Home > Resource Center > In the News Home > Greenbelt Alliance in the News

Greenbelt Alliance In the News

September 28, 2002

Trust seeks to fund affordable housing

Subheading

By Mary Fricker

A trust to fund affordable housing has just been established in Sonoma County, and supporters hope to raise their first $1 million within a year, the Sonoma County Housing Coalition announced Friday at its first anniversary meeting. The trust is a key objective of the coalition, a group of 125 businesses, agencies and community groups formed a year ago to tackle the shortage of affordable housing.

Through the trust, the coalition hopes over time to raise and distribute millions of dollars to create thousands of units of affordable housing, both rental and privately owned. "We'll go after all the money we can get and handle. We want to get it in and out quickly," said chairman Clark Blasdell, who also heads Northbay Family Homes, a non-profit housing developer in Novato.

The Sonoma County Housing Coalition is the county's biggest grassroots effort for affordable housing. It includes groups as diverse as the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce and the Greenbelt Alliance, and it pushes only policies that every member can agree upon. It was formed to meet what members saw as one of the biggest problems facing Sonoma County.

"There is a strong connection between our ongoing economic success and meeting the solution to this problem," real estate consultant Walt Keiser told the coalition Friday.

The coalition is targeting assistance at families with very low to moderate incomes. For a family of four in Sonoma County this year, that would be up to $76,000 a year, according to federal housing estimates. For an individual, up to $53,200. The coalition also targets housing for people with special needs, like seniors, the disabled, farm workers, large families, the homeless and others.

A home is usually considered affordable if it costs residents less than 30 percent of their income. But in Sonoma County, 40 percent is the norm, according to Ingo Winzer, a national real estate analyst. In the coalition's first year, its two key accomplishments were the formal establishment of the trust fund, completed two weeks ago, and the support that the coalition gave four residential construction projects with 300 affordable units.

Choosing the standards that a housing project must meet to win support was the group's No. 1 effort when it formed last year. Developers submit their projects for review, and the coalition supports projects that meet its criteria. Among the four projects that the coalition supported in the past year was the controversial Laguna Vista development in Sebastopol. Laguna Vista met the coalition's criteria because it provided some badly needed affordable units and included such features as mixed use and economic diversity, according to Paul Carroll, a union official who heads the coalition's advocacy efforts.

But opponents raised questions about the size of the project, traffic impacts, the prices of the homes and the proximity to the Laguna de Santa Rosa wetlands. The Sebastopol city council earlier this month signaled its opposition to the project, at least in its current form, and some coalition members were unhappy with their group's support. As a result, a review of how the coalition selects projects is likely in the coming months, Carroll said.

To raise money for the housing trust, the coalition plans to look at a variety of private, non-profit and government sources. By February it expects to make a formal recommendation to city councils and county supervisors on ways they can help. Money-raising methods under consideration are fees on commercial and residential developments, a real estate transfer tax, tax credits, bonds, increased redevelopment agency contributions and federal, state and non-profit grants. Governments could also provide surplus land for development. The money could be used for downpayments, second mortgages, loans to non-profit developers and an array of other financing strategies. A board of directors to oversee the trust will include city and county representatives.

Especially controversial is the possibility of charging a housing impact fee on all commercial development. All city councils in Sonoma County and the board of supervisors are considering such a fee, perhaps $2 to $3.50 per square foot. Builders and business interests warn that such fees would hurt economic development.

But housing experts from Napa, San Francisco and the South Bay, as well as real estate consultant Keiser, said Friday they've seen no evidence of such an impact in other locations where the fee has been implemented.

The trust fund hopes to raise $1 million and spend at least half of that in the next 12 months, chairman Blasdell said. Eventually, it would like to get $40 million a year to fund an estimated 1,000 units.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Fricker at 521-5241 or mfricker@pressdemocrat.com.

###