The Planning Commission of the City of Antioch will hold a public hearing at City Hall at 6:30 P.M. March 7th on Issues and Options for Antioch’s next 7 Year Housing Element Plan required by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). An excellent staff report on the subject can be downloaded from the City’s web site.

Here’s a brief synopsis:

AGAG calculated Antioch’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) to be 2,282 units, including 516 very low-income and 330 low-income units.

ABAG also concluded that since the previous 7-year planning period (1996-2006) did not identify enough sites to accommodate the entire allocation of low and very low-income units, the City’s adjusted RHNA be increased to 3,310 units.

As the City was unable to find enough land to meet its share of the regional need for lower income units, it will probably need to amend its existing ordinance to allow some residential projects to be approved WITHOUT A CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT OR DEVELOPMENT APPROVAL.

Projects that include lower income units to be entitled to a density bonus under State law and thus would be entitled to provide reduced parking. Parking requirements could also be reduced by providing shuttle or van service to shopping, social services and transit stations or limiting the areas where parking reductions apply to neighhoods or districts closer to transit or shopping. (Rivertown projects, for instance, could offer the option of paying an in-lieu fee to be used to construct a future parking structure.)

The City has hired Dyett & Bhatia as consultant to assist in adjusting our Housing Element program to become in full compliance with State law and make regulations consistent with the State density bonus requirements and establish new zoning districts and programs to accommodate new dwelling units.

Two options are suggested to help the city rezone sufficient land to accommodate its allocation for lower income units at the so called ”default density” (30 units per acre for Antioch and other suburban cities with more than 100,000 population).

One is to rezone 106.5 acres to establish a zone where multi development is permitted at 20 units per acre and rezone sufficient land at a minimum density of 30 units per acre. (Six sites with more than 50 acres in the Rivertown/Urban Waterfront Focus Area could be rezoned from PBC to allow residential development of a minimum density of 20 units per acre.)

The other option is to rezone 59.47 acres at a density of 30 units per acre and continue to require a conditional use permit or planned development approval for some or all units.

The zoning ordinance also needs amending to establish fixed standards and requirements in regard to development features. Some of the changes to be considered include: Reducing the existing 25-30 foot setback from collector streets and establish front yard build to or set back zones that would allow homes about 10-15 feet closer to the street, requiring parking to be located to the rear instead of instead of in front of buildings, etc.

Because Antioch does not have sufficient facilities to accommodate the need for emergency shelters, it must identify a zone or zones where at least one year round shelter can be established. It is proposed to amend our current ordinance to allow such a shelter on City owned land near Delta Fair and Century Blvd., including a site that the Bay Area Rescue Mission had considered for a transitional housing facility.

Based on an estimated density of 200 shelter beds per acre, the sites could accommodate both the 124 emergency shelter beds the City needs to meet the State requirement as well as 100 units of transitional housing and associated services.

Among other options is amending our zoning ordinance to define Single Room Occupancy (SRO) units as a form of multi-family housing and allow SROs in the Rivertown High Density Residential and Transit-Oriented Residential Districts subject to specific limitations.

I don’t know about you folks, but I’m tired of government intervention, e.g., being told what light bulb I can use or having to bring an reusable bag to the grocery store. We all need to protest the proliferation of proposed parcel taxes on future parcel ballot measures and the imposition of zoning mandates on local communities by MTC and ABAG, the latest scheme which is entitled ONE BAY AREA PLAN, one of the many mandates touted to reduce greenhouse gasses but which in reality are just meant to overturn local control of zoning.

Please attend this planning meeting because as Abraham Lincoln once said “To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 29th, 2012 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.