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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010-06-17; Housing Commission; MinutesMinutes of: SPECIAL HOUSING COMMISSION Time of Meeting: 6:00 P.M. Date of Meeting: JUNE 17, 2010 Place of Meeting: HOUSING & NEIGHBORHOOD SERVICES CONFERENCE ROOM CALL TO ORDER Chairperson Smith called the Meeting to order at 6:00 p.m. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE The Pledge of Allegiance was not said due to the office not having a flag. ROLL CALL Present: Commissioners: Emelda Bradwell Susan Igoe Bobbie Smith Absent: Craig Kirk Hope Wrisley Staff Present: Housing and Redevelopment Director: Debbie Fountain Senior Planner: Scott Donnell APPROVAL OF MINUTES Minutes of March 11, 2010, meeting were approved as written. VOTE: 3-0 AYES: Bradwell, Igoe, and Smith NOES: None ABSTAIN: Kirk and Wrisley ABSENT: None ITEM NOT ON AGENDA There were no items not on the agenda. NEW BUSINESS Scott Donnell, Senior Planner, said the presentation is for minor changes to the city's inclusionary housing ordinance. The inclusionary housing ordinance is part of our zoning ordinance. It contains most of the land use standards for the City of Carlsbad. Changes that are proposed and that you are considering tonight all stem from the lawsuit known as Palmer versus the City of Los Angeles. Palmer is a developer, and at the time was proposing to construct rental apartments, and the City of Los Angeles imposed an inclusionary housing requirement similar to our inclusionary housing ordinance. Palmer filed suit and the case made its way to the Court of Appeals and eventually to the California State Supreme Court. The State Supreme Court refused to hear it, but upheld the Court of Appeals decision. That decision was that the inclusionary housing requirements do not apply to rental projects. That is based on some previous case law. Our City Attorney felt that we needed to amend our inclusionary housing ordinance to come in line with that Court of Appeals decision. Essentially what it says is, for developers proposing apartment projects, the city cannot apply inclusionary requirements to them unless they are requesting some kind of city assistance. As you know, we use our inclusionary housing ordinance to get affordable housing. This court ruling says the city cannot do that with rental projects. The caveat to that is if a developer of affordable housing comes along and wants to build apartments, and also need financial assistance or some kind of incentive then that triggers the inclusionary housing requirement. Really the only time the court ruling would apply is if a developer did not request any assistance. The changes that have been proposed for the inclusionary housing ordinance mainly are based just on the court case. There isn't anything currently in the ordinance to say inclusionary housing requirements don't apply to apartment developments unless the developer is requesting the assistance or incentive. SPECIAL HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES JUNE 17,2010 PAGE 2 of 4 At the same time, we have gone through the ordinance and made some minor changes. We wanted to add some terms and clarify some terms so the ordinance is just easier to use. We also did some housekeeping. For the most part a couple of references to some of the code sections are wrong and they have been corrected. The resolution you have would recommend approval of the changes. It simply says the inclusionary housing ordinance still can do its purpose, still requires affordable housing, subject to the limitations of this court case, the Palmer case. Your recommendation gets forwarded to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission also makes a recommendation. Both recommendations go to City Council for final approval. I would be happy to walk through this and go over the changes with you. That is my presentation. Debbie Fountain, the Housing and Redevelopment Director, said one of the things that has been working in the City of Carlsbad is that we don't get too many stand alone apartment projects that people are proposing. Most of the time if we get an apartment project, it is because they have the inclusionary housing requirement on their single-family home development. If they have a single-family home development, they can build an apartment complex within their master plan or specific plan or subdivision to meet the inclusionary requirements for the single-family home subdivision. We can put restrictions on that because that is meeting their inclusionary requirement for their single-family home development. It is only if somebody came in and wanted to build an apartment complex and they didn't have any other single-family home units or anything that would trigger the inclusionary, other than the apartment complex itself, then we would not be able to get our 15% inclusionary unless they asked for financial assistance. We don't think it will have a real widespread problem for us. Depending on what the market does, if there is a big run on trying to build more apartments as standalone projects, it might be an issue. We think in general, it is not going to have a huge impact on our program. As you all know, we are not getting a lot of market rate housing of any type right now. We were hoping the City of Los Angeles would have won on appeal and this wouldn't have happened so we waited until all the final actions were done before any changes were proposed to the ordinance. It is unfortunately because it goes back to a law that has been on the books for a while called the Costa-Hawkins Act, which when originally proposed, was limited to a certain number of cities; it wasn't supposed to be this widespread prohibition on rent restrictions, but as it got final adoption, it didn't go along with this original intent. The developer in the case in Los Angeles found a loophole and was able to get its inclusionary requirement removed as a result of this lawsuit, but it doesn't affect widespread on developers. Instead I think some of the developers thought it might have had more of an impact. We are hoping it won't have a huge negative impact on us in trying to get more affordable housing, but it is a reality that we have to deal with and make some repairs to our ordinance. Would you like Mr. Donnell to go through the changes with you? Commissioner Bradwell asked if that would create a conflict of interest down the line in some way if they are asking the city for funding, would that present a conflict of