Everett Commons — "a collection of townhomes nestled into a neighborhood of Victorian-era homes in the affluent island city of Alameda, California" according to the architecture firm that designed it — holds two dubious distinctions:
- a "preservation award" from the Alameda Architectural Preservation Society
- coverage in a widely shared Los Angeles Times article headlined ‘Affordable’ housing can cost $1 million per unit in California
Everett Commons is "affordable" in that it's operated by the Housing Authority of the City of Alameda to provide places to live in Alameda to people who make 20% to 60% of area median income. (More specifically, Everett Commons is best described as subsidized affordable housing because public funds plus tax credits to private lenders enable the units to be affordable to these renters.) But it was hardly "affordable" to build — and while the high cost to realize each unit was driven by multiple factors, the most important factor that was under our own local control relates directly to that booby prize from the Alameda Architectural Preservation Society.
To continue to quote from the architecture firm:
The project required extensive community outreach, municipal and historic review, and an iterative design process including multiple building design and siting options. The resulting design leverages contemporary construction techniques and materials to create new buildings that have a similar character and scale to their historic neighbors.
[...]
Neighbors, originally vehemently opposed to anything new, have been enthusiastic about how the quality of the development contributes positively to their neighborhood.
Left out in the architect's profile are hard numbers. Per the LA Times article:
in the decade of debate before its approval, the number of proposed apartments shrank from 36 to 20.
Building fewer units on the site meant that the land cost for each unit went up. And while time passed during that "decade of debate," construction costs kept increasing year over delayed year.
Instead of building housing right next to Park Street for 36 individuals or families, the Housing Authority was ultimately only able to create space for 20 (and at an even higher per-unit cost, undercutting their ability to potentially use some of the fund sources for housing units elsewhere in Alameda).
Was the "award" celebrating the Victorian-compatible styling on a physical structure — those paint colors are quite tasteful! — or celebrating that AAPS and some neighbors had successfully prevented 16+ poor people from finding stable housing in this Alameda neighborhood?
Crossing Broadway
Look at the Housing Authority's map of current communities and patterns quickly appear:
These public housing communities are located, on average, in Alameda Island's less highly resourced neighborhoods. None in the Gold Coast. Bay Farm doesn't even appear in the map extent. (AHA should fix this oversight — it would only involve changing one line of JavaScript to zoom their map out to show the entire city limits.) And there are no pins representing projects east of Broadway.
AHA is currently in the process of preparing to cross Broadway — and as someone who owns a single-family house east of Broadway, I say welcome to the East End!
Alameda Unified transferred 2615 Eagle Ave, the school district's outdated maintenance warehouse and yard, to the Alameda Housing Authority in 2022.
According to Island City Development (AHA's associated non-profit entity that builds new projects to eventually deliver to AHA for management):
The Poplar is a planned new development on a 1-acre site in the desirable Fernside neighborhood. The development is in a highly walkable neighborhood near grocery stores, restaurants, health clinics, schools, well-served transit stops, and community parks. The Poplar will be a family development with an estimated 50-60 apartment homes reserved for low-to-moderate income families including one manager unit. The development will be a five-story residential building with parking, onsite laundry room, Property management and social services offices, and community spaces. The development will be sustainably constructed, Greenpoint Rated, have Bay friendly Landscape, and be Baywise Certified.
Streamlining subsidized affordable housing
Will this new subsidized-affordable housing project be nipped and tucked by opponents just as Everett Commons was? Will AAPS be awarding The Poplar with a "preservation award" to celebrate a low unit count, a high per-unit cost, and a slow timeline that delays the arrival of actual residents?
Maybe — but hopefully not this time.
First, this project will prioritize Alameda Unified staff as residents. To put it crudely, instead of just having poor people as potential neighbors, these will be teachers! Hopefully everyone loves public school teachers. (Full disclosure: I'm married to a public school teacher.)
More importantly, state law and local codes have changed:
- In 2018, SB 35 streamlines local approvals of subsidized affordable housing.
- In 2020, Alameda's Planning Board adopted "objective design standards" for multi-family residential development.
- In 2021, Alameda removed minimum parking requirements from the city zoning code.
- In 2023, SB 423 extended and expanded the provisions of SB 35.
Per those standards:
Therefore, when Island City Development and AHA begin the design review process for this project, the project will receive a ministerial review against a checklist — not a "decade of debate."
The Planning Board will probably meet a single time for the design review, with PB members constrained in their ability to make extraneous requests of the project (similar to the subdued single PB meeting recently held for a multifamily housing project proposed near Target).
Parking is a useful amenity for many people — including people who live in subsidized affordable housing. But more auto parking means less space and less budget for housing people.
AHA's project team and their leadership are hopefully thinking very carefully about this tradeoff. It should be driven by neutral market research about potential residents, as well as cold hard budget tradeoffs. Existing residents' worries about "overflow" on-street parking should not drive this decision.
A Goldilocks amount of public involvement
A recurring theme on this blog is finding a sweet spot for enough but not too much public engagement for civic projects — a Goldilocks amount of public involvement.
Enough input to improve the overall quality of outcomes and to promote meaningful feelings of civic involvement and participatory pride, but not so much that public projects are filibustered by endless questioning or nipped-and-tucked to the extent that that budget and scope become impossible.
It's good that Alameda Housing Authority is starting to engage existing residents in this project that will hopefully provide places to live for many new households east of Broadway and it's good that AHA now has the legal authority to move ahead toward project construction efficiently with minimal public involvement.
Is AHA going to use that legal authority? They've listed a series of five public meetings:
- August 19 - Site & Development Process Overview
- September 10 - Design Charette
- October 1 - Site Reuse and Resiliency
- October 16 - Final Development Plan
- October 29 - Environmental Conditions and Remediation
There's also a mailing list if you want to "stay up to date with information on the project."
On the one hand, this is substantially less than a "decade" of public involvement for Everett Commons. But on the other hand, one does need to ask: What value do these multiple public engagement activities provide toward AHA's core mission and the project outcome?
When such projects previously had to pass through a gauntlet of design review, engaging the most recalcitrant of project opponents was important. Now that that leverage has been removed, what's the point?
Educating the broader public about AHA's mission and process is worthwhile. But will the fact that someone who already securely lives in the neighborhood participates in a design charette (or charet or charrette) and four additional meetings benefit the project's success for its future residents? Will the project budget that AHA puts toward its architectural team organizing these events, holding these events, and acting on feedback improve the outcome for those future residents?
I hope the staff leadership of the Housing Authority and its board of commissioners are thinking critically about these sorts of questions.
Priorities
Want an AAPS preservation award for your own Gothic Revival or Queen Anne or Eastlake or Italianate or Craftsman. Go for it! It's a pleasure to see the care people put into their own private properties around Alameda. But for our publicly subsidized affordable housing, let's prioritize people — the teachers, families, and people of all backgrounds and income levels who can be served by Alameda's Housing Authority and provided with secure and stable housing right here, on both sides of Broadway.