RPVCCA_CC_SR_2013_09_17_02_Draft_General_Plan_Housing_Element
PUBLIC HEARING
Date: September 17, 2013
Subject: Preliminary Review of the Draft General Plan Housing Element
Subject Property: Citywide
1. Declare the Hearing Open: Mayor Brooks
2. Report of Notice Given: City Clerk Morreale
3. Staff Report & Recommendation: Deputy Community Development Director
Pfost
4. Public Testimony:
Appellant: N/A
Applicant: N/A
5. Council Questions:
6. Rebuttal:
7. Declare Hearing Closed: Mayor Brooks
8. Council Deliberation:
9. Council Action:
RANCHO PALOS VERDES
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CITY OF
MEMORANDUM
TO:
FROM:
DATE:
SUBJECT:
Project Managers:
RECOMMENDATION
HONORABLE MAYOR & CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS
JOEL ROJAS, AICP, COMMUNITY DE.PJ.t{NT DIRECTOR
SEPTEMBER 17, 2013 u V
PRELIMINARY REVIEW OF THE DRAFT GENERAL PLAN
HOUSING ELEMENT
Gregory Pfost, AICP, Deputy Community Development Director~
So Kim, Associate Planner @_ ~\
Open the public hearing, receive public comments on the Preliminary Draft Housing Element,
provide Staff with feedback on the document, and direct Staff to forward the Preliminary Draft
Housing Element to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) for review and
feedback.
BACKGROUND
All General Plans must contain a Housing Element that addresses existing and projected housing
needs, along with goals, policies, objectives and programs for the preservation, improvement and
development of housing. Unlike other elements of the City's General Plan, pursuant to State Law a
Housing Element must be updated every five years. The last update for the City was certified by the
California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) in 2010. The next Housing
Element update for all cities is due to HCD by OCtober 15, 2013. Similar to the approach taken in
1992, 2001and2010, Staff has used an outside consultant (Castaneda & Associates) to prepare
the City's Preliminary Draft Housing Element.
On August 27, 2013, the Preliminary Draft Housing Element was presented to the Planning
Commission for review and comments. The Planning Commission provided Staff with the following
direction and forwarded the document to the City Council for review and comments: 1) Review the
Introduction section of the Housing Element and make sure that the contents are consistent with the
City's General Plan Introduction Section; 2) Update the graphics; and 3) Update a graph shown on
page 1-4. The Preliminary updated Draft with the Planning Commission recommended changes was
distributed to the Council on September 3, 2013.
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DISCUSSION
Required Content of the Housing Element
The Housing Element is one of the seven mandatory elements of the General Plan, and it specifies
ways in which the housing needs of existing and future residents can be met. Attached is a copy of
the Preliminary Draft Housing Element, which includes the following six major components, required
by State Law:
• An assessment of the community's housing needs.
• An inventory of sites that can accommodate the share of the Regional Housing Need.
• An analysis of housing market and governmental constraints that impede public and private
sector efforts to meet the needs.
• A progress report describing actions taken to implement the 2008-2014 Housing Element.
• A statement of goals, quantified objectives and policies relative to the construction,
reh<;ibilitation, conversion and preservation of housing.
• An implementation program which sets forth a schedule of actions which the City is
undertaking or intends to undertake to implement the policies and achieve the stated goals
and objectives.
The City's Housing Need
In the City of Rancho Palos Verdes, just like all cities and counties in the State of California, the
number of future housing units needed to meet the Region's need is determined through a process
called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA), which involves State HCD and the
Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) defining the future need for each
jurisdiction. According to the RHNA, the City's allocated new housing construction need is 31 new
housing units for the planning period of October 2013 to 2021. The 31 new housing unit need is
segmented as follows:
• 13 "Above Moderate" income units
• 5 "Moderate" income units
• 5 "Low" income units
• 4 "Very Low" income units
• 4 "Extremely Low'' income units
It is important to note that the City is not responsible for constructing these units using its own
resources. Instead, the City is only responsible for identifying the sites available to meet this need,
while it is perceived that the market will theoretically see to the construction of the units.
Proposal to Meet the City's Housing Need
In the 2001 and 2010 Housing Elements, the RHNA new construction need was 53 and 60 units
respectively. During the preparation of those two Housing Elements, the City was fortunate to have
purchased the site where the current Mirandela Senior Affordable Housing Project is located.
