-income neighborhood is the actual concern.

Simply revising the language without modifying the underlying policy amounts to disregarding the issue.

Still, we’ll respond to each of the three comments in the amended language in turn. 19 City of Concord, May 2022, p. D36.
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“(1) The Sites Analysis is merely an indicator of capacity for new development but does not itself influence or determine what income levels the market will ultimately provide.”
We’ve already questioned the accuracy of the idea that the Sites Analysis “does not itself influence or determine what income levels the market will ultimately provide.” But setting that aside, this statement makes it sound as if the City has only identified land in the Monument Corridor for higher-income housing to show that there’s capacity to meet the RHNA for all income levels under existing zoning. As we argued in our original letter, this approach reinforces the status quo of existing land use patterns, which, as shown in Appendix D, have created racial and economic segregation in Concord. Indeed, the disproportionate focus on zoning capacity–to the exclusion of other considerations, like equity–ignores a critical point: not all new residential development is good development.

While, in some communities, new development leads to equitable opportunity, in others, it leads to displacement. In contradiction to its expressed concern about displacement, Concord continues to double down on the latter when it should prioritize the former. By scrounging up capacity for new development, including moderate- and above-moderate- income units, in the Monument Corridor, the City is in effect deferring the more urgent work of increasing capacity in exclusionary communities, where new units would affirmatively further fair housing.
(2) “The programs of the Housing Element will help to reverse and improve patterns of segregation throughout the community…by strengthening tenant protections, incentivizing the production and preservation of deed-restricted affordable units, targeting investments grants funds and outreach to the R/ECAP, and leveraging and advocating for more affordable housing funds.” While important, the activities listed here–for example, strengthening tenant protections or preserving and producing affordable housing under the current zoning–won’t actually do anything to reduce segregation, which is a key part of the AFFH requirement. The most direct and equitable way to reverse harmful patterns of segregation is to promote more multi-family and deed-restricted affordable development in racially concentrated areas of affluence, which, in Concord, requires intentional and immediate upzoning of the most segregated tracts in the city.
(3) “The Housing Element Update will increase opportunities for medium and high residential densities in areas with access to resources, outside of lower-resource areas, through the rezoning program in Objective 8.6.” 11Page 590 of 670
We provide our comments on the need for more targeted and measurable elements of Objective 8.6 further below.
“See Master Response #6...While the City has sufficient and adequate capacity to accommodate the RHNA at all income levels, the City has committed to a series of programs to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing through increased housing opportunities across the city.”
We take this as a tacit recognition that neither the existing zoning nor Sites Inventory is capable of meeting the AFFH mandate to “[replace] segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns.”20 This simply reinforces our concerns and adds urgency to this letter and related comments.
“See Master Response #8…Timing associated with program objectives represents the point at which the program is expected to be fully implemented. Timeframes consider the full length of time needed between the initial and final stages of program implementation, which includes any associated California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review, as well as the availability of staff and other needed resources for program implementation. The planning period for the Housing Element is 2023-2031 and all programs are scheduled to be implemented within the first half of the planning cycle, no later than 2026.”
We appreciate this point as well as the inclusion of a start time in Objective 8.6. At the same time, countless members of protected classes have already been displaced from Concord, and countless more are at risk of displacement in the near future. Thus, even if all of the Housing Element programs are meant to be implemented within the first half of the 6th Cycle, frontloading certain programs within the 2023-2026 time period still amounts to prioritizing some actions over others. This is time that vulnerable residents can’t afford for us to waste. Therefore, we ask the City to prioritize programs that meaningfully address the top contributing factors to fair housing problems, such as policies to stop displacement and reduce segregation, over issues that bear no relationship to the Assessment of Fair Housing.
“Regarding the areas to be considered for rezoning, see revised language in Program 8…[R]ezoning will occur in areas that are not designated as ‘Low Resource’ on the TCAC Opportunity Maps, which encompasses a large portion of the City designated 20 Gov. Code § 8899.50(a).
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either as ‘Moderate Resource’ or ‘High Resource.’ The language regarding ‘amenities and/or public transit’ is found in the introductory text for Program 8 and is not in the actual objective. This language has been revised to clarify that amenities and public transit will be considered during the rezoning, but would not be a quantifiable objective.

Therefore, this rezoning program allows adequate flexibility to increase housing opportunities in middle- and upper-income areas outside of existing lower-income areas with amenities and transit.”
We appreciate that the City has tried to clarify the language of Objective 8.6, especially by noting that amenities and transit are relevant but not sufficient criteria to affirmatively further fair housing. Still, we think more can and should be done to ensure that rezoning efforts meaningfully mitigate the harms of racial and economic segregation in Concord.

First and foremost, the City should commit to a race-conscious approach when making decisions about where to upzone land and promote affordable housing development.

AFFH is meant, in part, to remedy the intergenerational harms that have been created and perpetuated through intentional racial segregation. Race-conscious harms require race-conscious solutions. However, the City continues to organize its approach around the race-blind “resource” designation used by the State Tax Credit Allocation Committee (TCAC), while more appropriate race-conscious data sources exist. For example, the Bay Area Equity Atlas has recently published an analysis of regional segregation that uses a metric called the “index of concentration at the extremes” (CE) to identify where racial segregation intersects with economic inequality.21 The CE, in other words, can be used to identify and target exclusionary areas of White wealth and economic advantage for zoning reform, thus advancing AFFH goals.

The Equity Atlas has provided data on race/class segregation in Concord according to two measures: (1) the segregation of White homeowners from renters of color and (2) the segregation of high-income White households (those earning more than $150,000 per year) from low-income households of color (those earning less than $40,000 per year). These data, which are provided at the Census Tract level, are based on the American Communities Survey 5-Year Estimates from 2020.22 Our side-by-side analysis of the TCAC and Equity Atlas scores for the top ten most segregated Census Tracts in Concord (see Appendix 2) shows that TCAC is a poor proxy for racial and economic segregation, and thus shouldn’t be used as the primary basis for rezoning efforts when desegregation is the aim. For example, 22 Bay Area Equity Atlas. 2022. “Mapping Racial and Economic Segregation in Concord.” 21 Bay Area Equity Atlas. July 27, 2022. “One in 10 Bay Area Neighborhoods Are Segregated Areas of White Wealth.”
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TCAC actually designates two out of the ten Tracts with the highest aggregated CE scores as areas of “High Segregation and Poverty,” but this overlooks considerable inequalities. Census Tract 3300 in North Concord, for instance, is designated “High Segregation and Poverty” even though, according to the Equity Atlas, it’s home to over 400 high-income White households and zero low-income Black and Latinx households.

Meanwhile, several Census Tracts that are designated “Moderate Resource” by TCAC actually demonstrate severe patterns of racial and economic segregation. Census Tract 3381.02 in Southwest Concord, for example, is home to 768 White owner households but no Black or Asian American/Pacific Islander renter households, and only 41 Latinx ones.

In sum, relying upon TCAC’s “resource” designation system to determine where to increase residential densities and affordable housing development will in no way guarantee that the most racially and economically segregated areas of the city will be prioritized for efforts to affirmatively further fair housing. Again, the AFFH mandate calls upon localities to “[replace] segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns.” In Concord, it’s evident that these patterns are deeply racialized. The City should thus commit to using data that considers both racial segregation and economic inequality, like those provided by the Equity Atlas, to direct its rezoning program. In addition, it should include a clear commitment to consult with members of the communities most harmed by segregation and the organizations that serve them at every stage of the rezoning process; specify a minimum amount of new multi-family units to be zoned for; and proactively encourage affordable development in exclusionary communities by identifying prime sites, dedicating financial resources, and recruiting non-profit development partners. This more robust and intentional approach is the only way to ensure that the inequities identified in the Assessment of Fair Housing will truly be addressed.

3. Increase Funding for Affordable Housing Development, Acquisition-Rehab, and Community Land Trusts
“Additional objectives related to the pursuit of funding have been added to Program 8, and Program 25 is a newly incorporated program to address funding.” The City added some additional specificity to the affordable housing funding measures included under Program 8 (Fair Housing). Program 8 now calls for learning more about the potential for new regional resources to support affordable housing development and preservation in Concord and, if necessary, “coordinating” with the agencies responsible for the Contra Costa County Measure X Housing Fund (MXHF) and Bay Area Housing 14Page 593 of 670
Finance Authority (BAHFA).23 In addition, the City included Program 25 (Advocacy for State Housing Legislation, Policies and Funding), which commits to lobbying for State policies that might increase affordable housing funding in Concord.

While we appreciate the City’s responsiveness to our letter on this point, we remain concerned that Objectives 8.4 and 8.5 and Program 25 are still too vague to ensure that Concord can generate the increase in local source funding that it needs to meet even a portion of its greatly expanded lower-income RHNA. This approach is consistent with the pattern we described in our original letter, whereby the City relies upon County and State agencies rather than cultivate its own opportunities to generate funding resources.

The City should commit to concrete actions that will increase local funding for affordable housing development, acquisition-rehab, and community land trust purchases. This should include establishing or increasing taxes on higher-cost real-estate transactions, vacant properties, or large landlords, and supporting community benefit negotiations at large developments, such as the Concord Naval Weapons Station.

Conclusion
We, the undersigned organizations, thank you for considering our additional comments and urge you to continue to work with directly impacted residents and the organizations that serve them to ensure that Concord’s 6th Cycle Housing Element meets the City’s equity goals and the State’s AFFH requirements.

Sincerely,

1. East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy

2. Monument Impact

3. Public Advocates

4. Center for Human Development

5. Central County Regional Group

6. Centro Legal de la Raza

7. Choice in Aging

8. CoCoKids

9. Concord Communities Alliance

10.Contra Costa Asian American Pacific Islander Coalition

11. Contra Costa Crisis Center
23 City of Concord, August 2022, p. 20.
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12.Contra Costa Immigrant Rights Alliance

13.Contra Costa Labor Council

14.Contra Costa Senior Legal Services

15.East Bay Community Foundation

16.East Bay Housing Organizations

17.East County Community Leaders Network

18.Ensuring Opportunity Campaign

19.Faith Alliance for a Moral Economy

20.Faith in Action East Bay

21.Greenbelt Alliance

22.Healthy & Active Before 5

23.Hope Solutions

24.Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay

25.Latino Community Foundation

26.Meals on Wheels - Diablo Region

27.NAMI Contra Costa

28.Neto Community Network

29.Portia Bell Hume Center

30.Richmond Community Foundation/RCF Connects

31.Shelter, Inc.

32.SparkPoint Contra Costa

33.STAND! For Families Free of Violence

34.Tenants Together

35.Todos Santos Tenants Union

36.Trinity Center

37.Urban Habitat

38.We Care Services for Children
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October 13, 2022
To: Bay Area Local Planning Directors
RE: Proposed Update Process for Bay Area Housing Elements to Achieve Meaningful Public Participation
Dear Bay Area Planning Directors,
We, the Bay Area Housing Element Working Group, are writing to urge you to prioritize community input to develop strong housing policy in the final stages of the 2023-2031 Housing Element Planning process. The Bay Area Housing Element Working Group is convened by the 6 Wins for Social Equity Network, a regional equity coalition founded in 2010. The Housing Element Working Group consists of housing law and policy experts working together to ensure the region is one where everyone can find a home. We believe that strong housing policy and planning is an essential step towards that vision.

Deep community engagement is at the heart of the Housing Element process in California. True community engagement requires more than just extensive outreach to the community. It must be designed to facilitate the meaningful dialogue and co-planning with your residents necessary to realize the potential of the Bay Area as a vibrant, diverse, and healthy community. After months of work, the Bay Area jurisdictions have largely submitted first drafts of your 2023-2031 Housing Elements to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), and have recently received or are awaiting a letter from HCD reviewing your draft and recommending changes. In this next stage it is important not only to respond to HCD’s comments, but to do so in a way that meaningfully involves the community in that response.

This requires that you give community members an adequate opportunity to read, analyze, and comment on the updates, and then transparently incorporate that feedback into your final Housing Element before submitting a final version to HCD.

State law requires local governments to make “a diligent effort...to achieve public participation of all economic segments of the community in the development of the housing element.” (Gov. Code 65583(c)(9) (emphasis added)). “A diligent effort means going beyond simply giving the public an opportunity to provide input and should beproactively and broadly conducted through a variety of methods to assure access and participation.” (Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) Guidance Memo, April 2021, p. 21).

In order to ensure that your communities continue to have the opportunity to understand and influence your decisions, we recommend you take the following steps:

1. Publish the review letter you receive from HCD on your Housing Element website as soon as you receive it. This will ensure that community members have as much time as possible to understand HCD’s opinions and concerns, so that they can best participate in updating your Housing Element and ensure it prioritizes equity and fairness.

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2. Hold one or more community meetings, work sessions, and/or public hearings to take comments on the HCD review findings and how best to address them before the next draft is prepared.Incorporate as much community input as possible, including expertise from local community based organizations, about housing needs and solutions. Consider all proposed analyses and recommendations. A diverse range of methods for soliciting comments from the community will facilitate the input of residents with disabilities and language access needs. This input is necessary to your ability to fully consider the housing needs of disabled residents and English Language Learners in your jurisdiction, as the State Housing Element law requires.

3. Once the revised draft is finalized, post it on your Housing Element website in both a clean version and a version with visible redlines against the initial public review draft.This will allow community members to more easily review the changes you have made, which will in turn: enable the community to help ensure compliance with state law; clarify the reasons behind the jurisdiction’s decisions regarding revisions and community input; and help build trust. Ensuring transparency and accountability in the process will yield the strongest possible final Housing Element.

4. Publish a summary of comments received and a list of changes made to the original draft identifying which comments or policy suggestions were accepted, which were not, and why.This, again, enables the community ease in reviewing and understanding the changes the jurisdiction has made. It is similar to the federal Administrative Procedure Act standards for public input in decision-making processes, and provides a best practice towards developing trust between governments and their constituents. That trust is even more important at the local level.

5. While state law only requires a 7-day comment period, you should provide a 30-day public comment period after releasing revised drafts.Allowing the necessary time for community members to review the Housing Element will improve the quality of the public input received by the city. Cities that use higher-quality public input to inform their Housing Elements will increase the likelihood of certification by HCD, as their Housing Elements will better address the needs of the community. Providing a 30-day public comment period additionally furthers the spirit of the legal requirements under California Housing Element law, and will allow for better policy outcomes.

The Housing Element Working Group remains committed to working in partnership with Bay Area jurisdictions to ensure that, from start to finish, the Housing Element update process is inclusive, laying out a roadmap to effectively and equitably address the affordable housing crisis. All Bay Area residents deserve a safe, accessible, and affordable place to call home, with a range of choices free of barriers to fair housing. The Housing Element update process provides the tools to do just that. We look forward to continuing this work with you.

Regards,
Bay Area Housing Element Working Group

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December 16th, 2022
To: Aaron Sage, Principal Planner
Mindy Gentry, Planning Manager
Asha Bleier, Consultant Project Manager, Dudek
Elizabeth Dickson, Planner, Dudek
Laura Hoffmeister, Mayor Jason Laub, Planning Commissioner Edi Birsan, Vice Mayor Aeysha Corio, Planning Commissioner Carlyn Obringer, Councilmember Raymond Barbour, Planning Commissioner Laura Nakamura, Councilmember John Mercurio, Planning Commissioner Dominic Aliano, Councilmember Craig Mizutani, Planning Commissioner Cc: David Zisser, Assistant Deputy Director, HCD
Melinda Coy, Land Use and Planning Manager, HCD
RE: Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) Comments on City of Concord’s 6th Cycle Draft Housing Element
Dear Planning Staff, Consultants, City Councilmembers, and Planning Commissioners, On November 14th, 2022, HCD issued a letter listing the changes the City of Concord must make to its 6th Cycle Draft Housing Element in order to comply with State law. If the City fails to make these changes, then it risks incurring a range of State-mandated penalties, from fines and disqualification from state and federal funding streams to the loss of land use and permitting powers.1 In the following letter, submitted on behalf of the Raise the Roof Coalition, we wish to return to the recommendations that we made in the letters dated June 27th, 2022 and October 10th, 2022 to highlight the ways that our proposals address HCD’s comments, thus contributing to a clear path to certification. As a reminder, these recommendations were endorsed by over 37 organizations that serve 1 See Gov. Code § 65755.
1

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and work alongside the residents most impacted by Concord’s affordable housing and homelessness crises–people whose input is meant to be centered in the development of the Housing Element–including low-income renters, immigrants, and people of color.2 In order to distinguish HCD’s comments from our own, all quotations and paraphrases from HCD’s letter are marked in red.

