Fred Allebach is a member of the City of Sonoma’s Community Services and Environmental Commission, and an Advisory Committee member of the Sonoma Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency. Fred is a member of Sonoma Overlook Trail Stewards, as well as Sonoma Valley Housing Group and Transition Sonoma Valley.
In support of affordable housing
To the Sonoma Planning commission:
I stand in support of Altimira Apartment project and encourage you to do the same.
Affordable housing is the greatest need, and biggest issue facing Sonoma and Sonoma Valley now, and as such, it is very important to approve the negative declaration, and grant the use permit with the full number of units (48) proposed. These units are needing to be built ASAP.
Density, number of units, and AMI thresholds
The two-acre project site is allowed 20 units per acre, or 40 total. With a 35% density bonus, the allowable number of units would be 52. SAHA has compromised to 48 units.
Any challenge to density, intensity, parking etc. is centered on disputing the eight units allowed by the density bonus. If these eight units are reduced, it will impact the cost and concomitant affordability of the rest of the units.
If a consideration to reduce the number of units is entertained, particular attention should be paid to the impact this will have on the projected rents of the remaining units. The project here should remain affordable to households and renters in the 30% to 50% AMI range. Affordable at the lower AMI range is what this project is supposed to be.
Regarding density and intensity, I urge you to view a Google Maps or Google Earth overflight of this whole area of town, from Leveroni on over. The aerial view is very helpful in providing visual context of existing conditions. There is already very tightly packed housing all around, as well as major urban uses such as: the Lodge, Train Town, Friedman’s, Broadway Market, 4-corners auto repair station, and medical/ office facilities, as well as the high school and middle school. This is by no means a pastoral, rural area. The adjacent housing is relatively new and not notable architecturally. The neighborhood is a high-use, densely packed, urban area, with two adjacent, busy transit corridors.
It is unlikely that an eight-unit density bonus will push this area over any density, character, parking, or traffic edges or tipping points, as the overall urban intensity of this part of town is substantial. A reduction of any of the eight units in question will not mitigate existing urban uses and overall area housing density in any appreciable way, but rather it will seek to satisfy the demands of a relatively few neighbors, whose desires and preferences then must be weighed against the overall community benefit of much-needed 48 affordable housing units.
Consistency with General Plan
The project fits General Plan guidelines in important respects: it promotes high density infill development on a housing opportunity site, it facilitates development of affordable housing, it collaborates with non-profits to get tax-credit funding, reduced parking standards are allowed because of affordable housing benefits, and open space, ecosystem, watershed and ag lands are preserved by concentrating development in existing urban areas. With local employment of residents, work-related transportation greenhouse gases will be very much reduced.
Planning and design issues
I suggest that you accommodate suggested design changes, to the extent that they do not impact the cost/ affordability of the project, and that design, and other questions/ issues do not reduce the number of units.
Neighbors may have valid design concerns; this does not make them NIMBYs. The immediate five households, and adjacent neighbors are having to absorb a change from an open field to a housing development. Who would not be upset? These folks are defending their territory.
However, there was never a guarantee that this field on Broadway would remain open space, or that there would be no impacts from any future development. Or that people who would live there would not drive down any nearby streets. Or that people who lived there could have some windows and look out them. Design-wise, the existing neighborhood should not take steps to freeze out uses and spatial enjoyment from the coming neighbors in the new development. That would not be very welcoming, nor represent good planning from the city’s perspective, if new housing developments were seen as hostile invasions to be closed off and isolated from existing neighborhoods.
A hostile invasion scenario is played out with many local housing developments, where building height, mass, window aspect, parking, density, traffic etc. are all called into question. However, neighbors do not have the right to limit the enjoyment of future residents of an adjoining property by imposing conditions that are any less than the neighbors themselves already have.
Housing Element has a backlog of AMI-level housing
Sonoma can’t burn the bridge and not allow any more diverse housing uses. Diverse housing is called for in the city’s Housing Element. There is a backlog of unbuilt housing for people in the AMI income range. Realistically, the only options for affordable housing are to get denser, get more height, or expand the UGB. Hard decisions will have to be made here, ones that reflect the values of the community. Hopefully these values are inclusive.
This project does not make up for all the unbuilt AMI-level housing needed, but it is a good step in the right direction.
