The City of Santa Cruz, just as many other cities in the state, is developing objective standards for the review of multifamily housing and mixed-use development applications.
This effort is largely in response to California state legislation that requires jurisdictions to adopt objective standards and to implement them in a streamlined review of qualifying housing projects.
The goal of the change in state law is to support development of new housing in communities across California, as part of the effort toward our housing crisis. Changes in California state law now require cities and counties to use only development standards that can be objectively defined and measured when reviewing applications for new housing development.
These objective standards could include things such as building heights, required setbacks from adjacent property, requirements for the number, size and placement of windows, standards for landscaping and lighting or other quantifiable, measurable features of buildings and property.
Objective standards are defined under state law as “standards that involve no personal or subjective judgment by a public official and are uniformly verifiable by reference to an external and uniform benchmark or criterion available and knowable by both the development applicant or proponent and the public official prior to submittal” (California Government Code, Section 65913.4).
• SB 35: Streamlined Affordable Housing: Requires approval of qualified housing projects based on objective regulatory standards.
• SB 167: Housing Accountability Act: Local government may not deny, reduce density, or make infeasible housing projects consistent with objective design standards.
• SB 330: Housing Crisis Act: Prohibits imposing or enforcing new design standards established on or after Jan. 1, 2020, that are not objective.
The municipal code in the city of Santa Cruz currently has only a few development regulations that are objective and measurable, so the city needs to write more specific standards to ensure that new multifamily housing and mixed-use development projects enhance the built environment of Santa Cruz and create new homes that residents find comfortable, and offer different choices that would affect the cost of housing construction.
To better understand what residents in our community would like to see in our objective standards, the city had an engagement process over the course of the past year and a half to identify and implement the objective standards that mean the most to our community. Focus groups included students, renters, Latinx-Chicanx, eastside residents, lower-income households, and young adults. Answers to the questions asked in the community engagement process were used to help identify and define Santa Cruz’s community character and help to prioritize among tradeoffs as the objective zoning standards are formulated.
In addition, drafts have gone to the City Planning Commission for evaluation, and on Aug. 23, 2022 city staff made a presentation at the City Council meeting. The Council did not take action yet, and continued the item to Sept. 13, which has now been continued again to the Nov. 15 City Council meeting.
I recommend reading through the materials from the staff presentation. To read the materials, visit bit.ly/ObjectiveStandardsPresentation. We hope that the extra time, until the Nov. 15 meeting, will give our community time to get clarification and understanding on the objective standards recommendations and details, as well as submit any further questions or comments in the comment form on the city website at: https://bit.ly/CITYWIDEMULTIFAMILYOBJECTIVESTANDARDSPROJECT. City staff will be reaching out to those community members that have reached out with questions.
The purpose of developing objective standards is to comply with recent State housing legislation, establish an objective framework by which a qualifying project will be evaluated, implement streamlined processes for qualifying projects, ensure that qualifying projects align with the city’s expectations and vision to maintain and support the character of the city, and provide a set of clear criteria to guide development.
They can be a powerful tool that allows communities to respond to state housing laws that reduce local control of development. They provide an opportunity to make sure that the appearance of new development is compatible with the City’s community vision. The standards will provide more certainty for the community, applicants, staff, and decision makers.
Sonja Brunner is the mayor of Santa Cruz.
