Santa Monica has been added to a list of communities designated a "Prohousing" by the State. On Jan. 31, Governor Gavin Newsom announced seven communities (Eureka, Healdsburg, Mountain View, Petaluma, San Luis Obispo, Santa Monica and the County of Tulare) received the designation bringing the total to 37 statewide.
"We need to aggressively build more housing to support Californians. Prohousing cities move to the front of the line when it comes to incentives, funding and other state resources," said Newsom in the announcement. "It’s critical for more communities to join in this distinction and build their fair share of housing."
In the announcement, the California Department of Housing and Community Development said the state needs to plan for 2.5 million new homes over the next eight years, with at least one million serving the needs of lower-income Californians.
To encourage that development, the Prohousing Designation rewards communities with "funding incentives and additional resources that help scale up those innovative efforts."
Those incentives include exclusive access to Prohousing grants and additional points in the scoring of competitive housing, community development, and infrastructure funding programs administered by the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). This year HCD announced new permanent Prohousing Designation Program guidelines, as well as a $9.5 million incentive program available to qualifying communities.
"Communities whether large or small, rural or urban, are actively working to accelerate the development of housing for Californians at all income levels," said HCD Director Gustavo Velasquez. "We are pleased to be able to reward our Prohousing partners with incentives to help them build on their innovative efforts to break down barriers to development."
To qualify, municipalities have to show they have reduced barriers to housing construction.
According to the announcement Santa Monica has identified sufficient sites for 13,600 new housing units and eliminated parking requirements for residential development citywide, increasing available land for development. The city received credit for fast tracked approval of all ADUs and junior accessory dwelling units (JADUs) regardless of size, waiving development impact fees on those units and creating an ADU handbook that includes step-by-step instructions, prototypical ADU plans, and parcel configurations. City efforts to provide financial assistance for the acquisition, rehabilitation, and new construction of affordable rental housing opportunities for lower-income households were also praised.
"Housing is a key piece of our work to foster a diverse community through equitable access to housing, regardless of someone’s income level. And it’s particularly important to our economic recovery and in our efforts to prevent and address homelessness," City Manager David White said. "The city has successfully aligned with the state housing laws thereby removing ‘red tape’ for those that want to invest in Santa Monica."
The designation is an about face for the City after it was recently penalized by the state for what regulators said was insufficient efforts to accommodate state mandated housing goals.
The City of Santa Monica failed to adopt its state mandated Housing Element by the deadline, allowing developers to file for Builders Remedy projects. Those projects were entirely outside city control and could bypass all zoning rules provided they meet minimum standards for affordability. The City said it maintained the applications were not valid and the application of the provision is untested in court but after eventually coming into compliance, City Hall chose to pursue a settlement with developers to prevent more than 4,000 units from flooding the city outside regular development rules.
The City found itself in a similar, if less dire, situation just this year.
According to state regulators, Santa Monica did not build enough units in the very low, low and moderate income levels in recent years and that deficit put the city under a state law that allows anyone building a project with at least 50% affordable units to bypass design rules. However, the law’s additional requirements on developers make it generally undesirable as a regulatory option and local officials have said that while they have to comply with the law, they do not think it will have an impact on local development.
matt@smdp.com
