Even real-estate agents want streamlined permitting for housing
Owning a single-family house provides two ancillary benefits: (1) The ability to start public comments at City Council meetings by declaring "As a home-owner here in Alameda, I..." and then following that intro with a comment about almost anything; and (2) Receiving regular mailings from all of the local REALTORS® hoping to someday conduct a transaction on your behalf. Like a catalog, the real-estate mailings can be mildly amusing to flip through.
While skimming their catalog of fancy food, I thought about purchasing $1,000 worth of cheese, meat, and chocolate. (No, I can't justify an insane amount of rich food spaced out over three monthly shipments... but why not think about it momentarily while flipping through a catalog?)
The latest Zingerman's catalog also offers cute cookies for Easter, hamantaschen for Purim (with optional noise-making groggers), and ma'moul for Eid (made in a bakery in Dearborn). Even as Tr*mp and Co. stoke division across the country and around the world, Michigan's foodways are hopefully just one of many reminders of our commonalities to appreciate.
Back to real estate: specifically, the most recent mailer from one of Alameda's REALTORS® that came alongside the Zingerman's catalog and included this profile of a recently sold house in the Fernside neighborhood:
In contrast with the enticement of a Zingerman's product listing, the real-estate newsletter begins with blame:
It was an exercise in patience as the City of Alameda bombarded the owner with permit hurdles and obstacles at every turn and this is after the owner filed full architectural drawings to [e]nsure a smooth permit and inspect process. As a result, the buyer probably has the safest most compliant house in all of Alameda. After $300,000 of improvements, this fully remodeled Tudor sold for $1,900,000.
It's a curious complaint, as it aligns with a broader pattern: building housing is way too hard in the Bay Area. In response to people living on the streets of the Bay Area and even comfortably housed people moving to other regions and states as they grow frustrated with the scarcity and cost of housing, California lawmakers have belatedly passed laws that streamline the permitting for more housing. Most of these laws have targeted multi-family housing, thus the potential for the owners of the Bay Farm shopping center to apply for permits to build new housing — including subsidized affordable housing — with zero discretionary involvement from the City of Alameda.
As a home-owner here in Alameda, I... feel excluded from the state's efforts to streamline housing construction.
There's now an almost ironic divide that multi-family housing in some parts of Alameda can be permitted efficiently by right, following objective design standards, while remodeling or rebuilding a single-family house in many of Alameda's "R" zones may involve many more steps, such as:
- City of Alameda's Historical Advisory Board, an appointed body whose members are nominated by the Mayor and appointed by City Council to exercise certain powers over structures built before 1942, "Historical Monuments," and "resource[s] listed on the Historical Building Study List."
- Design review administered by Alameda's Planning Department, which may involve notifying property owners within 100 feet and giving them 10 days to comment on the changes you'd like to make to your own property. Everyone across Alameda may also opine on your house remodel if it goes to a Zoning Administrator Hearing and/or a meeting of the Planning Board.
- Homeowners associations, such as those affiliated under the Community of Harbor Bay Isle, can require their own private design review even before the individual property-owner approaches the City of Alameda to start that entire separate public process.
All of these hurdles to change may have, in the past, felt like a positive to owners of single-family houses — preserving the character of the neighborhood, as some claimed. But now with streamlining available to multifamily and mixed-use developments, all of those required processes and approvals and inspections may feel like an unnecessary "exercise in patience."
And to be serious: Even though I'm having fun writing this post about permitting process with a bit of whimsy, I disagree with the real-estate newsletter's tone. It's not fair or appropriate to suggest that these processes are the fault of city staff. In addition to following state law and relevant building codes, they are following the provisions of the Alameda Municipal Code. Staff are tasked with ensuring applicants follow all adopted requirements — even if those requirements can't necessarily be met in an efficient manner.
For instance, my non-expert read is that staff likely often have to square the city's Window Replacement Guidelines with current building code requirements. The former requires "like for like" replacement of windows with period and style specific window frames. The latter may require a update in window types to allow a person to escape a bedroom or a firefighter to enter a structure. The fact that the interaction of these requirements may trigger a design review process isn't staff's fault or necessarily even in their professional judgement — it's, to be blunt, just the natural result of generations of City Council members and their appointees on the Planning Board and Historical Advisory Board voting to formalize overly detailed aesthetic desires.
As a homeowner here in Alameda, I... honestly don't feel the need to regulate my neighbors' muntin patterns (a term I didn't even know until reading about this topic).
In summary, even a mailer from a REALTOR® practically now agrees with the YIMBYs: It's time to streamline planning and permitting processes to more efficiently expand and modernize California's housing stock!
All that said, if you have an extra $1,000, you can currently order three months of cheese, cured meats, and chocolate from Zingerman's — or you could have purchased approximately 1.2 sqft of house on Cambridge Drive.