Specific design issues
Some design issues addressed by neighbors: privacy, window aspect, building height, fence type, solar panel heat and glare, and Lodge loading dock emissions. For privacy, I don’t think it is reasonable to try and control the SAHA development so there can be no views to the west. Is there a precedent anywhere that says existing neighbors can demand that new neighbors will have no view into existing neighborhoods? I don’t think so. People want views. For building height, the SAHA buildings are roughly the same size as the Bragg Street buildings. Why would some homes get to be high, with windows with a view, and others not? Why freeze new neighbors out of any small pleasures of living in a home, like a sunset view? Why would some neighborhoods have the righty to curtail the view of others? For fence type, a block wall has no precedent in Sonoma. A block wall is a very uncommon fence type for a Sonoma residential area. If artsy wood fences are good enough for the rest of Sonoma, good enough for here as well. For solar panel glare and heat, is this a problem anywhere else? Isn’t solar very desirable to save on fossil fuel emissions? Glare from solar panels will be gone as soon the sun passes a particular angle. And finally, to see heat from neighbor’s solar panels as a problem seems like a stretch.
Lodge loading dock
One line of argument has to do with project-adjacent exhaust fumes and air quality from the Lodge loading dock. This situation is indeed problematic, has a history, and is in need of rectification from a GHG mitigation, from a pollution, and from a nuisance standpoint. However, I submit that this is a specious argument when applied to the Altimira Apts. because the neighbor in question is using material developed in her own struggle against the Lodge, and transferring it to the SAHA development, to make it appear she cares about the new tenants, when in fact, the argument is being used to try and foil and criticize the project as having inadequate mitigations. This line takes a pre-existent situation and transfers those arguments to the SAHA development.
The fact is, urban land use differences have tensions, especially where they adjoin, and some things may just not be possible to mitigate entirely, as large buffer zones to separate all uses would take up too much land. In mixed zoning areas, intractable troubles can be expected, for example with neighbors forced to tolerate noise and loud music from local bars right next to residential neighborhoods.
Concentrated poverty
This topic was raised early in the process, and in the event that some will still bring it up, I will include this section in my current comments.
A worst scenario proposed by neighbors and others, that I take particular exception to, is the assertion that this project will result in “concentrated poverty”. This term is from the Sonoma Gateway website. http://www.sonomagateway.org/#!diversity/rnqlj The project has been equated with bringing in an intensified criminal element, that it will constitute blight, that low income equals alcohol, drug and sex abuse, chronic diseases, a grave safety burden and that property values will be reduced. These assertions are all part and parcel of a long trajectory of racial discrimination that has kept suburbs like Sonoma predominantly white and that have resulted in the need for the Fair Housing Act and density bonuses in the first place.
The ultimate, unstated fear is that black and Mexican neighbors are equal to low income are equal to crime. All the above worst-case scenarios constitute a well-known code that has justified historical patterns of real estate redlining and segregation. These issues coalesce and are a flash point around affordable housing. This is then framed by neighbors as “just how we feel.”
Neighbors have legit concerns about this project, but they cannot avoid the connection of speech regarding crime and concentrated poverty, and its connection with past redlining and segregation. To deny this connection would be naïve.
Concentrated poverty is Richmond, not one 48-unit development in a rich town in the midst of a diverse, multiple use area. And in fact, as of 9/16, three sex offenders already live in the Clay Street area. The neighbors want a concrete wall between them and the development but the real fact is, they have already been infiltrated by crime and noise.
Background discussions and process
A report I wrote for the Sun http://sonomasun.com/2016/08/26/report-community-mtg-about-broadway-affordable-housing-project/ and the series of comments about it provide further context, and public opinion about this project.
Many concessions already made
I believe that SAHA has already made substantial design concessions, as listed in the staff report, and has made a solid public outreach effort. I don’t see how a developer could be more forthcoming. No one has ever said SAHA was impolite or unresponsive.
SAHA has taken the number of possible units down by four, moved the community building and entrance, changed the trash collection location, gotten rid of three-story buildings, adjusted the western building roof height and angle, and made concessions on window aspect. At some point the neighbors have to see they can’t demand the moon and heaven too.
Please consider design if need be, and also consider the great need for affordable units and the need to keep prices down. As a member of the SAHA Community Advisory Committee (CAC) group, I found the SAHA architect to be very good, and sensitive to neighbor’s concerns. Many compromises and suggestions by neighbors have been taken. It is my understanding as a participant, that the CAC process left a good design in place.
Greatest good
This is a good project that works toward the greatest good in the community. I urge you to accept the negative declaration and grant a use permit for a 48-unit project.
