New Los Gatos General Plan includes 3,196 housing units

The new General Plan for Los Gatos calls for 3,196 housing units to be developed in town over the next 20 years.

Town council adopted the 2040 General Plan and environmental impact report at a special meeting June 30. The vote was split, with Mayor Rob Rennie, Vice Mayor Maria Ristow and Councilmember Marico Sayoc voting in support of the plan and councilmembers Mary Badame and Matthew Hudes voting against it for adding an “excessive” number of housing units.

While there is no guarantee that all the units will actually be built, the plan will serve as a reference document for the town as it expands and attempts to fulfill its state-mandated housing growth. Under California's Housing Element, Los Gatos must add 1,993 new housing units between 2023 and 2031 to meet the needs of people across all income levels.

Of the 3,196 units, just 2,221 of them are designated as new developments. Five hundred units are designated as Accessory Dwelling Units, and 475 units are currently in the works.

The plan's adoption followed years of deliberation and dozens of meetings. The June 30 meeting was a continuation of a June 20 meeting when council first started reviewing the plan.

Tensions were high toward the end of the fivehour meeting, and Hudes called out alleged bias among staff over the plan's “increased density and higher (housing unit) numbers than required.”

“I just want to leave that by thanking each and every one of you for the hard work on the General Plan, but also raising the thought that there is no place for bias in professional municipal management,” Hudes said.

Sayoc, Ristow and Rennie spoke in defense of town staff after Hudes' comments.

“I just want to make it absolutely clear to our public that it's not fair to scapegoat staff if you don't like the final result,” Sayoc said. “Just because it didn't go in a way that was … the way you wanted it to be doesn't mean your voices weren't heard.”

Rennie made the motion to focus housing growth on major streets with mixeduse and higher-density developments, which passed 3-2, with Badame and Hudes voting no. The motion maintains the town's low-density neighborhoods and allows more housing types in the medium-density areas to address “missing middle” housing, but it does not allow new housing in areas at risk of wildfires.

Hudes and Badame tried to reduce the number of housing units called for in the General Plan, saying Senate Bill 9 could lead to more development than required by the state Housing Element. Senate Bill 9, the California Housing Opportunity and More Efficiency

Act, allows property owners to upzone their single-family lots by splitting them into two parcels and to build up to four units on a property originally zoned for one home.

Hudes made his own motion prior to Rennie's that would have eliminated the upzoning of medium- and low-density residential areas and reduced the number of mixed-use density and high-density residential units while upzoning the business district.

That way, Hudes said, a portion of the affordable housing would be built “further from traditional residential neighborhoods” and closer to public transportation. Other affordable housing units could be possible in residential neighborhoods within the existing medium density residential zones and through potential SB 9 projects, Hudes said.

He also accounted for 116 units in the hillside and an estimated 250 units to come out of SB 9 to go toward meeting the town's Housing Element requirements.

Several councilmembers and staff were not comfortable with the proposed changes, saying the hillside numbers and SB 9 estimates would likely be rejected by the state during the Housing Element approval process. All California cities are required by state law to submit their housing development plans to the state by the end of the year or face penalties.

“I think it's a compromise,” Rennie said. “Eight years from now, I guarantee we're not going to have built 2,496 units, it's just a planning goal; most of it's not going to happen, so I wouldn't get that excited about it, and a lot of it is a semantic discussion, anyway.” Jeff Suzuki, a member of the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition, was among members of the public who spoke in favor of affordable housing at the June 30 meeting.

“If we care about socioeconomic and racial diversity in town, we have to make it economically possible for people from marginalized communities to live here,” Suzuki said. “We need affordable housing.”

Other residents were against planning for housing development, due to the increased strain on resources and traffic.

“I would vote for the lowering of the amount of housing that is necessary, because of the unusual circumstances that Los Gatos faces with Highway 17 and the general reality of the drought,” Leonie Pennington said.