Quick Take
The City of Santa Cruz Planning Commission will consider getting rid of public hearings for 100% affordable housing projects at its meeting on Thursday evening. City planners say, if approved, it wouldn’t mean that all public engagement would be tossed, and that community members would still have opportunities to provide feedback prior to approval.
The City of Santa Cruz Planning Commission could move to drop public hearings for 100% affordable housing projects at its meeting on Thursday evening to reflect changes in state law surrounding new developments. It would apply to only formal public hearings in front of a governmental body such as the planning commission or the city council.
According to a staff report, state law has changed in recent years to make local governments apply only objective standards in the review and approval processes of housing development projects. Objective design standards are essentially the granular details around the physical characteristics of new buildings and developments.
In order to make this change, planners are also proposing a special zoning area called the “Affordable Housing Ministerial Approval Overlay District.” That would allow any fully affordable housing project to go through a purely ministerial approval process, meaning that if the project complies with the city’s objective standards, it would not require a public hearing process or the typical California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) environmental review. Other cities including Sacramento, Oakland and Los Angeles have versions of this process for entirely affordable housing projects, according to the staff report.
The district proposal would include all sites zoned for multifamily or mixed-use and where affordable housing developments are already allowed. However, it would not include any natural and/or protected lands, including areas mapped for sensitive habitat or vegetation under the city’s general plan, areas within 300 feet of mapping for freshwater wetlands or salt marshes, sites under study within the city’s Creeks and Wetlands Management Plan, and areas near creeks where developments are either not allowed or require further permitting.
City of Santa Cruz Principal Planner Matt VanHua said that a main reason behind the proposal is to expedite the approval of affordable housing as much as possible. If the planning commission approves the change, VanHua said, it does not mean that the public will suddenly be kept in the dark about all affordable housing projects. There would still be public meetings for the community to provide input prior to the project’s approval.
“Public engagement happens early in the process, too,” he said, “when [the developer] is maybe just thinking about submitting something to the city, or just did submit something.”
VanHua added that city staff have found that these types of meetings are a better way to consider the public’s opinions and any changes to the projects, as they take place well before the final design is approved. He said that’s another benefit to shifting toward this process, as a governmental body does not have the power to change the project once the design is finalized, as long as it meets the objective standards.
“It’s going through the city and the standards are being followed,” VanHua said, adding that the community will remain involved in the development and improvement of those objective standards over time. “We’re at the point where those are the only standards we can truly have projects comply with.”
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