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101-Draft Minutes 1-23-2014.pdfCITY OF CUPERTINO 10300 Torre Avenue Cupertino, CA 95014 CITY OF CUPERTINO SPECIAL JOINT MEETING PLANNING COMMISSION AND THE HOUSING COMMISSION DRAFT SUMMARY 6:30 P.M. January 23, 2014 THURSDAY CUPERTINO CITY HALL, EOC ROOM The Special Joint meeting of the Cupertino Planning Commission and Housing Commission of January 23, 2014, was called to order at 6:30 p.m. in the Cupertino City Hall, EOC Room, 10300 Torre Avenue, Cupertino, CA. by Com. Brophy. SALUTE TO THE FLAG . ROLL CALL Director of Community Development Aarti Shrivastava City Planner Gary Chao Asst. City Attorney Colleen Winchester Staff Piu Ghosh Staff Diana Pancholi MIG Laura Stetson MIG Ellie Fiore Planning Commissioners: Paul Brophy Alan Takahashi Margaret Gong Winnie Lee Don Sun (absent) Housing Commission: Com. Raman APPROVAL OF MINUTES: None WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS: None POSTPONEMENTS/REMOVAL FROM CALENDAR: None CONSENT CALENDAR: None ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: None STUDY SESSION: Presentation on the Housing Element update for the 5th Planning Cycle (Time Period: Jan. 31, 2015 – Jan. 31, 2023) and the city’s current regional Housing Needs Assessment and conduct a workshop to collect public input. Aarti Shrivastava, Director of Community Development: • Introduced Laura Stetson, Consultant for the Housing Element. 2 Special Joint Meeting of Cupertino Planning Commission and Housing Commission January 23, 2014 Laura Stetson, MIG, Housing Element Consultant: • Reviewed the purpose of the study session with the Housing Commission which was to discuss what the housing element is, and why the city is updating its housing element. • She reviewed the slide presentation which included Housing Element Basics, Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA), Housing Needs Considerations including Aging Population/Workforce, Jobs vs. Housing Growth, Hosing Costs vs. Earnings, What Is Affordable Housing, Community Benefits, Emerging Housing Concepts, and Community Input. • The Housing Element is part of the city’s General Plan, often called a blueprint or constitution for development in the city. Each California city is required to have the plan, to lay out a path for how the city wants to grow, develop, maintain, and improve over a 20 year period. Most cities update their plan over a 15 to 20 year basis; Cupertino is doing a focused General Plan update now but the Housing Element is different; it is the only Element that is required to be updated on a regular basis. The period of adoption was 7 years and through legislation has been changed to an 8 year cycle. It is an important community activity that Cupertino will go through every 8 years to set its housing priorities and understand what the community’s housing needs are. It is also the only part of the General Plan required to be certified by the State Dept. of Housing and Community Development, the deadline for adopting the Element is January 31, 2015 with a 120-day grace period. • If the city meets the deadline and has an adopted Element by the deadline it means that the state has found that the city has a legally adequate and internally consistent General Plan that provides legal protection for the city to a greater extent for many potential challenges to future land use decisions. It also puts the city in a much better position to compete for grants and loans that HCD and other agencies have available. In addition, should the Housing Element not be updated by the due date, it will have to be updated every 4 years instead. • With the certified Element, the city moves to the head of the class regarding issues that help build housing in the community that is desirable. Without a certified Element, there are some other state mandates regarding how housing has to be built in the community; most cities like to be the masters of their own destinies and they ensure they have adopted housing elements so there are no state requirements that kick in. The Housing Element is a plan for not just building housing but maintaining housing in the community; ensuring that everybody has equal access to housing no matter their income range so that there’s a broad array of housing opportunities both in the existing housing stock as well as any new housing that might be built in Cupertino over the next 8 years or so. • One of the key objectives that the city needs to meet as part of the housing element is to plan for a certain level of new housing development over the 8 years; for some people it is a difficult thing to want to do or understand because they feel there is a lot of housing already in Cupertino; but every city and county in California is required to provide opportunities for development of a fair share of new housing development. It is state law and it is a top down process from the state that comes through ABAG down to each city. • She reviewed the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) process in which each city is allocated a number of housing units. The number that is their RHNA is a goal, not an obligation; the city is not required to ensure the housing is constructed or to construct that housing itself; it is merely a goal for ensuring that there are resources in place for the market to take its course and provide that housing. Part of the RHNA deals with affordability level of housing and ensuring that there is housing for all income levels. The city through the Housing Element needs to show that there are sites available to accommodate housing for the various income levels for 1064 units divided up by income categories. She then discussed how the city’s RHNA compared to neighboring jurisdictions; explained how the RHNA is derived and the factors that go into determining the RHNA including population growth, and the availability of transit. Because of the growth projected in the area the growth is distributed among all the cities in the county. The issues are when people can’t afford to live in the community near where they work, it does impact the community in many