Healdsburg voters to weigh easing restrictions on development

Measure O would lift some restrictions on market rate rental housing construction in some parts of town.

photo credit: Courtesy, City of Healdsburg
Measure O would lift some restrictions on development in areas of Healdsburg colored green.

In 2000, Healdsburg voters approved a residential growth management ordinance. It banned the city from issuing more than about 30 home building permits a year.

In 2018 and 2020, the city's voters passed amendments allowing more apartments to be built for those earning under a certain threshold.

Most locals would likely agree that Healdsburg's law limiting the number of new homes has been a success.

But some say too successful.

Now a November ballot measure aims to further change the equation.

Measure O would set the stage for allowing new apartment buildings to rise in the Healdsburg Avenue corridor, from North Street up to the Community Center, the area near the future SMART station and along Old Redwood Highway at the city's southern end.

There's been a fairly frequent refrain at this year's Healdsburg city council meetings. And that's despite moves to encourage construction, the growth management ordinance is considered---as one city document says----a key barrier to developing housing that meets the needs of the entire community.

"There were two efforts in the past to, in a very targeted way, amend the Growth Management Ordinance to just open up the possibility of building more middle income housing, and those both passed in the previous years, and they resulted in zero units, said Healdsburg city manager Jeff Kay.

Kay said those prior efforts drowned themselves in red tape.

"It was too burdensome for tenants it was too burdensome for developers, it was too burdensome for property owners," Kay said.

Speaking at a council meeting in June, Mayor David Hegele told colleagues years of strict anti-development regulations have hurt Healdsburg.

"When people find out about what the growth management ordinance has done, there's a lot of people that will get pissed off about that."

Councilmembers spent much of that meeting debating how best to sell Measure O--whether voters would react more favorably if wording referred to workforce housing, middle class housing or middle income housing.

While affordable housing is exempt from the city's existing Growth Management Ordinance, and several complexes have risen, the lack of medium-priced apartments is a problem. "We're building inclusionary housing, so that is already covered, but what we haven't done is covered for somebody in the middle of their career, middle of their life, or maybe towards the end, as councilmember Kelly said, wanted to downsize, because that's also part of the problem with our housing is that people hang on to their homes, because there is no place to go down to and still stay in your community," said councilmember Ron Edwards

Addressing the council that night, Healdsburg resident Jonathan Pearlman offered his assessment, and this suggestion.

"If you ask anybody in town, other than people who are really wealthy, they'd say, 'oh yeah, I'm a, I'm a middle class person. To say middle class housing means it's not luxury housing and its not affordable housing. I mean, one way to say it is maybe to say workforce and middle class housing. So that people in the workforce say 'oh, its for me,' and people who are in the middle class say it's for us as well," Pearlman said.

In reality, there is no distinction. City Manager Kay said regardless of the term used, the units would be market rate.

That's a problem Measure O just won't fix....said Brigette Mansell, a former Healdsburg mayor and opponent of earlier efforts to loosen the Growth Management Ordinance.

"It trusts the market that fails and has failed our middle income and working class. So as a middle income person on a pension from the state teacher's retirement system, I know firsthand as a homeowner in town that middle income people are not capable of moving into our town. And it hasn't---it never works to do this. The market is definitely slanted towards way too high income housing. So it's not proven," Mansell said.

Mansell said she thinks it is irresponsible for the city council to put forth what she considers an open-ended invitation to wealthy people to build more expensive housing.

"I don't understand how more of something is gonna right the ship of luxury homes being the only thing built in our town.....The areas that they want to develop, specifically central Healdsburg, they can build a 600 square foot studio, and get a million dollars for it," Mansell said.

Measure O supporters counter that apartments would be for rent, not sale. And that smaller units, perhaps without parking, would cut construction costs, potentially allowing for lower rental prices.

That's an argument Mansell said she doesn't buy.

"It's not going to be good for middle income people. If it was, I would support it because I'm for middle class housing. But the tough part is the doublespeak of saying it is a middle class housing/workforce housing. It's not, it's not going to work that way potentially and I can't watch this happen to my town, Mansell said.

But Kay maintained that there are a number of levers the city could pull to assure that new market rate units don't end up as luxury pied-a-terres.

"There's things you can do with densities, minimum densities. maximum densities, unit sizes--capping the units so that you don't get five thousand square foot vanity projects, you get regular multifamily housing for working families," Kay said.

Meanwhile, at the state level, the legislature has approved a number of laws in recent years cracking down on cities not allowing construction of what is considered their share of new housing units.

But Healdsburg isn't likely to face sanctions--at least in the short term.

State officials have already approved the city's new Housing Element, though the document's projections are based on Measure O's approval and subsequent zoning changes.