THOUSAND OAKS CITY COUNCIL
THOUSAND
CALIFORMIA
Supplemental
Information
Packet
Agendplement at Packe Mate: Jun 6, 26, 3023
2:30 p.m.
Supplemental Information:
City's website at toaks.org/agendas or by contacting the City Clerk Dept at (805) 449-2151 during normal busi- Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA):
n compliance with the ADA, if you need special assistance to participate in this meeting or other services il onjunction with this meeting, please contact the City Clerk Department at (805) 449-2151. Assisted listenin devices are available at this meeting. Ask City Clerk staff if you desire to use this device. Upon request, the agenda and documents in this agenda packet, can be made available in appropriate alternative formats to persons with a disability. Notification at least 48 hours prior to the meeting or time when services are needed will assist City staff in assuring reasonable arrangements can be made to provide accessibility to the meeting TO COUNCIL: 06/06/2023
AGENDA ITEM NO.: 11A
MEETING DATE: 06/06/2023
From: Conejo Housing <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, June 6, 2023 12:55 PM
To: City Clerk's Office <[email protected]>; Kevin McNamee <[email protected]>; Al Adam <[email protected]>; Bob Engler < [email protected]>; David Newman <[email protected]>; Mikey Taylor <[email protected]>
Subject: 11. A. Proposed FY 202324 and FY 202425 Operating and Capital Improvement Program Budgets
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
Dear City Council Members,
Your review and consideration of the attached letter are appreciated.
Conejo Housing Coalition
HOUSINC
COALITION
June 6, 2023
To the honorable members of the Thousand Oaks City Council:
Subject: Proposed FY 2023-24 & FY 2024-2025 Operating and Capital Improvement Program Budgets The Conejo Housing Coalition is an advocacy group made up of several diverse local organizations, focused on the need for affordable housing in Thousand Oaks.
We appreciate your recent vote to set affordable housing as a top priority over the next fiscal year. We also appreciate your vote to identify homelessness as a top priority. We believe these two urgent and inextricably linked priorities should be reflected not only in the city's statement of priorities, but also in the funding appropriations in the city budget. We encourage you to align the budget with these urgent priorities. We have several requests to address the affordable housing and homelessness issues you voted to make top priorities for the City of Thousand Oaks.
Requested Actions from the Thousand Oaks City Council in Response to Housing Affordability and Homelessness Concerns:
Prioritize Housing Affordability, the Prevention of Homelessness and Support for the Unhoused by:
• Creating ongoing Task Forces on Affordable Housing and Homelessness to work on tackling these issues in the city.
• Dedicating funding for a consultant to create Affordable Housing and Homelessness Action Plans. • Incentivize homeowners and property owners to develop and build Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) as a short-term measure to provide additional affordable housing options.
Prioritize Housing Affordability in the Budget by:
• Maintaining Existing Affordable Housing Units within the city. • Creating Conditions conducive to the Production of Substantial Numbers of New Affordable Units (in both the Rental and For-Sale Categories) Year after Year - target meeting or exceeding something like 10% of the total need per year.
• Using City-owned land or purchasing new land to donate to non-profit affordable housing developers. • Budgeting for an increase in Planning staff and/or Consultants to create a series of overlay zones that address specific housing affordability issues (ex. Senior Housing, Extremely Low Income Housing, 2 Accessible and Supportive Housing for People with Disabilities, Workforce Housing, Family Starter Housing, Faith Community Properties, etc.) until each housing affordability issue has been successfully resolved.
• Seeking Federal and State grants to fund projects and subsidize affordable units, subsidize set asides, and using City staff and resources to assist the public with grant applications for their specific projects, including, but not limited to, AARP Community Challenge Grants, ADA Accessibility Grants, Department of Developmental Disability's Community Placement Plan (CPP), and Community Resource Development Plan (CRDP) funding, and other available grants, loans, or funding sources that may prevent residents from being displaced due to rising housing-related expenses.
