Butler: Affordable-housing policies open few doors in Nevada County

Photo by Bob Lickter A couple sifts through recycling bins recently in Nevada City looking for something they can sell. The challenging times are squeezing many local residents who need our elected leaders to find ways to jump start the local economy.

Affordable housing is and will continue to be a key issue for this area, but maybe we need to rethink the idea that yet another policy is going to fix it. It seems that these extraordinarily detailed policies drafted in the halls of government are the beginning of the end for the programs they purport to serve.

My View

By Pat Butler

Nevada City Advocate

Watching some dust fly over an alleged violation of the Brown Act in Grass Valley reminds me of the old saying “Nero fiddles while Rome burns.”

The source of the complaint is a longstanding and well-known opponent of growth who made the charges after the City Council terminated its affordable housing policy on a 4-1 vote.

The policy required builders to make 20 percent of their units affordable, which is determined by the city of Grass Valley. In addition, the homes were to be deed-restricted to discourage the new owners from selling their homes and perhaps moving into a nicer one, which has been part of the American dream for a while now.

The policy was approved by the council in 2004, but it never really lived up to its promise. In six years, the city has added a total of 92 “affordable” housing units to its stock. Overall, it has approved 481 units in that same period of time.

The practical affect of the affordable housing policy was to discourage home building.

Forward-thinking projects like Loma Rica have lingered for years during this era of affordable-housing policy. Greg Zaller, who brought affordable housing units to Pakistan, commented on nevadacityadvocate.com that he can no longer build affordable homes here.

Now, the sputtering economy and thicket of red tape that government imposes has ground the home-building industry into sawdust, which means lost jobs, lost retail sales, no new affordable homes, and even more questions about our collective future.

But instead of accepting the reality of the failure of the policy and that a clear majority of councilors voted to rescind it, we have one man trying to discredit an entire process and cast a sinister shadow over an entire council.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Brown Act, it requires local elected bodies like city councils to post a notice of a meeting 72 hours before it is scheduled to start.

In this case, three city councilors attended a housing meeting with other members of the public, which made it an official meeting.

No action was taken at that meeting and the third city councilor at the meeting reported the violation to the Grass Valley city attorney when she learned of it. Meanwhile, the vote to end the policy was taken at a public meeting and after no doubt hours of soul-searching by the council and city staff, which recommended it be rescinded.

The district attorney, meanwhile, investigated the complaint and was satisfied the city addressed the problems and that the meeting was not a strategy session designed to bring down a failed policy.

A rather innocuous mistake at one meeting where one is trying to learn more about affordable-housing concerns does not mitigate six years of a failed policy and a public vote.

Affordable housing is and will continue to be a key issue for this area, but maybe we need to rethink the idea that yet another policy is going to fix it. It seems that these extraordinarily detailed policies drafted in the halls of government are the beginning of the end for the programs they purport to serve.

Nevada City recently spent a long time updating its affordable housing policy, which it did to make itself eligible for more state grants.

 A well-intentioned city council and staff spent months working on an amnesty policy for landlords who had illegal second units that were rented. It was considered a convenient way to add to the affordable housing stock even if it didn’t actually add any affordable units to the city landscape.

The amnesty policy does require a landlord to pay thousands of dollars in past fees and water and sewer bills as part of the program, which has largely failed to meet expectations.

The irony is that those illegal units are the affordable ones.

The Nevada City policy also has provisions for deed restrictions, square-footage restrictions and quotas for affordable housing on future projects. On the bright side, the city has doubled the density on a couple of one-acre parcels from eight to 16 units.

Housing is a serious problem for western Nevada County. Most homes are far too expensive for young families trying to make it in an area where average wages don’t come close to covering average mortgages.

If our elected officials and affordable-housing policy supporters are really serious about housing, they need to take the shackles off builders and streamline the bureaucratic pipeline and allow them to build homes, duplexes and, yes, even apartments.

At the same time, our elected officials need to embrace job-creation strategies and support the organizations and industries that contribute to the economic vitality of this area during these all-too tenuous times.

Pat Butler is the author of My View and the editor and publisher of the Nevada City Advocate. He can be reached by sending an e-mail to pat@nevadacityadvocate.com.