1. Include Clear Commitments for the City Council to Consider Local Rent Stabilization and Just Cause Eviction Protections by 2024 HCD noted that, in order to affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH) in accordance with AB 686, the Housing Element must include programs that directly address fair housing problems identified through a complete and thorough Assessment of Fair Housing. It is not enough to claim, without evidence or reason, that a general program is adequate to address the specific and acute fair housing problems impacting the community. Rather, according to HCD, “[g]oals and actions must specifically respond to the…identified and prioritized contributing factors to fair housing issues and must be significant and meaningful enough to overcome identified patterns and trends (italics added).”3 In our letter dated October 10th, 2022, we came to an identical conclusion. We agreed with the Assessment of Fair Housing (Appendix D) that “displacement due to economic pressures” is in fact the primary contributing factor to fair housing problems in Concord.4 However, through careful consideration of each of the City’s proposed anti-displacement strategies, we concluded that the draft Programs neither “respond[ed] to…the identified and prioritized contributing factors,” i.e. displacement due to economic pressures, nor were “significant and meaningful enough to overcome identified patterns and trends.” Indeed, in certain cases, we noted that Programs that were identified by the City as anti-displacement measures actually had the potential to make displacement worse.

As a reminder, we raised the following concerns regarding the proposed Programs that the City claimed would either “directly or indirectly address displacement risk.”5 ● Program 2 (Addressing Constraints to Development) , Program 6 (By-Right Development), and Program 12 (Inclusionary Housing) may actually increase displacement by accelerating market-rate and/or moderate-income development 5 City of Concord. August 2022. Revised Draft Housing Element (2023-2031), p. H35. 4 City of Concord. May 2022. Draft Housing Element (2023-2031), p. D81. 3 California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). November 14th, 2022. “Appendix: City of Concord,” p. 11.
2 Per Gov. Code § 65583(c)(9), localities are required to make a “diligent effort…to achieve public participation of all economic segments of the community in the development of the housing element.” 2Page 602 of 670
while undermining the provision of affordable housing for people with the lowest incomes and greatest rent burdens.
● Program 9 (Middle Density), Program 10 (Homeownership Assistance), Program 17 (Preservation and Housing Rehabilitation), andProgram 18 (Preservation of At-Risk Affordable Housing Units) are–in the City’s words– meant to “supplement other tenant protections and anti-displacement strategies, rather than serving [sic] as the City’s primary anti-displacement strategy.”6 Given their secondary–and, in some cases, tenuous (e.g. Middle Density)–relationship to the forms of displacement identified in the Assessment of Fair Housing, these programs distract from the core need to address “displacement due to economic pressures.”
● Program 10 (TOPA/COPA), while potentially important, is treated as a long-term homeownership strategy, and thus, as written, is unable to quickly and effectively mitigate the displacement of low-income renters at the scale required to ensure the impact is “significant and meaningful enough to overcome identified patterns and trends.”
● Program 19 (Replacement Requirements) merely commits to the minimum requirements under State law to discourage demolition-induced displacement.

Moreover, given the lack of direct redevelopment in Concord, as documented in the City’s Annual Progress Reports (APRs), demolition-induced displacement is far less threatening to the housing security of low-income renters than excessive rent increases and profit-motivated evictions.
● The City’s own data (Appendix D) show that Program 20 (Residential Tenant Protection Program) has proven inadequate to address displacement. Instead, displacement has increased during the 5th Cycle, when most of these programs have been in effect.
● Program 24 (STRs), while potentially important, bears no empirical relationship to the Assessment of Fair Housing or Local Knowledge. Like Program 10, it is designed as a long-term and indirect strategy, rather than one that is likely to have a “beneficial impact” on reducing displacement during the 6th Cycle.7 We concur with HCD that these programs, as a whole, are simply not “significant and meaningful enough” to address displacement due to economic pressures. In order to receive HCD certification, and thus have a legally compliant Housing Element, the City must “add or modify programs.”8 While HCD did not specify any particular additions or modifications, we reiterate that rent stabilization and local eviction protections are 8 HCD, November 14th, 2022, p. 11.
7 Per Gov. Code § 65583(c), programs must be timed to ensure “beneficial impacts…within the planning period.”
6 City of Concord, August 2022, p. H35.
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needed to reduce displacement due to economic pressures, and thus meet the statutory requirements of Housing Element law.

As revealed in our letter dated August 12th, 2022, in painstaking numeric detail, these policies represent the primary recommendation made throughout not only the Housing Element Update, but also a number of policy debates about displacement in Concord that have occurred since 2016. Indeed, 54 out of 65 of the individuals or organizations who submitted comments on the Draft (83%) called for more robust tenant protections, including rent stabilization and just cause eviction policies. Therefore, in line with HCD’s remarks, we wish to remind the City that its Assessment of Fair Housing is required to “utiliz[e] knowledge from local and regional advocates, public comments, and service providers.”9 And given that the Programs must be “[b]ased on the outcomes of that analysis,”10 it follows that the City has, to date, failed to adequately consider and incorporate Local Knowledge into the creation of the Housing Element.11

2. Promote Integrated and Balanced Living Patterns by Rezoning Exclusionary Areas
HCD stated that, while the Sites Inventory must demonstrate that there is adequate capacity to meet Concord’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), it must also demonstrate that these sites are “distributed throughout the community in a manner that AFFH.” In other words, it must show how the location of development sites by proposed income level “improves or exacerbates conditions” of racial and economic segregation.12 This accords exactly with the concerns that we raised in our previous letters. Namely, we argued that by identifying sites in the Monument Corridor for moderate- and above- moderate-income housing, and by treating the purported lack of sites for lower-income housing in exclusionary areas as a problem to be addressed in the future, the Housing Element failed to meet the AFFH mandate to “[replace] segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns.”13 Indeed, the City has studiously avoided identifying even one site for lower-income housing in the southern and eastern parts of Concord. It has thus worked to maintain the immoral and illegal status quo of racial and economic segregation.
13 Gov. Code § 8899.50(a).
12 HCD, November 14th, 2022, p. 2.
11 Per State law, localities are required to consider “local data and knowledge” in their evaluation of fair housing issues. See HCD. April 2021. Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing: Guidance for All Public Entities and for Housing Elements, p. 24. See also Gov. Code § 65583(c)(9-10). 10 HCD, November 14th, 2022, p. 11.
9 HCD, November 14th, 2022, p. 2.
4Page 604 of 670
This, as we argued, stems in part from the City’s failure to consider existing patterns of segregation and targeted strategies for desegregation in terms of race. HCD addressed this exact issue, stating that the Assessment of Fair Housing must analyze regional and local patterns of segregation by race. Likewise, HCD stated that the City mustidentify Concord’s existing Racially Concentrated Areas of Affluence.14 In our previous letter, we drew attention to these deficiencies by providing data from the Bay Area Equity Atlas that reveal that there are many neighborhoods in which high-income and/or homeowner White households are segregated from low-income and/or renter households of color. If the City were to compare the Sites Inventory against these maps, it would be clear that the distribution of sites “exacerbates,” rather than “improves,” fair housing problems in Concord.

Therefore, we state again that, in order to comply with State law, the City should (a) immediately identify sites, funding, and non-profit partners to build lower-income housing in exclusionary areas of opportunity, (b) immediately remove moderate- and above-moderate-income sites from areas that are sensitive to gentrification, and (c) commit to consulting race-conscious data and communities with lived experience in making future decisions about where to upzone land to promote affordable and balanced housing development.

3. Increase Funding for Affordable Housing Development, Acquisition-Rehab, and Community Land Trusts
Despite the large size of the City’s lower-income RHNA, the Draft does not take enough proactive measures to expand local source funding for affordable housing development, acquisition-rehab, and community land trusts. While HCD did not comment on the issue of revenue generation directly, it did state that the City must “clarify the percent required for affordable housing for inclusionary requirements” under Program 12 (Inclusionary Housing).15 Given that this represents the only Program that would help the City make up for the current gap in local source funding, we too would like to see the City specify not only (a) the percentage and income levels for the inclusionary ordinance, but also (b) the number of lower-income units that the policy is likely to create during the 6th Cycle, whether through on-site development or in-lieu fees.

At the November 29th, 2022 meeting of the Housing and Economic Development (HED) Committee, staff proposed that the City set its inclusionary requirement at 5 or 6%, the vast majority of which would be moderate-income units.16 This is an unacceptable 16 See staff report for HED Meeting, November 29th, 2022. 15 HCD, November 14th, 2022, p. 10.
14 HCD, November 14th, 2022, p. 1.
5Page 605 of 670
proposal. First, it is less supportive of affordable housing development than the policies of surrounding cities. Second, it will have a minimal impact, at best, on the City’s lower- income RHNA. In the absence of other Programs to increase City funding for affordable housing, it is obvious that such a minimal approach will put the City on a path to, once again, miss the mark of its RHNA requirements, especially for extremely-low-income (ELI) residents. Indeed, HCD noted that the Draft fails to demonstrate how it will fund these much-needed ELI homes.17
Therefore, we repeat that the City should commit to additional actions that will increase local funding for affordable housing development, acquisition-rehab, and community land trust purchases, such as increasing taxes on higher-cost real-estate transactions, vacant properties, and large landlords and supporting community benefit negotiations at large developments like the Concord Naval Weapons Station.

In conclusion, there is substantial alignment between our existing recommendations and HCD’s requirements regarding legal compliance with Housing Element law. As it revises its Housing Element, we urge the City to heed these recommendations and, in so doing, finally put the voices and expertise of impacted community members at the center of its Housing Element Update. There are severe consequences for non-compliance, ranging from fines and disqualification from state and federal funding streams to the loss of land use and permitting powers.18 Now is the time to correct course and produce a Housing Element that will put Concord on a fair, equitable, and inclusive path for the future.

Sincerely,
Alex Werth
Policy and Research Advisor
East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE)
On behalf of the Raise the Roof Coalition
18 See Gov. Code § 65755.
17 HCD, November 14th, 2022, p. 11.
6Page 606 of 670

December 19, 2022

To: Aaron Sage, Principal Planner
Mindy Gentry, Planning Manager
Asha Bleier, Consultant Project Manager, Dudek
Elizabeth Dickson, Planner, Dudek

Laura Hoffmeister, Mayor
Edi Birsan, Vice-Mayor
Carlyn Obringer, Councilmember
Laura Nakamura, Councilmember
Dominic Aliano, Councilmember

Jason Laub, Planning Commissioner
Mark Weinmann, Planning Commissioner
Raymond Barbour, Planning Commissioner
John Mercurio, Planning Commissioner
Craig Mizutani, Planning Commissioner

Cc: David Zisser, Assistant Deputy Director, HCD
Melinda Coy, Land Use and Planning Manager, HCD

RE: Comments on HCD’s Response Letter to Concord’s Draft 6th Cycle Housing Element

Dear Planning Staff, Consultants, City Councilmembers, and Planning Commissioners,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Concord’s Draft Housing Element. East Bay Housing Organizations (EBHO) works to produce, preserve, and protect affordable housing opportunities for low-income communities across Contra Costa and Alameda Counties. Many of our 400+ individual and organizational members live, work, or provide affordable homes in Concord.

Having reviewed the Draft Housing Element and the response letter from HCD, we would like to submit the following comments in support of creating a Housing Element that will adequately address the goals of the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), provide affordable housing and tenant protections to Concord residents, and receive the approval of the State.

To start, EBHO recommends increasing the percentage of affordable housing required as part of Program 12 to improve Concord’s Inclusionary Housing Program (IHP) as well as raising in lieu fees to the maximum feasible level. As we stated in our comments during the recent hearing of the Housing and Economic Development (HED) Committee, the 6% inclusionary requirement recommended for rental housing developments is far below the standard used by any other city. This

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is especially worrying considering that most of the units created by this requirement would be for moderate income residents as opposed to lower incomes residents—an imbalance that makes Concord an outlier among similar jurisdictions. In their letter, HCD specifically requires the City to include the proposed inclusionary percentage as well as an analysis of the effects of this requirement in the next draft of the Housing Element. We do not believe the current low percentage of units required meets the intent of the State’s requirements, as a thorough analysis would illustrate the extremely low number of deeply affordable units and modest amount of affordable housing funding this program would create. This is supported by our own analysis of the proposed requirement as well as academic studies that show that inclusionary requirements in California do not impede new construction.1

We also find it worrying that City staff and Council members repeatedly stated during the November 29th HED committee meeting that the inclusionary requirements they were considering were “not the means to solve our RHNA.” The inclusion of this program in the Housing Element, as required by HCD both statutorily and in their response letter, belies this claim and calls into question the City’s commitment to fulfilling the promises as part of this process.

Setting productive inclusionary requirements and associated in-lieu fees is necessary to fulfill Concord’s RHNA allocation as it not only creates affordable units directly, but offers the chance to bring in much more affordable housing funding than previously. Despite explicit interest in affordable development among local officials and residents, Concord is currently constrained in its ability to meet the demand for affordable homes by the small size of its Affordable Housing Trust Fund (AHTF). As of March 2022, there was only $6 million in the AHTF, which is less than the $7.8 million used to fund the 62-unit Galindo Terrace project–the only development to receive a grant from the AHTF in recent years. It is thus critical that the Inclusionary Housing requirements, and their in lieu fee structure, are revised to create the maximum amount of lower-income homes and fee revenue.

Making program 12 more aggressive is also clearly supported by the Draft Housing Needs Assessment (Appendix B), which finds that low-income households experience cost burden at a much higher rate than those of moderate-income in Concord. 71% of households making less than 80% of Area Median Income (AMI) experience cost burden, while only 37% of households making between 80 and 100% of AMI do.2 The City, in its recent discussion of their ordinance, turns this metric on its head; justifying their all but nonexistent requirement for deeply affordable units by pointing to the difficulty and cost gap for private developers to provide lower income units as opposed to moderate. This reasoning seems to forget that the goal of an inclusionary requirement should be to reduce the affordability gap for lower income residents, rather than maximize developer profit by minimizing the cost of providing units that fulfill the requirement. Thus, as a measurable goal for Program 12, we strongly urge the city to rebalance the requirement away from moderate income units and towards low and very- low income units.

1 Mukhij, V., Regus, L., Slovin, S., & Das, A, “Can Inclusionary Zoning Be an Effective and Efficient Housing Policy? Evidence from Los Angeles and Orange Counties” Journal of Urban Affairs, 32, 2. April 2010 2 City of Concord. May 2022. Draft Housing Element (2023-2031), p. B17.

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Unfortunately, Program 12 is the only significant proposal in the draft Housing Element to increase the scale of affordable housing funding in any form. While the City has amended Program 8 to take account of the fact that Contra Costa County has already approved the creation of the Regional Housing Trust Fund (RHTF), exploring this program’s potential to fund housing is not enough to address the need.

The RHTF will only disperse $12 million per year and covers the entire county as well as all activities related to housing production, preservation, and protection. It will not meaningfully increase Concord’s investment in affordable housing development. The City should amend this item to explicitly commit to development of additional funding sources for affordable housing creation as well as create a realistic timeline for doing so. The lack of such local funding currently makes it nearly impossible for 100% affordable projects to be competitive for state, federal, and regional funding. This should be especially vital considering the comments highlighted earlier regarding Inclusionary requirements: if the city does not expect to meaningfully address its affordable unit allocation via the inclusion of affordable units in market rate projects, it must propose an alternate means of funding 100% affordable projects. No such proposal is currently present in the draft Housing Element, casting doubt on the City’s commitment to meeting their required affordable housing goals.

