Tread carefully with the housing element

Make sure the voice of the community is acted up

The community spoke and our city council members should listen. We likely set a 64-year Saratoga record with 550+ attendees at last night’s Housing Element* meeting. Obviously, we wouldn’t have been able to fit this group in the Civic Theatre. Zoom helps. After the mailing of the recent city-wide postcard -  the engagement from Saratogans has kicked into high gear.

We have a choice - rollover and play dead to allow Sacramento to wreck Saratoga’s future.

Or approach the problem from a standpoint of knowledge, engagement and action to protect our neighborhoods. The very future of our city is at stake!

What is the rush? The Housing Element Certification deadline is January 2023

I asked for a Housing Element delay to “go back to the drawing boards," instead of the city council vote that is being pushed for in January.

For example - Sacramento’s bill SB-9 (that went live on January 1 this year)  allows lot splitting and will generate new housing units for Saratoga; we have NOT yet added the SB-9 numbers to our Housing Element. HCD hasn’t given it to us yet. I have been asking for a letter to be sent out to HCD asking for this number. 

For example - West Valley College has plans to build housing on campus. We don’t have those numbers. That number could be added to Saratoga's Housing Element quota if we had it.

Why not roll up the citizen feedback into a better Housing Element plan that meets the needs of our city; one that pays heed to the feedback we got?

Why not make sure their voice is heard and acted upon?

Why not do our darnedest to do the right thing for Saratoga?

The housing changes for Saratoga are just too radical and we have to tread carefully. 

As someone said - We need the voice of reason rising against this terrible plan that will disfigure Saratoga forever.

NOTE: It is also imperative that each of us rally behind the proposed ballot measure that will essentially nullify Sacramento’s bills like SB-35, SB-9 and SB-10. Get involved!

Below are excerpts from my Managed Growth policy page:  RishiKumar.com/ManagedGrowth

As you know, the Housing Element RHNA allocation is a state-wide housing mandate from California's Department of Housing and Community Development. The 2022 RHNA housing numbers are exponentially higher than what has been allocated in the past  - thanks to SB-828. As a result, high-density housing sites are being proposed in every city. Many cities and communities are reeling under this housing pressure and are fearful of its impacts that will be felt for decades to come. The land developers will make a fortune and our cities will cease to be what they are today. The RHNA housing units allocated to your city include categories such as very low income, low income, moderate income, and above moderate income housing. It is also an environmental disaster. Sacramento’s housing policy is relying on supply and demand to create more housing in the hope of driving prices down - but that has never worked anywhere. The legislative bills from Sacramento like SB-9 and SB-10 are also pushing high-density housing all over California - and there are more coming. However, this approach has failed to adequately address the creation of more affordable housing or fix the systemic challenges that have led to today’s exodus from California. No one wants to discuss the infrastructure gap.

The Housing Element’s inflated* housing goals, i.e RHNA numbers, has been rigged for cities to fail and for developers to make money. Yep - setup for failure thanks to politicians who have sold out to the real-estate industry as the op-ed points out. Once a city fails, SB-35 kicks in. SB-35 is essentially triggered by developers failing to pull building permits. If building permits are not pulled, cities are blamed. But a city government is not in the business of building housing as we all know. The city hands out permits and Saratoga has NOT refused any permits in the 8 years and more. If developers don’t pull permits, then developers circumvent the city council (as per the definition of SB-35) and go through a ministerial approval aka rubber-stamping approval without public hearing. The developers get a free reign over the city.

*Visit https://www.saratoga.ca.us/housing for details with our housing element