Gen H Monthly News and Updates | Nov 2020 |
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A message from Generation Housing Executive Director, Jen Klose |
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They say that “elections have consequences”, but do they necessarily? It might be more accurate to say that “elections can have consequences.” Candidates make promises and sell plans. Ballot measures have broad and vague language that are later put into specific action by state and local regulations yet to be developed. Many vote and then wait to see what happens in the years between trips to the ballot box.
But in Sonoma County, our need to get shovels in the ground and get housing built is too dire and too urgent to watch and wait. We — pro-housing voters, community leaders, community organizations — must be consistently involved to influence the actions of our elected and appointed leaders to move the needle on development of more and more affordable housing. Our Generation Housing team is working tirelessly to advise and educate, partner with, support, and at times push and oppose our leaders in order to accelerate the pace of housing development.
Read the rest of the message here.
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SIGN THE PETITION AND TAKE ACTION TODAY |
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We are urging the City of Santa Rosa to match the County’s investment in affordable housing funding so that more of our friends and neighbors can do better than just “make rent” — they can thrive.
You can read and sign the petition here.
Submit a comment to the City of Santa Rosa:
Community members are encouraged to provide input by emailing suggestions to citycouncil@srcity.org between now and December 8, 2020.
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Upcoming Events
Advancing Housing Solutions for a Healthier Sonoma County | Nov. 19th 6:00 - 7:00 PM
How can housing advocates and health experts collaborate to advance solutions and policies that can foster a healthier Sonoma County? Join Generation Housing as we discuss with a panel of experts the impacts of past and present housing policies on health and the way in which they’ve entrenched and exacerbated disparities.
Youth and Housing Town Hall | Dec. 7th 6:00 - 7:30 PM
How is Sonoma County’s housing crisis impacting our young people and what does this mean for our future? How can youth raise their voices to advocate for more housing options?
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Gen H Supports Proposed Housing Communities and Projects |
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3575 Mendocino Ave, “Journey’s End Redevelopment” | Santa Rosa |
Generation Housing proudly endorses the 3575 Mendocino Avenue Project, a project that strongly aligns with our project endorsement criteria and guiding principles.
The 2017 wildfires severely harmed Sonoma County as over 5,300 homes were lost, including 162 mobile homes that were destroyed at the former Journey’s End Mobile Home Park. Redevelopment of the former Journey’s End site is instrumental, both materially and symbolically, to Sonoma County’s overall recovery by offering high-density residential housing with a mix of affordable and market rate units near public transit.
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Vartnaw Landing | Petaluma |
Generation Housing proudly endorses the Vartnaw Landing development proposed at 1280 Petaluma Blvd South, Petaluma, CA.
The project consists of 79 residential units and 4 additional accessory dwelling units (ADUs). This mixed-income development features both market-rate and deed-restricted affordable homes with about 30 percent of the homes intended for moderate, and low-income households. The ADU’s will be deed restricted rentals for very low-income households. These homes combined make a considerable contribution to the City of Petaluma’s housing obligations both in terms of total and affordable homes.
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College Creek | Santa Rosa |
Generation Housing is excited to endorse College Creek apartments at 2150 West College Ave.
College Creek proposes a 164-unit multi-family residential community consisting of affordable housing units in 1, 2 and 3- bedroom for-rent apartment homes at the former site of the Sonoma County Water Agency on West College Avenue in Santa Rosa. The proposed development would include 100% deed-restricted affordable homes intended for families between 30 to 80 percent of the area median income, which aligns with Generation Housing’s efforts to have former public lands used to support affordable housing.
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We are Gen H! Become a member today! |
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The Future of Housing in the 2020 Election
Written by Luke Lindenbusch
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Generation Housing’s first election cycle as an organization occurred in an election year unlike any other. Pandemic campaigns weren’t easy for candidates, yet they provided the public and advocates like us with an unprecedented ability to digitally engage candidates on the issues that matter. Our six-part candidate forum webinar series, The Future of Housing, hosted candidates for the city councils of Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Windsor, Sebastopol, Rohnert Park, and Petaluma. There weren’t any housing production measures on the ballot this year in Sonoma County, but we intended to ensure that housing policy was on the ballot. After hearing from fourteen of the councilmembers elected this year, we’re confident that incumbents and insurgents alike are well-equipped to advance meaningful housing solutions in Sonoma County.
Read the full article here.
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Santa Rosa Junior College receives $1M grant for affordable student housing from Kaiser Permanente |
Generation Housing would like to congratulate the Santa Rosa Junior College for their visionary and intrepid efforts to build affordable housing for students. These funds will go a long way towards ensuring that students have access to affordable housing while they complete their studies at SRJC.
With this grant, Kaiser Permanente continues to demonstrate its commitment to advance housing as an important solution to improving community health.
Generation Housing would like to especially congratulate Pedro Avila, Vice President of Student Services at the Santa Rosa Junior College and Generation Housing Board Member, for his leadership in providing needed services to SRJC students.
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In this month’s advocacy update, we’ll share with you recent developments regarding the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA, pronounced “Reena”) - a statewide process that will inform the amount of housing each of our local cities and towns will be expected to permit in the coming years. And a new data dashboard to help each of us better understand RHNA!
New State Housing Mandate Indicates Sonoma County and the Bay Area Will Need to Build Much More Housing
Every eight years, the State of California along with regional governments, counties, cities, and towns embark on a process to update their plans to accommodate the amount of housing that must be built in order to meet the needs of their residents. The process and the amount of housing that should be built is known as the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, or RHNA.
