DATE: JUNE 20, 2023
DEPARTMENT: COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
FROM: LISA BRINTON, DIRECTOR
THROUGH: ROD POWELL, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
BY: GRANT LEONARD, PLANNING MANAGER
TITLE: SUBMITTAL OF DRAFT 2023-2031 HOUSING ELEMENT AND GENERAL PLAN UPDATE QUARTERLY REPORT RECOMMENDED MOTION:
A motion to approve a resolution authorizing the submittal of the Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element to the State of California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) for review.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Salinas is a community that values housing and believes in taking definitive action to support development of new housing and housing programs to support all members of our community. The City sees increasing the housing supply as a critical step needed to better the quality of life for existing and future residents of Salinas.
The 2023-2031 Housing Element is a tool for the City to plan for the community’s housing needs over the next eight-year planning cycle. Through research, analysis, and extensive public engagement, the Housing Element establishes the City’s official housing policies and objectives and identifies available candidate housing sites to accommodate the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) goals as determined by the Association of Monterrey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG).
The Housing Element contains a detailed outline and work program for implementing the City’s goals, policies, quantified objectives, and programs for the preservation, improvement, and development of housing for a sustainable future. The Housing Element will be implemented over the next eight years and will allow the City to build off recent successes in the development of critically needed housing and programs to ensure all Salinas residents have access to safe, affordable, stable, and equitable housing.
As part of the Housing Element update process, the City has prepared a draft for review by the public and HCD. Following the public and HCD review period, the City will finalize the 2023-2031 Housing Element and release it for final public review and consideration of approval in November 2023.
BACKGROUND:
The Housing Element is the City’s guiding policy document for housing matters and is one of the required chapters of the General Plan. The City of Salinas’ current Housing Element (2015-2023) was adopted in 2015 and was certified by HCD as complying with State law. Because the current Housing Element expires at the end of 2023, the City is required to adopt an updated Housing Element by December 15th. This sixth cycle update of the Housing Element will cover the planning period of December 31, 2023 through December 31, 2031.
The process for updating the Housing Element includes providing a draft Housing Element for 30-day public review and a consultation with HCD. The draft Housing Element was available for public review from May 12, 2023, through June 20, 2023. During this period, the Draft 2023-2031 was presented to the Planning Commission on May 17th, and to the Housing and Land Use Commission on June 6th. After closing the comment period on June 20th, the City will have two weeks to respond to any comments received before submitting the draft Housing Element to HCD for a 90-day review and comment period on July 6, 2023. The City will receive HCD comments by early October and will incorporate any requested changes into the Final 2023-2031 Housing Element, which will be considered at the November 15th Planning Commission for recommendation to City Council in advance of Council’s consideration of adoption on December 5, 2023.
A summary of the Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element is included as Attachment 3.
DISCUSSION:
Submittal of Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element
Community Engagement
The City has actively engaged the community on the subject of housing since the adoption of the 2015-2023 Housing Element. Community engagement for the Housing Element built upon the extensive bi-lingual community outreach conducted for the Alisal Vibrancy Plan, Chinatown Revitalization Plan, Regional Farmworker Housing Study and Action Plan, Visión Salinas Guiding Principles, Visión Salinas 2040 General Plan Update, and the 2023 and 2024 City Budgets.
The City began formal 2023-2031 Housing Element public engagement with an online Housing Element workshop on February 9, 2023 and will continue outreach through Council consideration of the adoption of the 2023-2031 Housing Element in December 2023. The outreach strategy includes various methods of collecting community input, including community workshops, webinars, stakeholder interviews, housing surveys, pop-up community events, and the General Plan Steering Committee. Through a Sustainable Agricultural Land Conservation (SALC) Planning Grant, the City is also partnering with Center for Community Advocacy (CCA) to deepen grassroots outreach. CCA reached nearly 300 people through 71 house meetings discussing housing needs. As part of the community engagement strategy, the City has conducted outreach not only in both English and Spanish, but also in the indigenous Mixteco language, marking the first time the City has conducted such multi-lingual outreach.
A summary of the recurring and new themes that emerged from the community engagement is included as Attachment 5. A full discussion of the City’s engagement activities is included in Chapter 2 of the Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element, Attachment 2.
In addition to the comments received through the meetings listed above, the City has also received one comment letter from the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership, attached to this staff report that complemented the City on its housing efforts and discussed actions the City could take to further support housing production.
Housing Plan: Recommended Goals, Policies, and Actions
To meet the City’s housing needs over the next eight years, the Housing Element needs to contain meaningful goals, policies, and actions that will serve as the City’s guiding housing document. Chapter 6 of the Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element sets forth a program of policies and actions to address the City’s housing needs, including housing construction, providing different housing types at all affordability levels, establishing tenant protections, improving neighborhoods and existing housing, and ensuring access to safe and decent housing for all segments of the community.
The Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element includes a Housing Plan with the following five goals, each with a set of specific policies:
Increase Housing Supply and Opportunities for All
Provide Tenant Protections
Access to Safe and Healthy Housing for all Residents
Advance Housing Affordability and Opportunity at all Income Levels Stabilize and Support Neighborhoods
The goals and policies reflect the new and recurring themes identified through the public outreach process and are consistent with the housing goals and policies identified in recent community planning efforts, such as the Alisal Vibrancy Plan.
