A message from Generation Housing Executive Director |
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Dear Gen H Family:
We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends. This Thanksgiving we were most thankful for all of you. Your support for affordable housing and improving our community by making sure every one of our neighbors thrives, is vitally important to our mission.
We all have our chosen families, thank you for choosing the Gen H Family!
Jen
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Sign up for ACTION ALERTS! |
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Policy & Advocacy Update: Things to Celebrate
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It’s important to, on occasion, reflect and recognize significant milestones in getting more, more diverse, and more affordable housing built. So let’s take a moment this month...and celebrate!
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The SMART Village has cleared another major milestone! An infill project, the SMART Village design proposes a six-story, 114-unit residential building consisting of a combination of studio, one-, two-bedroom, and 'family' style apartments with 12 units reserved for income-qualified households. On Wednesday (11/17), the project received unanimous approval from the Santa Rosa Cultural Heritage Board with minor input. The project is now headed to the Santa Rosa Design Review Board for additional review.
We celebrate this project for several reasons. The nearby SMART station, regional bike network connections, proximity to downtown, and convenient connections to local and regional road networks, will give the residents a broad array of transit options, creating opportunities to reduce car dependency. These transit oriented strategies, coupled with a highly sustainable approach to site planning and organization, will allow for the creation of a forward looking, sustainably driven and resilient community. This project, and others soon-to-be approved in the same vicinity, represent a measurable step forward in creating a vibrant downtown core for the City of Santa Rosa...
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Board Member Spotlight: Manuel Perez |
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Manuel Perez-Parra is a recent graduate from the University of California, Riverside. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and minored in Education. Currently, he is working full time as a Fellow at 10,000 Degree and is also a Youth Promotor for Latino Service Providers. Manuel is passionate about housing development in Sonoma County because it provides homes for families that are in need and is looking forward to helping out his community as the newest Generation Housing Board Member.
Outside of academics and work, you can find Manuel enjoying a good movie or spending time with friends and loved ones. He enjoys experiencing new restaurants and trying out new types of food.
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Yasmin
Yasmin is a 22-year-old dental hygiene student who lives with her parents in Petaluma, where they own and run a local restaurant.
Yasmin has lived in her family’s home for the last 20 years, and she hopes to be able to someday afford to buy a house of her own in Sonoma County. In order to do so, Yasmin is considering having her parents buy a new house so that they can copay and live separately. When asked about her opinion on the current state of housing, she stated that "It’s really unrealistic for millennials to be able to buy a home -- we need to make it more affordable so that we can keep our community here!"
She loves living in Sonoma County because people are kind, it’s wine country, and there are open, green spaces like the local soccer fields, where she often goes to watch games. She wants to see her family and friends thrive in the town they grey up in.
Help Generation Housing ensure housing availability for people like Yasmin by joining #WeAreGenH now!
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We are teachers, first responders, farm workers. We are grocers, we are artists. |
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Together, each of you, all of us, and all residents of Sonoma County. We Are Gen H, and we all need affordable places to live.
The “We Are Gen H” pro-housing campaign lifts up the experiences of workers, artists, and students in the community and organizes community members to take action and show support for more construction of more types of housing in Sonoma County.
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58,000 Homes: The Roadmap |
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Part One November 2021
Read our latest report. Current Homebuilding Rates and the Pace Needed to Meet Sonoma County’s Needs
Achieving the ambitious goal of producing 58,000 new homes for Sonoma County residents requires grounding the discussion in the data that reflects existing homebuilding levels and identifying the new levels of production necessary to improve affordability.
In the figure below, we start by forecasting to 2030 by using a weighted average to predict future levels of home production. The existing levels of home production from 2000 to 2018 are used to estimate home production levels between 2018 to 2030. The estimate under this scenario is labeled “Business As-Usual” given the assumption that producing homes at past to current levels would be maintaining the status quo, or business as-usual. Under this scenario, Sonoma County would produce an average of 989 homes annually. Between our time period of 2018 to 2030, Sonoma County would produce about 12,857 new homes.