Read the rest of our advocacy update here
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Stephanie Picard Bowen |Operations & Development Director |
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Stephanie Picard Bowen brings nearly a decade of experience working in the nonprofit world and most recently as a Project Manager at a general contracting firm in Sonoma County working with wildfire survivors rebuilding their homes. Prior to that, she worked at Social Advocates for Youth, where she worked on the Capital Campaign for the SAY Dream Center and produced events like One Cold Night and SAY Soiree. She joins Generation Housing as Operations & Development Director.
Read Stephanie's full bio here
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Sonoma County Housing News Digest
In case you missed some of the key news items of the last few weeks on local housing, Generation Housing has procured a bevy of news articles from around Sonoma County.
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Townhome boom emerges in Santa Rosa as needed affordable option | Press Democrat
“Townhouses are multistory residences that share one or two walls with adjacent neighbors, but have their own entrances. They are ubiquitous in East Coast cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. However, they have been the rare exception for Californians, who preferred suburban lots and lawns. A recent drive around southwest Santa Rosa shows that is quickly changing. Amid a protracted housing crunch, about 500 townhomes have been built or are under construction in that section of the city alone.”
Despite the continuing public health emergency, California courts have resumed most eviction cases. From April 6 through Sept. 1, a state Judicial Council emergency rule suspended evictions across the state, except those necessary to protect public health and safety. This emergency protection was critical in preventing unnecessary evictions and protecting public health.
Santa Rosa Hotel Acquired Through Project Homekey as Transitional Housing | NBC News Bay Area
The purchase of a Santa Rosa hotel to provide temporary housing for vulnerable people lacking shelter was approved Tuesday by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors.
The $8 million acquisition of the 44-room Hotel Azura was made through the state's Project Homekey program, established in June in response to the COVID-19 health emergency. Officials said the hotel on Healdsburg Avenue would be converted into interim housing for up to 66 individuals when escrow is closed, possibly by next week.
Six- to eight-story luxury apartment buildings, downsized “microsuites,” minimal on-site parking, ground-floor child care.
These features of urban living could soon be coming to the North Bay’s largest city, and, according to real estate developers speaking at a business conference Tuesday downtown Santa Rosa is more welcoming of such housing investments than in years past.
“We’ve seen Santa Rosa walk the walk,” said Pauline Block, head of marketing and development for Petaluma-based Cornerstone Properties, which owns The Press Democrat building on Mendocino Avenue and several other sites in the city. She pointed to the city’s formation of an enterprise district to deal with longstanding challenges, the reunification of Courthouse Square and the completion of the Station Area Specific Plan for Railroad Square.
Affordable Housing Developers Brace For Funding Hit As Pandemic Lingers | BisNow
As the region and state's housing crises hit critical levels, traditional sources of funding for Bay Area affordable housing — from federal low-income housing tax credits to local subsidies — are likely to dry up, affordable housing developers say.
"At this point, we were fortunate in that many of the programs on the state level were funded prior to the pandemic and economic downturn, so the pots have been filled," said Larry Florin, CEO of North Bay affordable housing developer Burbank Housing. “The problem is they’re also one-time funding sources, so when they’re gone, you have to either come up with new money or the program goes away."
Creating a new home where there’s already a single-family residence, whether by converting a garage into a living space or constructing a separate “granny “unit on the same property, is a rising answer for some to the housing shortage.
Now a nonprofit center has been set up to provide free help in how to get started, including financial planning, budgeting, permitting, design considerations and construction tips for accessory dwelling units (ADU) in Napa and Sonoma counties.
The nonprofit Napa Sonoma ADU Center’s advisers and partners track frequently changing state and local ADU laws and policies, conduct focus groups and interviews with local homeowners. It also provides a step-by-step ADU workbook, created by Baird + Driskell Community Planning, offering useful information and reduce the uncertainty in what many feel is a complicated process, among other vital services.
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Demystifying Housing Policy:
Five Housing Terms Everyone Should Know
Housing affects all of us, yet the terminology used to discuss housing can be fraught with insider lingo and it can be difficult to fully grasp. So we’ve compiled a brief list of some of the most common terms used in the housing policy world to help everyone better understand and engage in the housing conversation.
HOUSING ELEMENT
A required element of all California city general plans, housing elements identify and analyze housing needs and include goals, objectives, policies, and programs for providing a city’s fair share of affordable housing needs. Although state law mandates that jurisdictions rezone enough land to meet their regional housing needs allocation and each jurisdiction is required to have an approved housing element, jurisdictions retain local land use control and Housing Elements are only plans for housing. Advocates then push for implementation of these plans and work tirelessly to get these cities and counties to produce the homes their communities desperately need.
INFILL DEVELOPMENT
A strategy for accommodating growth and preventing sprawl through greater density and efficiency in land use development within existing urban boundaries.
LAND TRUST
In the strictest sense, a nonprofit organization that sells affordable homes but retains ownership of the land under them in order to control, through the lease, the long-term affordability of the homes. The lease ensures that the home is resold to a low-income family, sold at a below-market price, and/or sold with a share of the appreciated value going to the nonprofit. The term is used more loosely to describe programs that subsidize fee simple homeownership for low-income families and impose similar kinds of long-term affordability controls.
MARKET-RATE HOUSING
Housing built by for-profit developers with private capital, generally for people above 120% Area Median Income, adjusted for household size.
MODERATE INCOME
A person or household with gross household income between 80% and 120% of Area Median Income, adjusted for household size, often including registered nurses and police officers. This housing, also called Work Force Housing, is typically built by for-profit developers in exchange for incentives offered by local jurisdictions (density bonuses, etc.)
Visit our website to learn more housing terms at our Publications and Resources page and check out our Housing Glossary.
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