Prioritize Addressing Homelessness in the Budget by:
• Partnering with local religious organizations and utilizing city-owned parking lots to develop a safe parking program.
• Partnering with local religious organizations to provide a year-round emergency shelter program. • Expanding shelter and interim supportive housing capacity to match the City's current homeless population, including special facilities for specific sub-populations of homeless such as Domestic Violence Shelters. Such as emergency congregate or non-congregate shelter funds to distribute to local agencies in the City of Thousand Oaks.
• Using City-owned land or purchasing new land to donate to permanent supportive housing developers.
• Securing Federal and State grants to fund projects, subsidize housing units, and provide wraparound services.
Context for the Requested Actions on Housing Affordability and Homelessness Concerns:
Inadequate Conditions to Substantially Address Housing Affordability and Homelessness:
Conditions to produce affordable housing are created through the Zoning and Land Uses specified in the City's General Plan Update Land Use Map and Housing Element, as well as updates to Zoning and Land Use policies through tools such as Overlay Zones. Prior meetings for these elements of the General Plan have resulted in draft documents that will not produce sufficient units, including new affordable units, to meet the affordability needs of the populations already living in Thousand Oaks.
Table 20, on page 20 of the Draft 2021-2029 Housing Element, shows 2017 data on the cost burden experienced by Thousand Oaks households. Even going off of pre-pandemic data, out of 46,135 total households in Thousand Oaks, 16,701 households paid more than 30% of their income towards housing-related expenses, and of these, 7,705 households paid more than 50% of their income towards housing-related expenses. A 50% dedication of household income towards housing-related expenses is a severe cost burden that increases the likelihood of homelessness.
There are multiple ways of addressing a community's housing cost burden, such as increasing wages, using government and community-based funding or grants to subsidize housing for cost burdened residents and providing an abundant supply of housing units in all affordability categories, which can reduce competition for scarce housing supply. Of all the factors that affect a community's housing cost burden, the area where city leaders can have the most impact is increasing the supply of affordable housing units.
Affordable housing production measures currently planned by the City include a 10% Inclusionary Housing Ordinance that will require all new projects meeting the unit number threshold to set aside 10% of the new housing units as affordable, and/or to pay an in-lieu fee that can go into the City's funding towards affordable housing. A 10% baseline means that for the city to gain 100 affordable housing units through the inclusionary ordinance, 1,000 total units in qualifying projects will have to be approved and built. This alone will not be enough to produce an adequate supply of affordable housing within the City, even if thousands of new housing units get built between now and the end of the 2021-2029 Housing Cycle. If 3,000 units in qualifying projects are produced by 2029, 300 of those units would be in affordable categories.
Another tool to incentivize affordable housing production is the state's Density Bonus Law. Under this law, a project that sets aside 24% of its housing units at the low income level, or 15% of its housing units at the very low income level, or 44% of its for-sale units at the moderate income level, is allowed to increase the total number of units in the project by 50%.
If 3,000 units in qualifying projects were to be produced by 2029, 720 of those units could fall within the low-income affordable category. Since the 2017 data from Table 20 shows that 1,832 low income households in Thousand Oaks are severely cost burdened, even full use of the density bonus law targeted towards low-income housing would not produce enough affordable units to meet the need for housing at the low-income level, nor would it produce any housing for the other affordable categories that also have a need within the community.
Ultimately, this means that the amount of housing that may be produced under the Thousand Oaks General Plan 2045 will not be capable of meeting the need within the community that existed even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic turmoil, unless there is an extreme, and very unlikely, increase in total housing production on the order of thousands of units per year throughout this housing cycle.
In order to incentivize affordable housing production beyond what the General Plan will realistically allow, and to stabilize affordable housing for vulnerable populations within the community, the City of Thousand Oaks should append the General Plan's zoning and land use provisions through the use of a series of overlay zones, which should be viewed as an ongoing project that will require additional planning staff and/or consultant hours throughout the remainder of the housing cycle, and which should receive adequate funding in the City's biennial budget processes until the affordable housing need has been met.