Next, we want to emphasize HCD’s requirement in several sections of their letter that the City must analyze and propose changes to their incentive structure and approval process for certain types of housing. As mentioned in our previous letter, the City should consider reducing or waiving fees and applying streamlined review processes for affordable developments, as these kinds of administrative hurdles can significantly hamper construction. As pointed out by HCD, the City is required to take some of these actions for developments that provide certain special needs housing, including housing for Extremely Low-Income (ELI) residents. Their response also notes the need for the City to more comprehensively analyze its approval process, design review, and permitting procedures, in order to firmly establish that they are not constraints on housing production. We urge the city to completely analyze these processes and commit to proactive measures as part of Program 11 to alleviate constraints on the development of affordable and special needs housing. These efforts should be a top priority for completion early in the effective term of this housing element.

HCD also points to the statutory requirement that the City develop a comprehensive program to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing (AFFH). As pointed out by our partners in the Raise the Roof (RTR) coalition; the City’s proposed response to the lack of fair housing—most seriously illustrated by ongoing displacement of low income residents—is too broad and does not adequately address the root causes of the problem, as identified in the City’s own Assessment of Fair Housing. HCD’s findings support this conclusion closely, concluding that the current draft does not “specifically respond to the…identified and prioritized contributing factors to fair housing issues” or include programs that are “significant and meaningful enough to overcome identified patterns and trends.” We strongly support both RTR and HCD’s conclusion that the city must develop a more robust program to AFFH, complete with specific commitments, milestones, geographic targeting, and numeric objectives.

Specifically, the City should commit to developing local eviction protections and rent stabilization measures, as these policies offer the best chance of fulfilling the State’s requirements by addressing the core issue.

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As noted by HCD, the requirements of AFFH extend to the site inventory in this draft, which does not do enough to distribute housing throughout the community in a manner that addresses socioeconomic and racial segregation. This is especially egregious along the Monument Corridor, which bears an oversized portion of market rate housing despite being the most clearly segregated area of the City; an action that will only contribute to gentrification. HCD further requires the next draft include specific commitments to rezoning publicly owned areas to ensure that the sites identified are capable of absorbing the units required by RHNA. We would especially like to repeat our concern, echoed by HCD, that the City has not justified their assumptions around affordable housing creation. Considering the lack of local investment and appropriately zoned high resource areas—both factors vital to the competitiveness of affordable housing projects for other funding, particularly tax credits—it is not realistic to assume that all of the sites identified for 100% affordable development will actually be built. In fact, the City is already reneging on these commitments, as a site identified in the draft for 100% affordable housing, Town Center II, is currently being offered for development with no requirement that it include any affordable units and no resources offered to make an affordable project possible. Considering that the parcel for this project was also recently reassessed to increase its asking price substantially, there is no chance it will be developed with the affordability and density identified in the Site Inventory. We therefore agree with HCD’s assessment that the City’s site inventory needs significant work to become realistic as well as meet Fair Housing and Affordable Housing requirements. We particularly emphasize the requirement to analyze the likelihood that sites will develop with the affordability and densities predicted, considering the lack of the competitive features and local resources that are necessary to develop affordable projects. Failure to provide such analysis runs counter to the requirements to AFFH and represents another sign that the City does not realistically expect to meet its RHNA allocation again.

Finally, we would like to call special attention to the link between this draft and the recently released term sheet proposed by Concord First Partners (CFP). Due to the changes made by CFP to the commitments of the Area Plan for the Reuse Area—namely increasing the number of units from 12,272 to 15,595 while maintaining the same number of affordable units—the information presented in the draft housing element is no longer accurate. This is of particular importance because HCD specifically requires a more complete analysis of units located within the Reuse area as well as a justification for the requirement that 25% of Reuse units be affordable. Any analysis that responds to this requirement must explain why the Reuse project is no longer requiring 25% of the units to be affordable; with the new term sheet only 3,020 out of 15,595 units (or 19%) are planned to be permanent affordable housing. CFP plans to make up the difference with deed-restricted junior accessory dwelling units (JADUs) attached to market-rate single family homes that are put up for sale.

We have serious concerns with this strategy for developing affordable housing due to the myriad difficulties attached to monitoring that JADUs are rented in compliance with affordability restriction.

While HCD did not have the chance to review the proposed JADU program, they do note that the Housing Element already relies too heavily on assumptions about ADU production and affordability, and require the City to develop realistic plans to monitor these factors and take necessary action to correct if they are falling below targets. We strongly support HCD’s requirement that the updated Housing Element draft include a thorough analysis of the feasibility of the affordable

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percentage required by the Area Plan and specified in the draft Housing Element. We further recommend that this analysis give extra attention to the proposed JADU units and offers a realistic assessment of the City’s ability to monitor their compliance with affordability requirements as part of HCD’s wider requirement that the City develop such a program for non- Reuse Area ADUs.

We look forward to the new draft Housing Element, and encourage the City to reach out to us to discuss the changes that must be made to ensure a compliant and successful plan.

Sincerely,

Aaron Tiedemann
Policy Manager
East Bay Housing Organizations.

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I 1
Concord HEU CBO Listening Session
December 21, 20222
Overview
On December 21, 2022, the City of Concord met with representatives from local organizations to discuss their concerns and comments on the City’s Housing Element Update (HEU). The meeting was held over Zoom. Participants included City Planning Division staff, a facilitator, and community- based organizations (CBOs) who had submitted letters to the City and the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) regarding the City’s latest draft HEU. The purpose of the meeting was to learn about the community history regarding the origins of the area of Concord classified as a Racially or Ethnically Concentrated Area of Poverty (R/ECAP), and to further understand the CBOs’ comments and concerns on the HEU.

The following individuals were in attendance:
• Mindy Gentry, City of Concord
• Aaron Sage, City of Concord
• Kristi Laughlin, EBASE
• Alex Werth, EBASE
• Debra Ballinger, EBHO and Monument Impact
• Aaron Tiedemann, EBHO
• Vanessa Chena Davila, Monument Impact
• Tony Bravo, Monument Impact
• Jenna Tourje, Facilitator, Kearns & West
The meeting agenda included a welcome and introductions, a review of the meeting purpose, a discussion on the R/ECAP, a listening session to further clarify the CBOs’ comments and concerns on the HEU, and a discussion on next steps and process items.

R/ECAP Discussion
Aaron S. shared information on HCD’s request for more information on how the R/ECAP in Concord developed. After clarifying questions on where the R/ECAP is in Concord and what it means, CBOs shared the following themes:
• The Monument Corridor has been an area of concentrated poverty for decades. The City could identify the history of Monument Impact and other community-based groups to determine how long the area has been a R/ECAP.
• Exclusionary zoning and the limited availability of multi-family housing in surrounding areas have created an area where there is a higher concentration of multi-family housing and poverty.
• Discriminatory lending practices and racially restrictive covenants in single-family neighborhoods have contributed to the existence of the R/ECAP. • Designating sites for market-rate housing in the Monument Corridor will lead to displacement in the R/ECAP. Instead, the City should rezone exclusionary-zoned areas to prevent displacement and create greater opportunities for affordable housing. • Factors such as exploitation by housing developers and landlords, a history of discriminatory lending practices, and single-family or other exclusionary zoning have impoverished R/ECAP residents. Apartment owners in the RECAP have exploited the segregation of working-class people of color and immigrants in the R/ECAP to charge higher rents, despite low incomes, ATTACHMENT 6

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I 2
because many tenants have no other choice but to find an apartment in the district. This coupling of segregation and exploitation actually contributes to the impoverishment of local renters. It's not just that residents naturally experience poverty; segregation in the R/ECAP is part of what produces poverty in the first place.

Debra provided the following information following the conclusion of the meeting:
• A Concord-focused report on mapping segregation (linked here) • An article in The Mercury News on racial covenants in the East Bay (linked here) • Reports on the history of redlining and racial segregation in Contra Costa County (linked here), the Bay Area (linked here), and California (linked here) Concerns and Comments on the Housing Element
Each participant in the meeting had an opportunity to share their concerns and comments on the HEU. Key concerns, comments, and action items are identified below:

Anti-Displacement Measures: The programs identified in the HEU are unlikely to address displacement and some may actually exacerbate displacement. Regarding the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) and Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) program, participants identified that without a dedicated funding source, this program is unlikely to address displacement of low-income renters at scale. In addition, because the TOPA/COPA program is designed to operate and provide benefits over a long-term horizon, and is designated as a homeownership strategy, it is incapable of addressing the rapid displacement of the renters with the lowest incomes and greatest rent burdens, who are at the center of the City’s Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH).

Participants identified that by-right development policies are likely to exacerbate displacement by accelerating the production of market-rate housing in low-resource areas, thereby contributing to gentrification. It was also noted that the program on middle-density housing development opportunities is not related to displacement and should not be identified as an anti-displacement program.

Participants noted there is no program dedicated to anti-displacement in the HEU. Instead, various programs are identified as having a nexus to anti-displacement, but in many cases the program is not a significant action as defined by HCD. Participants identified several ways to address displacement in the HEU. These included creating an overall anti-displacement program with measures empirically proven to prevent displacement caused by economic pressures (the most prevalent form of displacement identified in the City’s AFH and public testimony). Participants also noted that adding rent stabilization and just cause evictions to the HEU’s tenant protections program (Program 20) will clearly address anti-displacement in Concord.

Participants noted that the timeline needs to be updated to respond to HCD’s comments, and that these measures should be adopted by the end of 2023.

Affordable Housing Creation: Participants noted there is no realistic way for Concord to meet its lower-income housing need within this RHNA cycle with the programs identified. There is concern regarding the lack of a program with adequate support and funding for affordable housing, particularly for 100% affordable housing projects. It was noted this type of affordable housing cannot be developed without land donation or monetary support. Therefore, sites identified as lower-income in the HEU sites inventory will actually be developed with less affordable housing or with fewer than 25 percent affordable units. This may violate the State’s no-net-loss law as there would not be enough sites remaining to meet the City’s RHNA obligation.

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I 3
A recent example of the City’s lack of support for affordable housing is the developer selection process for the City-owned Town Center II site. The HEU sites inventory identifies this site for lower- income housing development, but the City did not include a 100-percent affordability requirement in the Notice of Availability for the site, and has not proactively sought affordable housing developers or offered any financial support for such a development.

Participants identified ways the City can address these issues. One way is for the City to discount or donate surplus land. The City should also support a future regional housing bond measure through the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) in 2024. Finally, the City should place a local affordable housing tax measure on the ballot early in the HEU planning period to provide a dedicated funding source for the creation of affordable housing.

Participants also noted the Affordable Housing Trust Fund does not include an adequate level of in lieu fees to allow for a significant impact. It was also noted that the City’s current direction on updating its inclusionary housing provisions will not be effective, because it is not proposing the maximum possible in lieu fee and minimum percentage of affordable units.

Site Selection: Participants noted that State law requires, and HCD has requested, further analysis to show how the City’s proposed site selection complies with Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) requirements. Per State law and HCD’s review letter, the site selection must consider whether sites "improve" or "exacerbate" racial and economic segregation. One concern with the sites analysis is that the lower-income sites identified are not located in higher-resource areas. Sites located in higher-resources would be more competitive for State funds, and are therefore more likely to be built.

Participants identified that the City should redo its sites analysis in a way that “places race at the center,” meaning that it follows State AFFH requirements by considering whether or not the sites inventory improves or exacerbates historical and ongoing patterns of race/class segregation, which must be documented as part of the AFH. And, when future rezoning does occur, engagement needs to take place to center the voices of those being displaced and those negatively impacted by exclusionary zoning, not just the homeowners who have benefited financially from decades of exclusionary zoning.

Naval Weapons Station: While the Concord Naval Weapons Station (CNWS) site is not included in the sites inventory, the HEU states that it will include 25% affordable housing. Participants questioned and raised concerns on how this requirement would be met based on a recent proposal by the CNWS developer to designate Junior Accessory Dwelling Units as affordable units.

Process: Participants identified that the HEU’s community engagement process focused on equity and listened well to the community and to community advocates. However, they expressed concern that the City Council has not been responsive to the overwhelming input received through this process on displacement, racial inequity and lack of affordable housing. An example was shared from the last Council meeting on the HEU, where the Council declined to include tenant protections that were supported by the vast majority of public comments, but included a program on short-term rentals that was supported only by the comments of one white homeowner.

Participants also noted that HCD’s comments cite the City’s obligation to incorporate local knowledge and data where appropriate, and that in State housing element law the political preferences of the Council do not outweigh public comments, demonstrated housing needs, and empirically based programs.

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I 4
Next Steps:

City staff shared next steps in the HEU process. These include sharing this summary with participants to confirm their comments are correctly documented. This summary will also be attached to the staff report for the January 10 City Council meeting on the HEU.

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12/13/2022 1
Ho
using Element Compliance and Key Funding Programs:

Summary
December 13, 2022
Some state and regional funding sources are tied to having a certified Housing Element. This overview memo and attached table summarize housing element requirements and key deadlines for several funding programs. Jurisdictions should review the funding sources they plan on utilizing and ensure they will comply.

DISCLAIMER: ABAG/MTC believes this information to be correct at the time of publication, but jurisdictions should independently confirm these assumptions as deadlines and guidelines continue to evolve. This document is intended to provide general information and does not constitute legal advice. Additional facts, facts specific to a particular situation, or future developments may affect the subjects discussed in this FAQ. Seek the advice of your attorney before acting or relying upon the following information.

Summary: Funding Programs that Require Compliant Housing Elements Unless otherwise noted, each program requires a certified housing element, defined as an “adopted housing element that has been found by the Department to be in substantial compliance.” More details, including links to sources, are included in the appendix below.

Funding Program Agency
When the Housing
Element Needs to
be Certified
Relevant
Deadline in
20231
Affordable Housing & Sustainable Communities (AHSC)
Note language about “presumptive compliance” in the
DRAFT regulations: if jurisdictions are undergoing review at the time of the award, awards will be conditioned
upon final certification at the time of disbursement.

Strategic Growth
Council (SGC)
Time of award
(DRAFT)
August 2023
(planned)
1 If the deadline for having housing element certification is tied to the time of the application, the due date for the application is listed. If the funding is tied to the time of award, the expected date that the money will be awarded is listed. Please double-check deadline dates as the NOFA calendar is not fixed.

ATTACHMENT 7

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Regional Housing Technical Assistance Program
12/1
3/2022 2
Funding Program Agency
When the Housing
Element Needs to
be Certified
Relevant
Deadline in
20231
California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)
Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant
Note: at the time of this writing, the current DRAFT
application guide for the Caltrans Sustainable
Transportation Planning Grant requires a certified
housing element at the time of application. However,
Caltrans staff have informally indicated that STP Grant Applicants will be able to explain in the application that they are in the process of updating their housing
element. Caltrans would then condition their grant, if
awarded, to require the jurisdiction to have an adopted Housing Element before they can execute a grant
agreement with Caltrans.

Caltrans Time of application
(DRAFT)
March 2023
(planned)
Community Development Block Grant Program
Note that statutory requirement reads: “Submit a draft
or adopted housing element to the Department in
accordance with state law”
California
Department of
Housing &
Community
Development
(HCD)
Time of award January 2023
(planned)
2024 TBD
Infill Infrastructure Grant (IIG)
Note language in the guidelines that reads: “If award
decision made within 120 days of housing element due
date, Dept may refer to prior cycle compliance.”
Note language about "presumptive compliance" in the
guidelines: if jurisdictions are undergoing review at the time of the award, awards will be conditioned upon final certification at the time of disbursement.

HCD Time of award December
2022
December
2023 (planned)
Oct-Dec 2023
(Small
Jurisdiction)
Local Housing Trust Fund (LHTF) HCD Time of award September 2023 (planned)
One Bay Area Grant (OBAG) Metropolitan
Transportation
Commission
(MTC)
December 31, 2023 December 31,
2023
Permanent Local Housing Allocation (PLHA)
Note language in the guidelines that reads: “If award
decision made within 120 days of housing element due
date, Dept may refer to prior cycle compliance”
HCD Time of award, by
February 2023
Dates depend
on specific
PLHA program

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Regional Housing Technical Assistance Program

12/13/2022 3
Funding Program Agency
When the Housing
Element Needs to
be Certified
Relevant
Deadline in
20231
Transit Oriented Development (TOD) HCD Time of application No funding currently
available

Summary: Funding Programs that Reward Projects in Jurisdictions with Compliant Housing Elements
Several programs use HCD’s Prohousing Designation as a possible evaluation criterion. Prohousing Designation requires “an adopted housing element that has been duly found to be in substantial compliance with the requirements of Housing Element Law” at the time of the Prohousing application OR prior to designation.

