How the city uses low-income housing requirements to get poor projects past the EIR and other code requirements

Well, a reader called me out on my last lame post – I was asking why Chico City Council and staff want to reduce the number of “low-income” units required for Merriam Park, and this person questioned the need for more “low-income” housing.

Good for you, sharp observer – I should have made my point – developers skip past requirements like Environmental Impact Reports, even standard code requirement like street width, by agreeing to build a certain percentage of their units as “low-income”. Later on, and usually after many years and some changes in ownership of the project, the “low-income” requirements are unceremoniously dropped.

I remember reading about a subdivision Tom DiGiovanni planned for a town in Florida – Amelia Place – on a sensitive wetlands site. Public disapproval was set aside by their town council, who agreed to let DG build if he included “low-income” housing. When that council was voted/termed out a few years later, the “low-income” requirement was dropped, and a subdivision that would not have passed an EIR was built anyway. Of course, DG has long since sold the subdivision to another developer and skipped off to California to build Doe Mill.

DiGiovanni is the master of getting around public approval and code. He actually got the city to let him write a “parallel code” that allows all kinds of exceptions to alllll the rules, including street size, set-backs, even fire safety code. He planned Doe Mill and Merriam Park by the parallel code, and then sold Merriam Park to Dan Gonzales and his partners, who are now asking the city to forgive them the “low-income” units that were used to shoehorn this high-density, high-cost, high-falutin’ new “city within a city” through the permits process.

Merriam Park and Doe Mill were both classic sprawl, by the legal definition. They also would never have passed an EIR – both sit on flood land, fairy shrimp, meadow foam – remember how the liberals roasted Bernie Richter over the meadow foam? But MP and DM were okay with the liberal crowd, because they were what was considered hip at the time. Now they are being used to justify the building of Valley’s Edge, and the same people who cheered DG on are now pissed off at Brouhard. Go figure.

Valley’s Edge also has a certain percentage of “low-income” housing required in the plan. But, as you see, plans can change, long after the EIR requirement has been thrown out, and the staffers and council members that approved the plans have moved on and are no longer accountable for the resulting mess.

Wait until they roll out the new subdivision they’re planning for Barber Yard – a registered brownfield – while all the liberals are running wild with their panties in a knot over Valley’s Edge.

I put “low-income” in quotes because I honestly don’t know the latest legal definition. But no, I’m not a fan of it. I know what the results are – as our city manager Mark Sorensen pointed out to me years ago, subsidized housing generates no property taxes. So, the rest of us regular homeowners and renters are going to pay more to pick up the slack, that’s what I know. We’ll pay for their new street while the street in front of our house turns to rubble. We’ll pay peanuts to hook them up to city sewer while the price for hooking up an existing house has surpassed $20,000.

Yes, I’d like to see more infill – there are old neighborhoods with big lots sitting empty, streets and sidewalks falling into the abyss – that’s what I call “redevelopment”. What they are doing now, is creating slums and bad parts of town through neglect of older neighborhoods. While the older neighborhoods pay the increasing costs of providing infrastructure and services like police and fire to the newer subdivisions, we watch our neighborhood rot around our heads.

Look what they tried to pull with Measure H – as soon as that was passed, they announced plans for refurbishing streets in newer neighborhoods all over town. The public, like an old dog, suddenly reared up over that announcement, and Mayor Coolidge had to do a quick 2-step boogie reverse. But they are just slurry sealing, look that up yourself, it’s like putting Saran wrap over a plate of rocks. The major projects are being paid for out of state grants, while the city directs Measure H right into the General Pot Fund for use in paying their pensions and benefits.

I didn’t finish my report on that last meeting, but ER reporter Evan Tuchinsky wrote an article about the pension deficit. I’ll say, they’re crapping their pants over that, as well as the prospect of losing Measure H to the Taxpayer Protection Act.

And they’re approving new housing as fast as they can rubberstamp the plans. Not that they’re interested in providing housing for anybody, it’s the other way around – they’re providing suckers for the developers.