Petaluma City Manager Addresses Affordable Housing

PETALUMA, CA - Petaluma City Manager John C. Brown has outlined city programs to address housing affordability is a new letter to the community:

The cost to rent or buy a home in Petaluma has increased dramatically in recent years. According to Zillow, during the past five years, the average price of a single family home increased from $386,100 to $620,100 and the average rent increased from $1,922 to $2,636. As a consequence many people, even some with relatively high incomes, have difficulty finding a place to live at a price they can afford.

Petaluma's Housing program is flexible, allowing it to change with the needs of the community. Since its inception, more than 1,760 units were built in collaboration with non-profit partners. These include rental units for families, seniors, and the developmentally disabled, and also enable single family home ownership through subsidies and first-time home-buyers programs. The City also financed two homeless shelters and five homes for transitional housing. Homes and apartments have restrictions to keep them affordable in future years. In our mobile home parks, Petaluma helps to keep rents affordable, with 343 spaces subject to our Mobile Home Rent Stabilization program.

Through the Housing programs, community nonprofits serve more than 1,228 low income citizens each year.

What is affordable housing?

In government agencies, "affordable" means housing for low income households, i.e., those earning below the median income of an area. In Sonoma County, a family with earnings of less than 50% to 60% of the median income would typically qualify for affordable rental apartments. Qualification for affordable home ownership would be at 80% to 20% of the median family income.

For a family of four, the qualifying annual income would range from $49,440 (low) to $98,800 (moderate). Qualifying low income families will pay $1,113 for a 2 bedroom apartment, saving them more than $1,000 / month when compared to the average market rate 2-bedroom apartment.

How do we fund affordable housing?

Over the years, Petaluma used several sources of funding to help build affordable housing with our nonprofit partners. Those funding sources include fees charged to private developers in lieu of providing affordable housing units in their projects (In-Lieu fees); Redevelopment funding; Community Development Block Grants; and fees charged to commercial projects to support the cost of providing housing for their employees (Commercial Linkage fees). In 2011, the State of California took Redevelopment funding away from cities, which reduced the amount of money available to Petaluma for affordable housing projects by $3 million a year. Losing this funding source makes it very difficult for Petaluma to subsidize affordable housing projects, which have cost the City $3.5 million to $4 million per development.

Looking to the Future

Since losing Redevelopment funding, the focus of Petaluma's housing programs is preserving and ensuring the long-term affordability of our existing affordable housing stock. By funding programs such as Rebuilding Together Petaluma, an organization that makes home repairs for low income home owners, we can prevent unsafe and unhealthy living conditions and keep people living in their homes.

The City supports nonprofits such as Eden Housing, Burbank Housing, PEP Housing, and USA Properties by helping to finance property renovations. This financial assistance serves to extend affordability restrictions for an additional 55 years.

Petaluma is working with private developers to encourage them to include affordable units in their projects. Those who do not include affordable units must pay the Housing In-Lieu fee. As noted earlier in this column, commercial developments also pay the Commercial Linkage fee, which can be used to build affordable housing. Both of these fees will soon be under review, with possible increases to follow, as both fees were established when Redevelopment funding was still available to offset costs. The Housing Division is always looking for opportunities to build more affordable housing through new State and federal funding sources and by working with private developers. Current examples of these efforts are 23 affordable rental units that will be built as part of the Altura Apartment project, 21 rental units in a market-rate development of 142 units, and 25 First Time Homebuyer homes in a market-rate development of 198 units.

--Announcement from City of Petaluma; Image of Logan Place housing courtesy City of Petaluma