Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Uh, good evening everyone. It is the city of Desert Hot Springs regular meeting of the planning commission for Tuesday, September 9th. May we have the roll call, please? Commissioner Lombardo, present. Commissioner Parker present. Commissioner Row present. Vice Chair Wagstaff present. Chairman Lindell. Chairman Indel present. All right. Would everyone please rise for the pledge of allegiance? Repeat after me. I pledge allegiance

to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Thank you. All right. Um, approval of the agenda. Has everyone looked at the agenda? I'm sure they have. Um, does anyone want to make a motion to approve the agenda? And a second. A motion to approve the agenda. Okay. I second.

All right. Can we have a vote? Yeah, it's it's not showing up.

By voice vote. Okay. Commissioner Lombardo, four. Commissioner Parker, four. Commissioner Row, four. Vice Chair Wagstaff, four. Chairman Indel, four. Motion passes unanimously. All right. Um, number one, planning commission regular meeting minutes. We need to approve the minutes as presented or as corrected. Has every if everyone's had a chance to look at the minutes, would somebody make a motion to approve? I motion to approve. Second. All right. Second. Can we take a vote?

Commissioner Lombardo four. Commissioner Parker, four. Commissioner Row, four. Vice Chair Wax, four. Chairman Nel, four. Motion passes unanimously.

All right. At this time, pursuant to the Brown Act, any person may comment on matters of general interest within the subject matter jurisdiction of the planning commission, not listed on the agenda. Does anyone have any public comments they'd like to make? No. All right. Then we'll move to our first hearing. General plan amendment GPA 25-2 midcycle sixth cycle housing elements update. Travis Clark, can you give us a staff report, please?

Yes. Uh good evening. Uh Mr. Chairman and members of the commission. Uh Cat, do we have the presentation? Anyway, I hope you all had a nice summer vacation. uh and holiday and now it's time to get back to work. So, um I'll uh present uh this item, but I wanted to let you know we have two members of our consulting team in the audience this evening, uh Kelly Clark and Natalie Castillia Orosco, and they'll answer the hard questions on the statistics and the data because they were the ones that helped crunch most of that. So, you have any questions for them? So uh what is a housing element and have to start with sometimes with the very basic questions uh before we jump into details and acronyms. So the housing element is the city's roadmap for providing housing for all residents in the city. It is part of the general plan. Some would say it's the most important element in the general plan. Uh a lot of times general plans don't get updated till intervals like 10 to 20 years but the housing element is always updated at eight-year intervals. So that's the state requirement. Uh the current housing element provides housing needs from 2021 through 2029. This is called the sixth cycle. Uh although no update is required by the state, the city is required to do a midcycle i.e. four years update as part of the settlement agreement. So that's the reason for this update. Just a little bit more background. Um the way the housing works is it plans for new housing units by income level and that is through the regional housing needs allocation. So this is a statewide allocation uh that's assigned to each jurisdiction. Uh and in our case we got an allocation

a total of 3,873 units. Uh you'll notice that the majority of those units close to 2700 more than 2,700 are moderate or above moderate. So the majority of them but we also have a total of,4 affordable housing units uh from the low income, very low income and extremely low incomes. A housing unit could be a single family house, it could be an apartment, it can be a condo, uh an ADU or mobile phone mobile home. All of those count as housing units. So I wanted to highlight some of the progress made uh from the start of the sixth cycle uh till now uh after uh crunching the August numbers. We have almost 700 units permitted in this cycle or that's 18% of the arena as of the end of August 2025. So the way the state measures it uh way you quote get credit for it is the housing unit is permitted. Uh it doesn't have to be entitled doesn't have to be completed but it is at least permitted. So even at the end of the cycle a lot of the housing units will keep running into the next cycle right because there's different stages of the housing production. So far in 2025 we've had 186 units permitted. Uh that's at a faster pace than any other year uh previously. Uh so we're off to uh you know really good start. Uh infill development remains strong. Uh 62 of the 136 units permitted in 2024 were infill development. So almost almost half. And then ADUs also remain popular. Um, we had 17 units in 2024 and we've already eclipsed that, I

believe, with at least 18 units so far this year. About half or so use the city's pre-approved plans. So, some of the uh progress uh that we're making uh really on the market side and the uh housing tracks, Skyborn, that's the largest one that we have right now. We have at least 135 homes under construction or completed in Skybornne. Uh 63 of 76 in Rancho Discono. Those two projects are both uh LAR uh builder uh projects. Uh Mighty Homes, we have 17 of 77. And interestingly, uh each of those homes has its own ADU as part of the part of the uh project development. Amenur Palms is at 8 to 34 and Eagle Point is at 14 homes uh under construction. That's by Monty Vista Homes.

