Editorial: Affordable Housing – Time for Sonoma to put its money where its mouth is 

At the top of its goals for 2025, the Sonoma City Council has placed the creation of affordable housing, particularly housing for lower-wage earners. A review of Affordable Housing (deed restricted and income qualified) created during this past year is bleak; only two low and very low income units were built. Unless the city ups its game dramatically, it will fall far short of its goal to produce 311 Affordable Housing units during the next seven years, the state’s mandated target.

Luckily, there is an opportunity to make a difference. By using a million or so dollars from its $1.4 million Affordable Housing Trust Fund, the city can begin the process of purchasing the old Truck and Auto parcel at the corner of MacArthur Street and Broadway. It’s now up for sale. Having laid fallow since the business closed and was demolished, the site is perfectly located to provide housing for lower-wage hotel workers downtown and put a dent in the number of units needed and required.

The parcel costs $4.6 million, well more than one million dollars, but a million is enough to prime the pump. Nonprofit housing developers like Burbank or Midpen Housing know everything about how to leverage government money, but it’s up to the government to get the ball rolling.

Now’s time for the City Council to put its money where its mouth is. If the council is serious about creating affordable housing, now’s the time to prove it. It can begin with securing an option to buy the parcel, which will provide the time for the city to work with a nonprofit housing developer and lead a community-based fund-raising campaign to secure additional money. The Chamber of Commerce says its members complain they can’t find employees due to the lack of affordable housing. Now is the chance for the Chamber and its members to be part of the solution and not just complain about the problem.

The parcel is currently zoned Mixed-Use, which is intended to be a blend of housing and commercial use, but there is no requirement that limits the use of the parcel for housing only. With a density of 20 units an acre, plus a density bonus of 50 percent, seventy or more affordable units could be built to house our service industry workers and their families.

The parcel is on our major commercial corridor, has access to bus routes, and is walking distance to Plaza restaurants, businesses, and local hotels. It’s within Sonoma’s urban core, and one of the few, large, undeveloped parcels remaining downtown. In short, it’s perfect.

If the City of Sonoma does not help purchase this parcel, it will most likely be bought and developed by commercial interests that exploit its development for high-end uses. Although it requires that 50 percent of the developed real estate be housing, only 25 percent of that is required to be affordable, putting barely a dent in the city’s goal.

We think the City of Sonoma needs to get proactive and take a bold step forward in implementing Sonoma’s Affordable Housing solutions. The city can’t have it both ways, making its top goal the creation of Affordable Housing but not actually doing it. The City of Sonoma needs to get off the dime and take real action to make it happen now.