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Sedona...
Proposed affordable housing amendment is unfair, harmful to Sedona homeowners
by Paul Chevalier
Sedona has many caring people who want to help their fellow residents who have economic difficulties find affordable housing.
A few years ago, our City Council established a housing commission to address this particular issue. After study, this commission decided to focus its efforts on housing affordable to families earning near the community-annual median income (in round numbers, this is $50,000 or $57,000, depending on the county of residence).
This commission has come up with several ideas to create such housing. This month, my column is narrowly focused on addressing one of them - increasing residential density in residential areas of Sedona.
In the next few months, our new City Council will be asked by the housing commission to approve a Sedona Community Plan Future Land Use Map amendment that will allow residential zoning density to increase up to 20 housing units per acre in certain areas of our city, provided the project included a moderate number of units for families making around $50,000 a year.
These housing units could be built in residential neighborhoods where the land is currently zoned for two, four, or eight houses per acre. If your neighborhood is targeted, the acre of land next to where you live could have 20 housing units built on it. Of course, this affects your privacy and the value of your home.
In 2003, some of our citizens figured out that the then-Community Plan language dealing with “transitional district land uses” could have a negative impact on them. They made an environmentally sensitive appeal to our City Council. The 2003 council listened and voted to replace “transitional districts” with “special use districts” that permit an increase in residential housing density only if a developer can show that the project that is proposed specifically meets that neighborhood’s needs and benefits.
Special use districts work fairly. Since 2003, four rezonings in the new special use district have been approved.
But, this new housing commission amendment ignores the special use requirement (that a project must meet the needs of the neighborhood where it is located), and would allow the creation of developments that substantially increase density without showing any neighborhood benefit at all.
This approach to affordable housing requires tradeoffs that are too harmful to the residents of Sedona to offset any benefit Sedona might achieve.
The Tradeoffs
What are some of these tradeoffs?
1. Increasing housing density negatively impacts our neighborhoods. This was well studied, in 2002-3, by a Growth Committee appointed by our City Council.
The Growth Committee, after much consideration and many meetings, recommended to our City Council that residential growth be limited to the total number of housing units permitted by current zoning. Our current Community Plan limits housing density to “no more than eight units (per acre) in a total site.” We should continue to heed the advice of the Growth Committee, which is concerned about the growth of our community as a whole.
Our Housing Commission, which is proposing this new amendment, has a different agenda. It has one special cause - to create affordable housing.
The costs to our community as a whole of increasing residential density are high.
a) It will add more residents, which, in turn, will increase the use of our vital resources, particularly our water supply.
b) It will increase wear and tear damage to our infrastructure, particularly our roads.
c) It will increase both traffic and off-road parking. This comes at a time when we are already struggling with how to solve the traffic challenges we foresee developing in the near future.
d) And, perhaps the most significant negative impact of increasing residential density, is that it will hurt the current citizens of Sedona who have homes near each of these new 20-unit-per-acre developments that are created. These citizens are the people that our City Council should be most concerned about. It is their lifestyle that will be negatively impacted, and it is the value of their homes that will diminish.
This is the reality that the Growth Committee found in 2003. Their studies were right for Sedona at that time, and they are still right, today.
The Growth Committee’s recommendations deserve greater consideration because the Growth Committee is looking broadly at all the growth needs of Sedona and - unlike the housing commission - is not focused on a narrow agenda.
2. Over time, the financial upkeep of the affordable units will become unacceptable.
If the housing commission has its way, legal limits will be put on future affordable units that are for rent or sale - for up to 99 years - by our city, which will then be in the time-consuming and costly housing-rules enforcement and foreclosure business.
This would have to be done, because without legal limits on rent and sale increases, the affordable units could quickly rise in value (like Nepenthe) and no longer be affordable. If such a rise in value occurred, the whole point of allowing the building of 20 housing units per acre would be meaningless.
Yet, controlling price increases on housing creates another giant problem. When a government restricts housing prices, at some point, the incentive for the owner to properly maintain the property is gone.
