Spotlight on Housing: What can be done to achieve housing relief?

Housing series concludes with the question, ‘Now what?’|

It's one thing to identify a problem. It's another to determine the causes of that problem, and yet another to find practical solutions.

Over the last six weeks, the Index-Tribune's Spotlight on Housing series has examined, in depth, local issues of rising rents and crowded houses. Writers and community members have asked questions about the barriers to building more housing, looking hard at the needs of workers, families, and young people who may have found a home in Sonoma, but who now desperately need an affordable way to stay here. Two obvious questions remain.

'What now? What next?'

According to Supervisor Susan Gorin, there is plenty being done to address the need for plentiful affordable housing. But like most solutions to complex problems, tangible results are going to take some time.

'The Board of Supervisors recognizes there is a continuum of needs in the county,' Gorin says, pointing to a number of actions taken in recent months to address a host of housing-related matters. In addition to expanding homeless shelters across the county and increasing funding for several emergency shelter programs – including providing help for Sonoma Overnight Support and its First Street West shelter, the Haven – Gorin says she's enthusiastic that a number of actions currently being taken will eventually offer practical relief.

'I am working with a local group of builders and investors to identify undeveloped parcels of land and infill opportunity sites, to jump-start innovative ideas for smaller scale projects and second units,' Gorin says.

Additionally, voters this November will consider a county ballot measure to raise the Transient Occupancy Tax from nine to 12 percent. Gorin has proposed that $1 million from those TOT funds – taxes on hotels and other tourist accommodations – be allocated to create a housing trust fund. Similar to a program in the Silicon Valley, the trust fund would be used to subsidize affordable housing projects. If the ballot measure passes, it could generate an additional $4 million a year.

'We will be using the increased revenue from this measure to fund mitigations to the impact of tourism,' says Gorin, specifically naming expansions of affordable housing, roads and fire services. Gorin also points to recent discussions about converting the Sonoma Developmental Center into some sort of affordable workforce housing community, but adds that transitioning the soon-to-be-shuttered center into a practical housing community will likely take a number of years.

'The need for workforce housing is at a critical point in the Sonoma Valley, as well as the rest of the county,' she says. 'It is important to consider all strategies. It's not easy to do this when demand is high and supply is critically low. Our community needs to recognize that we are at a point where we must accept a bit more density and a bit more height in new housing projects, in order to house our adult children and our workforce.'

At the city-level, Sonoma Mayor Laurie Gallian says the City Council is similarly committed to addressing the housing shortage in practical ways, balancing long-term solutions with needs for immediate action.

'The clock is ticking, and we understand the urgency,' says Gallian. 'For one thing, winter is fast approaching, and there are people with no housing at all, so there's a timeline we are facing. In the next several weeks, we'll be having conversations with the interfaith community, and will work toward establishing whatever shelter is necessary for the coming rainy season.'

Action is being taken to alleviate the Valley-wide housing shortage as well, Gallian says, pointing not just to projects like the soon-to-be-completed Fetters Apartments in the Springs, and the 49-unit project planned for a County-owned vacant lot on Broadway.

The Sonoma Planning Commission has held two meetings in conjunction with the City Council on developing affordable housing options and identifying opportunities. Following their most recent session on Aug. 15, direction has been given to the Planning Commission, which will present a formal plan to the City Council, as early as October.

Among the ideas suggested, Gallian says, are relaxing ordinances against certain kinds of 'granny units' and allowing more 'junior accessory' dwelling units – essentially, existing rooms within houses refurbished to work as rentable living spaces with a separate entrance from the main house.

'Our housing shortage is a problem that was not created overnight, and it's not going to be solved overnight,' says Gallian. 'But we will soon have a plan of action, and we do intend to keep housing front and center.'

Those solutions, she says, will involve finding more ways to take advantage of existing housing, finding ways to get it onto the marketplace.

'The truth is, a whole lot of big affordable housing units are not going to be in our future,' Gallian says, 'so we have to start looking elsewhere to solve the problem.' That, she says, will likely require more conversation, more study, and more discussion.

Housing activist Dave Ransom, meanwhile, would prefer less talking and more action. 'Let's stop talking, and let's actually do something,' he says.

Ransom, a Santa Rosa resident, is a vocal member of the Sonoma Valley Housing Group, a community bloc of local housing advocates which hopes the City of Sonoma will follow the example of the Santa Rosa City Council which, on Aug. 9, declared a state of emergency on homelessness.

'Santa Rosa's declared a state of emergency, and we've asked the City of Sonoma to do that, too,' says Ransom. 'If this is a state of emergency, and we believe it is, then let's treat it like one. Let's build a tent city the way they do when there's a fire or an earthquake. Let's bring in Porta-Potties. Let's start breadlines for the hungry like we did during the Depression. It might be only triage, but at least triage is action. It's doing something.

'Talking isn't doing,' he says. 'Talking is just talking.'

To that end, Ransom's group, a project of the Sonoma Valley Methodist Church, has been circulating a resolution carrying a series of demands, including a call for local government to take 'immediate steps to provide shelter for the homeless,' along with other strongly worded suggestions. These include establishing 'alternative interim housing' along the lines of workforce boarding rooms, formal dormitories, or 'Of Mice and Men'-style bunkhouses, along with establishing safe zones for tents, trailers and car-parking. The resolution also calls for an immediate freeze on rents in the area.

'It's a waste of housing to have these places that are rented out on the weekends to tourists, but remain empty the rest of the week,' Ransom says, 'when there are people living under bridges or crammed together, 10 to a house, just down the street.'

Whether or not the City elects to – or is legally able to – consider such aggressive but potentially controversial steps, there are those who say that much more is currently being done to address the issue of housing than just a lot of discussion groups and brainstorming workshops.

'Positive, practical, nuts-and-bolts steps are taking place right now,' says Jim Leddy, special projects director of the Sonoma County Community Development Commission. 'A million new dollars have been put into the County's fund for building affordable housing, so there's available money right now. That's positive.'

How much of that money could be spent alleviating the problem in the Valley, he says, will be up to whichever nonprofit affordable housing companies – like MidPen Housing which is developing the Fetters Apartments – step forward to take advantage of affordable housing grants made from that money.

Also, Leddy adds, there is more available money for expanding the county's shelter system, in hopes that more beds in more shelters will get more homeless off the streets. Along with expanding shelters and developing affordable housing complexes, Leddy suggests that part of the solution will come from putting small pockets of new housing wherever we can.

'Infill is a path that could be taken,' he says. 'We're looking at models for that. Little developments that can get 12 people off the market – maybe seniors or veterans – and get them into an affordable home.'

But first things first, he warns. The building of new units, and the repurposing of existing units, will involve loosening affordable housing regulations, and relaxing or eliminating an array of land-use and zoning restrictions.

'That's how you unstick the market,' Leddy says. 'You create supply. And right now, we are conscientiously building toward deciding what concrete actions can be taken immediately – changing zoning where it's necessary, creating more available land wherever we can.'

Email David at david.templeton@sonomanews.com.

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