Step zero and waiting

Measure R, Healdsburg’s voter-defeated housing plan, has left city leaders and attuned citizens scratching their heads and wondering why it lost and what will come next, if anything, to address a severe local housing crisis.
Perhaps it lost because voters were asked the wrong question, embedded in complicated ballot language. As to what might come next, that may be more up to the people who voted against it than those who voted for it. Measure R sought to update the 16 year-old Growth Management Ordinance and add new housing development tools and incentives.
Measure R asked, “Shall voters amend the existing GMO to increase inclusionary housing to 30 percent, remove existing restrictions on the number of new residential units allowed per year” and add new growth management and housing goals under a new Housing Action Plan?”
A large majority (60 percent) of voters didn’t trust this new language and favored the old GMO with its 30-unit per year slow-growth plan. Measure R opponents convinced enough voters to not trust their own city council with the new housing tools, even though both incumbents were re-elected and a third pro-R candidate also won.
What if Measure R instead had asked this: “Shall Healdsburg be a diverse, thriving community evidenced by a wide variety of housing — both type and price — where individuals at all stages of life and all economic levels participate in active, welcoming neighborhoods?”
That text is the vision statement of the Healdsburg Community Housing Committee, adopted following 16 public meetings over the past two years.
How many current residents would vote no to such an inclusive and welcoming vision? (It could be said that many of us just did exactly that.) Is it true what just-resigned city council member Eric Ziedrich said, that “There is a serious lacking of social responsibility by many who wish to preserve their social museum known as Healdsburg.”
We’re about to find out.
The defeat of Measure R now sets any local housing action plan backwards by a year or longer. Updating the current GMO was step one in the Housing Action Plan. Step two — to begin implementation of the many new housing tools to allow second units, rental apartment complexes, creative density plans and more mixed-priced housing — is now on hold. Finalization of a critical step three to create  new long term housing finance sources remains on a shelf somewhere at City Hall.
With the defeat of Measure R, Healdsburg’s housing plans are now at step zero.
What should happen next?
Early in the new year, we look forward to more meetings of the nine-member Community Housing Committee. We’d like to see one or two members added that could represent tenants or low income residents.
Many parts of the Healdsburg Action Plan can still be implemented under the tight 30-unit restriction of the GMO. New rules for second-unit dwellings and increased requirements on developers to include affordable units in their projects can go forward.
But without Measure R, what’s missing is the important answer to Mr. Ziedrich’s question. Does a significant number of current residents favor a selfish vision to keep Healdsburg as their own increasingly expensive “social museum?”
Even with a successful Measure R, Healdsburg and the rest of Sonoma County needs many more answers — and deeper commitment — to begin to address a housing crisis that is displacing our next generation, adding to homelessness and pushing workers and jobs out of our local economy.
Alone or without changes, Healdsburg’s original GMO will not help in this community crisis. It remains based on a selfish vision of “I’ve got mine and leave me alone.”
We know that is not what most Healdsburg people believe, we just asked the wrong question.
— Rollie Atkinson