interest? Ms. Fountain asked if Commissioner Bradwell meant if they were trying to build housing and asking the city for money. Commissioner Bradwell said right. Ms. Fountain said she doesn't think it would if there is some specific public purpose served by that. So if they are requesting money, and we say we need something in return for that such as affordable units, then it shouldn't cause us any problems. Commissioner Igoe said she is disappointed too and understands what is being said. Ms. Fountain said we are doing what we need to do. We are not going above and beyond the changes of the ordinance which is to address the lawsuit. If you look at some of the history of the Costa Hawkins Act, it was in place before we adopted our inclusionary so it is not a new law. You would have thought this would have come up sooner than it did. Partly that has to do with the fact that it is difficult to interpret what that actual law says. Whoever could have benefitted from it initially, did benefit and then a lot of SPECIAL HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES JUNE 17,2010 PAGE 3 of 4 people did not pay much attention to it afterwards because of the original intent. It is helpful to make sure we are clear with how things get interpreted so we don't have these some type of issues that somebody could challenge. Chairperson Smith said she can appreciate bringing this to the Commission's attention because anything could come up and we may not be aware of the law in Los Angeles. In reading over this material, it made me wonder. At least we are informed as to what is going on. Commissioner Igoe asked what the project they are looking to build is. I don't know that I read that in the material. What is the project they are talking about building. Ms. Fountain said we don't have any specific project with this. This is just the ordinance revision. Mr. Donnell was mentioning the case which is what triggered the changes in the requirement. That wasn't a project for Carlsbad. That was a project outside our city limits. This one is just the ordinance changes. We don't' have any project for you at this point. Mr. Donnell said he ran some numbers looking at all the affordable housing that has been built in the City of Carlsbad from 1996 through 2007. I found three standalone apartment projects. If they were built today and subject to this new law and therefore didn't provide inclusionary housing, then the question is how much of that affordable housing would be lost. I came up with about 123 units; that would be only 6% of the almost 2,000 inclusionary units that have been built. It really is a small number. Ms. Fountain said if some of those were doing it for inclusionary purposes, they would still have had to do it. Fortunately it doesn't affect anything we have already approved. Commissioner Bradwell asked if the approval of this ordinance, will it safeguard against any future litigation. Ms. Fountain said we never totally get out of the risk of somebody suing us. People can sue at any time. Because the attorneys review all of these ordinances and they are subject to the test of other case law, we feel like we are in a very good position for defending our inclusionary ordinance. It doesn't preclude somebody from suing us in the future, but we think we have a good ordinance that is consistent with other case law related to the right to implement inclusionary ordinances. This was law related to application of inclusionary ordinances. Those could change in the future so we can't totally protect against those. We have a City Attorney's office that watches all of that pretty closely. They usually let us know if they think something is coming our way. Commissioner Igoe make a recommendation that the Housing Commission adopt Housing Commission Resolution 2010-002 recommending approval to the Planning Commission and the City Council of the City of Carlsbad changes to Zoning Ordinance Chapter 21.85 as shown in Zone Code Amendment 10-03 on Local Coastal Program 10-02 and based upon the findings contained in Resolution 2010-002. Commissioner Bradwell seconded the motion. VOTE: 3-0 AYES: Bradwell, Igoe, and Smith NOES: None ABSTAIN: None ABSENT: Kirk and Wrisley DIRECTOR'S REPORT Ms. Fountain said she does not have any announcements or updates other than she did want to share about the Tavarua Senior Apartments on Harding Street. They are the senior units that has been going through several application processes to try and get financing. They went for their second round of tax credits and got denied again so they are going to go one more time. They are also trying to work on SPECIAL HOUSING COMMISSION MINUTES JUNE 17,2010 PAGE 4 of 4 some other applications for other public money to come into it. So they are looking at a supportive housing grant through the County of San Diego, which would mean about 10 of the units within their project would be available to people with disabilities. Typically supportive housing is for developmentally disabled type of households such as people with Alzheimer's, dementia, autistic, or something like that. They are looking in very good shape to get that supportive money from the county, which they have a very lengthy process to get that. That will help them in turn to be ranked higher for the tax credit, which is their other financing source they are working on. That will be positive if they can get that done. I am meeting with them tomorrow to find out where they are at. It is not unusual for it to take several rounds to get financing for this project. With Laurel Tree back in the 90's, they hit five rounds of the tax credits. Sometimes it takes a while to get the financing, but eventually they will get it. It depends on how other projects' applications come in, who is competing, how they rank; it is a very competitive process. They are working hard to still get that project approved. Habitat for Humanity is going to start working on their second phase of their units. Hopefully within the next year or so they will be able to finish their units. They have some funding that may expire at the end of this year if they don't use it so they are trying to get that second phase going so they can get the remainder of their units built. ADJOURNMENT By proper motion, the meeting of June 17, 2010, was adjourned at 6:25 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Deborah Fountain Housing and Redevelopment Director PATRICIA CRESCENTI Minutes Clerk MINUTES ARE ALSO TAPED AND KEPT ON FILE UNTIL THE WRITTEN MINUTES ARE APPROVED.