Funding Program Agency Evaluation Criteria
Active Transportation
Program
California Transportation
Commission (CTC)
Prohousing Designation is among possible evaluation
criteria at time of funding application (helps with score) HOME Investment HCD Scoring factor at time of funding application – the next planned deadline is July 2023
Local Partnership
Program
CTC Prohousing Designation is among possible evaluation criteria at time of funding application
Solutions for Congested
Corridors Program
CTC Prohousing Designation application is one way to
demonstrate efficient land use and housing at time of
funding application
Transit and Intercity Rail
Capital Program
California State
Transportation Agency
(CalSTA)
Prohousing Designation application is one way to
demonstrate efficient land use and housing at time of
funding application

Funding Programs that Do Not Require Compliant Housing Elements • Multifamily Housing Program (MHP) – no mention of housing element compliance in HCD’s current MHP Guidelines
Document references dates from HCD’s NOFA Schedule upda ted as of November 2022. Note that HCD updates its calendar regularly, so dates in this document may not remain current.

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12/13/2022 4
Appendix A: Details of Funding Programs that Require Housing Element Compliance

PROGRAM AGENCY REQUIREMENT
/CRITERIA

DEFINITION OF

COMPLIANCE DEADLINE FOR COMPLIANCE
RELEVANT 2023

DEADLINE
(PLANNED)2

LANGUAGE FROM GUIDELINES

OR REGULATIONS

REFERENCE

URL AS OF
12/1/2022

FUNDING

PROGRAM

WEBPAGE
Affordable
Housing &
Sustainable
Communities
(AHSC)
Strategic
Growth Council
(SGC)
Threshold
requirement
Adopted housing
element that has been
found by the
Department to be in
substantial compliance
At time of award

Note language about
“presumptive compliance: ” if
jurisdictions are undergoing
review at the time of the
award, awards will be
conditioned upon final
certification at the time of
disbursement.

Aug-23 (17) The Housing Element for the jurisdiction
in which the Project is located must be in
substantial compliance by the date of award
recommendation. Housing Element in
substantial compliance means the local public
entity’s adopted housing element is in
substantial compliance as demonstrated by a
letter from the Department which sets forth
findings that the housing element adopted
within the time frames required by Section
65588 of the Government Code includes that
substance essen tial to every requirement of
Article 10.6, commencing with Sectio n 65580,
of Chapter 3 of Division I of Ti tle VII of the
Government Code. A jurisdiction’s current
housing element compliance status can be
obtained by referencing the Department’s
website. Projects located on Trust Land, as
defined under Indian country, are exempt
from this requirement.

(A) For the purposes of this section alone,
jurisdictions that are undergoing Department
review of their housing element at the time o f
award and jurisdictions which are receiving
Department technical assistance to bring their
housing element into compliance at the time
of award, shall both be deemed to be in a
presumptive state of substantial compliance
by the Department. All awards premised on
presumptive substantial compliance shall
include conditions in their respective standard
agreements requiring that prior to funds
disbursement the subject jurisdiction must
Program
guidelines
Program
webpa ge

2 HCD programs reference Notice of Funding Availability Calendar

Page 619 of 670 ends

12/13/2022 5

PROGRAM AGENCY REQUIREMENT
/CRITERIA

DEFINITION OF

COMPLIANCE DEADLINE FOR COMPLIANCE
RELEVANT 2023

DEADLINE
(PLANNED)2

LANGUAGE FROM GUIDELINES

OR REGULATIONS

REFERENCE

URL AS OF
12/1/2022

FUNDING

PROGRAM

WEBPAGE
have received a final housing element
certification let ter from the Depart ment.

Caltrans
Sustainable
Transportation
Planning (STP)
Grant
California
Department of
Transportation
(Caltrans)
Threshold
requirement
Adopted housing
element that has been
found by the
Department to be in
substantial compliance
At time of application
At the time of this writing, the
current draft application
guide requires a certified
housing element at the time
of application. However,
Caltrans staff have informally
indicat ed that STP Grant
Applicants will be able to
explain in the application that
they are in the process of
updating their housing
element. Caltrans would then
condition their grant, if
awarded, to have an adopted
Housing Element before they
can execute a gran t
agreement with Caltrans.

Mar-23 City and county primary/sub -grant applicants
are required to submit a housing element
adopted by the local government to the
Department of Housing and Community
Development (HCD) by the application due
date. To be eligible for a funding award, HCD
must find the adopted housing element in
substantial compliance with state housing
element law pursuant to Government Code
Section 65585 by the application due date.

Program
Application
Guide
Program
website
Community
Development
Block Grant
(CDBG) Program
California
Department of
Housing &
Community
Development
(HCD)
Threshold
requirement:
definition of
eligible
applicant
Submit a draft or
adopted housing
element to the
Department in
accordance with state
law
At time of award January 2023
2024 TBD
As per HSC §50829, the Applicant must
submit a draft or adopted housing element to
the Department in accordance with the
requirements listed in Government Code (GC)
§65580, et seq. and GC §65585 (see Appendix
B) prior to an award being granted. Applicants
that fail to comply with the procedural
requirements (i.e., GC §65585) of the Housing
Element Law are ineligible for funding
through the state CDBG program. Eligibility
cannot be restored until the Applicant has
met such procedural requirements.

Program
NOFA memo
Program
website

Page 620 of 670 ends

12/13/2022 6

PROGRAM AGENCY REQUIREMENT
/CRITERIA

DEFINITION OF

COMPLIANCE DEADLINE FOR COMPLIANCE
RELEVANT 2023

DEADLINE
(PLANNED)2

LANGUAGE FROM GUIDELINES

OR REGULATIONS

REFERENCE

URL AS OF
12/1/2022

FUNDING

PROGRAM

WEBPAGE
Infill
Infrastructure
Grant (IIG)
HCD Threshold
requirement:
definition of
Qualifying Infill
Area
Adopted housing
element that has be en
found by the
Department to be in
substantial compliance
At time of award

If award decision made within
120 days of housing element
due date, HCD may refer to
prior cycle compliance

Note language about
“presumptive compliance: ” if
jurisdictions are undergoing
review at the time of the
award, awards will be
conditioned upon final
certification at the time of
disbursement.

December 2022

December 2023

Oct-Dec 2023
(Small
Jurisdiction)
(2) Be located in a city, county, or city and
county in which the general plan of the city,
county, or city and county has an adopted
housing element that has been found by the
Department to be in substantial compliance
with the requirements of Article 10. 6
(commencing with Section 65580) of Chapter
3 of Division 1 of Title 7 of the GC, pursuant to
GC Section 65585 at time of Award. If the
Award decisions are made within 120 days of
the housing element due date, the
Department may refer to the jurisdiction’ s
compliance from the prior cycle.

For the purpose of this section alone,
jurisdictions that are undergoing Department
review of their housing element at the time o f
Award, and jurisdictions that are receiving
Department technical assistance to bring the ir
housing element into compliance at the time
of Award, shall both be deemed to be in a
presumptive state of substantial compliance
by the Department. All Awards premised on
presumptive substantial compliance shall
include conditions in their respective
Standard Agreements requiring that prior to
funds disbursement, the subject jurisdiction
must have received a final housing element
certification let ter from the Depart ment.

Program
website

Download
June 16, 2022
IIG-2019
Guidelines
under
"Guidelines"

Program
NOFA memo
Program
website

Program
guidelines
Local Housing
Trust Fund
(LHTF)
HCD Threshold
requirement
Adopted housing
element that has been
found by the
Department to be in
substantial compliance
At time of award Sep-23 City or County Applicants must have a Housing Element that was adopted by the
Applicant’s governing body and subsequently
determined by the Department to be in
compliance with state Housing Element law
by the time awards are announced. If an
applicant is determined to be out of
compliance at the time awards are
announced, it will be ineligible to receive
funding and the next highest scoring eligible
application may be funded in its place.

Program
NOFA memo
Program
website

Page 621 of 670 ends

12/13/2022 7

PROGRAM AGENCY REQUIREMENT
/CRITERIA

DEFINITION OF

COMPLIANCE DEADLINE FOR COMPLIANCE
RELEVANT 2023

DEADLINE
(PLANNED)2

LANGUAGE FROM GUIDELINES

OR REGULATIONS

REFERENCE

URL AS OF
12/1/2022

FUNDING

PROGRAM

WEBPAGE
Multifamily
Housing
Program (MHP)
HCD n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a No language in guidelines Program guidelines
Program
website
One Bay Area
Grant (OBAG)
Metropolitan
Transportation
Commission
(MTC)
Threshold
requirement
Adopted housing
element that has been
found by the
Department to be in
substantial compliance
By December 31, 2023 31-Dec-23 Have a general plan housing element adopted and certified by the California Department of
Housing and Community Development (HCD)
for the 2023- 31 Regional Housing Needs
Allocation (RHNA) cycle by December 31,
2023, and maintain certification throughout
the OBAG 3 program period .

Program
details
Program
website
Permanent
Local Housing
Allocation
(PLHA)
HCD Threshold
requirement
Adopted housing
element that has been
found by the
Department to be in
substantial compliance
At time of award, by February
28, 2023

If application submitted
within 120 days of housing
element due date, Dept may
refer to prior cycle
compliance
Jan -March 2023
depending on
specific program

Aug-Dec 2023
(rolling awards
for the formula
program)
Housing Element Compliance: The Applicant
and delegating Local government, if
applicable, must be a locality with an adopted
housing element that has been found by the
Department to be in substantial compliance
with the requirements of Article 10.6
(commencing with section 65580) of Chapter
3 of Division 1 of Title 7 of the Government
Code, pursuant to Government Code section
65585 at the time of award. Awards will be
made through February 2023. If a jurisdiction
submits an application prior to the November
30th application closing deadline but fails to
demonstrate that their housing element is in
compliance by February 28, 2023, will not be
eligible and any 2019 funds will revert to the
Housing Rehabilitation Loan Fund per statute.

If the application is submitted within 120 day s
of the housing element due date, the
Department may refer to the jurisdiction’s
compliance from the prior cycle.

NOTE: Please be advised that no funding from
any subsequent year will be disbursed if the
Local government is not in compliance with
the housing element requirement and the
Housing Element Annual Progress Report
(APR) requirement stated in Guidelines
Section 302(a) and (b), or in the event that
the Local government has not submitte d its
Program
NOFA memo
Program
website

Page 622 of 670 ends

12/13/2022 8

PROGRAM AGENCY REQUIREMENT
/CRITERIA

DEFINITION OF

COMPLIANCE DEADLINE FOR COMPLIANCE
RELEVANT 2023

DEADLINE
(PLANNED)2

LANGUAGE FROM GUIDELINES

OR REGULATIONS

REFERENCE

URL AS OF
12/1/2022

FUNDING

PROGRAM

WEBPAGE
annual PLHA report, as required by Guidelines
Section 503. Please refer to Appendix D for
more information on verifying housing
element and APR status.

Transit Oriented
Development
(TOD)
HCD Threshold
requirement
Adopted housing
element that has been
found by the
Department to be in
substantial compliance
At time of application n/a All funds
have been
awarded
The Housing Development must be located in
a Locality with an adopted housing element
that has been found by the Department to be
in substantial compliance with the
requirements of California’s Housing Element
Law (Gov. Code, § 65580 et seq.) at time of
application.

Program
guidelin es
Program
website

Page 623 of 670 ends

12/13/2022 9
Appendix B: Details of Funding Programs that Incentivize Housing Element Compliance

PROGRAM AGENCY REQUIREMENT
/CRITERIA

DEFINITION OF

COMPLIANCE DEADLINE FOR COMPLIANCE
RELEVANT 2023

DEADLINE
(PLANNED)3

LANGUAGE FROM GUIDELINES

OR REGULATIONS

REFERENCE

URL AS OF
12/1/2022

FUNDING

PROGRAM

WEBPAGE
Active
Transportation
Program
California
Transportation
Commission
(CTC)
Prohousing
designation
a mong pos s ible
evaluation
criteria (helps
with score)
See Prohousing
Designation, below
See Prohousing Designation,
below
2022 applicatio n
deadline was
June 15, 2022

Adoption June
2023

2023 deadlines
TBD?
Under Scoring Criteria (Transformative
Projects): Applicants are encouraged to apply
for the California Department of Housing and
Community Development’s (HCD) Prohousing
Designation Program and to describe how
local policies align with prohousing criteria . If
housing is not an issue for the community , the
applicant should explain why it is not a
concern.

Program
guidelines
Program
website
HOME
Investment
HCD Scoring factor
(50 points out
of minimum
930 needed;
1550 points
possible)
Adopted housing
element that has been
found by the
Depart ment to be in
substantial compliance
At time of application Jul-23 Applicants that meet the definition of a local public entity (cities and counties) are required
to be in substantive compliance with state
Housing Element Law, as defined in state
HOME regulations Section 8201(t), as of the
NOFA application due date .

“Housing element in substantive compliance”
means the city or county’s adopted housing
element is in substantive compliance as
demonstrated by a letter from the
Department which sets forth findings that the
housing element adopted within the time
frames required by Section 65588 of the
Government Code includes that substance
essential to every requirement of Article 10. 6,
commencing with Section 65580, of Chapter 3
of Division I of Title VII of the Government
Code.

Program
NOFA memo

Program
regulations
Program
webs ite
Local
Partnership
Program
CTC Prohousing
designation
a mong pos s ible
evaluation
criteria
See Prohousing
Designation, below
See Prohousing Designation,
below
2022 applicatio n
deadline is
November 29,
2022

Among the evaluation criteria: Demonstrating
the local jurisdiction applied to the
Department of Housing and Community
Development’s Prohousing Designation
Program and meets Prohousing criteria that
support efficient land use.

Program
guidelines
Program
website

3 HCD programs reference Notice of Funding Availability Calendar

Page 624 of 670 ends

12/13/2022 10

PROGRAM AGENCY REQUIREMENT
/CRITERIA

DEFINITION OF

COMPLIANCE DEADLINE FOR COMPLIANCE
RELEVANT 2023

DEADLINE
(PLANNED)3

LANGUAGE FROM GUIDELINES

OR REGULATIONS

REFERENCE

URL AS OF
12/1/2022

FUNDING

PROGRAM

WEBPAGE
Program
adoption June
28-29, 2023

2023 deadlines
TBD?
Solutions for
Congested
Corridors
Program
CTC Prohousing
application is
one way to
demonstrate
efficient land
use and
housing
See Prohousing
Designation, below
See Prohousing Designation,
below
2022 applicatio n
deadline is
December 2,
2022

Program
adoption June
28-29, 2023

2023 deadlines
TBD?
Under Additional Evaluation Criteria (Efficent
Land Use and Housing): The applicant may
also identify 1) local government jurisdictions
that will be served by the proposed project
and have obtained a Prohousing Designation,
or have applied for a Prohousing Designation,
or 2) enacted or developing loca l la nd-use
policies in the project area which support
efficient land -use patterns or incorporate
Prohousing criteria.

Program
guidelin es
Program
website
Transit and
Intercity Rail
Capital Program
California State
Transportation
Agency (CalSTA)
Prohousing
designation
a mong pos s ible
evaluation
criteria
See Prohousing
Designation, below
See Prohousing Designation,
below
2023 applicatio n
deadline is
February 10,
2023

Anticipated
award date is
April 24, 2023
Under Primary Evaluation Criteria: Projects
must document the degree to which ridership
growth expected over the life of the project is
supported by housing policies that will
support such growth, including evidence of
compliance with state -required housing plans
(such as an Adopted Housing Element), and
may include a designation of the community
as Prohousing, as determined by the
Department of Housing and Community
Development’s Prohousing Designation
Program.

Program
guidelines
Program
website
*Prohousing
Designation
HCD Threshold
requirement
An adopted housing
element that has been
duly found to be in
substantial compliance
with the requirements
of Housing Element
Law
At time of application OR
prior to designation
Rolling
applications and
approvals
(1) The applicant has adopted a Compliant
Housing Element at the time of application or
prior to designation.