4 Housing and Homelessness in the Current Proposed Budget:
Of the total $541,839,004 proposed to be appropriated in Fiscal Years 2023-2024 and 2024-2025, the City is proposing $437,723 for the Housing Trust Fund, $3 million for the development and construction of the Navigation Center, $200,000 for the operations of the Navigation Center over two years, and $4,574,550 in the Capital Improvement Projects Budget, Housing Projects category, that is carried over from one-time funding received from the Federal government as part of the American Rescue Plan Act.
In total, this will equal $8,212,273 for housing and homelessness-related appropriations in this budget cycle, or 1.5% of the total appropriations. Absent the $4,574,550 remaining one-time funds from the Federal government, this drops to $3,637,723 for housing and homelessness-related appropriations by the City, or around 0.7% of the total appropriations in the budget cycle.
Final Ask:
In closing, we ask that the City Council take additional concrete and substantive steps including, but not limited to, those listed in the Requested Actions section at the top of this letter, to address two of the city's top priorities - Affordable Housing and Homelessness. The gap between the needs of our community and the likely outcomes of current proposed funding and actions is wide. Please commit to an increased allocation of funds and staffing in this and in upcoming budget cycles to close the gap and meet these critical needs.
Sincerely,
Conejo Housing Coalition
AAUW Thousand Oaks, Peggy Buckles
Adelante Comunidad Conejo, Lynda Karl
Autism Society Ventura County, Ashley Pope
Autism Society Ventura County Advocacy Committee, Ashley Pope Buen Vecino, Willie Lubka
Conejo Climate Coalition, Clint Fultz
Harbor House, Denise Cortes
Lutheran Social Services of Southern California, Dichele Harris Many Mansions, Rich Schroeder
Thousand Oaks Livability Network, Betsy Connolly
THRIVE Conejo, Lee Ann Holland
Ventura County Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE-VC), Rev. Dr. Betty Stapleford Ventura County YIMBY,, Jackson Piper
Steering Committee: Carole Shelton, Rossanna Guerra, Clint Fultz, Rich Schroeder, Jackson Piper, Lee Ann Holland, Willie Lubka
5 THOUSAND OAKS CITY COUNCIL
THOUSAND
CALIFORMIA
Supplemental
Information
Packet
Agendplement at Packe Mate: Jun 6, 26, 3023
5:00 p.m.
Supplemental Information:
City's website at toaks.org/agendas or by contacting the City Clerk Dept at (805) 449-2151 during normal busi- Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA):
In compliance with the ADA, if you need special assistance to participate in this meeting or other services in conjunction with this meeting, please contact the City Clerk Department at (805) 449-2151. Assisted listening devices are available at this meeting. Ask City Clerk staff if you desire to use this device. Upon request, the agenda and documents in this agenda packet, can be made available in appropriate alternative formats to persons with a disability. Notification at least 48 hours prior to the meeting or time when services are needed will assist City staff in assuring reasonable arrangements can be made to provide accessibility to the meeting TO COUNCIL: 6/6/2023
MEETING DATE: 6/6/2023
Name City Item # In favor/ Opposed Comment
Betsy Connolly Lynn Ranch (Unincorpora 10 Opposed Item 10 F. Approve agreement with Greater Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce for business-related services in a not-to- exceed amount of $240,000
In 2022, the Greater Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce chose to endorse political candidates, including candidates for Thousand Oaks City Council. The proposed agreement includes, in its scope of services list, "Host a Candidate Forum for City Council on a bi- yearly basis" and "Legislative Roundtable to provide a setting for dialogue on public policy issues."
Given the Chamber's decision to endorse candidates in the last election, it no longer seems reasonable for the organization to host a City Council Candidate forum. This activity should be removed from the list of services. If the Chamber continues to host legislative roundtables under the direction of and funding by the City of Thousand Oaks, those roundtables should include pro and con representatives. If the chamber is unwilling to provide balanced presenters, this item should also be removed from the proposed agreement.