LAKEPORT, Calif. – At the end of an hour-and-a-half-long joint hearing with the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday afternoon, the Lake County Planning Commission voted to accept an update to the county’s housing element and recommended the supervisors accept it.
The supervisors will consider that proposal at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, April 3.
The document, required by state law, assesses housing needs and related constraints, and includes a resource inventory, according to county documents. The last housing element was adopted in December 2004.
Work on the “lengthy and complex draft” of the document has been under way for more than a year, and has received the approval of the California Department of Housing and Community Development, said county Community Development Director Rick Coel.
Senior Planner Kevin Ingram said the last hearing on the document was held in September 2011.
During the public hearing, the bulk of the comment came from members of the advisory committee, including Andrew Rossoff and Linda Hedstrom.
Rossoff, referring to the 2004 housing element update, said the county learned then how not to adopt an update, with controversy arising regarding a lot of high density affordable housing that had been proposed for the Clearlake Oaks area.
The state Department of Housing and Community Development had given the county a requirement to rezone 50 acres for high density housing, and he was unsure if that had been accomplished.
Coel said it was done in September 2009 as part of the Shoreline Area Plan, and was meant to meet the state requirement.
Once the housing element is completed, Coel said county staff will find 31 acres to propose to replace part of that proposed acreage in the plan. That acreage has to have road and sewer access, and be located within community growth boundaries.
He explained the state demand that such land be identified for potential development is really a “phantom requirement.”
While the property could be developed, that’s not the desire either of the property’s owner or the community, Coel said. “It’s probably not the right thing to do.”
Supervisor Denise Rushing said the land in question also is the only available wetland in the area that can be restored, and drains from High Valley.
Rossoff was concerned that there should be policies laying out how constraints to development – such as lack of sewer and water – would be addressed.
Rushing said those kinds of issues go before the board all the time, and she said she couldn’t imagine that if one of the proposed sites had a major housing project, that they wouldn’t find a way to serve its sewer and water needs.
Hedstrom wanted the county to consider small measures to encourage improvements to homes that would allow more people to “age in place.”
‘We have no kind of transitional housing here for seniors,” between home and convalescent hospitals, which Hedstrom said is “crazy” for a place like Lake County, which is a county with one of the highest senior populations in the state.
She said there is no reason for the county not to advocate for people to stay comfortably, and affordably, in their own homes, and she suggested workshops for building inspectors on ways to make homes more livable for the elderly.
Hedstrom also encouraged the county to “make the time” to work on affordable housing.
Planning Commissioner Cliff Swetnam moved to find no significant environmental impact based on the initial study of the housing element update and recommended its approval to the board, which passed. Swetnam then moved for the commission to accept the update, which also passed.
Both votes were 4-0. Commissioner Olga Martin Steele was absent.
The board’s final approval is expected to be granted next month.
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