Because the Mirandela site was purchased for the development of future affordable housing units
that met the City's allocated RHNA for lower income units during the previous two Housing Element
planning periods, the City met its obligation to identify sites available and HCD "certified" the prior
two Housing Elements. However, while the City does have sites available to meet its current RHNA
need for 13 "Above Moderate" income units through the construction of new units on existing vacant
lots, its 5 "Moderate" income unit requirement through the City's Second Dwelling Unit ("Granny
2-3
Flat") Program (see Program #2 on page 3-5), and 5 lower income units through the future
Highridge Condominium Development and Crestridge Senior Housing Development, the City no
longer has sites available to meet its RHNA need for the remaining 8 lower income units.
Mixed Use Proposal for Western Avenue
In order to address the shortfall of 8 lower income housing sites, Staff and the City's Housing
Consultant are proposing to implement a Western Avenue Vision Plan/Adequate Site Program (see
Program #1 on pgs. 3-4 to 3-5). As the Council will recall, the City has been moving forward with a
Vision Plan for the Western Avenue Corridor, which was presented recently to the Planning
Commission and the City Council. The City recently submitted a Grant application for this year's
Compass Blueprint program from SCAG to continue with the Western Avenue Vision Plan by
moving onto the next step of preparing more specific use and design guidelines for the private and
public areas within the Corridor that will eventually lead to a revised Western Avenue Specific Plan.
This Visioning/Specific Plan project for Western Avenue provides a great opportunity to consider a
program that will provide for mixed use (residential and commercial) type development in the
Corridor, which provides a Housing Program to meet the City's RHNA need for lower income units.
In brief, the proposed Program #1 identified in the attached Preliminary Draft Housing Element
indicates that the City will re-zone sufficient land on Western Avenue to accommodate the 8 lower
income sites at a density of 20 du/ac or greater, by-right. More specifically, the zoning district must
allow multi-family uses by-right, without additional discretionary permit, such as a Conditional Use
Permit. It's important to note that the exact details of this change do not have to be identified at this
time -the City only needs to generally define a program that it will pursue that would meet the
RHNA site's requirement. Thus, as the City works out the details of such a program through the
Compass Blueprint project and the Specific Plan revisions, the City can define exactly how such a
program would work successfully along Western Avenue, including identifying specific development
standards (height, setbacks, lot coverage, parking), permitted uses on the site, design requirements
and even identifying specific sites that could accommodate the Program.
As noted in the Program, the potential zone change to accommodate this Program is targeted to be
completed by March 2017. It is important to note that the City has identified this as a Program that it
will pursue, however, if during the pursuit of such a Program, the City elects not to move forward
with it, then the City will be obligated to define other sites in the City where the lower income unit
need of 8 units can be met. Again, it's important to note that the City is not mandating the
construction of these units on a specific site, but only providing a path for the development
community to provide said units if its marketable. While the City currently has funds earmarked only
for the use on affordable housing projects, the expenditure of these funds would only be used in
concert with a developer that is interested in providing a product that meets the requirements that
the City identifies through the Specific Plan Amendment process. Of course, any future Code or
Specific Plan Amendments that would develop such a Program would be subject to public hearings
before the Planning Commission and City Council prior to adoption.
The remaining Housing Programs identified in the attached Preliminary Draft are programs that have
been implemented by the City in the past and will continue to be implemented in order to ensure
consistency with Housing Element Law while adhering to the goals, policies and objectives that
guide the City.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Public Notice
In order to obtain as much public input as possible on the Preliminary Draft Housing Element, an 1/8
page public hearing notice was published in the Peninsula News and mailed to all Homeowner's
Associations and churches within the City and various State Agencies. Additionally, notice of this
item was sent via electronic mail to all parties registered on the City's listserve system for the
Housing Element and the General Plan Update lists. Further, since one of the Programs within the
Housing Element involves the Western Avenue corridor, Staff also mailed a notice to those on the
Western Avenue Compass Blueprint project notification list, which includes all property owners
within 500' of Western Avenue.
All public comments received prior to and since the August 2th Planning Commission meeting, are
attached to this report.
Public Correspondence
Staff received several phone calls and letters/emails (attached) related to Program No. 1 of the Draft
document. In speaking with the public and reading the correspondence, the public appears to have
a misunderstanding of the program in general. The public believes that Program No. 1 will result in
either requiring a property owner to demolish their shopping center and construct affordable housing
or the City will exercise eminent domain to obtain a commercial property and construct affordable
housing ourselves. The idea behind Program No. 1 is to potentially broaden the zoning designation
of the Western Avenue properties from Commercial-General only to Commercial-General and multi-
family housing. Allowing for a broader use would provide developers more options/alternatives with
their sites, including mixed use development, should they decide to do so. This program would not
require anyone to do anything with their property. It would merely allow for additional uses on the
existing commercial properties if a property owner chooses to do so in the future.