But uh beyond that, there are still thousands more that are quote entitled, meaning they proceed received their preliminary entitlements. Skyborn alone has, you know, a couple thousand uh housing units. Uh then you look at the others that are still there including the specific plans uh that are uh still active. There's really a thousand more that are entitled. So there's plenty in the pipeline. Uh some of the good news to share is on the affordable housing uh side. Uh we've had three significant projects I would say that are entitled at this point. Uh Green Day Village is the largest at 220 units. Uh the crossings at Camino Companero at 64 and Parklane Homes at 167. I believe two of these came before you uh as the planning commission. Uh what they're all trying to do now is get funding. Uh as you can imagine, which is obviously very challenging right now. Um, one partnership that we uh struck up with was with Abode Communities at Parklane Homes and we've applied for a large state grant uh and loan that will help them build the housing units but also help the city with its infrastructure. And actually last week we got our preliminary scoring. Uh luckily the state gives you a chance to appeal or rebut that scoring uh which we did and hopefully we'll pick up some more points. We'll know by December if we're successful uh in that pursuit. Uh also as mentioned the ADU program is still going strong with the pre-approved ADU building plans. These are free to residents uh and city council did eliminate all impact fees on ADUs. So these can be

accessed directly from the uh homepage uh city's homepage. There's a ADU button and you can click it. You can peruse all the plans. There's a variety of styles as you can see and there are plans from studios all the way up to three bedrooms. So a wide variety of potential plans. The other good news to share is the partnership with the county, specifically uh Riverside Housing, uh and workforce solutions. Um so we had certain go programmatic goals in our housing element to assist with first-time home buyers, assist with home enhancement. Uh and we've actually already achieved those goals even though we're only midway through. So, we had 13 households uh participate in the first-time home buyer program within the city and eight households in the home enhancement program. And the 339 families, those are assisted through housing choice program and that's the voucher program. Some of the other supportive efforts the city has undertaken to support housing. Uh city council did reduce the impact fees for all new housing in the discount zone. That's the basically the order older portion of the city the older platted kind of the original platted portion of the city. That's about a 25% reduction there. Uh as some of you participated in, we had a uh comprehensive up update of the zoning ordinance title 17 uh to facilitate housing, reduce barriers, and also make uh our municipal code compliant with state law. Uh one of the things that uh I kind of harp on is this notion of a pre-application meeting with builders uh and developers. So um most cities do this. uh we take it pretty seriously. Uh

this allows a builder developer to come in uh present their concept plan. It can be almost a back of the napkin sketch to anything with sort of full full-blown you know construction plans. Uh and it allows all the departments to give them input and feedback early on in the process so nobody goes running off as a certain direction and makes a big costly mistake. uh and we'll actually hold multiple pre-application meetings for the same project if necessary uh to keep it on track. All the city departments are are represented at that meeting. So that gives them uh really good feedback. And the other thing I'll harp on is our quick turnaround uh for plan review. So we have a 10-day turnaround uh for any new building plans, any plan check. Uh so whether that's a 200 ft² addition or a 700,000 logistics 700,000 square foot logistics center the turnaround is still 10 days and then 5 days for a second. So those are some of the best review times in in the valley. Uh one uh change that we also included in this update is in the sites inventory map. Uh when the Parklane Homes project came about, uh when after the se after the county decided that they wanted to use the land behind a library for affordable housing, uh that allowed us to include this property in the site's inventory, whereas previously it was not. And through this process, we're able to move some of the units I I.e. the allocation assigned to other properties to this property still maintaining a no net loss. And so that happened initially with Camino Companero as you remember they wanted to change the zoning to residential medium kind of scale down the project but move the

