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Sausalito’s affordable housing mandate for its business districts only led to one new affordable apartment in 14 years.
That result justified the city’s decision in May to repeal a 2011 law requiring at least one affordable dwelling be included in small-scale developments in its commercial zones, city officials told the City Council on Tuesday.
“The former language actually represented a constraint to development,” said Brandon Phipps, the community and economic development director.
“Cities evaluate their existing regulations to determine whether or not they are unduly constraining development,” City Attorney Sergio Rudin said. “If the cities find that they do so, they are required to repeal those.”
The comments came as city staff reported on the affordable residences created in Sausalito’s commercial districts. Only three projects with affordable apartments have been built since 2000. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were 20 such projects.
During debate this spring, Councilmember Jill Hoffman criticized any effort to roll back affordable housing requirements in the business districts. City code requiring any addition built above the ground floor only be used for housing was also repealed.
“This is the first time in the council’s history that we’ve ever actually reduced existing housing programs,” she said.
During a lengthy discussion, repeal proponents said well-intentioned laws requiring affordable residences did not work for small-scale projects because the development costs could not be recovered.
Sausalito’s latest housing plan acknowledged that financial reality by assuming larger affordable apartments would be built on city-owned land.
Vice Mayor Steven Woodside cited a recent Marin County Civil Grand Jury report that said high costs and long timelines made affordable housing an “unattractive” investment.
Phipps’ presentation included photographs of two dozen commercial buildings across the city that had not expanded above their ground floors.
Hoffman did not want to write off developing affordable housing in the city’s commercial districts. City staffers failed to reach out to property owners to ask them what they needed to build dwellings, she said.
“The best protection they had was just taken away,” she said.
Mayor Joan Cox disagreed with her assessment.
“I was on the housing element committee that adopted the 2011 inclusionary housing requirements,” she said. “The City Council and staff made a fully informed decision in deciding to eliminate this program that was adopted in 2011, that was not yielding additional stock, but actually constraining additional affordable housing stock.”