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Dear Generation,
As we move into the last quarter of the year, it's time to focus on tangible and meaningful changes to achieve our vision for the North Bay. Our North Bay NEXT: 5 Action Steps outline a transformative path to ensure everyone has a place they can call home. If you're looking to make a difference today, we urge you to sign our North Bay Next petition. The steps are doable, impactful, and within the reach of our local leaders.
1) Bring Millions to Fund Housing: Pass a resolution endorsing the BAHA regional bond measure to bring at least $403M to Sonoma County, and $179M to Napa County, for housing production and preservation.
2) Zone for People: End exclusionary zoning. Create more diverse and more affordable housing by allowing up to 4-plex housing in single-family zones and expand zoning for Missing Middle small apartment complexes. This also empowers homeowners to maximize the value of their property and takes a step toward righting the wrong of decades of discriminatory zoning practices.
3) Fast & Fair: Streamline housing development by integrating Design Review Boards into Planning Commissions. This accelerates housing projects while still ensuring transparency and accountability in decision-making
4) Incentivize Affordability: Support near-term construction of Affordable and affordable-by-design workforce housing by offering a three-year temporary fee waiver and adopting fees based on square footage. This is an imperative offset to current economic forces making development financially infeasible.
5) People & Planet Over Parking: Let developers and their tenants make climate-smart decisions on parking needs by eliminating costly and heavy-handed parking mandates. This promotes a more sustainable approach to housing without passing on additional costs to residents.
Earlier this month, we've rolled out three policy briefs providing more information on the North Bay NEXT action steps, beginning with 1) Bring Millions to Fund Housing, 2) Zone for People and 3) Fast & Fair. These guides answer key questions from our community and provide an in-depth look at how these action steps can make a monumental impact. Keep an eye out for our last two upcoming policy briefs here. Our North Bay Housing Education webinar series will offer even more opportunities to learn about these crucial NEXT policies.
We also invite you to join us for our upcoming webinar, Housing is Economic Health, on Thursday, November 2nd. This webinar will feature local leaders and experts discussing the ripple effects of housing on everything from your local taco trucks to North Bay tourism.
Lastly, as you contemplate your year-end charitable plans, we hope you'll consider making Generation Housing part of your charitable giving plans. Your support empowers us to continue advocating for the housing solutions that will shape an equitable, healthy, and resilient North Bay! We invite you all to engage with us—read, learn, ask questions, and, most importantly, get involved and become a GenH member, we’re all in this together.
In continued partnership,
Team Gen H
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"We need all the types of housing. We need the types of housing stock that can work for everyone in this community, and it will look different for everyone." - Suzanne Smith, Retired, Executive Director Sonoma County Transportation Authority, Regional Climate Protection Authority (SCTA/RCPA) | |
North Bay Next Update
October 2023
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Year one of Generation Housing’s Prohousing Initiative draws to a close this month. We are proud to have worked with Designation-winning jurisdictions across Sonoma County as well as those outside of the county, including Ukiah and Roseville, to better understand the Department of Housing and Community Development’s approach to housing production. Sonoma County remains the county with the most successful applications in 2023, including Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Windsor, and the County itself. Even more exciting than the funding these designations unlock are the policies on affordable housing production that cities are required to implement.
Now that the application stage is over, in many ways, the hard work starts. Jurisdictions must implement their policies in order to remain in compliance and stay eligible for the Prohousing Designation advantages over the next two years. The state retains the right to determine how successful cities are at executing their policies as well as monitor the passage of separate ordinances that risk undermining housing production. The work ahead is even steeper for jurisdictions like Santa Rosa with a significant proportion of “proposed” rather than enacted policies. These policies must be passed within the first year of the designation. Jurisdictions are required to outline some but not all concrete steps toward the execution of these proposed policies.
But there is a lot of work to do - from understanding successful models of implementation, to finding data-backed evidence on the intersection of policy plans, and devising model ordinance language. This is where Generation Housing’s second phase of advising comes into play. Now that applications are in hand, Generation Housing will advocate, educate, and advise on the successful implementation of policies across five major areas of Prohousing policy. This next phase is reflected in our new North Bay NEXT initiative: a research-, advocacy-, and community-oriented rollout of model policy design in five areas crucial for boosting housing production and eliminating constraints on affordable housing approval, financing, and construction. Each is tailored to the assets and challenges of midsize cities and smaller towns with a legacy of single family housing but ambitions to provide housing for all its residents, workers, young families, and students.
As a result, our Prohousing Initiative updates will now become the home for our North Bay NEXT updates. Here, you can learn more about each policy area – from financing, approval, zoning, fee structuring, and parking – that impacts the cost of housing. You can also follow along as jurisdictions pledge to adopt or meet these housing goals. Each month we will post our Action Dashboard, share updates and information on a new policy area, including a policy brief that you can read to stay informed, and highlight opportunities to advocate for reform in front of elected officials. Stay tuned for more and please reach out to Joshua Shipper, our Director of Special Initiatives, at joshua@generationhousing.org for further information.
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Policy Update October 2023 | |
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Legislative Lowdown: Your Monthly Digest on State Housing Policy
Well that's a wrap! The first year of the 2023-2024 Legislative Session is officially over- and what a banner year it has been! Of the 11 bills we supported, 9 received the Governor's signature and were signed into law. We sent letters of support for 3 additional bills (not listed on our website) that were also signed into law.
