Affordable Piedmont? The Housing Element Challenge

How do you provide affordable housing in a town once known as the "City of Millionaires," where the median household income is $199,304 and only 2.5 percent of the residents are at or below the poverty level?

Where home ownership is more than 90 percent, and those homes have a median value over $1 million? Where fewer than 200 of the city's 3,924 housing units are in multi-unit structures? Where there's very little space to build anything new? (All figures from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, 2007-2011.)

How do you do it in a way that's acceptable to the city's residents? And why?

The why is simple — it's state law. Every city is required to have a "General Plan," a sort of roadmap to its future. Part of the General Plan is a "housing element," described by the state as "a comprehensive assessment of current and projected housing needs for all economic segments of the community. It sets forth local housing policies and programs to implement those policies."

But cities don't work in isolation on their housing elements. A regional Council of Governments — in the Bay Area it's the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) — decides how many units of housing each city in its area must plan for, and how many of those must be affordable at various income levels.

For Piedmont, for the period of 2007 to 2014, ABAG set that number at 40 units —  a figure that started out much higher but was lowered after considerable negotiation between the state Department of Housing and Community Development and the city.

For 2015 through 2022, Piedmont's allocation is 60 affordable housing units: 24 units for "very low income" (50 percent or less of Alameda County's median income); 14 for "low income (51 to 80 percent); 15 for :moderate income" (81 to 120 percent); and 7 for "above moderate income" (above 120 percent). 

To update its housing element for the next eight-year period, and to show how Piedmont can accommodate 60 units of affordable housing, the city has hired an outside consultant, Barry J. Miller. The Piedmont City Council approved a $34,780 contract with Miller at its Aug. 5 meeting.

Miller also prepared Piedmont's last two housing elements and its 2009 General Plan, according to City Planner Kate Black.

To date, Piedmont has planned for affordable housing mainly through policies that allow adding second units — in-law apartments, even converted pool houses — to single-family homes throughout the city. 

An ordinance approved last year provides incentives for home owners to rent second units at various income levels, ranging from "extremely low income" to "moderate," for several years. The incentives include less restrictive parking regulations for some income categories. 

Miller, the planning consultant, told city council members Monday that some of the "incentive periods" for low to moderate income units will expire during the period from 2015 to 2022. Those second units could then be rented at market rates to tenants at any income level.

That means the city may need to plan for more than just 20 additional units of affordable housing, Miller said. 

The city will hold at least one public workshop plus study sessions as work on the new housing element progresses, Black said. 

She said regular updates will be posted to the City of Piedmont website.

For more information on the region's current housing plan, see ABAG's "San Francisco Bay Area Housing Needs Plan 2007-2014," a lavishly illustrated document tat even includes a photo of the "Old Woman's Shoe" at the entrance to Children's Fairyland in Oakland.

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