On August 2th, there was one speaker who attended the meeting \Mio expressed his support for
Program No. 1. Mr. Herrera, a property owner of a strip mall along Western Avenue, felt that
broadening the zoning designation to allow additional uses on his property would give him more
development options and make his property more marketable to developers who may want to
purchase and re-develop the site. It should be noted that any future development proposals on any
of the sites would require separate Planning Department approval, which would include view
analysis, traffic analysis, height restrictions and compliance with other development standards.
Additionally, assuming Program No. 1 is in place, should a property owner choose to develop his/her
lot with a mixed-use building, with retail at the lower level and residential at top, not all or perhaps
none of the residential units would be required to be affordable units. It is assumed that a developer
would likely have mostly market rate residential units with a small portion as affordable dependent
upon the size of the project per the City's lnclusionary Housing requirements in the Municipal Code.
Again, details of this program would be determined at a later time if the Draft Housing Element is
approved with Program No. 1 at a future meeting.
Next Steps
Based on comments received from the City Council at tonight's public hearing, Staff will make
necessary changes to the Preliminary Draft prior to submitting it to HCD for their 60-day review
period. Once HCD completes their review and provides comments on the Preliminary Draft, Staff
will make any required changes and present the final Housing Element back to the Planning
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Commission for formal review, and then to the City Council for final adoption. The appropriate
environmental review in accordance with CEQA will also be prepared and presented to the
Commission and Council concurrently with the final Housing Element.
CONCLUSION
In working with the consultant, Staff feels that the Preliminary Draft Housing Element is consistent
with State Law and therefore recommends that the City Council receive any public comments,
provide Staff with comments and direct Staff to forward the preliminary draft document to HCD for
review.
ATTACHMENT
• Draft Housing Element (under separate cover delivered to City Council on 9/3/2013 and
available on the City's website through the following link:
http://palosverdes.com/rpv/planning/planning-zoning/Draft-Housing-Element-9-17-13. pdf)
• Public Comments
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So Kirn
From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:
Follow Up Flag:
Flag Status:
winniech@cox.net
Friday, August 30, 2013 10:11 PM
So Kim
the 31 new units construction
Follow up
Completed
I am a resident close to the Western Ave. I strongly opposed to the construction on any new units, especially the
lower income units. The reason is that Western Ave is very busy and crowded already, there should not be any
additional construction. Furthermore, lower income units will affect the price of the homes already existed. Are we
going to vote on this? Please let me know.
1
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August 26, 2013
Dear Planning Commissioners:
The attached limited response from the folks located in the Mira Costa
Terrace cul de sac community is personally delivered to you because we
are unable to attend in person your meeting on August 27, 2013.
We are a working class community of single family dwellings and all of
us are doing our best to stay "afloat" in these difficult economic times.
In the real work world, there is no such thing anymore of leaving your
job early to attend a meeting. We are encouraged to often stay over
without any compensation whatsoever, and we do this to keep our
jobs.
We are either employed (for more hours than 9-5 or our hours are
other than the regular 9-5 work day) or we are retired and have a full
day caring for grandchildren, or we have been retired for awhile and
can no longer drive at night.
We have no grandiose dreams in our daily livesl Our dreams are to stay
employed, to help our children and grandchildren to have enough
money to live on after we are long gone, and that our pension will be
there every month until we die. These are our Visions and Dreams that
we concentrate on Daily.
We encourage you as Community Leaders to concentrate on keeping
our beautiful City afloat, please do not squander our hard earned tax
dollars. It is not essential to grab every available Grant, especially when
the matching funds are a total unknown at the time the Grant is
awarded I We appreciate your concentration on what we are telling
you.
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WESTERN AVENUE VISION PLAN AND PROGRAM #1 OF THE
PRELIMINARY DRAFT HOUSING ELEMENT
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED PROPERTY OWNERS/RESIDENTS OF THE CUL
DE SAC COMMUNITY COMMONLY KNOWN AS MIRA COSTA TERRACE,
HEREBY OFFER OUR LIMITED COMMENTS ON YOUR VISION PLAN FOR
WESTERN AVENUE, AS FOLLOWS:
1. All Visions and Dreams have a Reality Check and here are a few
Reality Checks for your Serious Consideration:
a. Take a serious look at the surrounding area, i.e. the other side
of Western Avenue, the neighboring cities/communities (the
stuff that is across the street from RPV's Western Avenue)
Does the Vision Plan fit with the adjoining Western Avenue?
b. Traffic on Western!?! Ponte Vista continues to be an issue.