(6) Compliant Housing Element. An adopted
housing element that has been duly found to
be in substantial compliance with the
requirements of Housing Element Law.

Regulation
text
Program
website

Page 625 of 670 ends

?×
?×
%&p(
%&p(
A¿
Ygnacio Valley Rd
DetroitAve
DiamondBlvd
Treat BlvdOakGroveRd
Clayton Rd
Kirker Pass Rd
Concord Ave
SunvalleyBlvd CowellRd
Concord Blvd
Port
Chica
goHwy
Willow Pass Rd
Meadow
Ln
MonumentBlvd
I
0 0.75 1.5
Miles
S:\MapRequest\Engineering\CIPPavement\CIPPavementProjects.aprx Map Created: 1/4/2023
By GIS Division of Information Technology
Legend
RCAA Area
City Boundary
Racially Concentrated Areas of Affluence (RCAA)
ACS (2015-2019)
ATTACHMENT 8

Page 626 of 670 ends

Page 627 of 670 ends

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?×
?×
%&p(
%&p(
A¿
Ygnacio Valley Rd
DetroitAve
Diamond
Bl
vd
Treat Blvd
OakGroveRd
Clayton Rd
Kirker Pass Rd
Concord Ave
SunvalleyBlvd Cowell Rd
Concord Blvd
Por
tChicagoHwy
Willow Pass Rd
Meadow Ln
Monume
ntBlvd
RL
RL RL
RL
RL
RL
RL
RL
RR15
RR15
RR15
RR15
RR15
RR20
RR20
RR20
RR20
RR20
RR20
RR20
RR20
RR20
RR20
RR20
RR20
RR20
RR40
RR40
RR40
RR40
RS10
RS10
RS10
RS10RS10
RS10
RS10
RS10
RS10
RS10
RS10
RS10RS10
RS10
RS10
RS10
RS10
RS12
RS12
RS12 RS12
RS12
RS12
RS12
RS15
RS15
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS6
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7RS7
RS7RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7 RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7
RS7.5
RS7.5RS7.5
RS7.5
RS7.5
RS7.5
RS7.5
RS7.5
RS7.5
RS7.5
RS7.5
RS7.5
RS7.5
RS7.5
RS7.5
RS7.5
RS8
RS8
RS8 RS8
RS8
RS8
RS8
RS8
RS8
RS8
RS8
RS8
RS8
RS8
RS8RS8
RS8
RS8
RS8
RS8RS8
RS8
City of Concord Zoning
I
0 2,500 5,0001,250
Feet
S:\MapRequest\Engineering\CIPPavement\CIPPavementProjects.aprx Map Created: 1/4/2023 By GIS Division of Information Technology
Zoning Classification
Planned District
Rural Residential (RR15)
Rural Residential (RR20)
Rural Residential (RR40)
Single Family Residential (RS6)
Single Family Residential (RS7)
Single Family Residential (RS7.5)
Single Family Residential (RS8)
Single Family Residential (RS10)
Single Family Residential (RS12)
Single Family Residential (RS15)
Residential, Low Density (RL)
Residential, Medium Density (RM)
Residential, High Density (RH)
North Todos Santos (NTS)
Community Office (CO)
Commercial Mixed Use (CMX)
Neighborhood Commerical (NC)
Regional Commercial (RC)
Service Commerical (SC)
Downtown Pedestrian (DP)
Downtown Mixed Use (DMX)
West Concord Mixed Use (WMX)
Office Business Park (OBP)
Industrial Business Park (IBP)
Industrial Mixed Use (IMX)
Heavy Industrial (HI)
Public/Quasi-Public (PQP)
Open Space (OS)
Parks and Recreation (PR)
Rural Conservation (RLC)
Wetlands/Resource Conservation (WRC)
Study District (S)
Unzoned (U)
Concord Reuse Project – Green Frame (CRP-GF)
Concord City Boundary
BART Track
BART Station
ATTACHMENT 9

Page 633 of 670 ends

STATE OF CALIFORNIA - BUSINESS, CONSUMER SERVICES AND HOUSING AGENCY GAVIN NEWSOM, Governor

DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

DIVISION OF HOUSING POLICY DEVELOPMENT
2020 W. El Camino Avenue, Suite 500
Sacramento, CA 95833
(916) 263-2911 / FAX (916) 263-7453
www.hcd.ca.gov
MEMO
RANDUM
DATE: December 29, 2022
TO: Planning Directors and Interested Parties
.

FROM: Megan Kirkeby, Deputy Director
Di vision of Housing Policy Development
SUBJECT: Assembly Bill 2339 – Legislation Effective January 1, 2023:

Housing Element: Emergency Shelters
Chapter 654, Statutes of 2022 (AB 2339), adds additional specificity on how cities and counties plan for emergency shelters and ensure sufficient capacity for low-income housing in their housing elements. Generally, AB 2339 amends State Housing Element Law regarding identification of zones and sites for emergency shelters and transitional and supportive housing as follows:

Amendments to Government Code section 65583, subdivision (a)(4) • Ex
pands the definition of “emergency shelters” to include other interim interventions, including but not limited to, navigation centers, bridge housing, and respite or recuperative care.
• Requires that zoning designations identified to allow emergency shelters as a permitted use without a conditional use or other discretionary permit must allow residential uses. This could include zones that allow mixed uses that permit residential.
• The local government must demonstrate the adequacy of sites identified to accommodate emergency shelters. Specifically, if a vacant site is zoned for a nonresidential use but allows residential development, the site must be located near amenities and services that serve people experiencing homelessness. If the site is nonvacant, the analysis must provide substantial evidence that the existing use is likely to be discontinued during the planning period.

ATTACHMENT 10

Page 634 of 670 ends

Assembly Bill 2339 – Legislation Effective January 1, 2023:

Housing Element: Emergency Shelters

Page 2 ends

• Sites owned by the local government can be included if the analysis demonstrates that the sites will be made available for emergency shelters during the planning period, are suitable for residential use, and are located near amenities that serve people experiencing homelessness.
• Provides a calculation methodology for determining the sufficiency of sites available to accommodate emergency shelters in the identified zoning designation. • Requires analysis of any adopted written objective standards for potential governmental constraints.

Appl
icable Timing (Government Code section 65583, subdivision (e)) Amendments to Housing Element Law apply per the following timing:
• January 1, 2023 for any housing element or housing element amendment prepared pursuant to subdivision (e) of Section 65588 or Section 65584.02, when the city, county, or city and county fails to submit the first draft to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (Department) before the due date specified in Section 65588 or 65584.02.
• April 1, 2023 for a housing element or housing element amendment prepared pursuant to subdivision (e) of Section 65588 or Section 65584.02, when a city, county, or city and county submits a draft to the Department for review pursuant to Section 65585 more than 90 days after the effective date of the amendment to this section.

An electronic copy can be found at: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/.

You m
ay also obtain copies of published bills from the Legislative Bill Room by calling (916) 445-2323. If you have any questions, or seek additional technical assistance, please contact [email protected].

Page 635 of 670 ends

From: Peg Miller <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, January 9, 2023 4:55 PM
To: City Clerk <[email protected]>
Subject: supporting housing stability for Concord residents

In these very challenging times, please do whatever you need to do to help people stay in their housing, so we do not have even more people who are homeless….do whatever you can to increase the housing available for those unhoused people in Concord. Thanks for your concern for each and every person in Concord.

Sent from Mail for Windows

Benched Correspondence
Agenda Item No. 5.a
January 10, 2023

Page 636 of 670 ends

From: Alex <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2023 2:58 PM
To: City Clerk <[email protected]>
Subject: Comments for city council meeting

Hi,

These comments are in regards to item 5a: "Considering – comments from the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) on the City's draft Housing Element Update (HEU), and providing input to be incorporated into a revised HEU for adoption by the City Council."

I'm a long-term resident of Concord, born and raised here and now lucky enough to be able to raise my family here. I'm a homeowner in the Ygnacio Hills neighborhood just south of Treat.

I'm glad to see that the staff report moves up the timeline for rezoning South and East Concord.

Changing the zoning in these areas will greatly further fair housing, and it's only fair that my neighbors and I help make room for more families to live in Concord to help alleviate our serious housing crisis.

I support the staff comments and hope you implement them.

Alex Gude

Page 637 of 670 ends

From: East Bay for Everyone <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2023 2:57 PM
To: Sage, Aaron <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Comment on Housing Element item

Thanks very much for reading our letter and responding to many of our concerns. This draft sounds like it will be significantly improved from the last draft.

One note we had in our letter but did not see in the staff report (apologies if we missed it, we were reading quickly) was that Concord's setback requirements are very high. It would be great to reduce setbacks to make housing more feasible on a lot of these parcels, and also decrease walking times.

We would love the language in the Housing Element to be stronger around rent stabilization and just cause eviction protections.

We appreciate the commitment to rezoning in the southern and eastern parts of the city and would love to see a concrete commitment to include affordable housing in these areas.

We second the requests from Monument Impact to call for a "ballot measure" which would give flexibility about issuing a bond vs. a new tax in order to finance new housing development.

We would also love to see more information about your plans at North Concord to ensure housing is feasible there by 2031, after a developer pulled out.

Kevin

Benched Correspondence
Agenda Item No. 5a
January 10, 2023

Page 638 of 670 ends

State HCD Comments on
Housing Element Update
Comentarios Estatales de HCD Sobre la Actualización del Elemento de Vivienda City Council / Concejo Municipal
January 10, 2023
Project Manager:

Aaron Sage, Principal Planner
(925) 671-3465
[email protected]

Page 639 of 670 ends

2 Land Acknowledgement / Reconocimientode tierras
The primary inhabitants of Concord
were the Chupcan tribe of the Bay
Miwok language group. Concord is
also home to members of other
tribal groups, including Ohlone.

Los principales habitantes de la zona
eran la tribu Chupcan del grupo
lingüístico Bay Miwok. Concord
también es hogar de miembrxs de
otras tribus, incluyendo Ohlone.

City of Concord location
Borde Ciudad de Concord
Source: East Bay Regional
Parks District

Page 640 of 670 ends

Overview / Resumen
• HCD Comments / Recommended Revisions
HCD Comentarios / Revisiones recomendadas
• Next Steps / Proximos Pasos
• Consequences for Non-Compliance
Consecuencias del incumplimiento
• Council Input Requested / Se solicitan aportaciones del Consejo 3

Page 641 of 670 ends

HCD Comments
• 63 total comments / 63 comentarios en total
• 51 “minor” comments (technical/clarifications) / 51 comentarios "menores" (técnicos/aclaraciones)
• 12 “major” comments (significant analysis or policy changes) 12 comentarios “principales” (análisis significativo o cambios en las políticas)
• City must “consider and incorporate public comments where appropriate” / La ciudad debe "considerar e incorporar comentarios públicos cuando sea apropiado
4

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HCD Comment #4 – RECAP
HCD Comentario# 4 - RECAP
• Applies to area in Monument Corridor designated by HUD as “Racially or Ethnically Concentrated Area of Poverty” (RECAP) Se aplica al área en el Corredor de Monumentos designada por HUD como "Área de pobreza concentrada racial o étnicamente" (RECAP) • Comment: Conduct further analysis of “quality of life conditions” (e.g., housing, infrastructure, parks, etc.) and “the effectiveness or absence of past strategies related to [creating an] equitable quality of life.”
• Comentario: Realizar un análisis más detallado de las "condiciones de calidad de vida" (por ejemplo, vivienda, infraestructura, parques, etc.) y "la efectividad o ausencia de estrategias pasadas relacionadas con [crear una] calidad de vida equitativa".
5

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RECAP / TCAC Opportunity Map
Mapade RECAP / oportunidadesde TCAC
6 N
Recursos bajos
Límite de la ciudad
Recurso moderado
Alto Recurso
Estacion de Armas Navales
Área de pobreza concentrada
Legend / Leyenda
Estacion de Armas Navales
Área de pobreza concentrada
Legend / Leyenda

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Recommended Revisions – RECAP / Low-Resource Areas
Revisionesrecomendadas– RECAP / Áreasde bajosrecursos
• Complete a safety/mobility project of at least
$1 million in a low-resource area (with priority on highly segregated areas) / Completar un proyecto de seguridad / movilidad de al menos $1 millón en un área de bajos recursos (con prioridad en áreas altamente segregadas)
• Commit at least 20% of Cannabis Community Benefit Fund to low-resource areas (with priority on highly segregated areas) / Comprometer al menos el 20% del Fondo de Beneficios Comunitarios de Cannabis a áreas de bajos recursos (con prioridad en áreas altamente segregadas)
7

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Recommended Revisions – RECAP / Low-Resource Areas
Revisionesrecomendadas– RECAP / Áreasde bajosrecursos
• Spend $150K in settlement funds to advance small business development and economic vitality in the Monument Corridor Gastar $ 150K en fondos de liquidación para promover el desarrollo de pequeñas empresas y la vitalidad económica en el Corredor del Monumento
• Seek partners and apply for State Project Homekey funds for a project serving vulnerable populations / Buscar socios y solicitar fondos del Proyecto Estatal Homekey para un proyecto que sirva a poblaciones vulnerables
8

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Recommended Revisions – RECAP / Low-Resource Areas
Revisionesrecomendadas– RECAP / Áreasde bajosrecursos
• Partner with community based organizations to conduct bilingual outreach on fair housing laws (including Section 8 voucher protections), housing programs and social services
Asociarse con organizaciones comunitarias para llevar a cabo actividades bilingües sobre leyes de vivienda justa (incluyendo protecciones de vales de la Sección 8), programas de vivienda y servicios sociales 9

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HCD Comment #7 – AFFH and RHNA Sites
Comentario HCD #7 – Sitios AFFH y RHNA
• Relates to concentration of Regional Housing Needs
Determination (RHNA) sites in low-resource areas of Concord, and how the sites comply with Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) laws. / Se relaciona con la concentración de sitios de Determinación Regional de Necesidades de Vivienda (RHNA) en áreas de bajos recursos de Concord, y cómo los sitios cumplen con las leyes de Promoción Afirmativa de Vivienda Justa (AFFH). • Comment: Analyze “any isolation of the RHNA [sites] by income group and whether the distribution of sites improves or exacerbates conditions.” / Comentario: Analizar "cualquier aislamiento de los [sitios] RHNA por grupo de ingresos y si la distribución de los sitios mejora o exacerba las condiciones". 10

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RHNA Sites
Map
11 N
Mapade Posibles
Sitiosde Vivienda

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Recommended Revisions – AFFH and RHNA Sites
Revisiones recomendadas – Sitios AFFH y RHNA
• Revise AFFH rezoning program as follows: / Revise el programa de rezonificación de AFFH de la siguiente manera:
• Focus on higher-resource, racially and economically segregated areas, considering a variety of data sources, with public input / Centrarse en áreas de mayores recursos, segregadas racial y económicamente, teniendo en cuenta una variedad de fuentes de datos, con aportes públicos
• Rezone 20 acres of land at min. 60 units per acre / Rezonificar 20 acres de tierra a un mínimo de 60 unidades por acre
• Rezone for at least 1,000 units on sites that meet lower-income criteria / Rezonificar para al menos 1,000 unidades en sitios que cumplen con los criterios de bajos ingresos
• Complete by Dec. 2024 / Completar para diciembre de 2024 12

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Racially Concentrated Areas of Affluence
Áreas de riqueza racialmente concentradas
13 N

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Recommended Revisions – AFFH and RHNA Sites
Revisiones recomendadas – Sitios AFFH y RHNA
• Allow ADUs (and JADUs) to be combined with SB 9 units (up to 8 units) / Permitir que las ADU (y JADU) se combinen con unidades SB 9 (hasta 8 unidades)
• Allow affordable tiny homes/cottages on religious sites Permitir pequeñas casas / cabañas asequibles en sitios religiosos • Pursue additional funding sources for affordable housing, including placing tax measure on Nov. 2024 ballot
Buscar fuentes de financiamiento adicionales para viviendas asequibles, incluida la colocación de medidas fiscales en la boleta electoral de noviembre de 2024
14

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Alternate Revisions – AFFH and RHNA Sites
Revisiones alternativas: sitios AFFH y RHNA
• Adopt rent control ordinance by Dec. 2023 / Adoptar una ordenanza de control de alquileres para diciembre de 2023 • Adopt just cause eviction ordinance by Dec. 2023 / Adoptar una ordenanza de desalojo por causa justa para diciembre de 2023 • Increase allowable densities on Clayton Road near bus stops from 11-40 units per acre to 50-75 units per acre / Aumentar las densidades permitidas en Clayton Road cerca de las paradas de autobús de 11-40 unidades por acre a 50-75 unidades por acre 15

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HCD Comment #27 – Emergency Shelters
HCD Comentario#27 – Refugiosde emergencia
• Comment: Analyze emergency shelter regulations, e.g.
distance from sensitive uses, transit proximity, and facility requirements, as constraints on shelter development
Comentario: Analizar las regulaciones de refugio de emergencia, por ejemplo, la distancia de usos sensibles, la proximidad del tránsito y los requisitos de las instalaciones, como restricciones para el desarrollo de refugios.

