Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Of February 23. If you will, please join me in standing to the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance

to the flag of The United States

Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation Okay. I'm gonna do a little roll call. Commissioner Crockett.

Here.

Commissioner Griggy. Here. Commissioner Stuckenbroker?

Here.

Commissioner Tiernan? Here. Commissioner Derby is here, and commissioner Curtis Havel and commissioner Tim Roche are not here. May do I have a motion on the agenda?

Move to approve the final agenda. Second.

Commissioner Crockett. Aye. Commissioner Grigey. Aye. Commissioner Stuckenbroker. Aye. Mister Tiernan. Aye. And Commissioner Derby is an aye. Okay public comment. I'd like to open the public comment for something that is not on the agenda.

Not on the agenda.

Not on the agenda. Then I will open public comment period. Please step forward.

Good evening commissioners. My name is Jeff Dougherty. I'm the developer on the proposed 200 Project located in San Marin. I'm also a resident of Marin County. I live and work here. As we all know, we need housing if our children and neighbors are going to continue living and working here as well. I support all the work and appreciate the work you're doing on the housing element and meeting the arena targets. I look forward to working with you on 200 San Marin as well as future housing projects in Nevada. Thank you.

Thank you.

Is that the one at San Andreas? Correct. Oh, excellent. Good luck.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else? Seeing no one, I will close the public comment period. Okay. Consent items, none. Unfinished business, none. Public hearings, none. General business,

I'm going to hand it over to you.

All right. Thank you, commissioners. So this item is regarding the 2025 housing element annual progress report, or APR. So staff is requesting that the Planning Commission receive the annual housing report, take public comment, if any, and recommend the city council direct staff to file the APR with the state Department of Housing and Community Development and Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation. So the state requires each local jurisdiction in the state of California to file an APR annually.

And this report is intended to detail the city's progress towards achieving its regional housing needs allocation and also implementation of programs in the adopted housing element. The current housing element covers the years 2023 through 2031. And our arena in total is 2,090 units. Additionally, the purpose of the APR is to track housing units from the planning entitlement phase through building permit issuance and ultimately certificate of occupancy and to track the affordability level of those units. The state also tracks what, if any, state housing streamlining laws is used through the entitlement process, such as AB twenty eleven, SB 35, and SB nine, along with if there's any use of density bonus through the entitlement approval process.

Tables A and tables A2 are most applicable tables used to input and track entitlements and permits. Table B self populates based on the data input of tables A and A2. And table D is to detail housing element program implementation. So this year in 2025, or this past year, the city received four entitlement applications. Three of those were SB nine urban lot splits.

And one was a single family residential design review. So we just had a total of four units associated with four entitlements submitted during the calendar year. Looking at approved entitlements, the city approved a total of 156 units. The projects are listed on the slide. And the city issued 15 building permits.

14 of those were ADUs and JADUs, and one was for a single family dwelling. And the city granted 18 certificates of occupancy. And all of those were for ADUs and JADUs. So with that, as far as affordability, the city issued permits for four very low income, four low income, four moderate, and three above moderate. As far as the ADUs and JADUs, being here in the Bay Area, the city is able to utilize a breakdown of 30% for very low, low, and moderate income and 10% of those units as above moderate.

So essentially, you take 100% of the units and sort of divvy it up into the affordability categories 30% very low, 30% low, 30% mod, 10% above mod. And that's sort of how we came up with the numbers you see in there. The above mod also does reflect a single family unit. And that gets us to the total of 14 units. So with that, in total to date for the current housing element cycle, we've issued 141 building permits towards the goal of 2090, leaving us with nineteen forty nine remaining.

Should be noted cumulatively for calendar years 'twenty four and 2025, the city has entitled nine sixty one dwelling units, eight zero five of those in 2024, and 156 in 2025. So as far as the entitlements go, we are making pretty good progress. It's just actually getting those to a building permit issuance phase is where we're trying to get to at this point. There are some other tables in the APR spreadsheet. That information is detailed in the staff report.

For the most part, the city doesn't have a lot of those different types of development projects. I won't go into that. So looking at table D, housing element programs, we did accomplish a few things in 2025. Some of you will remember in January, we had an ADU ordinance update to update it to comply with the most recent changes to state laws regarding ADUs. In March, we brought forward an ordinance to update our emergency shelters ordinance to bring that into compliance with state law.