The two bills listed on our website that didn’t make the cut this year will be revisited again in the new year. SB 450, an SB 9 clean up bill and endorsed by Generation Housing, was pulled at the last minute by Senator Atkins before it would have likely moved forward to the Assembly Floor for a formal vote. This bill will likewise be picked up in the new year.
You can learn more about our endorsed legislation here.
If you have thoughts on bill proposals that can transform the Bay Area, feel free to reach out and share those ideas with our Policy Director Calum Weeks at calum@generationhousing.org. We are always interested in learning about how people in the community think we can build more, more diverse, and more affordable housing.
On the Horizon: What’s Coming Up on the Sonoma County Policy Front?
The City of Sonoma launched their General Plan Update Process this month. Interested community members can attend one of the upcoming Community Visioning Workshops on November 2 and/or 13 at 6:00pm at the Vintage House.
The City of Santa Rosa will share their Draft Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy at the Climate Action Subcommittee meeting scheduled for Wednesday, November 1 at 4:00pm.
The County Board of Supervisors has a presentation scheduled for Tuesday, November 11th (at ~8:30am) meeting that will offer an update on the ongoing process to annex the Moorland region into the City of Santa Rosa. To learn more about this process, we recommend this Press Democrat article as a primer. At this same meeting, the BOS will hold a carbon sequestration study continuing its commitment to achieve carbon neutrality.
The City of Petaluma will continue its discussion of the Downtown Housing & Economic Overlay at a joint meeting of the Petaluma Planning Commission and the Historic and Cultural Preservation Committee on Tuesday, November 14 at 6:00pm.
The County Board of Supervisors will review the First Reading of the Transient Occupancy Tax (“TOT”) Ordinance on Tuesday, November 28 (at ~8:30am). At this same meeting, the BOS will review the Fall General Fund Fiscal Forecast - this includes review of funds and will be an opportunity to revisit TOT, Teeter, and reinvestment/redevelopment policies.
The City of Santa Rosa will share a Draft Economic Development Strategic Plan to the City Council on Tuesday, November 28 at 4:00pm.
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At Generation Housing, we envision vibrant communities where everyone has access to safe, stable, affordable housing.
Generation Housing has worked hard to understand the current challenges residents face when it comes to housing. Through our survey-driven "Making the Rent" study and our "2023 State of Housing in Sonoma County" report, we've sought to illustrate the scale at which our housing deficit impacts our community. But as we launch our North Bay NEXT initiative, we also want to understand what Sonoma County residents hope to see in their communities. What types of housing, amenities, and plans would make your community stronger and healthier? To do that, Generation Housing is launching a short survey on the types of communities we most want to see.
Please take 10 minutes to complete this survey by Monday, December 13.
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Housing is Economic Health
Thursday, November 2
6:00-7:15 PM
Online Zoom Webinar
Wondering how housing affects everything from your local taco trucks to the state of North Bay tourism? The ripple effects are powerful! Our November 2nd webinar will equip you with the insights you need to advocate for meaningful housing solutions in our region—register today!
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Housing for the Future: A Focus on Families + Youth
More details coming soon — Mark your calendars for November 16th! The future of our young people, their quality of life, and our community are at stake.
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Max Zhang, Research Manager
Max joins the Generation Housing team with professional and academic experience in data analysis and public policy. He is a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in both Statistics and Economics. As a student there, Max helped improve transparency and reproducibility in policy analysis at the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences and studied pandemic unemployment insurance and Proposition 13 tax revenue impacts at the Berkeley Institute for Young Americans.
After graduation, he worked for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to enhance the detection of fraud in the Medicare system.
As a part of Gen H, Max is furthering a long-standing passion for effective and equitable policy by bringing the power of modern data analysis tools to the world of housing advocacy. When he isn’t busy learning everything there is to know about housing, you can find him spending time with friends and family, listening to podcasts, and enjoying the Bay Area’s perfect weather.
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Demystifying Housing Policy:
Four Housing Terms Everyone Should Know
BOOMERANG FUNDS New property tax revenues to a city or county’s general fund that came out of the elimination of Redevelopment Agencies, so called because these funds were relinquished by the local jurisdictions to the state and then “boomeranged” back to the local jurisdictions. Since 2012, over $60 million dollars in boomerang funds have been set aside for affordable homes due to successes in San Francisco, Fremont, Alameda County, San Mateo County, Santa Clara County, and recently Mountain View.
SECONDARY FINANCING A term used to describe any financing used in conjunction with first mortgage loans from conventional financing institutions—for example, a down payment grant, a deferred payment loan, or an amortizing second mortgage loan.
TRANSIT-ORIENTED COMMUNITIES (TOCs) Development that enables people to access and use transit more often for more types of trips by centering housing, jobs, services, and shopping around public transit. TOCs typically are implemented within a 1/2 to 1-mile radius of a transit station or major bus line.
SEVERE HOUSING COST BURDEN When 50% or more of a household’s income is spent on housing costs.
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Stay Informed | Get Involved | |
Sign up to volunteer at community events to meet people, talk about housing, and engage them in our work. | |
Thank you to our Catalyzing Members | | | | |