Recommended Revisions: / Revisiones recomendadas:
• Simplify emergency shelter regulations / Simplificar las regulaciones de refugio de emergencia
16

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HCD Comments #33-34 – Constraints on Multi-Family Housing Comentarios de HCD #33-34 – Restricciones en la vivienda multifamiliar • Comment: Analyze Design Review and Use Permit requirements for constraints on multi-family housing production
• Comentario: Analizar los requisitos de revisión de diseño y permisos de uso para restricciones en la producción de viviendas multifamiliares Recommended Revisions: / Revisiones recomendadas:
• Conduct all design review at staff level (no Design Review Board), if objective standards are met / Realice toda la revisión del diseño a nivel del personal (sin comité de revisión del diseño), si se cumplen los estándares objetivos
• Allow multi-family housing by right (no Planning Commission) in commercial districts, if objective standards are met / Permitir viviendas multifamiliares por derecho (sin Comisión de Planificación) en distritos comerciales, si se cumplen estándares objetivos
17

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• Comment: Group housing parking requirement and discretionary permits for Large Residential Care Facilities are constraints. • Comentario: El requisito de estacionamiento de vivienda grupal y los permisos discrecionales para grandes instalaciones de atención residencial son restricciones.

Recommended Revisions: / Revisiones recomendadas:
• Reduce parking requirement for group housing uses / Reducir el requisito de estacionamiento para usos de alojamiento grupal • Require only objective criteria and approval findings for Large Residential Care Facilities / Requerir solo criterios objetivos y hallazgos de aprobación para grandes centros de atención residencial 18 HCD Comments #40-41 – Constraints on Housing for Persons with Disabilities
Comentarios del HCD #40-41 – Limitaciones a la vivienda para personas con discapacidad

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Revisions to RHNA Sites Inventory
Revisiones al inventario de sitios de RHNA
• Move Concord Village site (approved at 180 units) from pipeline list to sites inventory / Mover el sitio de Concord Village (aprobado en 180 unidades) de la lista de sitios potenciales al inventario de sitios • Move The Ashbury site (approved at 313 units) from pipeline list to sites inventory / Mover el sitio de Ashbury (aprobado en 313 unidades) de la lista de sitios potencials al inventario de sitios
• Add BART-owned (skate park) site on Monument Blvd. (capacity of approx. 800 units) / Agregue un sitio propiedad de BART (parque de patinaje) en Monument Blvd. (capacidad de aprox. 800 unidades)
19

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Proposed
RHNA Site
Propuestade
sitio RHNA
20 N

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Next Steps / PróximosPasos
• Jan. 10 – Council input on HCD comments
10 de enero – Aportes del Consejo sobre los comentarios del HCD • Jan. 17 – Revised HEU released
17 de enero – Publicación de la HEU revisada
• Jan. 19 – Planning Commission recommendation
19 de enero – Recomendación de la Comisión de Planificación • Jan. 31 – Council adopts Final Draft HEU
31 de enero – El Consejo adopta el borrador final de HEU 21

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Next Steps / PróximosPasos
• Feb. 7 (approx.) – Final Draft HEU submitted to HCD
1 de febrero (aprox.) – Borrador final de HEU presentado a HCD • Apr. 2 (60 days after submittal) – HCD certifies HEU or provides further comments
2 de abril (60 días después de la presentación) – HCD certifica HEU o proporciona más comentarios
• May 31 – End of “grace period” for HCD enforcement
31 de mayo – Fin del "período de gracia" para la aplicación de HCD 22

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Consequences for Non-Compliance
Consecuenciasdel incumplimiento
• Delay of funding for homeless services and capital projects – 1/31/23 / Retraso de la financiación de servicios para personas sin hogar y proyectos de capital – 1/31/23
• Ineligibility for new funds – 12/31/23 / Inelegibilidad para nuevos fondos – 12/31/23
• Galindo Street Multimodal Corridor Project
• Willow Pass Road Bikeway Connection Project
23

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Consequences for Non-Compliance
Consecuenciasdel incumplimiento
• “Builder’s Remedy” project applications – 1/31/23 / Solicitudes de proyecto "Builder's Remedy" – 1/31/23
• HCD enforcement (fines, penalties, loss of land use authority) – 5/31/23 / Aplicación de HCD (multas, sanciones, pérdida de autoridad de uso de la tierra) – 5/31/23
24

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Council Input Requested / Solicitud de aportación del Consejo 25 TOPIC / TEMA PROGRAMS / PROGRAMAs

RECAP /
Low-Resource
Areas / Áreas de
bajos recursos
• Safety/mobility project (min. $1 million) / Proyecto de seguridad/movilidad (mín. $1 millón)
• 20% of Cannabis Community Benefit Fund / 20%
del Fondo de Beneficios Comunitarios de Cannabis
• $150,000 for Monument Corridor businesses /
$150,000 para negocios de Monument Corridor
• Project Homekey funds / Proyecto Homekey fondos
• Outreach on fair housing laws, housing programs
and social services / Divulgación sobre leyes de
vivienda justa, programas de vivienda y servicios
sociales

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Council Input Requested / Solicitud de aportación del Consejo 26 TOPIC / TEMA PROGRAMS / PROGRAMAs
AFFH and RHNA
Sites (Rezoning)
• Focus on higher-resource, racially and
economically segregated areas / Centrarse en las
zonas de mayores recursos, segregadas racial y
económicamente
• Rezone 20 acres at min. 60 units per acre /
Rezonificar 20 acres a un mínimo de 60 unidades por
acre
• Rezone for min. 1,000 units / Rezonificación para un
mínimo de 1.000 unidades
• Complete by Dec. 2024 / Completado para Dec. 24

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Council Input Requested / Solicitud de aportación del Consejo 27 TOPIC / TEMA PROGRAMS / PROGRAMAS
AFFH and
RHNA Sites
• SB 9 capacity increase / Aumento de capacidad SB 9
• Tiny homes on religious sites / Casas pequeñas en sitios religiosos
• Tax measure, Nov. 2024 / Medida impositiva, noviembre de 2024
Alternate Programs: / Programas alternativos:
• Rent control by Dec. 2023 / Control de alquileres para diciembre de 2023
• Just cause by Dec. 2023 / Causa justa para diciembre de 2023
• Increase densities on Clayton Road / Aumentar las
densidades en Clayton Road

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Council Input Requested / Solicitud de aportación del Consejo 28 TOPIC / TEMA PROGRAMS / PROGRAMA
Emergency
Shelters
Refugios de
emergencia
• Simplify regulations / Simplifique las regulaciones
Multi-Family
Constraints
Limitaciones de la
construcción
multifamiliar
• Staff-level Design Review / Revisión del diseño a
nivel de personal
• Allow by right in commercial districts / Permitir por derecho en distritos comerciales

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Council Input Requested / Solicitud de aportación del Consejo 29 TOPIC / TEMA PROGRAMS / PROGRAMAS
Persons with
Disabilities
Constraints /
Limitaciones de
Personas con
Discapacidad
• Reduce group housing parking standards / Reducir
los estándares de estacionamiento de viviendas
grupales
• Objective process for Large Residential Care/
Facilities / Proceso objetivo para grandes instalaciones de cuidados residenciales
Sites Inventory /
Inventario del sitio
• Add skate park site to inventory / Agregar el sitio del parque de patinaje al inventario

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Questions?
Preguntas?
30

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Income Level
Nivel de ingresos
5th Cycle RHNA
5º ciclo RHNA
6th Cycle RHNA
6º ciclo RHNA
Increase
Aumento
Target Housing Units
Objetivo de Unidades de vivienda
Extremely/Very Low |
Extremadamente-Muy Bajo 798 1,292 494 (61.9%)
Low | Bajo 444 744 300 (67.6%)
Moderate | Moderado 559 847 288 (51.5)%
Above Moderate | Encima
de Moderado 1,677 2,190 513 (31.6)%
Total
3,478 5,073 1,595
(45.9)%
Concord RHNA

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32 City
5th Cycle
RHNA
6th Cycle
RHNA Increase
Orinda 227 1359 499%
Unincorporated 1367 7645 459%
Lafayette 400 2114 429%
Clayton 141 570 304%
Pleasant Hill 448 1803 302%
Danville 557 2241 302%
San Ramon 1417 5111 261%
Martinez 469 1345 187%
Walnut Creek 2235 5805 160%
Antioch 1448 3016 108%
Brentwood 760 1522 100%
Concord 3478 5073 46%
Pittsburgh 2025 2017 0%
County RHNA Increases / Aumentos del RHNA del Condado

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Staff Report
Date: January 17, 2023
To: City Council
From: Valerie J. Barone, City Manager
Prepared by: Joelle Fockler, MMC, City Clerk
[email protected]
(925) 671-3390
Subject: Considering selection of applicants to interview for the Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group and directing staff on how to address having only one applicant for both the Mental Health Professional and the Substance Abuse Professional appointments (continued from January 10, 2023).

Report in Brief
The City Council is being requested to establish a list of candidates to interview for seven seats on the Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group. Interviews will be conducted and interview questions determined at the January 24, 2023, City Council meeting.

Recommended Action
Select applicants to interview for seven seats on the Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group and provide direction to staff on how to address having only one applicant for both the mental Health Professional and Substance Abuse Professional appointments.

Background
The Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group was created by the City Council on December 13, 2022, with the adoption of Resolution No. 22-77.

The Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group is a Council appointed special-purpose Working Group to advise staff, the consultant team, and the Council on the development of the Homeless Strategic Plan. The Homeless Strategic Plan (Plan) is intended to guide future City efforts and investments related to responding to the impacts from and the needs of Concord’s unsheltered population, using data and fact- based information.

5.b5.b5.b5.b

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City Council Agenda Report
Agenda Item No. 5.b
January 17, 2023
In very broad strokes, the Plan will be developed under Council’s direction and will incorporate:
 Strong community engagement/involvement including residents, businesses, individuals with lived experience, service providers, faith-based groups, etc.  A working Group, appointed by the Council, to work directly with staff and the consulting team to guide the development of the Plan.
 A comprehensive background report which, at minimum, describes:
o Current system and community services, where the services reside, and associated strategies, challenges, and costs.
o Unmet needs, system gaps, and system performance.
o Overview of federal, state, and regional/county data, roles, funding, and strategies.
 The development of a vision, goals, and objectives with measurable performance targets.
 Development of an implementation plan for the defined objectives, including prioritized recommendations or investment of the money Council has set aside to invest in responding to the impacts from and needs of Concord’s unsheltered population.

The Working Group is comprised of nine (9) members: two (2) Concord City Councilmembers, one (1) representative with lived experience of being homeless, one (1) representative from a nonprofit homeless services provider, one (1) substance abuse professional, one (1) mental health professional, one (1) Concord resident and property owner, one (1) representative that is a Concord representative and is either from Concord’s business community or an owner of commercial property in Concord, and one (1) representative that is a veteran homeless services provider. For the lived experience, nonprofit homeless services provider, and substance abuse and mental health profession positions, preference shall be given to applicants that are either from or based in Concord.

The Working Group will meet in person once per month, at minimum, for approximately nine to twelve months, and meetings are anticipated to last from 1-3 hours, depending on the agenda. Meetings will be subject to the Brown Act, noticed in advance, and open to the public with opportunities for public comment. Members are expected to attend all meetings, read all materials, and be prepared to listen and engage on the topics discussed.

On December 13, 2022, the Council announced a recruitment for the Working Group, and the application period closed on Tuesday, January 3, 2023. Twenty (20) applications were received: ten (10) for Concord Resident and Property Owner position;

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City Council Agenda Report
Agenda Item No. 5.b
January 17, 2023
four (4) for Nonprofit Homeless Service Provider; five (5) for Lived Experience representative; four (4) for Business Community representative; one (1) for Mental Health Professional; two (2) for Veteran Homeless Services Provider, and one (1) for Substance Abuse Professional.

Analysis
Two categories, Mental Health Professional and Substance Abuse Professional, received one application each. As the expectation was that there would be more than one applicant for each type of position, the Council may want to consider some options for these two positions. The options are presented below without a staff recommendation and without any priority to their order:

1. reopen the recruitment for the two positions (Mental Health Professional & Substance Abuse Professional) so the Council has more than one applicant to interview for each slot;

2. Interview the applicants for Mental Health and Substance Abuse Professionals then either appoint or recruit for more applications; or

3. Choose to appoint the single applicants for each position (Menatl Health Professional & Substance Abuse Professional) based on the submitted applications, without interviewing.

If the Council chooses to open a recruitment for the two positions, interviews for these two positions could be held separately from the interviews for the other five positions.

Holding separate interviews could delay the Working Group start.

The Council is being requested to select two applicants to interview for each position in the working group in the following categories:
 Concord Resident and Property Owner
 Nonprofit Homeless Service Provider
 Lived Experience of Being Homeless
 Concord Resident and Either from Concord’s Business Community or an Owner of Commercial Property in Concord
 Veteran Homeless Services Provider
Applications received for each category (Summary List attached as Attachment 1) Concord Resident and Property Owner
John Tague
Andrea (Andie) Altman*
Kent Davis*

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City Council Agenda Report
Agenda Item No. 5.b
January 17, 2023
Timothy Shindelus
Lance Goree
Desiree Mcdonagh
Harmesh Kumar*
Wayne Calhoon
John Eckstrom*
Linda Jacob*
Nonprofit Homeless Services Provider
Kelly Mckinley
Andrea (Andie) Altman*
Bob Pickett
John Eckstrom*
Lived Experience Representative
Stacy Ahlwardt
Kent Davis*
Melanie Taylor
Dawn Koch
Brandi Martinez
Business Community Representative
Eric Rehn
Don Freas
Mark Unterbach
John Eckstrom*
Mental Health Professional
Harmesh Kumar*
Veterans Homeless Services Provider
Leonard Ramirez
John Eckstrom*

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City Council Agenda Report
Agenda Item No. 5.b
January 17, 2023
Substance Abuse Professional
Linda Jacob*
*Applications submitted for more than one position
At the January 24, 2023, City Council meeting, the Council will 1) determine the interview questions; 2) interview the applicants; 3) select and vote on the applicants; 4) select two Councilmembers to serve on the Working Group; and 5) ratify the vote and appoint Working Group members by resolution.

Financial Impact
There is no financial impact.

Public Contact
The City Council Agenda was posted and applicants were notified.

