HomeMy WebLinkAbout5/7/2024 Item 8a, Dantona
Jim Dantona <
To:E-mail Council Website
Cc:Tway, Timothea (Timmi)
Subject:Potential Housing Opportunities (Item 8a)
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Good afternoon Mayor and Councilmembers,
A group of housing providers and advocates (developers, both for- and not-for-profit, architects and the Chamber)
have been meeting to discuss what actions could the City of SLO take most immediately to unlock housing
production in our community.
First, we are so thankful to Councilmember Pease, Whitney McDonald and Timmi Tway for joining our
conversations to help us be more tactical on strategies that we could reasonably employ to create more housing
in our community.
Tonight during your Supplemental Budget Preview, we would ask for your consideration in recommending that the
Community Development Department look at the following suggestions and provide comment when the final
budget item comes back before the Council in June.
Through our discussions with these practitioners and reviewing the city’s existing matrix of work programs to meet
the major city goal of “Housing and Homelessness”, we would suggest the following items as some of the first
steps to move forward:
In the Short-Term Existing Work Plan add these easy to fix items as part of the Zoning Regulations Update in
order to move housing projects faster:
o Change Objective Design Standard requirements from meeting all ten, to meeting a subset,
possibly seven of the ten. We will still get good design and unclog the planning backlog that delays
housing production.
o With the idea of unclogging CDD’s backlog, bring back TIPP-FAST so that these permits can get
moved through the system quickly and allow staff to spend more time on housing projects.
o Update the City’s ADU code to match State law – currently we are using incorrect wording and that
is causing delays.
o In the Mid-Higuera area there is a requirement for flood control mitigation that is impossible to
meet, because of the use of the word “and”. Modify the requirement to the state law standard and
use the word “or” to unlock significant housing in that area.
o Move the ARC/CHC process to the beginning of the process before hundreds of hours and
thousands of dollars have been spent coming up with a plan. Make it less of public hearing and
more of collaborative discussion. That will prevent delays of having to revise very detailed plans
that are nearly complete.
o Downtown height: No projects are being built to the 75’ option, because there are too many
requirements in order to access the height. Either remove those additional requirements or allow
buildings to go to 90’ with those requirements.
In the Medium-Term Existing Work Plan items:
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o There is a work item for the Upper Monterey Special Focus Area. Change that to be a “Corridors
Special Focus Area” that looks at zoning and housing opportunities from Upper Monterey from
California down to Mid-Higuera at Bridge Street. This has an enormous potential to unlock housing.
In the Long-Term Existing Work Plan items:
o There is a section identified as “Other Incentives for Housing Continuum”. Let’s come up with
Density Bonus Plus. Using the State Density Bonus laws for creating affordable housing, the city
should add additional incentives that will make the creation affordable housing something all
developers will want to build.
Some of us will be in attendance tonight to speak to these points. Thank you for your consideration.
All the best,
--
Jim Dantona
President and CEO
805.786.2761
jim@slochamber.org
895 Monterey Street, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
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