Supervisors considering reducing housing impact fees

While driving up the cost of construction, reducing thousands of dollars in fees may prove difficult while delivering underwhelming results.

photo credit: Marc Albert/KRCB
Sonoma County Administration Building.

Sonoma County officials are looking at rolling back or perhaps entirely eliminating certain kinds of development fees.

They're hoping to spur more housing construction.

Like the rest of California, there's a housing affordability crisis in Sonoma County.

Development and impact fees add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of new housing construction.

Under pressure from advocates, county supervisors are studying options for cutting them. It may not be easy. The myriad of fees are also part of how California pays for local government in the wake of Proposition 13.

Local advocacy group Generation Housing has been pushing the county and local cities to reduce fees.

The organization says the additional costs make new construction less viable economically for builders.

That's an argument that resonated with supervisor James Gore.

"If the true impact of impact fees for housing is less housing, than what are we doing? And why not change," Gore asked, rhetorically.

A Generation Housing researcher told the board reducing fees could wipe more than $7 million dollars off the cost of delivering a 500-unit apartment complex.

The county's power, however, is constrained.

It can't reduce school fees--that's controlled by school districts.

It can't reduce fire district fees either, and state laws after prop 13 add complexity to altering water and sewer fees.

While there's enthusiasm for reducing fees charged to affordable housing, Supervisor Chris Corsey said he doubts a broader policy would have any value.

"I don't expect a lot of affordable housing to be produced by a policy like this. It's not going to make any difference on the market rate side, you eliminate three or four thousand dollars in fees, and you are going to make the cost of building that much cheaper, but, when that house gets sold, it's sold on the market. There's probably going to be five people bidding for it and its going to sell for what is sells for, regardless of what the fees are," Coursey said.

While the board directed staff to study the issue and potential impacts, Supervisor Susan Gorin expressed concerns the revenue loss would rob county parks of maintenance and rehab money.

Marc Albert, KRCB, Sonoma County News