The City of Piedmont will host a Town Hall on June 7 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. to provide an opportunity for Piedmont residents to learn more about the Draft Housing Element. This Town Hall will provide an opportunity for community members to pose questions about the document. Following a short presentation addressing some of the issues, a panel will provide responses to questions submitted by attendees.
“We have received over 275 written comments from community members on the Draft Housing Element via email and the Piedmont Puzzle. And have heard from over 50 community members at the April 19th Housing Advisory Committee meeting and the May 12th Planning Commission meeting,” said Kevin Jackson, the City’s Director of Planning & Building. “Several of those comments included questions. We intend to provide answers to those questions and clarity on the purpose and scope of the Draft Housing Element at this Town Hall Q&A meeting.”
Residents can participate in the Zoom meeting or watch the meeting by tuning to KCOM TV, Comcast channel 27 or AT&T channel 99.
Housing Element update timeline:
June 7, 2022: Virtual Town Hall Q&A Meeting at 6:00 p.m.
June 20, 2022: City Council Consideration of Draft Housing Element.
Summer 2022: With the City Council’s consent, submission of Draft Housing Element to the CA
Housing and Community Development Department for certification.
May 2023: Deadline for adoption of the final draft of the updated Housing Element, date amended due to recent state law requiring additional review and longer comment periods.
Four informational videos about the 2023-2031 Housing Element have been produced by City staff. Please visit Piedmont’s Youtube channel HERE or watch these videos on the homepage of piedmontishome.org.
Piedmontishome.org
The City has created a web site, https://piedmontishome.org, which is a one-stop shop for information on the City’s housing efforts. This site contains information about the 2023-2031 Housing Element process, as well as other fair housing programs.
Community members are encouraged to review the materials on the site and submit comments, questions, ideas, and concerns to piedmontishome@piedmont.ca.gov. This email address will capture official public correspondence about City of Piedmont housing policy work, including the 2023-2031 Housing Element Update
Agree with Mike – very difficult to interpret what the City is proposing. Losing many of these sites to housing is in contravention of the City’s General Plan. Beyond that, many of the policies – large remodels required to add an ADU or contribute to a housing fund, supportive housing for homeless in Zones A or E, allowable ADU height of 24 feet, review of the city charter to eliminate voter approval for zone reclassifications – have been overshadowed by the city’s site selection and focus on unit numbers. The city should generate a table with brief descriptions of these policies and programs as it has done for past Housing Elements. And there’s no reason the city could not conduct an online survey for the draft Housing Element while the state is conducting its review.
I suspect that the 275 written comments already submitted will never be seen by one another. The public response gets buried.
What’s most unprofessional in this process is the burying of the selected housing sites in the second appendix. When one finally gets to the map of properties proposed for higher densities, there’s no key. One would need to drive all over town to know what’s presently on each site. Who would know that Ace Hardware and nursery and all churches and a synagogue are being proposed? Do the property owners even know?
Comments from just 50 community members at two meetings (many of them duplicative) is a pretty small sample size for this important document. The city should –
Provide an executive summary of the Housing Element. For the last meeting staff provided an index of the almost 100 policies/programs the Housing Element. It should add a short abstract for each of those so the public can better comprehend the plan. This is routinely done for city policy documents.
Mail out a city-wide postcard seeking comment on the Housing Element. This was done at the start of “Piedmont is Home” campaign.
Develop on on-line survey to solicit opinion on the draft Housing Element. Online surveys were conducted throughout the campaign. Why not now?
Release the EIR well in advance of the 6/7 meeting.
Staff contends there will be time for more public comment through May 2023 but the June 2022 submission will constitute a near final draft to which substantive changes cannot be made.