ways; economic 3 Special Joint Meeting of Cupertino Planning Commission and Housing Commission January 23, 2014 development, businesses may suffer because they find it is difficult to attract workers to their community because they have to live so far away. • She discussed affordable housing. In the last 20 years the paradigm has completely changed in the Bay Area; there are many people who once could afford homes, have good jobs, and still can’t afford housing in the Cupertino area because of the demand for all kinds of housing. Affordable housing as defined by the federal government says that if you are spending more than 30% of the household income on your housing that means that you are being cost burdened; you are in need of more affordable housing because you a paying more than 30% for either rent or mortgage and costs associated with it, such as insurance that comes with home ownership. In Cupertino 33% of all households are considered paying more for housing than the federal criteria; 51% of elderly households are paying more for housing than they can afford. An average software developer earning $127K per year could afford to pay about $3200 a month for housing; a retiree earning less than $30K year, in order to not be overburdened would need to be paying $729 per month for rent or mortgage which likely cannot be found in Cupertino. The estimated average mortgage in Cupertino is the range of $4800 to $5400 per month; people looking to buy homes are looking at those costs. Many people cannot afford to pay the prices for the different types of house; there are likely two wage owners in the family or sometimes more than one family living in a home. • Some communities try to encourage more development of housing that is affordable to a broader range of people; affordable housing has a different meaning in Cupertino when looking at housing costs. Some cities have said they need to do something to encourage developers to provide all types of housing for all types of people at all affordability ranges so they have set up some community benefit programs, so that most housing or office development can be built at a certain level but in exchange for allowing higher densities, the city could potentially ask for some type of community benefit in the form of additional park space, or it could be in the form of facilities funding for schools; more sustainable development approaches. Some communities use a mechanism to fund affordable housing, so that people get density bonuses under State Law to incorporate more affordable units with market rate units or to have in-lieu fees that are paid that help build up funds and are used to leverage the development of housing in the community. One of the exercises that will conducted tonight will be to help identify what their tradeoffs might be for more housing development and more affordable housing development in Cupertino; what community benefits Cupertino might look for in exchange for this type of housing. • She reviewed the various types of housing concepts including shared housing, cohousing, micro apartments and flex housing detailed in the presentation materials. Com. Brophy: • He referred to two slides, the first one that shows the Cupertino share of housing compared to other cities in the county. It appears that Cupertino has the smallest RHNA number relative to its population of any of the cities shown; the allocation recognizes that Cupertino has a limited amount of vacant land and limits them to what they can absorb. He said while there are many people concerned about having to allocate this number, he would point out that it is lower relative to their population than any other city in the county. • Referring to the chart illustrating jobs and population increase, he said the problem with doing 30 year projections is that they are seeing a growth of over 7,000 jobs in 30 years and the Apple project which was approved will have a net increase of about 9,000 in itself. He felt the 30 year projections should be taken with a grain of salt. Ellie Fiore: • In response to the question what generally are the considerations to calculating the allocation by city, she said it was a complicated process, part of it relating to looking at the vacancy rate in a particular 4 Special Joint Meeting of Cupertino Planning Commission and Housing Commission January 23, 2014 • community over those years; some of it is land availability, some of it is how successful they have been in the past in providing opportunities for new housing. There are a number of factors that go into it, including vacancy. Laura Stetson: • Asked for input from three residents relative to how they see the community evolving and how they see the community moving forward with regard to housing issues. Jennifer Griffin, Cupertino resident: • Said she considered Saratoga as a bedroom community with limited commercial and not any Facebook or Google working sites there. She questioned how they determine how much housing is needed for a city like Saratoga; also Los Altos because it is a small bedroom community. How do they take that into account when they come up with their ABAG numbers for bedroom community type situations. She said she did not feel that they would assume that Saratoga should be providing chunks of housing if they don’t have jobs there. Darryl Lum, Cupertino Dentist: • Has been in Cupertino since 1970 and practices dentistry in Cupertino. He noted how difficult it is for a professional person starting out in the community because of the high costs of setting up a practice and buying a home, and questioned if the city would still be able to attract enough young people with job skills to the community. Said you have to balance the needs of the developers and making their profit, the needs of the community and the needs of the city in generating tax revenue. Palo Alto is giving some community benefits for higher density, higher heights and yet many Palo Alto citizens do not like all those higher densities and higher heights. Barre Barnes, Cupertino resident: • Said his comment related to the density on the pockets of available land in