TO: HONORABLE MAYOR AND FROM: Councilmember Esparza
CITY COUNCIL Councilmember Foley
Councilmember Jimenez
Councilmember Peralez
Councilmember Cohen
SUBJECT: SEE BELOW DATE: 10/14/2022
Approved: Date: 10/14/2022
SUBJECT: MOBILE HOME PARK LAND USE DESIGNATION STATUS REPORT
RECOMMENDATION
Direct Staff to:
1. Return to Council with a detailed multi-year plan and timeline to complete the General Plan Land Use designation work for the remaining 56 mobilehome parks in the City, including returning through the Mid-Year Budget Review with resources needed to complete land use designations this fiscal year for the 12 most at risk parks identified in the Staff Report, and returning through the Budget Process with resources needed to redesignate all of the remaining parks in the City, and a detailed plan and timeline for doing so.
2. Streamline the public outreach process for the land use designation work, recognizing that this is work that our mobile home residents have both been aware of and actively fighting for since 2015.
3. Include Millpond 2 along with the other 12 parks assessed by staff to be highest risk to be redesignated this fiscal year through the Mid-Year Budget Review process. Thus making the complete list of parks to be redesignated this year: Oak Crest, Lamplighter, Quail Hollow, Chateau La Salle, Mill Pond 1 and 2, Caribees, Hometown, San Jose Mobile Home and RV Park, San Jose Trailer Park, La Buona Vita, Sunshadow, and Silver Creek Mobile Estates.
4. Align the relevant portions of the Housing Element with the plan and timeline for this work to ensure consistency.
BACKGROUND
COUNCIL AGENDA: 10/18/2022
ITEM: 8.3
When discussing our affordable housing strategy in San José, we often return to the “3 P’s” of affordable housing: Protect tenants, Preserve communities, and Produce housing. Measures to protect tenants and preserve communities are often challenging and expensive-but we take them because it is important to ensure that our City can be home to people of all incomes and backgrounds. In contrast to the multi-million dollar endeavors we often consider in addressing the housing crisis for our rental tenants, before the Council now is a straightforward and comparatively inexpensive opportunity to protect the City’s 35,000 mobilehome residents, and preserve the 10,000 mobilehomes that constitute some of the last naturally affordable housing stock in the City. Our mobilehome communities provide thousands of seniors and families the opportunity to own a home in Silicon Valley, while providing thousands of our seniors communities where they can age with dignity in the place they’ve always called home.
For over seven years, our mobile home residents have been clear in their calls for the Council to enact greater protections for our parks, and in March 2020, in response to these concerns, the Council provided direction to ensure that all our parks were enshrined in our General Plan through a Mobilehome Park Land Use Designation. This would ensure that if a park owner were to seek to redevelop a park, they would need to receive a General Plan Amendment from the City, which would require Council approval. Our mobilehome residents have patiently waited for us to complete this work, while weathering a pandemic and ensuing economic crisis that has further highlighted the need to protect our vulnerable residents and communities.
Now that staff has provided us with a clearer analysis of which parks are most at risk of future redevelopment, we need to move forward with this work, including a clear, multi-year plan and timeline for completing the land use amendments for all of our parks. We should prioritize the parks found to be at highest risk of redevelopment due to meeting the prevailing density criteria as assessed in the Staff Report. For this, we ask staff to return through the Mid-Year Budget Review process with a request for the needed resources to complete work on these parks this fiscal year, as well as a multiyear plan and timeline for completing land use work for all the parks. We also ask that Mill Pond 2 be included along with Mill Pond 1 as part of this initial prioritized work, as the residents of Mill Pond 1 and 2 consider themselves part of the same park community. Staff should incorporate the necessary resources for the remaining 43 parks into the Fiscal Year 23-24 Budget Process for Council approval next June.
Our mobilehome residents have been mobilizing to protect their homes, and requesting protections through our General Plan since at least 2015, over seven years ago. We know very well where the community stands on this, their support has been consistent and unwavering. Any community outreach we conduct as part of this effort should reflect the reality that most residents simply want this work to be done. We ask staff to consider ways to streamline the community outreach process, including whether simple noticing would suffice, to ensure that this work is not delayed by redundant community meetings that would tell us the same thing our residents have being saying for years.
Providing a transparent, public multi-year plan outlining this process will provide our residents with long-sought peace of mind while we complete this important and overdue work. We owe it to our mobilehome residents to deliver on our promise to protect their homes.
The signers of this memorandum have not had, and will not have, any private conversation with any other member of the City Council, or that member's staff, concerning any action discussed in the memorandum, and that each signer's staff members have not had , and have been instructed not to have, any such conversation with any other member of the City Council or that member's staff.