Attachments

1. Roster of Applicants

2. Applications

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Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Application Summary # Full Name Date Received
Concord
Resident and
Property Owner
NonProfit
Homeless
Servides
Provider
Lived Experience
Representative
Business
Community
Representative
Mental Health
Professional
Veteran
Homeless
Services
Provider
Substance
Abuse
Professional
1 John Tague 12/27/22 x
2 Kelly Mckinley 12/27/22 x
3 Andrea (andie) Altman 12/27/22 x x
4 Stacy Ahlwardt 12/22/22 x
5 Eric Rehn 12/20/22 x
6 Kent Davis 12/20/22 x x
7 Timothy Shindelus 12/20/22 x
8 Lance Goree 12/20/22 x
9 Desiree Mcdonagh 12/19/22 x
10 Harmesh Kumar 12/18/22 x x
11 Wayne Calhoon 12/18/22 x
12 Melanie Taylor 12/17/22 x
13 Dawn Koch 12/17/22 x
14 Don Freas 12/16/22 x
15 Bob Pickett 12/15/22 x
16 Brandi Martinez 12/15/22 x
17 Leonard Ramirez 12/15/22 x
18 Mark Unterbach 12/15/22 x
19 John Eckstrom 12/15/22 x x x x
20 Linda Jacob 01/01/23 x x
Applications Received
by Position Type #
Concord Resident and Property Owner 10
Nonprofit Homeless Services Provider 4
Lived Experience Representative 5
Business Community Representative 4
Mental Health Professional 1
Veteran Homeless Services Provider 2
Substance Abuse Professional 1
Attachment 1

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Submit Date: Dec 27, 2022
First Name Last Name
Email Address
Street Address Suite or Apt
City State Postal Code
Primary Phone Alternate Phone
Employer Job Title Occupation
City of Concord
Profile

HOME ADDRESS
Number of years at above address:

1.5 Number of years in Concord:

1.5 Number of years in the county:

1.5 Number of years at employer:

Employer Address
Which Boards would you like to apply for?
Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group: Submitted
Andrea (andie) Altman
Andrea Altman Fully Retired Retired
Andrea (andie) Altman Page 1 of 4
Attachment 2

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Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Are you available for daytime meetings?
Yes No
Question applies to multiple boards
Are you available for evening meetings?
Yes No
Would you like to be contacted about future Board, Committee, or Commission recruitments?
Yes No
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Please identify the type of position you are applying for * Nonprofit Homeless Services Provider
Concord Resident and Property Owner
Interests and Experience
Why would you like to participate in the Concord Community Academy? I would like to participate in the Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group for many reasons but first and foremost I am passionate about working to solve homelessness. The Homeless Strategic Plan and its implementation will touch and impact human lives across the board from the currently unhoused as well as folks living in neighborhoods that may need to accept some change and possibly more housing. I believe I can help in identifying the multitude of issues, opportunities and solutions that exist for the purpose of assisting in the preparation of a strategic plan. Besides helping to operate a local nonprofit focused on homelessness, I am also a Concord homeowner who sees and interacts daily with our unhoused. I would like to be part of the process to develop a plan that could be discussed and ultimately accepted and implemented for concord residents and our homeless.

How did you hear about the Concord Community Academy?
Word of mouth
Other
Andrea (andie) Altman Page 2 of 4

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Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Do you or have you participated in any supply and/or food distribution to the community of unsheltered residents? If so, please explain your experience.

Upon moving to Concord I met unhoused neighbors living in a city park and began to regularly bring them food, clothing, and other supplies. Last spring, I met a woman (Kelly McKinley) who feeds and works with the homeless daily, and have been working with her daily. We founded a Nonprofit and our grass roots organization provides food and several services daily to 50-60 unhoused people in Concord. I not only participate in cooking and hosting the organized dinners of hot meals, sandwiches and snacks 3 nights a week, but I also coordinate the weekly showers for the unhoused, manage the weekly balances on laundry cards, and assist in acquiring supplies needed like tents, bedding, propane, hygiene products, transportation assistance to appointments. Our nonprofit does business under the legal name of GROW and behind the scenes I am responsible for the operations of the corporation.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your most recent interaction with someone who you believe is unsheltered.

I had the pleasure last night of meeting two of my unsheltered friends trying to escape the incoming rain at a fast-food restaurant on Clayton Road. While enjoying our late-night snacks we chatted for over an hour about the storm, the way these 2 gentlemen handle weather changes versus the way I do, how they celebrated the holiday weekend and what we each would like to see for ourselves in 5 years. I speak to these 2 characters almost daily and we understand and trust each other, as far as the dialog about our dreams at least. I am learning that while each person has a somewhat different dream, they each have thought of some possible ways to get there. When I asked them this question back in June these two men each said he was on the street forever and would not engage in further discussion. Many neighbors have come into their lives since then and this has changed perspectives, mostly of themselves and some hope and believe that change for them is ok. Later I drove them to the trail of their camp sending them off with hugs and hoping for the best through the horribly windy, wet and stormy night.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your experience using homeless response programs such as CORE, the Police Department, and non-profit providers.

The few experiences that I have had so far with the Police Department were professional and informative.

I was able to get names and numbers of resources and information on what to do in specific situations. I am building relationships with nonprofits that provide varying services; from detox beds to SLE's to assisted living facilities. Working with other nonprofits allows me to focus on our core objectives and know where to reach out for other needs. My limited experiences with CORE are mixed, disappointed at the times I was not able to get information or a reference for what I needed regarding an unhoused friend and disappointed that they have made appointments to transport folks and have not shown up. I was happy this past summer that my call was answered by CORE staff and not the answering service, so I was able to learn quickly that they could not help with a request for information.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Do you have family members or close friends who are or have been unsheltered? Yes No
Education and Training
High School
Cheltenham HS, Wyncote, PA
Andrea (andie) Altman Page 3 of 4

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Upload a Resume
College
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
Technicial/Vocational Training
Certification or Other
CCAM (CA Community Association Manager)
TERMS OF ACCEPTANCE and SIGNATURE
Please Agree with the Following Statement
I understand that checking this box constitutes a legal signature confirming that I acknowledge and agree to the above Terms and Acceptance.

I Agree *
Electronic Signature - Please type your First and Last Name Andrea Altman
Andrea (andie) Altman Page 4 of 4

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ANDREA ALTMAN

Fully retired, I volunteer my time and energy to my community where it is most needed. My focus is exclusively on working with the unsheltered and I seek participation in programs and groups that effectively analyze and plan to solve the local unhoused population long term.

EXPERIENCE
2022-PRESNT

SECRETARY-TREASURER, COMMUNITY NETWORK CAPITAL- DBA GROW Business management of Concord-based Nonprofit dedicated to providing the local unhoused population with necessities while focusing long-term on rehabilitation and recovery. Responsibilities include all nonprofit business operations, partnership building with vital professionals and businesses, and daily support of our unhoused population.

2004 – PRESENT

FULL TIME VOLUNTEER/ BUSINESS CONSULTANT, VARIOUS
Kenwood Education Foundation President; Kiwanis Club of Oakmont President, Homeowners Association Board of Directors; Oakmont Community Foundation Board of Directors; California Parenting Institute Board of Directors, Business Relationship and Systems Consultant for Streetwise Reports, Crown Laboratories

2001-2014
FOUNDER, ANDREALA INC., Kenwood, CA
Business Relationship and Systems Consultant for Streetwise Reports, Logistics consultant Crown Laboratories of Las Vegas, Consulting for community Nonprofit development

1979 – 2000

VP, SYSTEMS AND DATABASES, MCKESSON DRUG COMPANY, SAN FRANCISCO Interface between business partners and tech; developed systems and business processes to improve and economize the delivery of medicines and healthcare products to pharmacies and hospitals.

EDUCATION
1979

BS, BUSINESS MANAGEMENT AND INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, LEHIGH UNIVERSITY – BETHLEHEM, PA
Graduated with Honors as Student-Athlete; Senior Management Case Study Published; Varsity Captain Field Hockey, Basketball and Tennis

Page 11 of 122 ends

2 SKILLS
• Collaborative
• Strong communicator
• Excellent listener and analytical person
• Goal focused
• Strong work ethic

ACTIVITIES
I enjoy giving back to my community and have become active everywhere I have lived; being fortunate to coach students in STEM programs; fundraise for vital programs for education, seniors, veterans; determine the educational and recreational needs of senior communities then design programs to meet those needs.

Since moving to Concord I have been active daily in getting to know my many unhoused neighbors while helping to organize efforts to provide food, clothes, supplies, showers, laundry, detox and rehab, and ultimately housing.

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Submit Date: Dec 15, 2022
First Name Last Name
Email Address
Street Address Suite or Apt
City State Postal Code
Primary Phone Alternate Phone
Employer Job Title Occupation
City of Concord
Profile

HOME ADDRESS
Number of years at above address:
630 Francisco Court
Number of years in Concord:
5 Number of years in the county:

CA
Number of years at employer:

Employer Address
Which Boards would you like to apply for?
Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group: Submitted
Bob Pickett
Retired N/A Retired
Bob Pickett Page 1 of 4

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I believe that my experience with Hope680 has a lot to contribute and with cooperation among organizations, we can create the most effective approach to homelessness.

How did you hear about the Concord Community Academy?
Word of mouth
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Do you or have you participated in any supply and/or food distribution to the community of unsheltered residents? If so, please explain your experience.

I have been participating in monthly outreaches to members of the homeless community for over 10 years. In total, I have engaged groups of homeless people, in their camps, on approximately 150 occasions. A typical day's outreach would include 2 to 4 camps and approximately 20 to 40 individuals.

We have provided homemade lunches, some clothing, tents, sleeping bags and toiletry items along with sharing our ministry message.

Bob Pickett Page 2 of 4

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Upload a Resume
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your most recent interaction with someone who you believe is unsheltered.

Saturday, December 7, 2022. I and five other volunteers visited two camps in Concord and encountered about seven people. Due to the heavy rain, we saw fewer people than we normally do. All of those that we met were exceptionally happy to see that we braved the storm to bring them hot coffee and lunches.

We were able to provide one gentleman (Curtis) with a nice, waterproof coat. In addition to lunches, we provided "blessing bags" and, as always, faith-based counseling. Two people expressed interest in seeking help from the Bay Area Rescue Mission. You can find more details of out outreaches on our website, www.Hope680.org.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your experience using homeless response programs such as CORE, the Police Department, and non-profit providers.

We are familiar with Core and sometimes cross paths with them during our time in the field. We often refer people to Core to help with medical and housing needs. We also have a close relationship with the Bay Area Rescue Mission in Richmond which has developed a full-service program of counseling, shelter, job training and job placement. We hand out information on BARM and encourage people to look into it. I have had occasions to interact with the Trinity Center in Walnut Creek.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Do you have family members or close friends who are or have been unsheltered? Yes No
Education and Training
High School
Acalanes High School, Lafayette
College
U.C. Davis, BS in Engineering U.C. Berkeley, MBA
Technicial/Vocational Training
N/A
Certification or Other
N/A
TERMS OF ACCEPTANCE and SIGNATURE
Bob Pickett Page 3 of 4

Page 15 of 122 ends

Please Agree with the Following Statement
I understand that checking this box constitutes a legal signature confirming that I acknowledge and agree to the above Terms and Acceptance.

I Agree *
Electronic Signature - Please type your First and Last Name Robert Pickett
Bob Pickett Page 4 of 4

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December 15, 2022
Resume’ of Bob Pickett
Re: City of Concord Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group I have been participating in a homeless outreach in Concord and surrounding cities for over eleven years. Our founding members started the ministry twelve years ago. We are supported by and put ourselves under the oversight of North Creek Church in Walnut Creek - our “sending church”.

Our outreach activities include visiting homeless campsites, sharing homemade lunches, personal items and necessities. We use these opportunities to provide faith-based counselling and to connect them with existing service providers including CORE, county rehab facilities and the Bay Area Rescue Mission. Over the last eleven years, I have participated in about 150 outreaches, I’ve visited an estimated 50 different homeless campsites and engaged with hundreds of individuals.

Our organization started with monthly outreaches conducted by a handful of individuals and has evolved into two outreaches each month with approximately 20 volunteers serving each at outreach. Another half dozen people help with preparation of lunches for us to hand out and many other volunteers assemble “Blessing Bags” which contain toiletries, socks, snack bars and juice boxes. We include serving hot coffee, which is very popular.

The items we distribute serve as great conversation starters. Over the years we have encountered many of the same people and have developed relationships that lead to trust and open conversation.

Contributors provide sleeping bags and warm coats for us to hand out in the winter time. Year around we provide socks and t-shirts. We have a total of about 90 volunteers, many of whom are Concord residents.

Hope680 incorporated in 2020 and received its tax-exempt status in 2021.

Just recently we signed a three-year lease for an office space in Concord.

Page 1 of 2 ends

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We have been organizing our volunteers into four teams with two or three of those teams spending their day in Concord. We also serve in Martinez, Pleasant Hill and Walnut Creek.

You can learn more about Hope680 at our website:
www.hope680.org
Personal Information:
 I have lived in Contra Costa County my entire life (73 years)  I grew up in Lafayette and have lived in Concord or Walnut Creek for 50 years.
 I have served on the Walnut Creek Planning Commission for 20 years and have two years remaining on my current term. As a member of the Planning Commission, I have served on many other community- oriented committees.
 I am on the Board of Hope680.
 My career was spent entirely developing and building single family homes throughout Central Contra Costa County.
 Education:
o Acalanes High School, Lafayette
o U.C. Davis, BS in Engineering
o U.C. Berkeley, MBA
Contact Information:

Email:

Phone/T ext:

Page 2 of 2 ends

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Submit Date: Dec 15, 2022
First Name Last Name
Email Address
Street Address Suite or Apt
City State Postal Code
Primary Phone Alternate Phone
Employer Job Title Occupation
City of Concord
Profile

HOME ADDRESS
Number of years at above address:
2 months
Number of years in Concord:
20 Number of years in the county:
25 Number of years at employer:

Employer Address
Which Boards would you like to apply for?
Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group: Submitted
Brandi Martinez
The Bay Church
Compassion Ministry
Administrative Assistant Compassion
Brandi Martinez Page 1 of 3

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I have both received food from distributions and am actively involved in our food distribution at the church.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your most recent interaction with someone who you believe is unsheltered.

I have daily interactions with unsheltered people. I work in the compassion ministry catering to our unsheltered guests and I work at a drug rehabilitation program where women are coming off of the streets. I was unsheltered myself not so long ago.

Brandi Martinez Page 2 of 3

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Upload a Resume
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your experience using homeless response programs such as CORE, the Police Department, and non-profit providers.

We work side by side with CORE and Martinez PD t some of our shower sites. We have collaborations with most of the non-profits in the area as well as other churches.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Do you have family members or close friends who are or have been unsheltered? Yes No
Education and Training
High School
Ygnacio Valley High School
College
Diablo Valley College
Technicial/Vocational Training
Carrington College
Certification or Other
TERMS OF ACCEPTANCE and SIGNATURE
Please Agree with the Following Statement
I understand that checking this box constitutes a legal signature confirming that I acknowledge and agree to the above Terms and Acceptance.

I Agree *
Electronic Signature - Please type your First and Last Name Brandi Martinez
Brandi Martinez Page 3 of 3

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BRANDI MARTINEZ

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Summary
Motivated Addiction Studies student seeking a position in a drug rehabilitation center to gain hands-on experience.

Outgoing and friendly with strong drive to succeed.

Experience
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT | 11/2021 - Current
The Bay Church - Concord, CA
 Provide case management assisting individuals with finding community resources such as housing, medical, mental health services, legal, employment and sobriety support networks.  Prepare and prioritize calendars and correspondence.
 Inventory and order supplies for Compassion Ministry.  Attend monthly council meetings to stay updated on current policies, programs, and community resources.  Collaborate with staff to ensure smooth delivery of services, as well as collaborate with community partners to coordinate joint events.
 Attend weekly staff meetings and trainings as needed.

SHIFT LEAD MANAGER | 10/2020 - 08/2022
Kinder's Custom Meats - Pleasant Hill, CA
 Reinforced rules to promote superior employee performance.  Upheld company standards and compliance requirements for operations.  Directed and led employees and team members on effective operations, methods, and procedures.

IN-HOME CAREGIVER | 06/2016 - 11/2019
Home Care, Robert and Patricia Fraga - Pacheco, CA
 Maintained clean and well-organized environment for client happiness and safety.  Supervised medication administration, personal hygiene and other activities of daily living.  Prepared high-quality nutritious meals for patients to promote better overall health and improve eating habits.

Volunteer Work
SITE LEADER - Clean Start Shower Program | 08/2021 - Current The Bay Church - Concord, CA
 Maintain an alcohol and drug free environment.
 Register new clients and assist with intake paperwork.  Regularly monitor clients’ safety due to prevalence of high fentanyl usage in the area.

VOLUNTEER - Food Distribution Ministry | 06/21 - Current The Bay Church - Concord, CA
 Assist with weekly food distribution to low-income members of the community.  Provide a non-judgmental, supportive environment to ensure community members feel welcomed and safe to return for additional services.

