City Council Approves Housing Element

The Piedmont City Council on Monday night unanimously adopted an update to its housing element, the culmination of a process of defining its capacity for different kinds of dwellings, including affordable housing.

It’s a process that involved more than a year of trading of proposals and language between city planners and the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

“We’ve been down a lengthy road with the State of California in certifying our element,” said Piedmont Planner Kate Black.

The road ended with a May 10 letter from the state saying that the city’s revised draft element complied with state housing element law. It cited programs that the city added to the element “to develop incentives to facilitate multifamily development” that encourage “a variety of housing types, particularly housing affordable to lower-income households.”

The back and forth on the issues has encouraged staff to look into “streamlining the zoning code so it works better,” said Black.

Black said Piedmont may have one of the lowest cost housing elements in the state in terms of efficiency in getting it approved. She credited consultant Barry Miller with diligence in seeing issues through with the state.

The housing element is the only part of the city's General Plan that requires this level of state approval of the details. From the state's viewpoint, it is designed to ensure that Piedmont, like other cities, bears its "fair share" of varied and affordable housing as the region's population increases.

However efficient, resident George Childs found the state-mandated process “absurd.”

“I think it’s time to tell the state to go to blazes,” Childs said during public comment periods. "[The state is] demanding that we do something that, while it may not be impossible to accomplish, certainly is going to be difficult and could possibly degrade community standards — this from a state that cannot fulfill its own obligations.”