Also in March, at the same hearing, we brought forward some changes to our community and residential care facilities. In July, this wasn't an ordinance. But through early twenty twenty five, we did a survey of residential property managers and property owners that typically rent their properties out to see which ones potentially allow pets, because that was a program in our housing element. So we got that information from property managers that responded. And we've got that information up on our web page.

And then associated with program 6D, mainly associated with, I think, the Romar Court situation, the city did bring forward to the city council a dangerous buildings ordinance. And that is aligned with program 6D regarding the Northwest Quad and proactive code enforcement, although that ordinance would be applicable citywide. Looking forward for the rest of 2026 and 2027, we're looking to bring forward a transfer of development rights ordinance, start work on a hillside ordinance revision. That will likely bleed into 2027. We've got two or three programs related to doing some code updates regarding streamlined housing process and other streamlining improvements.

We're also looking at two programs related to parking standards largely associated with existing state laws where proximity to transit stops and some other parking reductions is typically associated with density bonus. And then lastly, we're working on a just cause eviction and tenant protection and fair housing ordinance. Claire, community development director, is leading that process. And throughout the month of March, there's going to be some more community outreach. And I think there's a target date to take that to city council towards the March.

Looks like March 24 is a tentative city council date for that ordinance. So that really concludes the housing element APR associated with housing and housing affordability. I did get one question from a planning commissioner regarding mobile home units that are in mobile home parks and how levels of affordability are determined for those units in the parks. So hypothetically, if the city were to receive an application for a new mobile home park that would be established, it would likely be that the city's inclusionary housing ordinance would be applicable. So as long as the park had more than 20 units, 20% of those units would have to be affordable.

And those would be affordable, a mix of either very low and low or low and moderate income units. For the existing parks, I think there's a couple of things going on. One is there's this term naturally occurring affordable housing. And that's typically associated with maybe an older home stock or just housing that's in general more affordable. So it's not deed restricted at certain levels of affordability, but it's just naturally affordable based on the housing type or the circumstance.

So that's one thing. And then the second thing is that the city does have a mobile home rent control ordinance. It was last updated in 2024. And what that does is it generally restricts rent increases within the mobile home parks and we have three here in the city limits of Novato to 100% of the consumer price index, inflationary index, or 4%, whichever is lower. So maximum 4% or the CPI if it's less than 4%.

So I think that summarizes my well, I'll go through some key takeaways. So obviously, was a pretty slow year for building permits issued and new entitlements. As you saw, ADUs are still a majority. I think that was pretty similar to last year of permits issued. And then we do have, like I mentioned, a lot of entitled projects.

We'll see what happens as far as building permits issued this year. I mentioned a few of them. Seventeen eighty seven grant, residential care facility for the elderly. There's three AMG projects where we could be seeing building permits. Fireman's Fund site if they progress with demolition and get to a stage where they're ready 7,299 Redwood that's the old Mission Lodge site Valley Oaks.

And then lastly, the Habitat for Humanity project. And then similar to last year, we had a list of things that could impact development, interest rates, cost of materials, cost of labor, and other things going on in the political realm. So with that, I think that concludes my presentation. And happy to answer any questions.

Great, thank you. Commissioner Crockett, any questions?

No. All right,

Commissioner Grigey, any questions?

None at this time.

Commissioner Stuckenbroker, any questions?

No. Commissioner Tiernan, any questions?

I want to follow-up on the mobile home. Thank you for bringing that up. So I believe we have four parks in the city. Think maybe it's just three.

I think the one off Atherton is technically in the unincorporated area.

Wasn't sure, because the NBC is So coming off

the three of them, let's just assume that's 200 trailers or 200 homes. Do all 200 of those count as existing base, or do we just blankly say these are naturally occurring affordable places, so they should all count?

Yes. So I think there's maybe a couple of responses to your question. One, with the housing element, it's really about new units that we get to count for the current cycle. But what we also have in our housing element is we do have policies about trying to retain existing affordable units. So I know there's some programs that the county administers with CDBG grant monies.

And I think some of that's tied to rehab, so grant monies to help maybe lower income property owners do some rehab to keep their house in a state that's livable and maybe tied to I don't want to talk how to turn away because I don't know exactly the programs, but maybe Some heavy

ramps and handrails and things

like that to

try and make them more accessible. Okay great thank you.

And no questions from me. I'm gonna open the public comment period if anyone would like to state anything on the report. Seeing no, oh, alright, okay. I'm gonna open it up. Alright.

