Planners review Gateway housing
The Arcata Planning Commission provided feedback, asked questions and made recommendations on the city’s Gateway Area plan housing chapter at its Tuesday night regular meeting.
The plan’s housing chapter lays out the policy through which current and future housing needs are to be met. Current plans for the Gateway Area list a goal of 3,500 new residential units, mostly built in a combination of high-density, multifamily complexes such as townhomes, lofts, quads and work-live units, among others.
Arcata Community development director David Loya said that the policy has been modeled on feedback the city has received on several subjects.
“The policy embraces many of the things we’ve heard, not just before the Gateway plan was released, but also things that we’ve heard even just tonight, some calls for affordable housing and different income levels, calls for ensuring that there are ownership opportunities, mixedincome neighborhoods, for example,” he said.
Commissioner John Barstow voiced his objections to policies that incentivize residential density as a community amenity and incentivize affordable housing as a community amenity. These simplify development processes for projects that provide residential densities above the established minimums in the form code.
“I just doubt the wisdom of incentivizing these changes in the form that once we get down to actually nailing down what the form is and what the design criteria are and so on hopefully we’ll arrive at a final product that will allow for as much density as we think we’re going to need without having to incentivize it,” he said.
“My recommendation is to eliminate (the policies) 3J and 3K and have a statement that (says) discretionary review be required whenever the developer wants to do something that doesn’t fit within the specifications of the forum,” he continued.
Loya responded by pointing out the intent is not to have larger projects break form, as the form is meant to constrain all development secured through streamlined pathways. He pointed out that once developers get out of the proposed minimum tiers for unit counts, and enter community benefit tiers, discretionary review is not required. This was decided as a way of having developers build more units.
“This is an area where we need to clarify but there’s a little bit of a carrot, a little bit of a stick, if you will, there’s an incentive and there’s a bonus that goes along with affordable housing,” Loya said.
Commissioner Kimberley White inquired if increasing density doesn’t equate with increasing affordable housing. Loya answered there are several pieces of the housing market that the policy is providing for, some of these targeting unit count and others addressing affordability issues.
“The more supply there is, the more the affordability of those units can come into line with what people can actually afford, but there are specific incentives and requirements that will ultimately require that projects of a certain size are required to have affordable housing and or projects below that can elect to have affordable housing as one of the community amenity benefits,” Loya explained.
White also asked about opportunities to create homeownership opportunities for lower-income folks.
“What I’m hearing out in the community is just generally that nobody can afford to buy and everybody wants to have that opportunity,” she said.
The city’s community development director pointed to policy 3I, which encouraged new homeownership opportunities for lower-income households including through condominiums, as an intended point to reflect the community’s desire for access to home ownership. However, he recognized some of these projects may take another shape.
“Even if it’s townhomes, those are typically done units on one parcel, either stacked right next to each other on the same parcel. So I think any of those structures, or structures that we haven’t even thought of yet, would accomplish these goals would be strongly encouraged,” Loya said.
Commissioner Julie Vaissade-Elcock said the plan should encourage mixed-income neighborhoods and buildings. White followed up if that could be clarified as to not segregate people into buildings or blocks. Loya said making that change to the plan should be an easy fix.
Local resident Fred Weis pointed at the 3,500 units and the speed at which they will be coming as insufficient and expressed doubt over the actual affordability of micro-units while urging for decisive action.
“Do something bold. Don’t do something normal, or we’re just gonna have more of the same, even if it means creating new law,” Weis said. “We’re innovative here. We can do something. It’s going to take some work, but it can be done.”
The Gateway Area plan’s design will be on the table at the next two regular planning commission meetings, on July 26 and Aug. 9.