Placer County names housing priorities

Placer County is building a foundation for affordable housing that will produce visible results in the future. But right now, the staff is in catch-up mode with an issue that is fast exploding into a crisis.

"I'm sure Tahoe City, Kings Beach would be one of the nation's least affordable housing markets if there were statistics for this small of an area," said Rich Colwell, deputy chief executive officer for the county.

Families survive in substandard housing, newly married couples can't afford to buy a home and seasonal workers are sleeping in tents for summer jobs.

The problems are obvious, but the county executive warned community members in the First Tuesday Breakfast Club that the solutions won't be speedy.

"There's not enough money, there's not enough time and when we start to put affordable housing on the ground some people aren't going to like it because it is in their neighborhood," Colwell said.

Since the Placer County Redevelopment Agency was formed in 1996, the county has been organizing itself to be able to spend the tax increments created by businesses in the redevelopment zone. Any taxes earned beyond the 1996 base must be spent in the Tahoe City, Lake Forest and Kings Beach areas, with 80 percent for economic development and 20 percent for affordable housing.

"Prior to redevelopment, there was no driving force in the county to do affordable housing," said Colwell.

The Placer County Board of Supervisors in the past three years is also more politically inclined to address the affordable housing issue as well, he said. In April 1999, the supervisors adopted an affordable housing strategy with three priorities: rehabilitating substandard housing, facilitate new affordable rental housing and establish a first-time homebuyers' program.

The county has $400,000 in funds to substantially rehabilitate 11 substandard homes and increase the number of homes to be weatherized from 11 to 26. Colwell says he has applied for another $200,000 grant for housing rehabilitation.

The second priority is to generate affordable multi-unit complexes, which will not be owned by the county.

"We don't want to build affordable housing ghettos," Colwell said.

The county has searched every parcel in the area to see which pieces of vacant land might be worth pursuing for affordable housing and potential sites were found in Squaw Valley, the Nahas property in Dollar Hill, the Stoker property in Kings Beach and in Northstar and Martis Valley.

"Either before I die or get fired from this job, we will do something on Stoker," Colwell joked, because the property's condition has been a longstanding issue.

The county has established an affordable housing mitigation fee for projects within North Tahoe, collecting $84,000 from the Lahontan development and projecting $2.1 million from the Intrawest project.

"This is very important money to us. We've never seen anything close to this kind of money," Colwell said.

Placer County wasn't able to require Intrawest to provide on-site housing for its development at the base of Squaw Valley USA, but the fee "was a major step."

The county will not build an affordable housing project itself, but it would help.

"The state doesn't build it. The county doesn't built it. Private developers don't build it without federal, state and county money. Unless the money flows from the top, it won't get on the ground," he said.

The third priority is to start a first-time homebuyers program and the procedures for it are currently being developed.

"We believe this is the biggest problem for housing in Placer County," Colwell said.