Quick Take
It’s difficult to keep housing developments in Santa Cruz County straight these days, so if you saw wrapped-up modular homes on the lot at Seventh Avenue and Brommer Street, you might have thought yet another development was preparing for groundbreaking. Not quite, but it is the delivery of housing units for a long-planned Soquel project aiming to serve homeless veterans, youth emerging from the foster care system and a limited number of families.
If you’ve traveled across the Murray Street Bridge heading toward Live Oak recently, you were probably caught in traffic for a while as you inched past the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor. Farther along, on the east side of the harbor, you might notice some large, wrapped packages of prebuilt housing units sitting in an empty lot at the intersection of Brommer Street and Seventh Avenue.
Given the many major developments underway in Santa Cruz County, your head probably first went to housing, quickly followed by confusion over the seemingly random location and the lack of any discussion about a new project in the area.
So, it’ll probably make sense to know that those units are not for a brand-new project. They are modular homes for the long-planned Park Haven Plaza project, which is coming to 2838 Park Ave. in Soquel by spring 2025 and aims to house homeless veterans, youth emerging from the foster care system and a limited number of families. Walnut Creek-based Novin Development is leading the project. It is owned by Park Avenue LP, which includes Santa Cruz County, Central Valley Coalition for Affordable Housing and Novin Development itself.
In total, Park Haven Plaza is a 36-unit housing development funded through California’s Project Homekey — an over-$1 billion state funding program aimed at developing permanent housing units. All but one of the units will be low-income units, with the remaining unit to serve as housing for a manager. The development received a $10.7 million grant through Project Homekey in 2022.
Over the course of its march toward groundbreaking, the project was met with considerable opposition from locals, largely Aptos, Soquel and Capitola residents who live near the project site. Many of them felt as though the details of the project were determined behind the scenes and poorly communicated to the public. Others raised concerns about environmental harm the project might cause, emergency access, fire safety, a lack of parking and possible mental health issues associated with the project’s tenants.
District 1 County Supervisor Manu Koenig did not respond to Lookout’s request for comment by publication time. However, he said in a 2022 meeting with frustrated residents that he understood the concerns voiced, but saw the project as providing the kind of housing that would help veterans, families experiencing homelessness and adolescents exiting foster programs — the demographics the project is tailored to.
The project was initially expected to be finished by May of this year, but the 2023 storms caused some delay. Crews with Novin Development have completed the first concrete pour for the eventual complex’s foundation.
Iman Novin, president and CEO of Novin Development, said he anticipates that crews will set the modular units at the Park Avenue site in late September, after finishing up some outstanding utility work. He added that tenants will be welcomed shortly thereafter.
“Part of that [timing] is dependent on PG&E and being able to get power turned on, and that’s always sort of a question mark,” he said. “But we should be ready for lease-up at that point.”
Novin said that lease-up — the process of renting out all the units in a new property to reach full occupancy — will be performed through the county’s coordinated entry system, an approach that uses assessments and planning tools to reach as many people experiencing homelessness as possible from various walks of life. “That includes referrals through the Housing Authority, veteran administration and Housing for Health,” Novin said. “So it’s a collaborative effort.”
The 35 affordable units will be separated into categories, said Novin. Seventeen homes will be reserved for homeless veterans, 14 homes will be reserved for homeless young adults and four homes will be reserved for families with children experiencing homelessness.
Novin said the project’s total cost isn’t quite fully determined yet, due to “escalating subcosts,” but estimates it will range anywhere from $22 million to $25 million.
If all goes as planned, Novin hopes to have the project finished by late March or early April 2025.
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