Western is two lanes each way and is the only way IN/OUT of
our cul de sac community. How would you widen Western
Avenue without Disrupting the folks who are established????
c. A block wall to keep the bank from eroding ••• Really •• this
makes a Perfect Place for the General Public to dump their
trash. A block wall, no matter the height or location, makes it
impossible to keep the accumulation of public trash, dog
baggies, leaves etc. under control
d. Contrary to popular belief, a parking lot IS NOT a good buffer
between buildings (business or housing)
e. A HOTEL ••• take a good look at the hotels in San Pedro which
were a grandiose dream of Federally Funded Redevelopment.
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Who will come to the corner of Western/Caddington for a
vacation or even a night
f. Be careful with the trees. Trees are beautiful, especially in
draft plans for future development. However, these trees
grow into impossible heights and generally cause a multitude
of expensive maintenance problems as well as hazardous to
the general public, (Palm trees in particular)
g. Mandated Low Low Income Housing . . . please we on
Western Avenue have our share •.• Park Western and Harbor
Hills • . plan for this mandate to be located in another area
h. Western Avenue is Congested with strip malls and traffic.
That is a plain simple fact and to add 31 housing units is not a
reality viable vision/dream/plan. PLEASE take a look at the
multi-story and compact housing on San Pedro side of
Western. Not especially beautiful even with landscaping!
i. There appears to be no consideration for preservation of
views. In spite of efforts to protect and preserve Views, the
views are slowly, but surely disappearing due to vegetation
overgrowth, an oops in building height, i.e so it six or more
inches higher than projected ..• but, it is already built •• so be
it, it is too late and too expensive to start over or to correct
the error in height.
j. The displacement of all small businesses • . these are folks
who depend on their business for their livelihood, and they
are certainly not making a mint of money. This is shameful.
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' .
In today's economic situation, locally, state, and federal, and the
working public, we are concerned about this grandiose unrealistic
Vision Plan and feel smothered and violated that such a Plan has been
committed to paper and public hearings.
In conclusion, our thoughts expressed here are limited, however,
Please keep in mind we have signed this for your serious
consideration. You have been chosen as Special Folks to govern our
beautiful City for the comfort, enjoyment, and a healthy lifestyle for
All. Your thoughtful consideration of Our Vision is appreciated.
NAME STREET ADORES
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2-11
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2-12
So Kim
Greg Pfost (sT3~~~=
To:
Monday, August 26, 2013 3:26 PM
So Kim
Subject: FW: Housing Element. August 27, 2013 RPV Planning Commission meeting
Please include as correspondence to the PC.
Thanks.
-Greg.
Sincerely,
Gregory Pfost, AICP
Deputy Community Development Director
~City of Rancho Palos Verdes
30940 Hawthorne Blvd.
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275
(3l0) 544-5228
From: SunshineRPV@aol.com [mailto:SunshineRPV@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, August 26, 2013 2:53 PM
To: PlanningCommission
Cc: CC c· Subject: Housing Element. August 27, 2013 RPV Planning Commission meeting
<'"''MEMO from SUNSHINE
TO: RPV Planning Commission
RE: RPV Housing Element update. August 27 meeting.
Now that you know a little bit about the International Council on Local Environmental Issues (ICLEI), you
should know that the State Of California's Staff has "partnered with ICLEf' in a similar fashion as has RPV. It
was not a legislated action.
Even though it is inaccurate, my concern is less about the text of the proposed update of the RPV Housing
Element of the RPV General Plan and more about Staff's credibility in regard to statements made in the Staff
Report. Even worse, some important information is missing from the Staff Report.
The word "mandatory" and the phrase "required by State Law" are used without substantiation. Unfunded
mandates at every level of government are bad enough without some employees expanding them at their own
volition.
The major omission is a specific discussion of the consequences should an unfunded mandate miss a codified
deadline. Who's hoops are we jumping through?