To meet these goals, the Housing Plan contains the following program of actions that will be implemented over the next eight years of the Housing Element:
Provision of Adequate Sites for RHNA
Financial Assistance and Gap Financing
Prohousing Designation
Accessory Dwelling Units
East Area Specific Plan Development
General Plan and Zoning Code Update
Reduce Fees and Housing Production Constraints
Housing Rehabilitation Services Program
Rental Resources Programs
Services to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing
Code Enforcement
Housing Vouchers
Homebuyer Resources
Facilitate the Production Affordable Housing
Housing for Persons with Disabilities
Equitable Housing and Service Access for Unhoused Individuals and Families Preservation Affordable Housing At-Risk of Conversion
Local Workforce Housing
Inclusionary and Density Bonus Housing
Invest in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods
Protect Historic Resources
Staff is currently working to develop a sixth goal specific to Homeless Services and Programs. As currently written, homeless services and programs are included in the policies of Goal #4: Advance Housing Affordability and Opportunity at all Income Levels. However, given the number of policies and actions dedicated to homeless services, staff believes pulling them forward into a unique Goal #6 dedicated to Homeless Services and Programs is justified and will improve tracking and reporting of progress towards reducing homelessness.
Adequate Sites for New Housing
California General Plan law requires each city and county to have land zoned to accommodate its fair share of the regional housing need. Through the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) process, each jurisdiction in California is given a certain number of housing units to plan for, by income level, during the eight-year Housing Element timeframe. Salinas received a total of 6,674 units through the RHNA process, distributed by the following income categories.
Income Group
Total Housing Units Allocated
Percentage of Units
Extremely/Very Low
920
13.78%
Low
600
9.00%
Moderate
1,692
25.35%
Above moderate
3,462
51.87%
Total
6,674
100%
The City has completed an inventory of available housing sites and determined that there are sufficient sites available to plan for the 6,674 RHNA allocation. Sites to accommodate the City’s allocation are divided into the following categories:
Pipeline Projects and anticipated ADU Development
Vacant Residential and Mixed-Use Sites
Underutilized Residential and Mixed-Use Sites
The North of Boronda Future Growth Area.
The site inventory has identified capacity for an additional 7,284 units, 1,890 of which are on sites with density suitable for development of lower income housing. A map of the Sites Inventory is included as Attachment 4. Pipeline projects and anticipated ADU construction are expected to produce 1,299 units in the near term.
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
The goal of Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) is to combat housing discrimination, eliminate racial bias, undo historic patterns of segregation, and lift barriers that restrict access in order to foster inclusive communities, achieve racial equity, fair housing choice, and opportunity for all Californians.
Assembly Bill (AB) 686 requires that Housing Elements include an analysis of barriers that restrict access to opportunity and that they contain a commitment to specific meaningful actions to affirmatively further fair housing. AB 686 mandates that local governments identify meaningful goals to address the impacts of systemic issues such as residential segregation, housing cost burden, and unequal educational or employment opportunities to the extent these issues create and/or perpetuate discrimination against protected classes.
In compliance with AB 686, the City has completed an analysis of barriers to fair housing (Appendix D) and developed meaningful actions to combat barriers to fair housing that have been identified. These meaningful actions are incorporated in the Housing Element’s Goals, Policies, and Actions (Chapter 6), which integrates the principals of fair housing into the City’s housing plan for the 2023-2031 Housing Element.
Next Steps for the Housing Element
The Schedule for the completing Housing Element Update is:
May – June 2023: Release of Public review draft 2023-2031 Housing Element July – September 2023: HCD review of 2023-2031 Housing Element October – November: Revisions to draft 2023-2031 Housing Element update as needed November – December: 2023: Release of final 2023-2031 Housing Element for public and Planning Commission review December 5, 2023: Council of consideration of adoption of Housing Element Submission of adopted 2023-2031 Housing Element to California Department of Housing and Community Development for certification General Plan Quarterly Report for April- June 2023
Although completion of the Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element was the primary focus of the General Plan Update work this quarter, staff continued community engagement on the Public Safety Element that was started in the previous quarter. Public Safety engagement consisted of the following:
326 completed SALC Youth Ambassador surveys
4 community pop-up activities that engaged 150 community members 2 community meetings (one in Spanish and one in English) that engaged 70 community members.
Through this engagement, the community was asked “What would make your community safer?” The top three responses were:
More lighting in streets and public spaces
Pedestrian/traffic safety
Youth programming/services
A summary of the new and recurring themes that emerged from the Public Safety outreach is included as Attachment 6. Staff will use the information gathered through the engagement process to help shape the Public Safety Element goals, policies, and actions as the Public Safety Element is written over the summer.
General Plan Schedule Update
With the completion of the Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element, staff took the opportunity to revisit and update the General Plan Update schedule. The current schedule anticipates that a full draft of the General Plan update will be available for public review in January 2024. The updated schedule is provided as Attachment 7 to this staff report.
CEQA CONSIDERATION:
The submission of the Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element and the General Plan Update administrative report are not projects as defined by CEQA Guidelines Section 15378. Any subsequent discretionary projects resulting from this action will be assessed for CEQA applicability.
ATTACHMENTS:
Resolution Authorizing the Submittal of Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element Draft 2023-231 Housing Element
Summary of Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element
Sites Inventory Map
Summary of Public Comment Themes
Public Safety Outreach Summary
Draft General Plan Update Schedule
Public comment letter from Monterey Bay Economic Partnership Page | 3
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