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e • BAY AREA I nVILIII. IND1,11x, Ayyutienov May 17, 2018 Transmitted via EMAIL The Honorable Mayor Ian Bain City of Redwood City Council City of Redwood City 1017 Middlefield Rd. Redwood City CA 94063 RE: May 21, 2018 City Council Meeting - Inclusionary Housing Ordinance Dear Mayor Bain and Councilmembers, H1:: t,Ei,%ti=C) R MAY 17 2018 Clip of City City Uork BIA Bay Area appreciates the opportunity to comment on the Redwood City's consideration of modifications to its below market rate housing programs. BIA supports the City's efforts to address Affordable Housing programs, however grave concern remains with Staff recommended options as outlined in the report to the Planning Commission. If the AB 1505 transition to Inclusionary as recommended by Staff is adopted, many hundreds of units may be indefinitely delayed or go away altogether. That's the opposite of what's needed to address housing affordability and homelessness challenges. Creating market rate housing is what ultimately enables people to avoid displacement, exit homelessness, start careers and afford to live in a region with irreversibly high housing costs. It is an undisputed fact that there is a need for the Silicon Valley region to address the crisis of housing affordability throughout the Bay Area, including Redwood City. However, BIA members are very concerned to see BMR inclusionary housing program recommendations in the Staff Report that would represent a astounding increase over the existing Affordable Housing Impact Fee, severely restrict means of compliance options and impose rapid shifts in policy. Housing affordability has become a crisis due to the overall lack of housing supply, recent explosive regional job growth, the termination of redevelopment by the state legislature and other economic, political and social factors that should be addressed by society at large, not allocated solely to builders of market -rate housing. The Staff report relies heavily on the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) to attempt to quantify the need in the community for various affordability levels of housing. However, in March of 2017 the Legislative Analyst Office contended in its report "Do Communities Adequately Plan for Housing?" that RHNA alone is an inadequate tool to measure housing need because RHNA fails to anticipate the kinds of housing consumers are demanding and builders are willing to construct. BIA recognizes that the Redwood City likely will follow the trend of other Bay Area cities in adopting AB 1505. In this case, BIA Bay Area strongly suggests that 1) to slow the rapid escalation of housing fees and therefore a housing slowdown due to the depression of residual land value, worsening the effects of the housing crisis; 2) to maintain competitiveness for future housing, jobs and transportation investment by