June 8, 2007

From the Mayor’s Desk

California faces an imminent affordable housing dilemma

By Mayor Dan Furtado
Special to the Times

The population of California is over 36 million, while the current population of the United States is 300 million.
Santa Clara County has over 1.7 million persons, and our current city population is approximately 39,000. Campbell is one of 101 cities in the Bay Area, commonly identified within the nine counties that make-up the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG).

The current population of the ABAG region is over 7 million. Within the Bay Area, actual job growth in 2006 was 54,100, and in 2007, Bay Area job growth is predicted to be 47,000. It’s no surprise, therefore, that there is a shortage of housing, including affordable housing.

California has attempted to address housing needs by periodically predicting the future need, and assigning to each region the number of housing units it must plan for over a seven-year cycle. Recently, for the period 2007-14, the state assigned ABAG 214,500 housing units it must plan for during this period.

For the last several months the Association of Bay Area Governments has been working on how it should further assign numbers to its counties and cities. Santa Clara County is expected to plan for 57,000-59,000 housing units over the seven-year planning cycle. Of this number, over 33,000 must be affordable units. The law requires that each city incorporate in its planning provisions for building its assigned quota in order to certify its housing element of the city General Plan.

The generally ac-cepted definition of affordability is for a family to pay no more than 30 percent of its annual income on housing. Currently in our county, a family of four whose household income is $ 84,900 or less is eligible to apply for affordable housing ($67,900 for a family of two).

In Campbell, we built 85 affordable units from 1999-2006; during this period, we built a total of 506 housing units in the city. Overall, since 1984, the city has built 260 affordable units.

There are a number of programs that we participate in to work toward our assigned goals. These include redevelopment agency funds; first-time homebuyer loans; Proposition 46 funds; Metropolitan Transportation Commission grants; Community Development Block Grants; Housing Trust funds; city rehabilitation and loan program funds; Proposition 1C funds; several county programs.

Persons who benefit from affordable housing funds to purchase a house are restricted from receiving full dollar returns upon selling, subject to the conditions of their grant eligibility.

It is anticipated that the jobs/housing imbalance will continue. We in Silicon Valley need to discuss how we should plan to address this issue. Quality of life and infrastructure needs are only part of a comprehensive discussion.