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Article – Affordable Housing |
Reprinted courtesy of West County Gazette, February 2004 Affordable Housing Comes Home by Vesta Copestakes, Editor, West County Gazette For all those people who hate meetings and don’t want to get involved on that level — you missed a good one. Four and one-half hours of meeting to be exact. Now I have to say that the first two hours had nothing to do with the topic we Forestville and Graton residents came to discuss, but it was definitely educational. For all those who didn’t attend, please thank all those who did, because we had some influence! They listened to us in the Public Hearing part of the show and it made a difference! Over time we’ll find out how it all comes out in the wash. These things are like weather reports. They change with the wind! Ok — on to the meat! The state has mandated — and I MEAN mandated — that Sonoma County come up with 500 affordable housing units in unincorporated land that is zoned industrial — NOT residential. The logic on this one escapes me in some ways, and in others, I get it because residential is big bucks land and they probably don’t want to mess with people’s personal income, etc. And after all, people with money can hire lawyers and you know what a mess they can make. Good as well as bad as we are learning with the Pocket Canyon battle to stop logging. The state also has an issue with the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude that people don’t want those poor people on their block so the State is going to make sure they kick those NIMBY people around a bit to make things fair. Well, I get that one, too! I’m personally on the lower economic rungs of the ladder and unless some huge windfall lands on my front doorstep, I’ll be living with the have-nots for a long time. Have-nots tend to hold some resentment for haves and like to think someone is on their side! In this case, it’s the State. But have-nots don’t like to be told what to do anymore than haves! Interestingly, a Forestville architect who specializes in Affordable Housing projects spoke about the non-logic of putting people out in the country away from easy access to jobs via public transportation. She made enough sense to get the board thinking. Thank You — I missed your name! So the PRMD (Permit Resource Management & Development) folks combed Sonoma County for land that meets State requirements and with a long list of how to rate them, came up with an A list and a B list. The A list included 655 units and the B list included 332, so there was plenty of room to reject some land. The B list is land that’s not quite right, but if not enough units on the A list got approved, the B list was there waiting. Interestingly enough, when the Citizens Advisory Council (more volunteers you can thank for giving their time to common causes) went through the A list and realized they had more than enough units (600 on 30 acres), they also wanted to consider a piece of land on the B list to replace one on the A list, but it was too late. They got stuck by rules just like the rest of us. But I have a sneaky feeling that some of this might come back up for review at some point. No matter what, nothing is caste in stone and everything can be protested in a court of law. Thos GOOD lawyers we LOVE! So how did Forestville and Graton fare? Forestville has an unusually high percentage of land allocated for Affordable Housing — a full 15% of what they call Urban Residential Land. The next highest is around 4% in Geyserville. Go figure. Naturally, I protested that we already have plenty of potential affordable housing in all the run down cabins just begging for a remodel, but those don’t count. And neither does our collective protest that 15% is too much for one town to handle! And another attendee suggested that we look at Granny Units on existing residential land as a good way to provide affordable units and at least one Council member agreed! But that doesn’t meet the state mandate so it doesn’t count! Nice try.  Graton’s A6 Two parcels of land in Forestville are on the A list and one in Graton with Graton also having 4 B list parcels. As it turned out, even though they approved the Graton A list site for approval, if they had their druthers, they’d rather drop that one to B because Graton has no public water system and a few other problems, and take a Geyserville site off the B list and move it to A, but they were powerless on this one. So Graton can look at .64 acres at 2999 Bowen Avenue as an Affordable Housing site some time in the future [A6].  A3 Now Forestville was more complicated and had a slew of caring residents there to protest the whole scheme for traffic reasons, safety reasons, sewer hook-ups that would go to these units and not existing homes reasons, etc, etc. The two sites in question are A3 at 6555 Covey Road, also known as the Electro Vector plant behind Carr’s Drive-In and the Burbank Housing project proposed and planned for A4 at 6310 Forestville Street, which will be sandwiched in between the Bypass and the Storage Units. It looks pretty on the map because those structures aren’t up yet, but it won’t be so pretty to live in a strip behind a huge wall and up against a raised highway. Naturally, we brought that up — AND the whole PCB contamination aspect of the Electro Vector land.  A4 So the board turned down the contaminated land (A3) and chose the blocked in land (A4), then later thought better about it since there is federal money to clean up the contamination and the blocked land doesn’t seem like a very nice place to live! But it was too late by then! Again — like the weather, we’ll find out what happens over time. No matter what, one of these two properties is going to get built, but probably (?) not both. And at this point, it’s A4. Personally, I’d like to see Senior Housing downtown as an Affordable Housing option because Seniors need to be able to walk to get their needs met and socialize rather than being isolated in distant homes and dependent on someone else to get them around. And let’s face it, they wouldn’t be nearly as rambunctious as a house full of kids and rowdy teens with cars! Little kids turn into teens as Graton will tell you many years after they approved a project for young families. So bottom line is we get what we knew we were going to get, the 30 houses of Burbank Housing and Graton gets some mystery development downtown. But don’t think this is over. The ground isn’t dug up yet, so who knows! Thank You everyone who showed up at this meeting and said your piece and everyone who was a body to be counted. It helped! They listened. The Citizens Advisory Board are people just like the rest of us doing their part to bring residents’ perspective to a government process. There are some very astute, reasonable and conscientious people on that board. In many ways I was comforted by watching these people in action. They honestly represent a good cross section of the diverse population of Sonoma County. It’s not a perfect system, especially when they felt trapped by the rules, but it’s a heck of a lot better than leaving it entirely up to the government. Please address your comments to: Vesta Copestakes. Back to Top Back to Issues & Updates Page |