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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

March 23, 2003

Less growth forecast for county

New guidelines shift added housing toward urban Bay Area

The forecast by the Association of Bay Area Governments represents a significant change in how the nine-county region is expected to absorb new residents and businesses.

It has the potential to drastically cut affordable housing quotas for Sonoma and other rural counties, reducing their exposure to lawsuits from housing advocates.

Sonoma County officials for years have said the previous forecasts for local growth were too high, leading to unrealistic affordable housing quotas. They feared lawsuits by housing advocates could force them to convert farmland into apartments and condominiums.

They see the new plan as a victory.

"It's the first indication ABAG has ever made in the right direction," Sonoma County Supervisor Paul Kelley said. "We've always told them their numbers were inflated, which put the unincorporated areas in a bind because we have city-centered growth."

Kelley and his colleagues shouldn't celebrate yet.

The regional agency's executive board approved the vision Thursday night, but that alone doesn't change anything.

It would take several years for the forecast to make any measurable difference, and only if more than 100 city and county governments in the Bay Area change their individual growth plans to reflect the new regional goals.

Already, power brokers are at odds.

Some cities, including Berkeley and Alameda, objected to the number of new homes they have been assigned, and the guidelines are expected to face opposition from slow-growth groups.

Business lobbyists and home builders, meanwhile, say the guidelines aren't bold enough. They want even more new homes, and developers want to continue building on the outskirts of the Bay Area because that is the easiest and cheapest option.

Environmental groups, including the Greenbelt Alliance, also want more housing, but they want builders further restricted from developing outlying areas.

Besides recommending changes to how growth is absorbed, the forecast calls for more overall housing than previously anticipated. The new forecast envisions nearly 600,000 new homes in the Bay Area by 2025, a 15 percent increase from the 511,970 expected in past projections.

Paul Fassinger, the Bay Area association's research director, said the guidelines represent a realistic balance between the region's need for more housing and the constraints that can prevent it from being built.

"It's important to have something that is achievable," he said.

The planning agency has historically projected growth based on previous trends. The new forecast assumes more homes and businesses will be built in big cities and along highways and rail lines to prevent sprawl, ease traffic congestion, cut air pollution and reduce commute times.

The new projections could be significant because the regional planning agency uses them to set affordable housing expectations throughout the Bay Area. State law requires cities and counties to provide space for future housing, including affordable housing.

Traditionally, the Bay Area association has tried to make housing growth match job growth. But its formulas didn't recognize that Sonoma and other counties in the past produced more houses than jobs, and thus need fewer new homes to achieve balance.

The result was a recommendation for far more new homes than local officials anticipated.

For Sonoma County, the difference between the revised projections and past forecasts is staggering.

The previous forecast, done in 2002, assumed the county would add 50,000 new homes and 131,186 new residents from 2000 to 2025. The new forecast sees 37,597 new homes and 98,886 new residents, a 25 percent reduction in both categories and the equivalent of eliminating the populations of Windsor and Sebastopol combined.

The change is even more pronounced in unincorporated areas. Healdsburg's rural surroundings, for instance, were previously expected to add 730 new homes by 2025. The new forecast predicts only 140 new homes, an 80 percent reduction.

That is more in line with local goals of concentrating growth within city boundaries to prevent sprawl. Santa Rosa's projected growth would decrease 15 percent to 17,594 from 20,784.

Petaluma is the only place in Sonoma County that is expected to grow more under the revised forecast. It would add 3,754 new homes, 7 percent more than the earlier forecast of 3,494. The county's southernmost city, it is closest to the Bay Area's urban core.

Other rural counties, which have shared Sonoma's complaints about previous forecasts, are now projected to have less growth as well.

The revised forecast reduces Napa County's expected growth from 2000 to 2025 by 33 percent.

"We're encouraged the numbers are now in line with what is happening on the street," Napa County Supervisor Bill Dodd said. "It's encouraging to see them moving in the right direction."

If followed by quotas, the forecast could reduce the affordable housing quotas assigned to Sonoma County and its cities. Even though the Bay Area association has no direct control over growth, its housing quotas have left local governments subject to lawsuits from affordable housing advocates.

Attorneys pushing for more affordable housing have used the quotas to force counties and cities to change their growth plans. Those changes often conflicted with the goals of concentrating growth within cities.

"They were dumping these huge housing unit numbers on us," said Sonoma County Supervisor Mike Kerns, who sits on the regional agency's executive board. "We always thought it wasn't right and not accurate."

David Grabill, an attorney for the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group, said even if the housing quotas are reduced, that doesn't eliminate the area's affordable housing shortage.

Fewer homes in Napa and Sonoma mean more growth in the Bay Area's urban core.

The forecast projects that San Francisco will add more than 50,000 new homes, 170 percent more than the previous expectation of fewer than 20,000 homes. It also foresees a significant increase in the growth of Alameda, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.

"I think it's become evident that we are seeing problems as our population becomes more dispersed and is pushed farther from job centers," said Santa Rosa Councilman Steve Rabinowitsh, who represents Sonoma County cities on the regional planning agency. "It's more efficient to have growth in urbanized areas."

You can reach Staff Writer Spencer Soper at 521-5257 or ssoper@pressdemocrat.com.

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