units elsewhere. And then there are two other properties on Palm Drive where it makes sense to do something similar because they front on commercial highway and better use for that is retail or restaurants than necessarily you know housing. So those are the other change that we made. The other thing that we did was revamp our housing website. So a much appreciation to Ava who took on this task. Um will admit finding information was challenging before. So, we basically totally restructured it, made it a lot easier uh to get uh at the information, whether it's just brochures or other guidance documents, made a lot of that available in English and Spanish. And so now also on the homepage there's a housing uh button there that takes you to this page where you can find out information on different categories like affordable housing uh housing expense assistance fair housing home ownership uh building residential housing within the city our preapproved ADUs and the housing element itself and we'll keep adding to that and updating it uh as information changes. So, one thing that happened um last year is we held our first-time home buyers workshop uh here actually here in city hall. We had a really good response and they ran out of money pretty quickly. So, we have to kind of stay on top of that to which fund uh uh which program actually has the funds to uh uh continue. Uh the other thing we did recently was hold a community workshop here on August 12th, 2025 to get basically input and feedback uh on this midcycle element. Uh we had about 13 to 15 people attend I believe uh throughout the evening. Uh so

some of the comments received were uh some concern about the traffic impacts on Palm Drive with the approval of the of the new housing projects. uh kind of a discussion of owning versus renting affordable housing and you know the economics behind all of that. Uh but mostly uh most of the participants were just glad that we were holding the workshop and providing this information to the public and able to provide u some feedback and one of our commissioners attended almost stayed through the whole thing. So thank you very much. Uh so with that, our recommendation uh is that uh you recommend to city council uh that they approve the general plan amendment GPA 25-2 to update the housing element six cycle and find the project category categorically exempt from SQA per section 1561B3. And I would be happy to take any questions and our consultants are here to answer any questions you may have as well. All right. Uh, do any commissioners have questions for staff?

Okay. Um, I just have a couple of questions. Uh, you mentioned the home enhancement program. Was that the $10,000 grants that the city gave to individual homeowners, about 10 homeowners? I I'm not sure what the final amount it was, but this was through the county housing and workforce solution. At one time, I think the city had started to uh put together its own program, but it was just far more efficient to work with the county since they already had that infrastructure in place. But but did it did it result in homes being improved? Yes. Yeah. The number that the number that I gave you there. And will there be more money coming for that? Do you know?

Uh that's the $10,000 question. Yeah. So what we've found is you know at least anecdotally sometimes when first-time home buyers fund h has funding the home enhancement program doesn't and then vice versa you know. So uh it's we just have to keep track of it. U giving you know any kind of u changes in federal funds that may flow down or state funds that are available as well. Um is there still a moratorum on evictions in California? Do you know anybody know? Not that I'm aware of. No. Okay. Mr. Chair, are you talking about uh the evictions in terms of co when uh COVID happened?

Well, yeah. I mean, I thought I read a statement in the document and maybe it was referring to CO talking about um evictions still being a moratorum still being on. I know there I I know that there was obviously during CO um I believe that was lifted, but I don't want to misspeak for the record, but I do believe that that was lifted. I think it was in effect for like 18 to 24 months or something like that. Uhhuh. So yeah. Um and also is Desert Hot Springs treated fairly by the state when the numbers arena numbers are handed out, doled out and and and also are we how do we compare to the other cities in the valley? Are we ahead?

Um I I would say we're we're definitely treated fairly this round. Um, as you notice, um, our numbers tend to skew higher for the moderate and above moderate incomes more than say some of the other communities. Um, and I think that's because the city and its representatives made a case that, hey, Desert Hot Springs is already fairly affordable compared to some of the other cities in the valley. Um, and for that reason, that's kind of why the numbers are the way they are. I think every city feels like the numbers are large to try to achieve within that amount of time and a lot of it is out of the city's control. It's based on market conditions, right? What the market does. So city doesn't build houses. We can assist, we can facilitate, we can review the plans, we can do everything to enable uh house building, but we don't build it. So we're a lot of times we're at the mercy of the market. Um, and you know, they're at the mercy of the interest rates and the labor supply and and and so on and so on. And with the affordable housing, the challenge is even tougher uh because there's just tends to be more pots of funding that you have to pull together to make the project pencil out. Mhm.

And um another question, does the city ever condemn proper houses, residential properties? We have um when it's in pretty bad shape, uh we've uh red tag the property, you know, especially like say after a fire or something something, you know, major like that and um try to work with the property owner to get it renovated. But in some cases, you know, it's um not able to or it's just so far gone, it's just not physically, you know, financially feasible. Mhm. That's Anybody else have a question?

