With housing, it’s quality over quantity

Earlier this month, developers and elected officials met at the Petaluma Sheraton to decry our region’s “affordable housing crisis.” While they didn’t precisely define what that means, they had the solution at hand anyway. You can probably guess what it is.

“California needs to build 100,000 new homes to meet the need,” said Bob Glover of the Bay Area Building Industry Association.

California is a big place, with stark regional differences when it comes to cost of living, population density, infrastructure, available jobs and so on. Funding mechanisms for both affordable and market-rate housing come and go these days, as does property tax revenue, which pays for the infrastructure needed for more housing. Indeed, the very definition of what constitutes “affordable housing” is a moving target and varies greatly from region to region.

In other words, housing units are not widgets, following a simple supply-demand curve. And statistics comparing housing scenarios from region to region should be viewed with suspicion.

Despite such complexities, the takeaway from the Sheraton gathering was apparently very simple. Participants demanded “action” to fix the problem, i.e. accelerated housing development. And they followed up with a call for scaling back one of California’s most important environmental laws, the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.

When developers and politicians join hands in this way, journalists ought to show a little skepticism. But an Argus-Courier editorial from last week (“Housing crisis demands action”) merely seconded their ideas, painting CEQA as a blunt instrument for selfish homeowners, and stating: “It doesn’t matter if existing zoning laws allow for a housing development. Opponents will say the project is too big, will obscure their views or will generate too much traffic.”

This knee-jerk approach ignores not only the complexities of housing in general, but the terrible long-term consequences that pell-mell development causes.

When residents volunteer their time to ensure new housing is well designed and fairly applied, they’re often the only thing standing in the way of a city’s decline. It takes more than an urban growth limit to protect a city’s future.

Examples of what I mean abound. Look at my hometown of Stockton, which for two decades never saw a housing development it didn’t like. City leaders rubber-stamped every building proposal, developers like The Grupe Company enriched themselves, and the city paved over its fertile farmland. Here was a place taking bold “action” when it came to housing.

Today, of course, Stockton is bankrupt and unable to support its own infrastructure. But house hunters take note: There are plenty of properties for sale or rent in Stockton, at affordable prices. Sure, the schools are awful and police are running ragged, but housing is housing, right?

None of this is to say that development is inherently bad. Rather, Petalumans must watch out for poorly designed projects being pushed through because, we are told, the city must “solve the housing crisis.” Basin Street Properties’ Theatre District units are excellent (and even count as “affordable” by San Francisco standards). The beige condo boxes clustered around McNear Circle are not.

In short, when it comes to development, we are the vetting process. Beware simpleminded answers to the complex issue of housing. Demand that developers and your elected officials keep quality in mind, rather than just quantity. And before we begin, let’s make sure we all know exactly what we mean when we talk about “affordable housing.” Building intelligently and non-destructively requires much more consideration than one finds in recent Argus-Courier editorials on the subject. But Petaluma is worth it.

(Don Frances is a Petalu ma resident.)