The biggest issue that both the City and the County had substantial hearings on during the month of March was housing. Both bodies had study sessions in March to discuss the latest on housing policy.
This is a huge, long-term issue and we must keep rolling that boulder up the hill, because we cannot afford to slow down or go backwards. Housing will continue to govern our region on how and if we will continue to grow our economy. We need housing that allows a stable workforce and for individuals and young families to make their space in SLO County. To tackle this issue, the SLO Chamber is looking back at what has been successful. One major success story was that the City of SLO updated its Land Use and Circulation Element in 2014. That update unlocked major housing opportunities at both San Luis Ranch and Avila Ranch, not to mention all the smaller developments that have done great work to help grow our housing stock. As we see the last Land Use and Circulation Element update nears full build out, our advocacy will focus on starting work on the next set of plans.
Whether that is a look at specific area plans around Upper Monterey, mid-Higuera, the Margarita Area and/or Tank Farm Area or a limited City General Plan update – we believe these plan updates at the City level and complementary ones at the County level will help us identify the next opportunities to meet our housing needs.
Additionally, in the shorter term, we believe that we can look at codes that have not been as effective for delivering housing as we hoped. We are advocating for the city and the development community to look at existing codes, like the 75-foot height limit downtown or the newly implemented flexible density program, as barriers within the codes that we could amend to facilitate more housing units.
The City of SLO is also working on an Energy Efficient Renovations Policy for existing buildings. This would require energy efficiency upgrades to cut greenhouse gas emissions in existing buildings undergoing significant renovations or remodeling. The City came to our Legislative Action Committee meeting to share their initial thoughts and gain our feedback last fall. The City took feedback from the SLO Chamber and other organizations and is getting ready to bring back their recommendations for an actual policy. We will have City staff back in April at our advisory committee, but the initial draft shows the City is recommending that residential units that have a major addition of 500 or more square feet or alteration of 50% or more of the square footage must make energy efficiency upgrades (likely to the HVAC system, the water heater or solar on the roof). Smaller projects are exempt and these upgrades will not be triggered at time of sale of the property. The city is taking comments now through April 12 on the Open City Hall website. The hearing will be on May 21 at City Council if you want to be a part of the conversation.
The SLO Chamber helped facilitate the 2024 SLO County Housing Summit in March, where we brought together speakers and a panel to discuss the entire continuum of housing and how we can create more housing at all levels. Some major calls-to-action that came from those discussions were:
1) If we support new housing, then we must attend hearings and meetings to let elected officials know that we do support new housing projects. Elected officials cannot only be hearing from people who want to stop building housing.
2) Like we discussed about the updates in the City of SLO, we need to take the next steps at the County to utilize the Housing and Infrastructure Plan and implementation of that framework throughout the region.
3) If we genuinely want to develop a significant amount of affordable housing, we need to develop a dedicated line of funding that will allow organizations like People’s Self Help Housing or the Housing Authority of SLO to leverage state and federal dollars to create a significant amount of affordable housing.