California lawmakers are taking aggressive action to address the state’s crippling housing shortage in 2019. But despite political momentum and popular support, the state’s campaign to fix the broken housing market is facing a growing backlash from cities on the Peninsula.
As of last month’s deadline, more than 200 bills pertaining to housing have been filed in the state Legislature, and the sheer scope and severity of proposals is leaving local officials bewildered and nervous. Many critics say a power grab is in the works, alleging that a new state bureaucracy will rescind local control, replacing it with a top-down plan for where and how housing should be built.
While Peninsula cities have a long history of constraining housing growth, local officials say that they are beginning to act more responsibly. Like other elected officials interviewed for this story, former Palo Alto Councilman Greg Scharff balked at the notion of state officials overriding land-use decisions on behalf of cities.
“I think most elected city council members recognize there’s a housing crisis,” he said. “But if your solution is putting a 50-foot-high apartment building in a single-family neighborhood, that’s just too disruptive.”
Housing advocates say the city-led status quo is insufficient and unsustainable. Left to their own devices, California cities for the most part have been digging the state deeper into a housing crisis, often by making decisions that seem sensible locally but end up shifting the burden elsewhere. At current rates, it will be centuries before more than one-third of Bay Area cities are expected to reach their affordable housing goals.
Any true solution to the housing crisis means some of California’s vaunted ideals of local autonomy may need to be sacrificed, said Amie Fishman, executive director of the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California.
“This impacts our children, our education system, our economy, even the climate. Every single aspect of our lives is affected by this housing crisis,” she said. “It’s been really easy to say no, and that’s why we’re in such a crisis today.”
The centerpiece of this conflict is the so-called Casa Compact, a 10-point set of actions designed to spur substantial housing growth while preventing gentrification or mass displacement. The Casa package was drafted by a special committee at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission over the course of about two years, but it has recently become a lightning rod of controversy. This year, most of the committee’s final recommendations have been plucked and drafted into a set of new bills moving through the state Legislature.
Depending on whom you ask, the Casa agenda is either overdue or overbearing. In general, the package would adopt a mild form of rent control across the Bay Area, establish a new $1.5 billion regional housing agency and force cities to streamline reviews and locate dense housing near transit lines.
It’s a package in which “everyone finds something to hate,” admitted Mountain View Councilman Chris Clark, who voted to approve the plan in January as a board member of the Association of Bay Area Governments. Clark acknowledged that the policies provide some badly needed accountability for cities that routinely flout their housing requirements. For example, the city of Menlo Park infamously refused for nearly 20 years to provide zoning for any low-income housing until a lawsuit forced the issue. Similarly about one out of six cities in California this year declined to reveal potentially embarrassing data on their housing stock, even though disclosure is supposed to be mandatory.
The Casa Compact is just one new effort by the state’s leadership to signal that this kind of defiance will soon carry a penalty. Upon taking office, Gov. Gavin Newsom made headlines for making an example of Huntington Beach by filing a lawsuit against the city for failing to plan for any low-income housing.
Clark pointed out that Casa has plenty of “teeth” to penalize cities that refuse to do their part, but he is nervous that it doesn’t work the other way. Mountain View has made strides to accommodate more housing, he said, but will the city’s reward be a mandate to just keep building more?
“What’s key for Mountain View and our neighbors is to ensure we get credit for everything we’ve done for housing, even when it wasn’t the cool thing to do,” Clark said. “For myself, I’d be willing to make some sacrifices if it kicks a lot of other cities into higher gear. But if you ask other council members, they don’t want to sacrifice any local control.”
The idea of surrendering local land-use powers to an outside agency does make Mountain View Mayor Lisa Matichak nervous. She said that she is not opposed to the Casa Compact in principle, but she resists the notion that Mountain View’s housing needs can easily be compared to San Jose’s or San Francisco’s.
“We all have unique aspects of our cities that we need to take into consideration as we evolve,” she said. “I support more housing, but it’s when you get into the details, that’s when you get some concerns about where this is going.”