In New York City, rent-controlled or rent-stabilized buildings are not well maintained and have the potential to become slums. If/when that happens here, Sedona could then take the property away from the owner, just as NYC does, but the city of Sedona would be stuck with legal costs and the cost of repairs.
Sedona would then become a landlord. Our city will be in the housing business. The City of Sedona Housing Policy is full of lien restrictions that will end up requiring the city to add staff to inspect and enforce them.
The alternative to this is to establish a land trust, which must be funded with public money. Where is the money going to come from to pay for this? A tax on our property? We already are having trouble finding money for the projects the city government previously has committed to.
3. This amendment doesn’t help low income people who currently live in Sedona.
In Sedona, we have workers at various economic levels already living here. As a result, we have residents whose incomes are far below the cut-off point that qualifies for the proposed housing commission affordable housing guidelines.
Some of these workers live in houses that are in desperate need of repair that these residents cannot afford. Why isn’t helping those current residents the central focus of our housing commission? It should be – they already live here.
Can our city really help our low income residents with their housing? It can, and it doesn’t involve building new houses in Sedona that are 20 units to the acre.
Our local government could begin by making an inventory of existing housing that needs serious repair. After taking inventory, our government could lead and join with building contractors to volunteer a realistic amount of time and skill to help these residents repair their homes. Our local government also might be able to negotiate at-cost purchases of building materials from local businesses, such as Lumberman’s and Ace Hardware.
The potential benefits
The main argument in support of this new affordable housing amendment is that affordable housing of this kind will allow more middle income workers to live in Sedona. The argument is that in not having affordable housing available, it forces longer commutes on people who work in Sedona but cannot afford to live here. This lessens the quality time at home for these commuters, lessens their relational ties to Sedona, and increases use of our roads to and from Sedona.
Another argument in favor of this potential amendment is that it would be to Sedona’s advantage to have our police, our firefighters, and our teachers living here.
These arguments all have critical weaknesses.
Most of the workers who commuters to Sedona are employed in the tourist industry or do landscaping - and they will not qualify for these housing units. The vast majority of them do not make $50,000 plus in yearly family income, and a significant number of our workers are not legally in the United States. Undocumented workers cannot even apply for housing benefits. We will not be helping these workers to live in Sedona by approving this amendment.
Also, there is no reason to believe that our firefighters and police and those of our teachers who could afford these units will want to leave the housing in which they are living now to move into units sandwiched together 20 to the acre. No matter how we build 20 units per acre in Sedona, economically it will not successfully compete with housing in these locations - in terms of either size or outdoor open space.
We cannot force our firefighters, police, or teachers to move from Cottonwood, Cornville, Camp Verde, or wherever they are living now just because we would prefer that they live in Sedona. Before our council agrees to pass this amendment, wouldn’t it be prudent for our council to demand respectable evidence of how many of these and other commuters, could both financially qualify and would like to relocate to this kind of housing in Sedona?
It doesn’t add up!
When all is said and done, the only fair way to evaluate this amendment is to weight the costs and gains of it against each other.
The homeowner’s tradeoffs we are being asked to make in this amendment are unfair. If this amendment is passed, some homeowners will have to fight loud and hard to keep 20 housing units from being built in their neighborhood.
Nevertheless, if this amendment is passed, 20 units per acre projects will get built in some neighborhoods in Sedona. Not all neighborhoods will be able to keep them out.
The smaller neighborhoods or the disorganized neighborhoods will be most at risk, because our council responds best to large groups of protesters.
Unless we, the people of Sedona, start to speak up more, this amendment is likely to be approved, because affordable housing sounds noble. Few politicians want to appear to the public as being opposed to a noble idea, even though the noble idea has many flaws.
Our housing commission is considering a variety of other approaches to increase affordable housing that are more appropriate, because they will not create the harm that this one will. Even if our City Council does not approve this particular amendment, insofar as it concerns residential zoning, it will not stop progress on the housing commission’s goal.
The best thing we can do is to protect ourselves by speaking our minds to the council before it votes on this amendment. Keep your eye on the council agenda, and voice your opinion on this affordable housing amendment.