Can ballot measures fix housing problem?

ANALYSIS
Healdsburg voters will be asked to approve two ballot measures in November, both promoted as part of a comprehensive solution to sky-high housing costs.
The most visible and controversial measure is to eliminate the 16-year-old growth management ordinance (GMO), passed by voters in 2000 after a burst of residential development in Parkland Farms. The other measure would raise the tax that hotels guests pay from 12 to 14 percent, with the new funds allocated to affordable housing.
In 2015, the Healdsburg City Council appointed a Community Housing Committee, which hosted 16 public meetings and workshops in an effort to solve what seemed to be an unsolvable problem – physical and legal constraints to growth, coupled with well-heeled buyers driving up housing prices.
The problem is not new, but has become more acute in recent years. The city was able to make progress housing its workforce when it still had funds from its redevelopment agency, but millions a year in locally generated funds disappeared in 2012 when Gov. Jerry Brown led an effort to dissolve redevelopment agencies statewide. The result is that the state had help climbing out of the recession, but communities that relied on redevelopment funds to support housing are left to scramble and look for new ideas.
Healdsburg has some redevelopment funds left, as well as property that can be used for affordable housing, but both will be exhausted soon.
Against that backdrop, with housing prices climbing and priced-out residents filling the City Council chambers at council meetings clamoring for help, the housing committee struggled to find the right mix of loosening growth controls enough to spur workforce housing development, while maintaining the much-loved but hard-to-define “small town charm” that makes Healdsburg so attractive.
After multiple public workshops, that ranged from long spreadsheet-laden slide shows, to interactive meetings where attendees placed Lego houses on maps to try and envision the future of housing in the community, the housing committee was closing in on a complex formula to loosen the current growth cap of 30 building permits a year to 45.
The plan called for certain permits to be allocated to workforce housing, what the committee called, “The Missing Middle,” housing for people who cannot afford the escalating cost of market rate homes but make too much money to qualify for traditional housing assistance.
As the list of exceptions and the complexity of the changes grew, the housing committee made a decision to seek simplicity. Committee members felt that even an expanded limit of 45 units a year would not give the city enough flexibility to negotiate with large developers to attain the desired housing mix of apartments, small lot subdivisions and other types of housing that would be more affordable than the larger, expensive homes that have dominated the market since the voter-adopted GMO constrained growth.
While the city is characterizing the current ballot measure as an attempt to modify the growth management ordinance, in fact it eliminates the ordinance altogether, asking the voters to revoke the GMO in favor of an ambitious and innovative Housing Action Plan (HAP).
The HAP was adopted by the city council last week in a 4-1 vote, that would set an annual goal of 70 units a year, with 30 allocated to market rate homes and 40 allocated to multi-family units such as apartments.
In addition, the inclusionary housing requirement would be raised from 15 percent to 30 percent. In theory, 30 percent of the 70 annual units would be required to be offered to low and moderate income buyers, to increase housing diversity and attainability.
The HAP lays out a moderate rate of growth with a strong emphasis on the missing middle and other workforce housing efforts, but GMO supporters say it can be modified anytime by a pro-growth city council. Jim Winston, the author of the original ordinance, has vowed to fight the ballot measure and a group he founded, Healdsburg Citizens for Responsible Growth, is gearing up for a battle.
Advocates of removing the GMO and relying on the HAP counter that Healdsburg residents are already active and engaged in growth issues, and that explosive growth will be prevented by an active citizenry and a city council committed by ordinance to the goals of the HAP.
City leaders say the HAP, praised by both sides of the GMO question, cannot be implemented unless the GMO is eliminated and flexibility is built into the process. They say that the current imbalance in housing has been fueled by the GMO and the unintended consequences of making housing scarce in a popular community.
Pro-GMO activists say the city cannot be trusted to follow the HAP and that voter control is the only safe way to have true growth control.
Another ballot measure, with no public opposition so far, is to increase the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT, popularly known as “Tax on Tourists”) from 12 percent to 14 percent, which could give Healdsburg the highest TOT in the county. The projected increase could raise half a million dollars a year to help subsidize affordable housing, a figure which will increase as new hotels are built and begin to contribute to the TOT.
A reason given to support raising the TOT is that visitor industries create low-wage jobs, which increases housing pressure as well as greenhouse gas emissions as employees who cannot afford to live in Healdsburg commute in from more affordable communities.