Does an affordable housing project in Felton spell environmental disaster?
Civilian experts are trying to fight the project based on water and sewer concerns
It’s hard to argue with the need for affordable housing in Santa Cruz County. Even with the local housing bubble rapidly moving from “deflate” to “pop” mode, home rentership (let alone ownership) is still wildly out of line with the average salary. But Steve Homan, a registered environmental health specialist, thinks something about the Zayante Oaks project proposed in Felton stinks.
In a seven-page letter delivered to the county planning department and board of supervisors in September 2006, Homan outlines the following serious issues with the 55-unit development (34 homes, 21 apartments) South County Housing (SCH) would like to build on the Felton Faire plot near the intersection of Graham Hill Road and Mt. Hermon Road:
• an inadequate drainfield area for onsite sewage, and unfavorable soil and groundwater conditions for building a sewage system;
• an inadequate public water supply proposal;
• stormwater detention issues;
• lack of urban services for an urban scale project;
• insufficient budgeting for maintenance expenses;
• and a completed land purchase that might lock SCH into going for a “build or bust” mentality.
Fast forward to this August, when the county first officially considered SCH’s proposal. The application was deemed incomplete and sent back for more work for the following reasons:
• stormwater management issues;
• soil analysis issues;
• inadequacies with the traffic impact analysis;
• lack of information about soil saturation and hydrology relating to the detention pond;
• accessibility issues;
• and incomplete and mismatching land surveys.
SCH, a nonprofit developer based in Gilroy, has been given until Nov. 21 to resubmit its application to address the issues. Its initial plans were to build a sewage system on site and dig a well for the water supply, though it is now exploring a relationship with San Lorenzo Valley Water District for its water supply.
Homan, who knows the land well because he worked with the shopping center at Felton Faire on its complicated infrastructure problems, thinks the property is flat out wrong for a development of this scale—not on aesthetic or political grounds, but purely environmental ones. “I have nothing against affordable projects, and if this place had a municipal sewer system to hook into, I’d go home and shut up,” he says. “It’s my opinion that it’s geologically and geographically impossible to put 55 units on that property, due to the soil and groundwater conditions. The sewage and effluent have nowhere to go. Zayante Creek and the San Lorenzo River make a V below this property. When this system fails—and it will fail for multiple reasons—that sewage is going to flow into the river. And just below that is the intake for the Santa Cruz city water supply.”
In addition to issues with the County Planning Department and Steve Homan, SCH also faces an uphill battle against a neighborhood group called San Lorenzo Valley Citizens Organized for Responsible Ecology (SLV CORE), which collected a petition of 4,000 signatures opposed to the project. “We all want genuine affordable housing and the way to achieve that is not by applying different, or discretionary, environmental standards to the same plot of land based on who is developing it,” she says. “To hold one developer to one home on the Felton Fair parcel because of Mt Hermon June Beetles, Zayante Band Winged Grasshoppers, Silver Spineflowers, high water table, water supply watershed designation, lack of sewer, lack of transportation, lack of jobs, Great Blue Heron habitat, oak woodlands, viewshed, MTBE plumes, water shortage … then allow the county’s pet developer 55 units is beyond bizarre. Any officials who have in any way facilitated this scheme should lose their jobs.”
So why is the project still viable? Homan believes it has something to do with the fact that SCH has already purchased the property for $2.5 million, and borrowed another $700,000 in order to explore developing it, so they’re too far in the hole to give up. The wrinkle, and the part that has many Felton residents whispering about improprieties, is that the lender of the $700,000 was the County of Santa Cruz Redevelopment Agency (RDA)—an entity that exists on funds from Live Oak and Soquel—an entity with a mandate to develop the economy of mid-county—and an entity that was headed at the time of the loans by Tom Burns, who is currently the county’s Planning Director.
Digging in the Waterlogged Dirt
To be precise, the RDA is supposed to reserve 20 percent of its funds for affordable housing that can be located anywhere within the county, but the question is whether those funds should be used to explore environmentally unsound projects. Andersen says SLV CORE has mutated from concern over the development to concern about the funding scheme. “Originally we understood that we were fighting a redevelopment project in a region that has rejected redevelopment intrusion,” she says, “and yes we understand the concept of Live Oak housing funds being used outside the district, but as the momentum accelerated we all agreed that our concern was much more broad than that. We all expressed concern over the broader implications of irresponsible development, fraudulent use of public funds, and false community process.”
Burns sees these accusations as a misunderstanding of the process. “I don’t approve either one of them,” he says of the loans the final project plans. “We make recommendations to the Board of Directors, whether it’s a loan to an entity or approval of the project. The board makes the decisions.” He does acknowledge that a reorganization brought the RDA’s housing function under the Planning Department’s umbrella, so that both come to his desk for approval. “I make a great effort to keep them separate from one another,” he says.
