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Greenbelt Alliance In the News
December 10, 2002
Calif. housing
battle creates an odd alliance
Subheading
John
Ritter
AUBURN, Calif. — The Sierra Club is involved in a battle over a
seven acres of land next to a shopping center. A developer wants to build
an apartment complex with modest rents. Nearby residents sued to stop
it. The environmental group is on the side of the builder.
Embroiled in the dispute is the Sierra Club — defender of open space,
enemy of development. But in this case, for the first time in its history,
the 110-year-old pillar of the environmental movement has gone to court
on behalf of a builder.
The club decided it's better to support a housing project on marginal
property inside an urban area than to fight it and watch development spread
over farmland, forests and hillsides in the rapidly growing corridor between
Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. Suburban sprawl, the club says, not only chews
up farmland and open space but creates more traffic congestion and air
pollution.
"We recognize that the future of smart growth lies in actually supporting
developers who are doing it right," says Melody Flowers, the Sierra
Club's national anti-sprawl director. "We can't just say no to everything."
Support for the proposed 72-unit Silver Bend complex here reflects a growing
awareness among environmentalists that their traditional response to development
— knee-jerk opposition — isn't always in their best interest.
As rapid population growth stokes debate over sprawl in many regions,
conservation groups are forging alliances with developers who meet their
smart-growth criteria: packing new housing, some of it affordable to middle-
and lower-income residents, into cities near jobs, shopping and mass transit,
shortening commutes and easing pressure on undeveloped land.
With 13 of the 15 least affordable real estate markets, California's housing
crunch is the nation's worst. But sprawl and congestion also plague Las
Vegas, Phoenix, Seattle, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Washington, D.C., and
other fast-growing metro areas. Service workers aren't the only ones being
pinched — even middle-class families can't afford to live where they
work. So they commute long distances and look for cheaper housing in subdivisions
sprouting from the edges of cities.
Home builders remain leery of environmentalists. The National Association
of Home Builders endorses smart growth but not at the expense of what
the home-buying public wants. High-density projects are fine, but they
can't satisfy the bulk of housing demand, the association says.
"The Sierra Club is almost always going to look at open space and
see a habitat or a buffer or a greenway and say this has got to be protected,"
says Clayton Traylor, a Home Builders vice president. "They put 90%
of their energy into that, and if it dislocates housing or creates leapfrog
development or increases the cost of housing it isn't their problem."
Developers who embrace smart growth are often stunned when they win environmentalists'
approval. "I was more shocked about having the Sierra Club support
our project than about the lawsuit to stop it," says Bill Spann,
Silver Bend project manager and a consultant for developer AHDC Inc. of
Clovis, Calif. "This would be the first time environmentalists have
gone to bat for us."
The strategy was honed by the Greenbelt Alliance, a group that has fought
for smart-growth projects in the nine-county San Francisco Bay area for
a decade. Greenbelt has lobbied successfully for affordable apartments,
condominiums and townhouses, usually along mass transit routes. Along
with the Sierra Club, Greenbelt joined a major business group and trade
unions to push for high-density projects in Silicon Valley's chronically
tight housing markets.
Their clout can be decisive. With the planning commission in Pleasant
Hill, Calif., on the verge last month of approving a retail complex of
"big box" stores for its potential sales tax revenue, Sierra
Club and Greenbelt argued for apartments instead on the site near a commuter
rail line — and swung the commission.
Suburban expansion east from Sacramento and a surging market for second
homes in the Sierra Nevada foothills make Placer California's fastest-growing
county. Its eastern border is the booming Lake Tahoe region and its huge
unmet housing demand among low-wage resort and entertainment workers.
Development pressure is severe, particularly along Interstate 80 east
of Sacramento. But cities along that stretch resist affordable housing
for low- and moderate-income families because developers insist the overwhelming
demand is for pricier homes.
Outside the cities, on county land, more than 8,000 new affordable units
will be needed by 2007, a regional government planning agency estimates.
County officials say there's virtually no hope of meeting the goal.
Many developers here, as elsewhere, cling to a suburban subdivision model
of single-family detached homes on large lots. Few want to build dense,
attached urban housing, arguing that most consumers don't want it.
"We're fiercely fighting battles all over," says Terry Davis,
conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club's Mother Lode chapter in
Sacramento.
"But the public needs to know we're not just against everything,
that we have ideas and solutions to our growth problem," he says.
Enthusiasm for bonding with developers is hard to gauge. Fighting sprawl
has been atop the Sierra Club's agenda for two years, but it's unclear
how well national priorities meld with local ones.
Bill Fulton, editor of the California Planning and Development Report,
a newsletter covering growth issues, says the typical Sierra Club member
suffers from NIMBYism (Not in My Back Yard).
"If you're an environmental activist because you live next to a pretty
place, which most of them do, then you don't care whether it's smart growth
to build in that pretty place or not," he says. "You just don't
want it to happen."
Despite sprawl's impact, nearly half the state's residents still prefer
living in large homes with large backyards, even if it means longer rides
to work, according to a November poll by the Public Policy Institute of
California. Only 31% would choose high-density neighborhoods convenient
to public transit.
Silver Bend supporters say the lawsuit to block the project is the result
of NIMBYism, some of it from residents who consider themselves environmentalists
and have supported other affordable housing projects.
But opponents want the county to abide by state law that they say requires
an environmental impact report.
"Great project, bad location," says John Gabrielli, lawyer for
RAID — Residents Against Inconsistent Development. "A lot of
my clients are neighbors to the project. And sure, they don't like it.
But it's their right not to like it."
RAID's lawsuit charges that county officials — the land is just outside
Auburn — passed over better sites, failed to test for pesticide contamination
from old orchards and ignored the danger to children of a steep cliff
on one side of the property.
County officials say the environmental impacts are insignificant and the
land suitable for apartments, a legal determination that requires no environmental
report. A fence will keep kids away from the cliff, they say.
The land has been zoned for residential development for years. "People
have their prejudices, especially in an upper middle class area like Auburn,"
the Sierra Club's Davis says. "They equate affordable housing with
crime and drugs and welfare.
"But we're talking about workforce housing for entry-level teachers,
firefighters and police officers. They would all qualify to live in a
place like Silver Bend," he says.