Cupertino. Some pieces of property have one building on it and there could be housing on it, but the zoning does not allow it. Its location would be ideal for housing and not good for commercial any longer, but to try and get zones like that changed takes a long time. Laura Stetson: • Said the focus of the Housing Element is to understand where good locations for housing are, and the City is in the process of doing a General Plan amendment to address that, which would be followed by zone changes and put those new land use regulations in place that would facilitate the type of housing that the community is looking for. Referring to a site she would term as an under-utilized site, it is not built to its full potential and it is possible to change the land use laws, regulation, zoning that apply to that site if that is the community’s desire to move forward in that direction. If an individual is taking that process on, it can be a lengthy process, that is why the city is being proactive in trying to help the process along. Jennifer Griffin, resident: • Said when talking about housing, etc. they are talking about people who are coming into the city to live or work but many times the existing community members who either live there or work in the city or somewhere else but have made Cupertino their home; are neglected and not cared about. She said that there are many neighborhoods in Cupertino that have been in existence for long periods of time, and she worries about pressures to pull back the boundaries on some of the neighborhoods for additional high density housing; and that the neighborhood integrity is going to be ripped up and not respected. There needs to be something done to ensure that the neighborhoods are left intact and 5 Special Joint Meeting of Cupertino Planning Commission and Housing Commission January 23, 2014 respected as communities where people live and have lived for long periods of time and not have their boundaries chopped up by additional high density housing because it causes problems. The end result in those older neighborhoods is the loss of grocery stores, the cobbler shops, the dentist, etc. and it ends up with neighborhoods surrounded by 8 to 9 story high density housing and no grocery stores, no shoe stores, etc. There needs to be a balance; sometimes there is a push-push for high density housing but there is no mix in that high density housing; you need the Safeways, the grocery stores, etc. because people do not necessarily want to have to drive out of their existing neighborhoods to find a Safeway that is two miles away, because the Safeway that was near them got torn down for high density housing. San Jose is in such a rush to put up their high density housing that they are beginning to become burdensome to their neighboring cities and the impacts are beginning to show where they put all the high density housing on the boarders of their city and the rest of the cities have to try to deal with the traffic. There needs to be a fair break that way. Laura Stetson: • Said Ms. Griffin made a clarifying comment when stating complete or intact neighborhoods, not just the fact that it is a single family neighborhood but there are services within walking distance and nearby. It is something they can look at both as part of the housing element but importantly as well as part of the focused General Plan update that the city has going on to ensure that balance and that there is walkable complete compact neighborhoods. The study session is a chance to talk about constraints and housing concerns to be able to start to investigate in greater depth the issues the housing element needs to address. Com. Raman, Housing Commission member: • Said schools are a major concern; it is already a challenging situation in the public schools year, particularly at the elementary level. When looking at 1,000 more units, those are the types of things when looking at the age profile of the people coming in, it becomes a concern. Com. Gong: • Said she presumed the silver tsunami residents were not moving in, but aging in place and the age is increasing by residents who have been there a long time; as a result it does impact the schools but it impacts it because they aren’t the younger family, they aren’t able to move in because the older population is maintaining their housing there. Where they think it is going to impact the schools in number of students, in fact is it may hinder the growth of the school age population if they don’t find a compromise or a workable solution. Laura Stetson: • Said some of the senior residents of the community said they want to stay in Cupertino, but they are tired of their large home because they require so much work and they want to do other things; and they also recognize that they could free up their large homes for a family with school children who could take advantage of the excellent schools. Ellie Fiore: • Said she read about the Rainbow Mansion in Cupertino where quite a few young technology employees have created a co-op; they set up a consortium that formalizes the process where people have to interview and apply to be considered for the co-housing. Perhaps that might work with maintaining a senior in the house and bringing in the other elements in an existing house. Laura Stetson: • Responding to a question about how the school district is incorporated in terms of growth planning, 6 Special Joint Meeting of Cupertino Planning Commission and Housing Commission January 23, 2014 she said they have talked to the School District, and Aarti Shrivastava is in constant contact with them; for projecting student population in Cupertino they do not follow any model, but they find they have to rethink how they are planning for students, and are looking at growth because of what is going on in Cupertino and the surrounding communities as well that feed into the school district, because the school district boundaries do not coincide with the city’s boundaries. Aarti Shrivastava: • Said they have met with the school districts and contracted with the school district’s demographer as well as the person who helps them