Late Effort Under Way to Lower Novato's Affordable Housing Mandates

Novato is pressuring regional and state housing authorities to lower their required densities for affordable housing complexes as part of long-range housing plans.

Novato City Councilwoman Pat Eklund has been sleuthing and pressuring regional authorities to “show all work” on decisions that were made about allotments for such housing, and she has received some shaky information in return.

As the Novato council heads into a key meeting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday about affordable housing — one expected to pack — the city is sending off letters to see if those mandated housing units can be lowered to help preserve the city’s desired small-town feel.

Saying the city should be designated as suburban rather than metropolitan, the Novato City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to send a letter to the acting director of the state Housing and Community Development Department in Sacramento urging it to change Novato’s designation so that 20 units per acre would serve as a default density rather than the existing 30 units.

It also voted unanimously to send a letter to the Association of Bay Area Governments in a request to lower the proportion of housing units that fall under the responsibility of the city vs. the county. After a lengthy investigation, Eklund said ABAG does not have documentation to show that the proportion of the city’s housing responsibilities was raised in 2007.

If the city is successful in getting housing requirements lowered, it would be a victory for those who have balked at the minimum 200 units of affordable housing that are targeted to be zoned for during the time period of 2007-2014. It could mean that whatever is agreed upon Thursday in terms of sites and locations of new zoned housing could be downsized in the months to come.

How many fewer units would Novato have to build if the pressure pays off? Eklund said she and Director Dave Wallace talked about that Wednesday and “we were conjecturing that it could be in the range of 50 units. It could be very significant. That’s why we’re pushing so hard. I don’t know if we’re going to get anywhere in time for this (2007-2014) allocation, but we’re hoping.”

Eklund said there is a higher likelihood that rules could be changed to affect the 2014-2022 allocation for the housing element of the city’s general plan.

“We’re already late with this current housing element,” Eklund said. “… We’re probably not going to receive a draft of it until January. By then we probably will have heard back on our request for recalculations, and then we can modify things as we need to. The important thing is that this might give us leverage for the next allocation.”

Residents and city staff have wrestled with the proposed location of future housing complexes for more than a year, and public outcry has been Richter-scale loud at times. Proponents have said Novato is in desperate need of more affordable housing; opponents have said such complexes will drive down existing home prices and possibly lead to more crime.

Thursday night, the City Council plans to choose from among 14 sites within the city limits to pepper in the 200 units. , mostly within a mile or two from the downtown area.

Eklund asked that the proposed letters be placed on the Tuesday agenda as an emergency item. She said the state housing element working group is meeting the first week of August to discuss the language of an state bill authored by Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, and a letter from the Novato City Council about default densities should be a high priority. The rest of the council agreed.

Mayor Madeline Kellner wrote a letter to Cathy Creswell, acting director of the state Housing and Community Development Department, to say that Novato should be credited for its record on affordable housing without a 30-unit mandate. She wrote that 20 units “is more compatible with our character and desire of our community.”

The letter states that Novato has built more affordable housing than other cities in Marin as well as the county of Marin, all done without the higher default density.

Several citizens spoke in favor Tuesday of pressuring the state authorities to change Novato’s designation from metropolitan to suburban, and the council voted to send the letter to the state.

At issue is housing in a city’s so-called sphere of influence, or unincorporated strips of land that surround a city. In the past, there was an agreed 50-50 split between cities and counties on the responsibility of housing allocation in the spheres of influence. But in 2007, ABAG changed the rule to 75 percent for cities and 25 percent for counties, and the state Housing and Community Development department approved that change.

But Eklund said she did not recall seeing a resolution on the ratio change four years ago and recently started her hunt to find documentation of it. She has an e-mail from ABAG Executive Director Ezra Rapport saying he has not found written record of that change and other evidence that it was agreed to during side conversations, not in open session.

“I spent days on this,” Eklund said Wednesday. “I was up to midnight searching the Web, and I went to the ABAG offices. The thing I kept thinking to myself was that if the (ABAG) staff was not afraid to ask the hard questions, I don’t know if all this would have happened. If I were on that staff, I would want to know what the ABAG board finally ended up approving, and I would want to see the official documentation.”