Piedmont Housing Information Session Thurs. 5 pm Aug. 2022
The City of Piedmont is presenting another informational event for Piedmonters on matters related to the Housing Element. A social time in the City Hall Courtyard will follow the presentation to give attendees “a chance to meet with City staff and gain additional clarity on the Draft Housing Element.”
Presentation information has not been provided by the City.
On Thursday, August 18th at 5:00 p.m., the City of Piedmont will host a “Housing Element 102” Information Session.
Community members are invited to attend in person, virtually on Zoom (https://piedmont-ca-gov.zoom.
us/j/82234103859), or on KCOM-TV, the City’s Government Access television station (Comcast Channel 27 or AT&T Channel 99). The information session, which will be held in the City Council Chambers, will be followed by an open house in the City Hall Courtyard. This session, which follows up on the Housing Element 101 session, hosted by the City on September 29, 2021, which can be viewed at https://piedmont.granicus.com/
player/clip/2413, is intended as an informational opportunity to provide clarity on salient pieces of a complex process and will focus on four main topics:
- Housing Element and the Regional Housing Needs Allocation Basics
- Overview of the Draft Housing Element Sites Inventory
- Recap of the Direction the City Council Provided to Staff at its August 1, 2022 Meeting
- Update on the Status of Piedmont’s Housing Element Process, Next Steps and Timeline to Certification
The open house will be a chance to meet with City staff and gain additional clarity on the Draft Housing Element.
Community members are encouraged to view the City’s Housing Element Basics YouTube playlist, which consists of a series of short videos about the Housing Element process.
Comprehensive and detailed information about the Housing Element process is available on https://piedmontishome.org and https://piedmont.ca.gov. Please contact Senior Planner Pierce Macdonald at piedmontishome@piedmont.ca.gov with questions or comments.
The session was very informative, providing good insight into what staff is doing in response to the 8/1 direction from Council. Staff indicated the draft HE will be brought to Council for approval by mid-October. Hopefully the candidate forums will be held before then.
Two questions arose for me. Staff gave details on the affordability levels the HE must achieve: 163 units for a family of four with income <$69,000, 94 units for income levels <$110,000, 92 units for incomes below $151,00. Based on employee salaries, staff also provided information on the numbers of city/PUSD employees that meet these levels: 140 with incomes < $69,000, 175 with incomes < $110,000, 49 with incomes $151,000. Unless I missed it, staff did not clarify whether these were individual incomes or that for an employee family of four, the family unit that is the basis for the affordability levels. It is a stated policy of the Housing Element to prioritize housing for city and school employees but those employees should qualify for the appropriate affordability level.
The other question is about undeveloped lots in Piedmont. Staff identified 55, many in the estate zone, and assigned a unit potential of 1 to each lot – 55 houses could be built in the next 8 years on these lots. With SB9 now the law, that number vastly underestimates the number of units Piedmont could realize from these undeveloped lots. SB9 allows for property owners to subdivide their lots and add a house and ADU to each, so one unit becomes 4 units. In addition, the city did not account for duplexes from the splitting of large Piedmont homes into two, something SB9 also allows. Were the city to make a plausible estimate of this growth, it would not need to consider the 801 building for housing.