with the impact fees to better understand what the impacts are. They will work closely with staff to ascertain what their needs are regardless of what housing is built; how does this new housing fit into it; what are the facilities’ needs going to be so that they address it more in a long term context rather than incremental, so they can work on solutions together. She commented on how impressed the school districts were with the City of Cupertino vs. some of the other cities who are also clients of theirs or whose residents also come to this school district. Laura Stetson: • Said when they talked to the school districts, they were interested in where the housing might be in Cupertino because it affects particular schools, and school districts are not in favor of redrawing school boundaries. Com. Lee: • Many of the plots of land in Cupertino are small with different owners, so the buildable space is small as well; which means that in the last ten years many of the housing projects have been on top, they build up two or three stories on top of retail which has had limited success due to the fact that the architecture screams housing not retail and parking is an issue too. Laura Stetson: • Said Com. Lee’s remarks presented a good lead into the next exercise with the group since it is not just about where housing might be in Cupertino, but what might that housing be. Discussion will include multi-family housing, apartments, condominiums, townhomes but also mixed use development. There are two ways to do mixed development; the first way Com. Lee described, the European way with the shops on the bottom and homes above, and another form of mixed use is to take a site and have a separate retail office/commercial pad area with housing on another portion of the site. There will be questions if it is appropriate to put mixed use development in Cupertino and where. Said there aren’t any large vacant sites in the city that require cooperation between property owners who want to get it done or a developer who is willing to start to assemble properties. It is a difficult model in a built out community such as Cupertino. Com. Brophy: • Said it was his 7th year on the Planning Commission and the No. 1 issue when discussing housing has been schools. The one thing that staff has done and the Planning Commission and City Council have tried to do is to have multi-family projects with a limited number of bedrooms to have them focus more on the young technical people who need housing. However in talking to Cupertino residents it appears many people don’t realize the growth in school enrollment does not come from these kind of projects, but rather from the gradual replacement of the old 800 square foot homes built in the 1950s, as those are torn down and replaced by 5 bedroom homes. There is no change in the number of dwelling units in the city but the cumulative effect is substantial. 7 Special Joint Meeting of Cupertino Planning Commission and Housing Commission January 23, 2014 Laura Stetson: • Said they heard many concerns about school impacts. Said the City has to show there is capacity for 1064 units; they can reuse sites that were identified before through the public process if it is determined that those are still suitable sites for housing and the housing hasn’t come to fruition. If through the process the community and policy makers decide that those weren’t good locations for housing, they would rather have commercial or office there. They have to find additional sites for 1064 units and there will not be credit for units built during a time period. It is starting for the period January 1, 2015 through 2022; how will they accommodate 1064 units. If there are projects under way now that are being entitled, the city will not get credit for those; those are essentially credits toward the prior cycle. • Said there were two maps available for participants to study; one map illustrates where potential housing could be located, including multi-family and mixed use and the other is related to community benefits that the community may be seeking if there is housing. Those present broke up into smaller discussion groups regarding housing issues, including mapping exercises to identify suitable housing sites in Cupertino and desired community benefits. Individual group discussion was not recorded. Laura Stetson: • Thanked those present for participating in the discussion group; some housing sites were identified, the discussion of community benefits will resume with the community at a future date. There were many possibilities with community benefits and people were receptive to using that approach as a tradeoff for some higher density housing in the community. She reviewed upcoming events associated with the process of getting a housing element adopted for Cupertino. The next meeting is scheduled in February with the Housing Commission (Additional details will be available shortly). At that meeting focus will be on the site discussion. The February 19 meeting will focus on the General Plan amendment. The work that has been going on to look at areas of the community that might have a General Plan amendment will include some housing discussion that can feed into the discussion with the Housing Commission. There will be a tentative joint meeting with the Planning Commission and City Council on March 4th to settle on the housing sites so the housing element can continue to move forward. • Thanked those who attended and encouraged everyone to participate not just in the housing element but also in the General Plan update. Com. Brophy thanked all those who attended the study session. Aarti Shrivastava: • Noted that there was a website for the General Plan: www.cupertinogpa.org with a tab for the housing element. There will soon also be a setup with comments. Colleen Winchester, Asst. City Attorney : • Reported the Housing Commission meeting will be February 13, 2014 at 6:30 p.m. The Planning Commission will meet January 28, 2014 at 6:45 p.m. Com. Brophy adjourned the meeting. Respectfully Submitted: ________________________________ Elizabeth Ellis, Recording Secretary