Campbell expands housing policy over commission’s opposition

Campbell is adjusting its affordable housing policy in hopes of creating more homes and raking in more development funds, despite an official recommendation not to.

The Campbell City Council voted 4-1 last week to expand its inclusionary housing policy, which would require smaller projects to convert at least 15% of homes into affordable housing or pay into the city’s housing efforts. The change applies to projects with five or more homes, lowering the existing threshold from 10 or more homes, and is expected to bring in about $237,000 annually. Campbell will implement it in about a year. Vice Mayor Sergio Lopez voted no.

Councilmembers went against the Planning Commission’s unanimous recommendation earlier this month to keep the same threshold. The recommendation was largely due to commissioners saying they were unclear about the ramifications of the policy shift. Some commissioners also said it could hinder development because small developers would have to pay an extra fee or front the additional costs of an affordable home.

Planning Commission Chair Alan Zisser said commissioners needed more time to understand and dissect the hefty policy, which led to the recommendation against it. Zisser, however, said he accepts the city council’s decision.

“That’s the beauty of the system, we can disagree, (and) it’ll move to council,” he told San José Spotlight. “Council, sometimes they have more information, and they’re the final decision makers.”

Mayor Susan Landry said she voted in favor of the change because building more affordable housing is critical, adding councilmembers sometimes disagree with the commission’s recommendations.

The policy’s nexus study found it wouldn’t harm development in the city, but Landry said if it does, the council can make adjustments during its annual assessments.

“The hope is that we basically start building up money and units to help our housing,” Landry told San José Spotlight. “We’ve got people that are in desperate need of housing, and it has been shown that to build affordable and low-income housing, there needs to be some financial support or subsidies. And this is a way to accomplish those goals.”

Campbell could further its housing goals under the policy change. The city aims to create 3,870 homes by 2031 to meet state mandates, 1,542 of which must be deemed affordable to low-income residents.

Residents aren’t entirely supportive of the shift.

Raja Pallela, a Campbell resident since 2018, said he’s concerned about the policy’s effect on missing middle housing — homes affordable to residents who earn too much to qualify for low-income housing, but not enough for a market-rate home. He said missing middle housing often appears in projects with five to nine homes, which developers may shy away from building due to the constraints of the policy shift.

“(Missing middle) salaries, considering the Bay Area, are not huge. They can’t have a full-fledged, traditional single-family home, but these are young couples and people,” he told San José Spotlight. “By doing this, the city council has killed the opportunity for the young families.”

Vice Mayor Lopez voted no because he shared similar concerns about missing middle housing. He supported the other aspects of the policy, including charging $9 per square foot on new commercial buildings, and said he’s proud of Campbell’s housing progress.

“What the discussion showed is that Campbell’s moving forward in terms of being all in on housing and there’s no going back from that,” he told San José Spotlight. “Just the progress that we’ve made in that area over the past four years has been really tremendous.”

Campbell has some affordable housing development underway at major thoroughfares. VTA is working with Campbell to bring 90 affordable apartments to the Winchester light rail station. Another project will add 12 tiny homes near Campbell Park.

Zisser wants the policy to succeed.

“We haven’t done a very good job in the past of collecting in-lieu fees that we could use for stimulating and getting affordable housing (developed),” he said. “Hopefully, it’ll accomplish that without developers thinking it’s too high a price to develop.”

Contact Annalise Freimarck at [email protected] or follow @annalise_ellen on X, formerly known as Twitter.