BRIDGE Housing Eden Housing Iron Horse Prioritizing Publicly-Owned Lands as a Critical Resource For Affordable Housing Recommendations From GCC Public Lands Working to CASA December 2017
WHO WE ARE The Great Communities Collaborative Public Lands Working Group coordinates amongst advocates working across the 9-county Bay Area to advance the use of public lands for public good. The group shares information, develops shared strategies for campaigns and advocacy, informs regional and state policy, and ensures the implementation of the state Surplus Land Act. The GCC Public Lands Working Group is co-convened by the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California (NPH) and the Great Communities Collaborative, an initiative of The San Francisco Foundation. Its membership includes: Bay Area Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII), East Bay Housing Organizations (EBHO), EBASE, Enterprise Community Partners, Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County (HLC), Public Advocates, Public Interest Law Project (PILP), Silicon Valley at Home, Silicon Valley Law Foundation, Silicon Valley Leadership Group, and Urban Habitat.
Prioritizing Publicly-Owned Lands As A Critical Resource For Affordable Housing Recommendations From GCC Public Lands Working Group to CASA Publicly-owned land is a vital resource for the development of affordable homes. Crucially, publicly-owned land was acquired using public funding and, as such, should be directed towards serving the public good. When local government and/or other public entities no longer use land that they own for its original intended purpose, these parcels become a precious resource for the development of affordable homes, especially in the land-constrained red-hot real estate market of the Bay Area. These precious parcels create opportunities for mission-driven developers to build homes affordable to our region s low and very-low income residents without having to compete against more deeply-pocketed private sector actors for the same land. State Legislation Recognizes Public Land as a Resource for Affordable Housing The State of California has long recognized that prioritizing public lands as a resource for the construction of affordable homes serves the public good, first passing the Surplus Land Act in 1968 and then strengthening through amendment in 2015. The Act requires public entities, when disposing of surplus lands, to give first priority to organizations that will develop residential projects where at least 25% of the units are affordable to low- and very low-income residents. If the public entity does not sell or lease the surplus land to a priority organization, then at least 15% of housing units developed on those sites must still be affordable. Building on the Bay Area s Existing Commitments to prioritize Public Lands for Affordable Housing When the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) adopted Plan Bay Area 2040 in the Summer of 2017, they committed to develop a strategy for the use of public land proximate to major transit assets to facilitate the development of housing affordable to low- and moderate-income households through conditions and provisions on funding sources. This commitment builds on MTC/ABAG s existing public lands work, which has included:
Requiring that all general-law jurisdictions in receipt of certain regional transportation funding through the One Bay Area Grant (OBAG) program pass resolutions attesting compliance with the Surplus Land Act as amended by AB 2135; Funding a study of all publicly-owned transit-oriented sites in 8 Bay Area counties and developing mock ups of potential development on those sites; Creating a $76 million race to the top grant program known as the 80K by 2020 challenge that will reward the top 15 highest producers of affordable housing between 2015 and 2020 with additional transportation funding. Recommendations from the Great Communities Collaborative Working Group The Great Communities Collaborative (GCC) Public Lands Working Group recommends that CASA prioritize the use of the region s publicly-owned lands as a critical resource for the development of affordable homes while significantly building and expanding on MTC/ABAG actions and commitments. We have grouped our recommendations of strategies 1 into immediate priorities and medium-term priorities classified by the following three categories: Incentives: Strategies that use regional transportation funding to incentivize cities, counties, and other public landholding entities to prioritize public lands for use in supporting the development of affordable housing on publicly-owned lands; Capacity Building: Strategies that provide technical assistance and/or guidance to public actors and others to help them to prioritize public lands for use in supporting the development of affordable housing on publicly-owned lands; Accountability: Strategies that hold public actors accountable for public lands-related commitments. 1 These policies primarily apply to land that will be developed for residential or mixed-use purposes; when residential development of any type is not possible (such as on parcels that are industrial/commercial/recreational), we urge cities to consider other community-serving uses for the land.
Immediate Priority Strategies Strategy 1. Require jurisdictions to develop a local public lands strategy that prioritizes public land for affordable housing, using the Surplus Land Act as a baseline, in order to be eligible for regional transportation funds. Type/Levels Accountability 2. Within the MTC/ABAG PDA planning program, create quantifiable outcomes for prioritizing public lands for use in supporting the development of affordable housing on the land 3. Consider clawbacks of regional transportation funding from jurisdictions that do not conform to their own local plans for prioritizing public lands for affordable housing development. 4. Ensure that PDA specific plans with a public lands component have associated policies and dates by which to adopt such policies and create a means for tracking such policy implementation at the regional level. Incentives Capacity Building 5. Include a public lands set-aside for the 80K by 2020 program that provides jurisdictions with additional transportation funding if they employ strategies to optimize the production of the maximum number of affordable homes on their publicly-owned sites. 6. Encourage jurisdictions to offer publicly-owned land for affordable housing at a discount through a regional transportation funding set-aside targeted to jurisdictions that sell such land at a discount. 7. Create and make publicly available a continuously updated inventory of all publicly-owned sites (including current uses) for every jurisdiction in the 9- County Bay Area so that they can be acted upon by community groups and public officials. 8. Request that MTC/ABAG designate a staff member to provide technical assistance regarding the equitable disposition of publicly-owned sites. Strategies/ Local Guideline Strategies/ + Local Guidelines
Medium-Term Priority Strategies Accountability Strategy 1. Require jurisdictions to compile public land inventories and adopt a disposition ordinance compliant with the Surplus Land Act. 2. Require CMAs to incentivize jurisdictions to use public land for affordable housing through making public sites available for affordable housing development. 3. Require CMAs to incentivize to use public lands for affordable housing development as part of their countywide planning process.. Type/Levels Requirements / Incentives 4. Develop a regional strategy for engaging special districts (e.g., transit agencies, community college, schools, public utilities and others) around public lands linking such districts with affordable housing development TA, locating and identifying special district public land sites for each county, ensuring that housing built on such land serves a range of incomes and affirmatively furthers fair housing (e.g.. for school districts, ensure that housing built on these sites serve more than just teachers). + Local Next Steps The GCC Public Lands Working Group recommends that these strategies be folded into and expanded on by the CASA process. We will continue to monitor the CASA process to ensure that public lands are prioritized for the development of affordable housing, and the group will prepare a technical guidance document targeted to jurisdictions and public agencies on best practices in using publicly-owned sites to promote the creation of more affordable homes. The GCC Public Lands Working Group is pleased to continue to serve as a resource to CASA in its work. For questions about this report and other GCC Public Lands Working Group recommendations, please contact: Ain Bailey, The San Francisco Foundation, Associate Initiative Officer: abailey@sff.org Pedro Galvao, Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California, Planning and Policy Manager: pedro@nonprofithousing.org
These recommendations provided by the Great Communities Collaborative Public Lands Working Group December 2017