To be more specific:
'ISCUSSION First sentence. "The Housing Element is one of seven mandatory elements of the General
.t!lan ... " When the existing RPV General Plan was blessed by various State of California Agencies, there were
only five "mandatory Elements". I should think that the Staff Report would state the legislative action as signed
1
2-13
''Z " (:·;'
by Governor whoever which added two more "mandatory Elements". Or, are they just something added to the
"guidelines" as suggested by ICLEI? Who has the authority to make them "mandatory"?
('" econd sentence. "Attached is a copy of the Preliminary Draft Housing Element which includes the following
six major components, required by State Law:" Check it out. The current Housing Element has only four
"mandatory components". What legislation, signed by which Governor added two more? To make it worse,
one of the previous components has been modified.
By whose authority has one component been changed into two?
Existing component requirement: An inventory of resources to meet needs and of the constraints that impede
public and private sector efforts to meet the needs.
Proposed and Recommended component requirements:
2. An inventory of sites that can accommodate the share of the Regional Housing Need.
3. An analysis of housing market and governmental constraints that impede public and private sector efforts to
meet the needs.
See the difference? See the unforeseen consequences? See the wasted Staff Time? See what the pursuit of
sustainable development is doing to our piece of paradise?
( ')on'tjust buy it because it is in a Staff Report. Only a majority of the currently seated RPV City Council may
" get a slim chance to choose to stop this train wreck.
Planning Commissioners are appointed by people who have been elected by an open vote. Did you get to
recommend who writes the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA)? Have you had an opportunity to
send a personal opinion to the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) about our local
housing needs?
Who are these people who expect us to provide "progress reports" about how we are taking care of our
community? Seriously, ifthe State of California didn't confiscate most of the money we pay in property taxes,
we could probably maintain our infrastructure all by ourselves.
The RPV City Council of 2005 obliterated the $125K of Consultant work and three years worth of 14
volunteers' research by "sitting mum" for one minute. How long does it take for the Chair of the RPV Planning
Commission to say ... "No motion. Next item?"
2
2-14
WesternAvenue Vision Plan, etc.
II;
WesternAvenue Vision Plan, etc.
Nina Yoshida [yoshida1832@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 2:42 PM
To: So Kim
Page 1 of 2
I received the city's letter today regarding the Western Avenue Vision Plan etc.
on Western Avenue.
I and probably all of my neighbors above Western Avenue with a View are
Alarmed with the confusing language of this letter to those of us not familiar with
your Western Avenue Specific Plan and the Limited Time for all of us to truly
review and study what all it is you Intend To Do!
I find absolutely no statement in your letter indicating the city is interested in
protecting our views or open space ... 31 new unit construction needs .. that is
a hefty number of new construction which I read as 31 new .. not remodel of the
units we now have on Western Avenue.
I am not at all anxious to be neighbors to ONE or EIGHT Low Income Housing or
to the "allocated" 31 new construction needs. Further, I believe there are other
areas in the city for consideration of the Needs that you have outlined in your
communication of August 21, 2013.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the city will keep an open mind and open
ears to really listen and really consider what its tax paying property owners,
residents, and business folks along Western Avenue have to say.
You have given the folks on Western Avenue a very limited time within which to
study, review, and discuss among ourselves, your far-reaching immediate plans
for Western Avenue. The city's elected officials and staff need to give those of us
who provide your tax dollar support serious consideration.
All of us along Western Avenue welcome sprucing up a bit, but please don't
smother us into oblivion by adding additional new construction and please let us
keep and maintain our precious fast disappearing views.
Further you definitely need to study Traffic ... Western Avenue is not prepared
for additional traffic ... I find no mention of Traffic patterns or plans in your
letter .. it is all about new construction and low income housing including multi-
housing???
I am sharing this with all of my neighbors who are property owners/residents in
the cul de sac area known as Mira Costa Terrace.
https://owa.rpv .com/owa/?ae=Item&t=IPM.Note&id=RgAAAADTI 4dB6uXQSZ5UVM%... 8/22/2013 2-15
WesternAvenue Vision Plan, etc. Page 2 of2
I plan to take a serious look at your Program #1 tomorrow and I pray I have the
smarts to understand it and if I don't someone can explain to us folks in simplistic
language what it is you are really planning. And that we can believe what you tell
us without there being an addendum farther down the road after the plan has
been implemented.
Nina Yoshida, 28808 Gunter Road, 310 547 2635
https://owa.rpv .com/owa/?ae=I tem&t=IPM.Note&id=RgAAAADTI 4dB6uXQSZ5UVM%. .. 8/22/2013 2-16