Education and Training
Diablo Valley College - Pleasant Hill, CA | Associate of Science Addiction Studies, Expected in 12/2023
Western Career College - Pleasant Hill, CA | Associate of Science Medical Assisting, 11/2001
.

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Submit Date: Dec 17, 2022
First Name Last Name
Email Address
Street Address Suite or Apt
City State Postal Code
Primary Phone Alternate Phone
Employer Job Title Occupation
City of Concord
Profile

HOME ADDRESS
Number of years at above address:
0 Number of years in Concord:
3 Number of years in the county:
3 Number of years at employer:

Employer Address
Which Boards would you like to apply for?
Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group: Submitted
Dawn Koch
Student Student Student
Dawn Koch Page 1 of 3

Page 24 of 122 ends

No
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your most recent interaction with someone who you believe is unsheltered.

I just got my housing 2months ago
Dawn Koch Page 2 of 3

Page 25 of 122 ends

Upload a Resume
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your experience using homeless response programs such as CORE, the Police Department, and non-profit providers.

Not very pleasant interactions
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Do you have family members or close friends who are or have been unsheltered? Yes No
Education and Training
High School
Howell High School Farmingdale, NJ
College
City college of San Francisco
Technicial/Vocational Training
Certification or Other
Cpr
TERMS OF ACCEPTANCE and SIGNATURE
Please Agree with the Following Statement
I understand that checking this box constitutes a legal signature confirming that I acknowledge and agree to the above Terms and Acceptance.

I Agree *
Electronic Signature - Please type your First and Last Name Dawn Koch
Dawn Koch Page 3 of 3

Page 26 of 122 ends

Submit Date: Dec 19, 2022
First Name Last Name
Email Address
Street Address Suite or Apt
City State Postal Code
Primary Phone Alternate Phone
Employer Job Title Occupation
City of Concord
Profile

HOME ADDRESS
Number of years at above address:
17 Number of years in Concord:
25 Number of years in the county:
30 Number of years at employer:

Employer Address
Which Boards would you like to apply for?
Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group: Submitted
Desiree Mcdonagh
Full Circle of Choices SLS attendant
Social Services-
developmental disabilities
Desiree Mcdonagh Page 1 of 4

Page 27 of 122 ends

How did you hear about the Concord Community Academy?
Other
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Do you or have you participated in any supply and/or food distribution to the community of unsheltered residents? If so, please explain your experience.

None
Desiree Mcdonagh Page 2 of 4

Page 28 of 122 ends

Upload a Resume
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your most recent interaction with someone who you believe is unsheltered.

Outside my townhouse complex which is gated a woman slept on the grass a few feet from one of our units. This young woman had a sleeping bag and a few food items. I saw her nearly every day as I left the complex for work. I also use the Concord library and have witnessed a few disputes over bathroom use with individuals who seem unhoused because they are carrying multiple bags and seem impaired by addiction.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your experience using homeless response programs such as CORE, the Police Department, and non-profit providers.

No experience, but I have seen outreach working in todos santos park in Concord.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Do you have family members or close friends who are or have been unsheltered? Yes No
Education and Training
High School
Mount Diablo High school
College
CSU East Bay- Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology May 2023
Technicial/Vocational Training
Certification or Other
TERMS OF ACCEPTANCE and SIGNATURE
Please Agree with the Following Statement
I understand that checking this box constitutes a legal signature confirming that I acknowledge and agree to the above Terms and Acceptance.

I Agree *
Desiree Mcdonagh Page 3 of 4

Page 29 of 122 ends

Electronic Signature - Please type your First and Last Name Desiree McDonagh
Desiree Mcdonagh Page 4 of 4

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Desiree McDonagh

Contact information

EDUCATION — Full Circle of
Choices :

California State University
East Bay, Hayward Ca

Graduation May 2023
with
Bachelor’s Degree in
Psychology

2016-Present
Job Description- Supported living and independent attendant.

I currently work with adults with developmental
disabilities and mental health diagnosis. I provide
supervision and help clients live independently by
assisting with cooking, cleaning, hygiene prompts,
transportation to events, dispense medication, and
supervision to ensure our clients can continue to live
safely and successfully. The clients I work with are on the Autism Spectrum and mild developmental
disabilities.

KEY SKILLS —
Family Support
Services of the
East Bay:

One-on-one direct care with
adults and children with
Developmental Disabilities-

Supported Living Skills

Independent Living skills

Respite

2016 (6 months)

I provided respite services to a child on the Autism
Spectrum twice a week for 3 hours. I provided social
skills and played games of his choice during our
session. I also provided weekly respite to young woman
who was blind with developmental disabilities to musical events of her choice.

Mt. Diablo Unified
School District:

2013-2016
I worked in several
cafeteria’s where I served
lunch to K-12 students.

Page 31 of 122 ends

REFERENCES

Full Circle of Choices- Supervisor-
Sue Carty

Mt. Diablo Unified School District co-worker-
Shawna Armstrong

CSU East Bay Classmate-
Julie Thai

Page 32 of 122 ends

Submit Date: Dec 16, 2022
First Name Last Name
Email Address
Street Address Suite or Apt
City State Postal Code
Primary Phone Alternate Phone
Employer Job Title Occupation
City of Concord
Profile

HOME ADDRESS
Number of years at above address:
44 Number of years in Concord:
30 years at our commercial propery
Number of years in the county:
60 Number of years at employer:

Employer Address
Which Boards would you like to apply for?
Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group: Submitted
Don Freas
Freas Plastering Company, Inc. CEO / Owner Plastering Contractor Don Freas Page 1 of 3

Page 33 of 122 ends

Since October of 2019 I have been participating as a volunteer serving the Martinez unsheltered through the Bay Church (Shower Trailer) and the Homeless Action Coalition @ Camp Hope.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your most recent interaction with someone who you believe is unsheltered.

Every Friday for the last 3 years in Martinez I interact with 25 - 35 unshelterd people. Every Sunday I bring breakfast to the Martinez Marina for the unhoused.

Don Freas Page 2 of 3

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Upload a Resume
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your experience using homeless response programs such as CORE, the Police Department, and non-profit providers.

I have been working along side all the programs that you have listed in the city of Martinez for the last 3 years
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Do you have family members or close friends who are or have been unsheltered? Yes No
Education and Training
High School
College Park High School
College
N/A
Technicial/Vocational Training
4 Year San Francisco Apprenticeship program
Certification or Other
Volunteer Chaplain at the Martinez Detention Facility
TERMS OF ACCEPTANCE and SIGNATURE
Please Agree with the Following Statement
I understand that checking this box constitutes a legal signature confirming that I acknowledge and agree to the above Terms and Acceptance.

I Agree *
Electronic Signature - Please type your First and Last Name Don Freas
Don Freas Page 3 of 3

Page 35 of 122 ends

Submit Date: Dec 20, 2022
First Name Last Name
Email Address
Street Address Suite or Apt
City State Postal Code
Primary Phone Alternate Phone
Employer Job Title Occupation
City of Concord
Profile

HOME ADDRESS
Number of years at above address:
7 Number of years in Concord:
7 Number of years in the county:
20 Number of years at employer:

Employer Address
Which Boards would you like to apply for?
Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group: Submitted
Eric Rehn
Kennedy Wilson Brokerage
Group Vice President
Commercial Real Estate
Broker
Eric Rehn Page 1 of 3

Page 36 of 122 ends

Through Rotary. We support multiple organizations in the area for food & other services.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your most recent interaction with someone who you believe is unsheltered.

Through commercial property activities at several locations we have to interact with people exhibiting mental illness. Unfortunately, the Police are the main resources for us.

Eric Rehn Page 2 of 3

Page 37 of 122 ends

Upload a Resume
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your experience using homeless response programs such as CORE, the Police Department, and non-profit providers.

Only experience is handing them off to the police department.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Do you have family members or close friends who are or have been unsheltered? Yes No
Education and Training
High School
Tracy Joint Union High School
College
California State University Fresno - BS degree
Technicial/Vocational Training
CCIM designation
Certification or Other
TERMS OF ACCEPTANCE and SIGNATURE
Please Agree with the Following Statement
I understand that checking this box constitutes a legal signature confirming that I acknowledge and agree to the above Terms and Acceptance.

I Agree *
Electronic Signature - Please type your First and Last Name Eric Rehn
Eric Rehn Page 3 of 3

Page 38 of 122 ends

Eric Rehn, CCIM

VICE PRESIDENT

KENNEDY WILSON BROKERAGE

PROFILE
Since moving to Northern California in 2003, Eric has worked on over 400 commercial real estate transactions, representing landlords, tenants, sellers, buyers and investors in Contra Costa, Napa and Solano counties. He specializes in industrial property types. Current projects include multiple industrial buildings, land and office properties, as well as investment offerings and cannabis-related real estate markets.

Eric continued his commercial real estate education by achieving the coveted CCIM designation for investment expertise and has attended various workshops on related industry issues. This training allows him to provide detailed analysis of commercial property valuations. He has been involved with the CCIM organization since 2012, serving as the Northern California chapter president in 2017 and as treasurer for two terms.

His past membership on the East Bay Leadership Council’s Land Use and Environmental & Manufacturing task forces kept him at the forefront of current political issues affecting commercial property in the market. He also served as a consultant to the Northern Waterfront Economic Development Initiative for Contra Costa County. Currently he serves in the Contra Costa County Taxpayers Association to promote “Good Government at Affordable Cost”.

CAREER HISTORY
For 20 years prior to receiving his real estate license, Eric worked in the medical device market as a surgical sales representative for 13 years and as a product marketing/development manager for six years after that. During his tenure in the medical field, he received numerous awards for sales and marketing performance and was responsible for the worldwide launch of hundreds of products in the minimally invasive surgical market.

His understanding of client concerns is based on personal investing experiences as well as handling the real estate for the family distribution/warehouse business.

This insight gives him a distinct advantage over the typical commercial broker’s focus on commissions rather than achieving the client’s goals.

SELECT CLIENTS
Advanced Elements
Alliance Support Partners
AREVA
Braddock & Logan
Century Window Cleaning
Concord Life Sciences Cntr
Current Electric
D & D Security
Eagle Bay Enterprises Inc.

East Bay Screenprint
Edward Pike Company
Envent Corporation
Fastenal
Glaser & Associates
Global Trading Company
Guilkey Construction
Helix Electric
Hertz Equipment Rentals
In Motion Dance Center
Irish Construction
John Deere Landscapes
JV Lucas Paving

Klamath Boats
Markstein Sales Company
Milgard Windows
New Key Construction
Onsite Health
PMI
Pro-Line Industrial Supply
RREEF
Speedy Glass
Wood Group, Inc.

CONTACT
www.kennedywilson.com

EDUCATION
Bachelor of Science,
Business Administration
California State University, Fresno
CalBRE #01368267

AFFILIATIONS
CCIM, Northern California Chapter
Board of Directors 2012-2019
President 2017
Treasurer 2014-2015
Rotary International
East Bay Leadership Council
CERT - City of Clayton Emergency
Response Team
Contra Costa Taxpayers Association
Board Member

ACHIEVEMENTS
PADI Open Water Certified Diver

Page 39 of 122 ends

Submit Date: Dec 18, 2022
First Name Last Name
Email Address
Street Address Suite or Apt
City State Postal Code
Primary Phone Alternate Phone
Employer Job Title Occupation
City of Concord
Profile

HOME ADDRESS
Number of years at above address:
2285 Mount Diablo Street
Number of years in Concord:
30+
Number of years in the county:

CA
Number of years at employer:

Employer Address
Which Boards would you like to apply for?
Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group: Submitted
Harmesh Kumar
Therapeutic Residential Care
Services Inc. President/CEO Licensed Clinical Psychologist Harmesh Kumar Page 1 of 4

Page 40 of 122 ends

How did you hear about the Concord Community Academy?
None Selected
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Do you or have you participated in any supply and/or food distribution to the community of unsheltered residents? If so, please explain your experience.

Being a resident and business owner in the down town area for many years our non-profit has provided shelters and food to homeless at multiple occasions including at out Annual Spring Festival at Todos Santos Plaza in 2004.

Harmesh Kumar Page 2 of 4

Page 41 of 122 ends

Upload a Resume
Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your most recent interaction with someone who you believe is unsheltered.

I personally know few people who are suffering from mental illness and it's the government policies and labor laws which led to them being homeless when most of the 6 beds licensed Board and Care Homes were shut down since 2010.

Question applies to Homeless Strategic Plan Working Group Describe your experience using homeless response programs such as CORE, the Police Department, and non-profit providers.

I believe that it takes a village to take care of our vulnerable community members and focus should be on helping them as human beings rather than getting them caught in the justice system. Some people will never be able to live in the community and they do need locked facilities to manage their daily lives due to severe mental and chronic mental, substance abuse and other brain pathologies. Our job should be to screen those who are at risk to decompensate and getting them hooked with treatment resources and providing support to those who are taking care of such individuals in the community and also in the institutions.

Technicial/Vocational Training
Ph.D. in Clinical Neuropsychology (1988-1991) from Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India and Post-doctoral fellowship under Dr. Ronald Ruff, Associate Professor at UCSF in (1991-1993) Director, Neurorehabilitation at St. Mary's Hospital and Medical Center, San Francisco,
Certification or Other
Licensed Psychologist in the State of California.

TERMS OF ACCEPTANCE and SIGNATURE
Harmesh Kumar Page 3 of 4

Page 42 of 122 ends

Please Agree with the Following Statement
I understand that checking this box constitutes a legal signature confirming that I acknowledge and agree to the above Terms and Acceptance.

I Agree *
Electronic Signature - Please type your First and Last Name Harmesh Kumar
Harmesh Kumar Page 4 of 4

Page 43 of 122 ends

1 of 11
Harmesh Kumar, Ph.D. – Resume – Dec. 2022

HARMESH KUMAR, Ph.D.

Licensed Psychologist (PSY 16738)

Private Clinical Practice: Concord and Fremont, California, USA: 39 Years’ experience in Assessment and Treatment for psychological, neuropsychological problems including screening for dementia(s); competence evaluations; personal injury evaluations and treatments along with individual and family therapy in cultural and linguistic context. He has been in a private Clinical private practice- providing individual, couple, family, group therapy, mental health consultation and psychological, neuropsychological and forensic evaluations and treatment and suicide prevention workshops. Providing behavioral consulting services to group homes serving the regional centers consumers with developmental disabilities and with behavioral challenges. Also providing training to staff on how to deal effectively with challenging behaviors of these consumers. (www.therapeutichomes.com)

Currently Working as a private contractor (Licensed Psychologist) with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation since March 2019 at California Health Care Facility Stockton and also worked last year at Medical Facility in Acute Psychiatric Program (PIP), Vacaville, CA.

Founder and President: Therapeutic Residential Care Services Inc. – September 7, 2004 - a agency specializing in providing residential and therapeutic services to people with mental, physical, developmental and seniors and new immigrants.

Founder and President: South Asian Behavioral Health and Training Foundation, Inc. – Founded in 2009 - A non-profit agency, to educate, create awareness and provide mental health and residential care services to South Asians in their cultural and linguistic context. (www.sabhfoundation.com)

Past Position: President/CEO and Founder – June 1993 – August 31, 2004 - Founded Neuro-behavioral and Psychological Institute (NPI) later renamed to Portia Bell Hume Behavioral Health and Training Center (State of California Licensed Non-Profit Mental Health Agency), Concord, CA. (It was founded in June 1993 with another clinical psychologist and the Center has grown from Two persons Clinic to Fifty plus persons Community Mental Health Center with three locations i.e. Concord, Fremont and Pittsburg). The mission of the agency was to serve the underserved communities and provide the highest quality of services training and supervision to trainees.

Started and developed Seven Programs from grounds up while directing each program initially and later handed them over to new Directors and Coordinators and provided supervision to them to make them independent, Outpatient Program (Three Locations), Partial Hospitalization Program, Residential Program, Training Program, Gero -Psychiatric Program, Behavioral Consultation Program, Neuro-behavioral/Psychological/Forensic Assessment Program. One additional Program i.e., Prevention Services was developed by one of the trainees in collaboration with Alameda County and provided supervision to her for seven years.

Page 44 of 122 ends

Concord City CouncilJanuary 17, 2023

Concord City Council
January 17, 2023