The SCH project would be the first of its kind in the San Lorenzo Valley, but Burns estimates that there have been more projects funded outside the Live Oak and Soquel area than within it during the past 10 to 15 years, so the RDA’s funding could hardly be called improper or unusual. “Honestly, on this site, there are specific general plan policies that encourage affordable housing,” he says. “That goes back to the mid-‘90s, from the General Plan update.”
As far as the application goes, it could be resubmitted by the time you’re reading this. Alice Daly of the planning department, who expects the resubmission well before the Nov. 21 deadline, says it’s very typical for a project to require two or even more tries before an application is considered complete. “We try to give an applicant a clear idea of what we need, but typically they come in and get routed through all the agencies, and then our people have a 30-day period to look at it and say thank you very much or ask for more information,” she says. “It’s very typical that something will go through one or more rounds of what we call incompleteness, especially for large projects.”
If the application is considered complete this time, that does not necessarily mean it has been approved by any of the various departments at the planning office, only that the experts now have enough information to make a decision. The project will then go through an environmental impact review (EIR) which includes an independent consultant looking at all aspects of the project, as well as opportunity for public comment from watchdogs like Homan and SLV CORE. Only when the EIR process is complete and the department certifies all the documents does the project go before the County Board of Supervisors. If the project is not approved, SCH will be required to sell the property and use the proceeds to repay the RDA loan.
Burns denies that the technical allegations made by Homan are necessarily valid. “There are a lot of the technical allegations made out there by people who consider themselves experts,” he says. “There are some allegations that are not supported by the facts, according to our technical experts. But that’s what the EIR process is for. We’ll have that done and reviewed by yet a third independent source. I have not been involved with the project on a day-to-day basis, but all these suggestions about drainage issues and septic have been looked at pretty closely.”
Andy Lief, the project manager for SCH, says they are not seeking any special concessions from the county in terms of environmental impact. “Everything is being planned in accordance with county plans and procedures,” he says. “We’re using a wastewater treatment system. We have the same requirements as a single person with a septic tank.” He does note one unusual feature of the project due to its site: “We are planning to reuse the treated wastewater for the toilets. This would be the first project in Santa Cruz County permitted to do that.”
SCH President and CEO Dennis Lalor says that every project they build has to deal with less-than-ideal land. He adds that it’s just the nature of building in a built-out county. “There’s no question that most land is available now has challenges that didn’t exist when there was plenty of land and everything was flat and had perfect conditions,” he says. “But there’s an overwhelming need for affordable housing, in Santa Cruz County as much as anywhere. That’s what motivates us to do what we have to do, to create that housing. This site has many challenges, and it’s also a very nice site for affordable units.”
Lief says that being next to the Felton Faire shopping center and the transportation hub in the parking lot make the site ideal for affordable housing. He also says SCH is aiming to rent the apartments and sell the homes to people who currently live and work in the San Lorenzo Valley. “Our goal is not necessarily to have housing for people commuting to Silicon Valley,” he says. “Our goal is to get people working at the high school—teachers and other school employees, or folks that work at Safeway. The goal is to cut traffic, and make a positive environmental impact.”
The apartments will be within renting reach of low fixed income seniors, and are expected to mostly rent to singles, though couples could be accommodated. The houses will be priced for people making $60,000 to $70,000 a year. Previous SCH projects in Santa Cruz County include the Corralitos Creek development in Freedom, and the Nuevo Sol Apartments at 111 Barson Street in Santa Cruz. The latter project was a rehabilitation of the dilapidated Hidden Court Motel into 11 units of homeless transition housing, completed in 2006 with the help of two $850,000 grants—one from the city of Santa Cruz, and one from the county. The project continues to receive rental subsidies from the county’s mental health services budget, including $82,550 approved earlier this year.
Burns says SCH has been a good partner in the past. “They have been extremely competent to work with,” he says. “They have delivered on not only the physical product of housing units, some of the best designed anywhere, but most importantly their long-term management has been superb.” SCH would be in charge of maintaining any water or sewer works they construct on the property, even for the houses that would be sold.
Asked if communication with the residents of Felton could improve, Burns sounds a note of frustration. “Did the people complaining tell you how many meetings there have been? I sat in a couple of those meetings and I thought there was a lot of healthy give and take. For those coming to the meetings wanting no housing put on the site, I’m sure they were disappointed, but there was a lot of discussion about the septic and drainage. Given the stage at which this project is, and it’s a very early stage, I think there’s been more community outreach than most any other project I’ve seen. We could maybe do more during the EIR process. Unfortunately so many people think they already know the facts. It’s not clear to me how helpful community dialogue will be if they already think they know everything they need to know.”
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