Hi, Derek Nell, resident of Nevada and represent the Nevada Unified School District. And I just wanted to say that the city appears, you know, appears it's doing what it can. It's trying to trying to be flexible. It's it's got a lot in the entitlement pipeline, and I think that that's that should be recognized as a positive thing. But everyone can sort of see for themselves that it's the high cost of housing right now.

One of the things that isn't mentioned up there is the cost of money. I like to bring that up every once in a while because we can point to a three legged stool of one being labor and one being construction and the material supply line, but the cost of syndicated fees and underwriting is also very, very, very, very high. But having said that, I think what what we all need to do, because the numbers that we have so far, they're bleak. And I don't know that there are consequences that the state's going to it's all pretty new. If there really are hard consequences that come down on cities if they fail to meet these Reno numbers, but that's not even really the issue.

The issue is the citizens, the people who can't afford to live here, especially our workforce, which is something that the school district is definitely focused on as it's having a major impact on our ability to deliver a local, high quality, consistent public education. So as you know, we're moving forward with some projects of our own. So we're hoping that the city and the commissioners here will all be flexible and creative and think broadly as when the solutions come forward. They may be a little out of the box in order to make it work, but we definitely have to do more to solve these problems. At this stage, you're basically looking at an update of numbers.

We don't have an actual update to the element itself, I think, for a couple of years. Officially it's going. But I would just say that I think as a community, we're just gonna have to work on being open and to creative ideas to solving this problem. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Nell. Seeing nobody else, I'm gonna Oh, no. Thank you.

Nobody else I will close the public hearing. Okay.

Let's circle back around. Does anyone else wanna make any statements or make a recommendation for make a motion I guess For a recommendation. Sure.

I'll recommend we approve this. I don't know that we really have anything to approve. Right? This is presented to us. But I I do wanna just say that as always in my time here, I appreciate the efforts of staff. It's not very glamorous when you're essentially spending a lot of these meetings talking about compliance with changing state ordinances, etcetera. So but the background work that's being done to to stay in compliance and and to make, as has been said, this community as attractive as possible for development when the metrics come together is great work being done by your team. So I appreciate it.

Thank you commissioner Crockett. Commissioner Grigey, do

you have anything you wanna say?

Yeah, I'll echo Commissioner Crockett's comments. I think that this annual progress report really underscores that Novato is trying to develop and meet this affordability crisis that we as a community and countless communities across California are facing. As Mr. Nell pointed out, there are factors outside of our control that are hampering that, unfortunately. So I really I do really appreciate the efforts of staff and the efforts of the city to meet this crisis and, you know, try to make sure that the you know, that my classmates who have been priced out of this community can hopefully someday return.

So I really appreciate the work that staff is doing and I will be voting for the recommendation.

Commissioner Stuckenbruger.

No, I'm good. Thank you.

Commissioner Tiernan.

Yeah, I'll support moving this to the city council. I think it is kind of unfortunate as light a year as it was, but it also reflects I think a lot of the climate that we're facing. It's good to see the ADUs still moving along. That was one of the big thrusts to try and get more stuff in our neighborhoods, get families closer together and what have you, so I think we need to continue to proceed.

Thank you

and I guess I would say I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Nell. I would hope that I would make or at least I would hope that counsel and this commission is open to flexibility. I could see many of the developers including some that already have their entitlements coming back around when they realized that some of the things they entitled were for an old environment an old market that had different conditions at the time. And there will be requests to down zone, for example, or maybe reduce unit count.

I think that's I actually think that's the great irony of Rina. We want thousands and thousands of units. And some people think, oh stacking and packing is the way but the reality is a lot of these sites would be worth a lot more to the developers if they could just build single family homes that frankly a lot of people that sometimes come out and complain about density would love to see. But again this is the state kind of driving these arena numbers. I know it's not staff coming up with them.

So any I would hope we are we want to we get we do everything we can to be flexible and try to figure out other ways of spreading units around if if we can again then if the if the goal is to get housing built we need to be flexible. Anyhow but yes I will recommend we submit what we have up to the city council.

So motion, anyone? Oh. So I think commissioner Crockett had a motion. I was just gonna say we need a second on the second. There we go. Okay. We'll do a little vote here. Commissioner Crockett? Aye. Commissioner Grigey? Aye. Commissioner Stuggenbroker? Aye. Commissioner Tiernan? Aye. And commissioner Derby's a nine. Alright. Send that on up. Is there anything else on the docket tonight? Nothing else this evening. Wonderful. Well, nothing from the commission. I'll say that we are adjourned. Okay? You're adjourned. There we go.

There we go. That was good. You were yeah. That was gonna happen.