I did. I had a question about ADUs. So, if a single family resident owner wanted to add an ADU and is there an agreement they could come to to make it an affordable housing unit, like for maybe a senior relative or something like that where they would get a credit andor it would count against our affordable housing count.

Well, it's interesting you raised that up because when we presented our arena numbers to the state this past year, we said, "Hey, we're building a lot of ADUs. Um, can we not get credit for that?" because, you know, they tend to be more affordable obviously and and uh you know, although you could say that in a certain amount of cases, you know, a relative lives in there, you know, not necessarily low income. Um the state came back and said, "Well, you're going to have to do a study before you can we can say you you can take credit for the ADUs." And we're like, "Well, we're you know, we're we're not going to do a study. we're going to give you the data. Um, so I don't know that whether we would get credit for it, you know, as a as an affordable unit. I mean, obviously I feel our numbers are are better than what we submit because of the number of ADUs that we are building within the city and I would probably say at least 50% of those guess anyway um that 50% of those uh are occupied by lower lower income folks. Um, but we won't get credit for it unless we do some sort of study.

Question. Okay, then uh let's open the public hearing. And I assume that there's no one here for public hearing. Anybody in favor against or neutral that wants to speak? I guess not. Okay. Then we'll close the public hearing. Planning Commission discussion. Do we have anything to discuss amongst ourselves?

No. All right. Then does someone want to make a motion? I will make a motion that we approve the general plan amendment GPA25-2 to update the housing element six cycle and find the project categorically exempt from the secret per section 15061B3 of the sequent guidelines. Do we have a second? I second it. All right, we have a vote. Commissioner Lombardo, four. Commissioner Parker, four. Commissioner Row,

four. Vice Chair Wagstaff, four. Chairman Nandell, four. Motion passes unanimously.

All right. Well, we're getting close to the end. Public comments. I guess there no one new has come in for public comments. Um, chair and planning commission member reports. Do any of us have anything that we want to report? Okay. Um, community development director report. I have a few updates for you. Uh, first of all, uh, I do have an empty chair here to my right. Um, just want to let you know that, uh, Patricia Villa Gomez, our principal planner, she'll be out for surgery, uh, for a few weeks. So, we wanted to wish her well and a speedy recovery and I would just emphasize a speedy recovery uh to get her back. Um she will be missed. Uh so have some patience with Ava while she takes on the counter questions and email questions and uh keeps the entitlement process going and everything else. So um we we do wish uh Patricia well. Uh I did want to take this meeting just to provide some updates on public projects. I given you a lot of information on housing but uh we do have some updates to share and of course I'll just qualify uh some of these dates. You know things happen when you're you know bidding public projects and um awarding construction opening bids and awarding construction and planning to start and some things are out of your control. you might be relying on Edison for a certain component of the project. But anyway, I wanted to pass on this information on Eagle Sports Park. Uh the plan is to separate the street work from the actual park construction itself in two different uh two different awards. So the hope is that um we'll award

construction for Eagle Sports Park uh in October and start construction in December. This is for the street improvement part and then for the park construction itself award in um November and hopefully start construction in January. And again, I'm qualifying all of these dates, but just trying to give you a time frame. The the point is that there's going to be a lot of construction occurring throughout the city on many of these public public projects. Uh next one is the Furby pool rehab. uh council has already awarded construction of that project and it should be starting uh construction uh this this uh September. Uh Reflection Park is another one. Uh we hope to start construction in September as well. And then the Wardman Park shade structures uh ideally uh again October 2025 would start construction on that one as well. So you're going to see all this work happening. As you all know, Hiend Avenue is already under construction for phase one. There will be a phase two followup on that. Uh but the really big one um that everyone's kind of anticipating is the Palm Drive South uh improvements. Uh the goal is to release the RFP in November uh opening the bid in December and award uh construction in January, February uh time frame. Again, that has an Edison component. So we we are relying on all of those parts coming together at once. So basically, you're going to see a lot of construction throughout the city on um these new public facilities. We are wrapping up. Um the fire station uh is very close to getting its final certificate of occupancy. It has a temporary certificate of occupancy. Interesting

enough, we need the fire inspector to final his part before it gets a final certificate of occupancy. We had to joke a little bit about that. And then of course you all can see the police annex as well under construction as well. So that's my update. Thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. Um, that looks like it's it. Thank you everyone for being here. We're adjourned.

Thank you. Thank you. Good evening.