We cannot AFFORD to get this housing wrong.
Healdsburg is already over-invested in luxury tourism. It “costs” the city, the citizens, in infrastructure and city staffing and may “pencil out” for outside investors, but not for the “Missing Middle” and the vital working people of Healdsburg’s neighborhoods and local-serving businesses.
The promoters of Measure O have stated that there will be no construction boom or unchecked housing with Measure O. They say that Measure O opposition has exaggerated and professed that the sky is falling.
Take a look at near term construction plans of multi-family units and you decide.
Without Measure O: 48 units Saggio Hills 58 units Dry Creek Commons 53 units Comstock North Village Mill District condominiums, 99 over six years (see attached photo).
I’ve already posted some of the truths behind Measure O, such as raising our density limit from 16 to 65 units per acre and the fact that there all already 852 units on the drawing board for downtown, with much more possible for the train station area and south entry riverfront.
The City Council and Measure O promoters would like you believe that Measure O is a “small change to our housing policy.” This could not be further from the truth. Measure O would add the unlimited building of multi-family housing to our current annual limit of 30 market-rate homes and 50 income-restricted units per year.
Healdsburg middle class, working class income residents, like me, Oppose Measure O because it may have the opposite effect of its stated objective. We need more of the How and less of the Why.
How does this ballot measure assure all this building will achieve its stated purpose?
I am FOR Housing. I am FOR growing Middle Class housing units in Healdsburg. It is far more complicated and will require so much more than opening up a “Market” and believing that building more and more housing density in Healdsburg means lower prices for teachers, like me.
Printed in the Press Democrat
Measure O may try to lure voters under the guise of affordable housing for the middle-class workforce, but the only thing it will guarantee is large scale development in a town of less than 12,000 people. Measure O takes off all the guardrails for multi-family housing construction.
Of course Healdsburg needs more "middle income" or "workforce housing," but this lifting of our voter-approved growth management ordinance along the Healdsburg Avenue Corridor is an extreme approach. Measure O provides neither assurances nor requirements that developers will actually build this so-called "Missing Middle" housing.
Why is our City Council choosing unlimited housing growth, requiring no annual growth limits, and allowing uncertain housing pricing on this two mile corridor of Healdsburg Avenue?
Transparency and trust are missing.
Healdsburg residents voted overwhelmingly in 2000 to pass an ordinance to limit annual housing growth. Residents were asked to lift these restrictions in 2016, and once again, overwhelmingly voted to keep housing growth limitations in place. With Measure O, Healdsburg residents are now being asked again to lift all annual growth restrictions for multi-family housing in areas that include the Healdsburg Avenue corridor and 88 acres of riverfront property by Memorial Bridge. Healdsburg cannot sustain such growth.