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Sign up to volunteer at community events to meet people, talk housing, and engage them in our work. |
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Generation Housing Members' Monthly House Party | December 16th 4:30 - 5:30PM, Virtual |
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Being a Generation Housing member comes with its perks, and one of them is free admission to members-only educational, networking, and advocacy events.
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Accessory Dwelling Unit Roundtable Conversation + Live Q&A | December 2nd 6:00 pm - 7:30PM
Join our partners Napa Sonoma ADU or a roundtable conversation about ADUs, including:
- Government agencies: Who’s Who & What Do They Do with ADUs?
- Utilities (energy, well, septic, etc.)
- Permit Fees: What are they?
- Budget & financing
- How are ADUs “eco-friendly”?
- New developments in ADU construction
- YOUR ADU questions, answered live!
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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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"Susana Alfaro cries when she thinks about the 10 years she and her family lived at the McCray Road Apartments in Cloverdale. The creeping mold, the sewage backups in the shower, the sound of rats scurrying around in the walls at night."
Affordable housing faces ‘visceral opposition’ in Sonoma County, supervisor says |The Press Democrat
Supervisors and city councils have approved or are in the process of approving many affordable housing projects for low- or very-low income residents throughout Sonoma County. But that’s not enough, says Supervisor James Gore, who represents northern Sonoma County, which includes Cloverdale, which has a population that’s nearly 40% Latino and has a lower median income than most of the county.
What’s next for planned Petaluma tiny home village?|Argus Courier
Petaluma leaders have committed more than $1 million toward proposed services and site development of a tiny home community meant to provide temporary housing to at least two dozen homeless residents by the beginning of next year.
SRJC celebrates new student housing project with groundbreaking ceremony | The Oak Leaf
"Nearly thirty years after demolishing its first student housing, Santa Rosa Junior College broke ground for construction of new and affordable on-campus dorms able to house 352 students on the southeast corner of Elliot Avenue and Armory Drive on Friday Oct. 22."
The Affordable Housing Crisis Is Destroying Relationships and Families| Newsweek
"Susan, a call center employee, moved in with her boyfriend, Eugene, after they had been dating for just over two months. "We couldn't afford to live by ourselves," she explained. Eugene, who worked two jobs, was barely breaking even, although he split rent with a male roommate. Adding Susan to the household was no one's first choice, but they all understood it was financially what they needed to do."
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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.
PERMANENT SUPPORTIVE HOUSING
Permanent supportive housing serves homeless individuals and families who have barriers to sustaining independent housing. PSH sites provide permanent housing and case management and other services designed to keep those people housed. desperately need.
REGIONAL HOUSING NEEDS ASSESSMENT (RHNA)
Association of Bay Area Government (ABAG) assessment that produces regional, sub-regional and local targets for the amount and type of homes needed over a seven-year period, based on new growth. RHNA takes into account anticipated housing demand generated by employment growth and population increase, however is not enforceable, which has led to the Bay Area vastly under producing housing for lower income individuals and families. RHNA also does not take into account prior unmet housing needs, which leads to the Bay Area falling farther and farther into a housing deficit.
PRIORITY DEVELOPMENT AREAS
Areas designated by cities and approved by the Association of Bay Area Government, as places where new growth (housing, jobs) should be concentrated. PDAs must meet certain requirements, including location close to transit. PDAs are supposed to be “complete communities” with housing, shopping and services accessible by bike and walking and homes for a range of economic levels. Plan Bay Area is based on concentrating growth in these PDAs.
SPECIFIC PLANS
Plans prepared by city government to attract, stimulate and guide development in a particular neighborhood. Often specific plans streamline certain requirements to make it easier for developers to get approvals to build projects.
VERY-LOW INCOME
A person or household whose gross household income does not exceed 50% of Area Median Income, adjusted for household size. This income category often includes preschool teachers, paramedics and retail clerks.
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