In particular, Matichak said she was worried that Casa legislation would undo years of planning for housing growth in the office-heavy North Bayshore and East Whisman neighborhoods. Those plans were fine-tuned to balance open space, transportation and housing, but the proposed state legislation could force the city to grant automatic approvals by a different set of standards, she said.
She is hardly alone with those complaints. Many of Matichak’s concerns were shared by her predecessor, former Mayor Lenny Siegel, despite their differences on a range of other issues. No one currently on Mountain View’s City Council has publicly championed the Casa Compact, although Mountain View has already passed many of the central elements of the Casa Compact on its own, such as rent control, eviction protections, displacement fees and inclusionary housing that sets aside a percentage of new units at more affordable prices.
Other cities have been more forceful in their resistance. Palo Alto, Cupertino, Sunnyvale and Los Altos officials have sent letters to MTC saying they could oppose the compact’s policies unless they were severely scaled back. Cupertino Mayor Steven Scharf used his State of the City address last month to rail the Casa Compact, describing it as a plan to “destroy” the Bay Area.
While Mountain View’s City Council members have avoided taking a formal position, they signed onto a joint letter sent last week by the Cities Association of Santa Clara County. That letter urges state lawmakers to provide the needed funding for cities to build housing on their own. Most prominently, the letter fiercely resists a proposal mentioned in the Casa Compact to redirect a portion of local property taxes to help finance the costs of housing production.
Councilwoman Margaret Abe-Koga, who co-authored the letter, said she worried that a new state housing bureaucracy would end up shifting Mountain View’s tax revenues to build new housing in other cities.
“For Mountain View, we’re hitting our housing quota, but we need more money for affordable housing production. That’s where the state should come in and help,” she said.
As of last week, this property-tax idea was scuttled after the state Legislature’s legal counsel determined it could violate the local-funding protections in the state constitution.
In some ways, this battle that has been slowly building for years. At least 30 years ago, experts were warning that a main culprit behind the state’s imbalanced housing market was “local control,” the independent power of each city to dictate its growth.
For that reason, housing advocates say this resistance is not surprising, given that certain cities have been among the most flagrant bad actors behind the imbalanced housing market. In this situation, local autonomy should no longer be considered sacrosanct, said Jeremy Hoffman, a Mountain View resident and member of the pro-housing YIMBY Action group.
“Some of the cities with the worst records on housing are currently led by officials who deny reality, claiming that their city already builds sufficient housing. It’s like climate change denial,” he said. “All the Casa Compact asks is that we all hold ourselves and each other to the same standards, and we all chip in a little bit.”
Matichak was among a delegation of officials from 23 Peninsula cities who met last week at the offices of state Sen. Jerry Hill to underscore their concerns with the new housing legislation. Across the board, none of the city representatives voiced support for Casa in its current form, she said.
In an interview following the meeting, Hill sent mixed messages. He applauded the effort behind Casa and the legislation it produced, but he said he couldn’t support it in its current format.
“The elements are admirable and I would support them as necessary for the success of any housing solution, but it’s the nuances,” he said. “There’s no question about the need for this legislation, but we need to get there in a way that works for the largest constituency.”
In particular, Hill focused his criticisms on the transit-oriented development bill, SB 50, which has become the most controversial piece of the housing compact. Echoing Matichak’s concerns, Hill said the legislation needed to provide more flexibility for cities to decide where to locate dense housing.
Yet even as he poked holes, Hill also said the package wasn’t as draconian as its critics were making it out to be. The problem was branding, he said — the Casa Compact had inadvertently become a rallying cry for slow-growth factions, and they were being joined by local elected officials who felt excluded from its creation.
Fishman of the Nonprofit Housing Association acknowledged that Casa proponents had their work cut out for them.
“A majority of the Bay Area wants a solution to this, but there’s still a minority of NIMBY groups out there fomenting fear and misinformation,” she said. “People may not agree with every single element, but they agree that we need this package.”
Email Mark Noack at mnoack@mv-voice.com
