RULES AGENDA: 8/3/2022
ITEM: C.1
Memorandum
TO: CITY COUNCIL FROM: Mayor Sam Liccardo
Councilmember Sergio Jimenez
Councilmember Pam Foley
SUBJECT: COMMUNITY OUTREACH
FOR QUICK-BUILD
INTERIM HOUSING
DATE: June 28, 2022
APPROVED:
RECOMMENDATIONS:
1. Provide community notification for any residents living within 1,000 feet of a site approved by Council on June 21, 2022 for quick-build apartment communities (a.k.a., Emergency Interim Housing Communities, or EIHC’s).
2. Return to the City Council within 120 days of the posting of this memo, to enable the public to share feedback and concerns about specific sites approved by Council, and about any other options explored by staff within each council district. Community feedback should not compromise progress towards our goal of 1,000 units planned or under construction by December 31st, and staff should continue to design and progress sites that were approved on June 21st while alternatives are evaluated.
3. Provide the Council and Public with a report of:
a. Feasibility and viability of other sites explored within council districts 4 and 10, and the steps taken to explore those sites, in collaboration with the respective Council offices and Mayor’s Office, with the requirement that any alternative site must:
i. Be of sufficient size to yield the goal of at least 60 resident beds, preferably more;
ii. Be within the capability of the City to secure control (through option, lease, or purchase) within the established timeline for project delivery, and within the Council-approved budget with nominal or very low acquisition or lease cost.
b. Whether Staff recommendation for any site has changed since the June 21, 2022 Council hearing, most particularly to enable Council to consider alternative sites within districts 4 and 10;
c. Staff’s initial recommendations for targeting any specific unhoused populations for service on any of the sites;
d. A description of the City Manager’s proposed approach to preserving the quality of life in surrounding neighborhoods, and to ensuring the safe functioning of any existing or future quick-build apartment community, based on the City’s positive experience with the three existing EIHC’s. The approach should evaluate existing conditions and necessary service enhancements, including implementation of “noencampment zones” within a specified radius of the site; e. Success of the existing quick-build apartment communities, including discussion of safety and related quality-of-life issues.
4. Work with the Council Offices and Mayor’s Office provide substantive information and communication support for outreach to inform surrounding communities, and to receive community feedback.
DISCUSSION:
On June 21st, Council directed Staff to return to Council with a number of policy analyses and recommendations regarding quick-build apartment communities, which will provide the Council a good opportunity to hear from the community, and for neighbors to share concerns directly with the Council. Councilmembers Cohen and Mahan expressed concerns during our public deliberations about the process Council has taken for selecting sites, and specifically regarding giving residents a more explicit opportunity to be heard by Council and Staff about their obvious concerns.
Two years ago, Councilmember Jimenez endured the understandable frustration of residents surprised by our actions during the urgent early weeks of the pandemic on two quick-build sites in his district. During that time, we moved quickly to construct several quick-build apartment communities to address the pandemic—building rooms for medically vulnerable residents suddenly displaced from shelters—at a speed appropriate for the crisis. We must continue to move at the speed that the magnitude of our homelessness crisis demands.
Nonetheless, we should hear from residents in potentially affected neighborhoods to enable us to make the best possible decision on this inevitably controversial topic. Doing so may yield other logistically feasible locations that can elicit broader community support.
We should set our expectations to reality, however; any new location is more likely going to merely move the locus of opposition, rather than dispel it. Experience informs us that the most ideal location, producing the most successful housing community, will still yield strong opposition when neighbors hear that formerly homeless residents will occupy the units.
Addressing this crisis with urgency requires that this Council make many difficult decisions.
Every district and neighborhood must step up to housing our struggling community members.
The alternative is stark: we will be condemned to a future that has those same community members remaining unhoused in our neighborhoods — a much more dire and unsafe reality for everyone.