Following a warning from state regulators, the Concord City Council this week reversed its decision to effectively block a public housing project that council members said would concentrate an excessive amount of public housing in town's downtown area.
Last month, the council rejected the project developer's request to simply accept as much as $90 million in state financing, putting the planned 183-unit complex in jeopardy. Council members as an alternative encouraged Idaho-based Pacific West Communities to develop the complex primarily as market-rate housing, which might not receive subsidies.
A couple of weeks later, nonetheless, the state housing authority wrote to the East Bay suburb, explaining that by halting the project, the council can have violated fair housing regulations and town's state-mandated obligation to approve reasonably priced housing. The authority reminded local officials that it has the authority to implement state housing laws, as evidenced by a series of lawsuits it has recently filed against Southern California cities, including Huntington Beach, Anaheim and Fullerton.
State regulators have sent similar warning letters to other Bay Area cities, particularly Woodside, which attempted to avoid a recently enacted state housing law by declaring the suburb of super-rich Silicon Valley settlers a mountain lion sanctuary.
At a transient special meeting on Monday – the deadline for Pacific West to get approval for the financing – the council reversed course and voted unanimously for the subsidies. While council members needed to approve the state tax-exempt bonds that give developers access to low-interest construction loans, the financing is free for town.
Mayor Edi Birsan said in an interview that the voting change decision had nothing to do with the state's letter and insisted that town had the authority to reject the funding.
“I was not in the least afraid of a legal dispute,” Birsan said, stressing that he was speaking just for himself and never for other council members.
Birsan described the council's initial move to dam the subsidies as a part of a negotiation with the developer to “secure things that we needed to get confirmed in writing.” Birsan said his biggest concern was that Pacific West would go to the council again and ask for more taxpayer-funded financing, however the developer convinced him that wasn't needed. He wouldn’t say why other council members modified their minds.
City Councilman Dominic Aliano, whose district includes the proposed project at 1650 Ashbury Dr. near the Concord BART station, didn’t immediately reply to questions on the explanations for his vote change.
Before initially rejecting the funding, Aliano and other council members argued that approving more public housing in the realm risked depriving the neighborhood of a healthy mixture of residents of all backgrounds. As a part of their reasoning, council members pointed to the state's recent efforts to force cities to plan more cost-effective housing in wealthier neighborhoods — an argument that apparently didn’t persuade state regulators.
Unlike the previous meeting, council members voted to approve the funding on Monday without much discussion.
Plans for the Ashbury project call for housing that might be reasonably priced for households earning between 30 and 70 percent of the standard annual income within the East Bay, or between $46,700 and $108,990 for a family of 4. These households would typically spend about 30 percent of their income on rent.
The city council's change of heart comes at a time when the state is requiring Concord to approve greater than 5,000 latest housing units citywide, greater than half of which can be reasonably priced for low- and middle-income residents.
The city can be planning an enormous, decades-long redevelopment project at the previous Concord Naval Weapons Station that might create greater than 12,200 homes, including hundreds of reasonably priced units. The long-delayed project has went through three developers amid a mess of labor disputes, power games and allegations of backroom deals.
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