Proposed amount won’t require Measure C to be amended
Morgan Hill – The Association of Bay Area Governments is asking the city of Morgan Hill to build 1,366 housing units by 2014.
That proposed amount is 1,118 units fewer than ABAG’s last housing allocation for Morgan Hill, handed down in 1999, and means the city won’t have to amend its growth control ordinance to meet ABAG’s housing goal.
The amount of housing cities and counties must plan for is determined through interplay of state, regional and local housing policy.
Between 1999 and June 2006, ABAG asked Morgan Hill to supply 2,848 housing units. Morgan Hill passed that hurdle because of an unusual backlog of more than 900 units that were applied to the total, but were approved prior to 1999.
Measure C, passed by voters in 2004, allows about 250 units to be built per year in Morgan Hill. During a seven-year stretch, about 1,750 units could be constructed.
The California Department of Housing and Community Development periodically assigns a Regional Housing Needs Allocation to each region in California.
The regional allocations are then divided among individual jurisdictions. The Bay Area is currently performing the fourth revision of its housing needs plan for 2007 to 2014.
As the council of governments for the nine Bay Area counties, state law requires ABAG to determine the existing and projected housing need for its region by allocating the regional housing numbers provided by the state.
ABAG’s projected housing allocation numbers for the next seven years ask Santa Clara County to add 60,775 units, or 2,784 more than the previous seven years. San Jose is being asked to add more than 6,000 more units than it did between 1999 and 2006.
Of the 1,366 Morgan Hill could be required to build, 23 percent would have to be for very-low income families, 16 percent for low income, 19 percent for moderate income and 42 percent for above moderate income.
A 60-day public comment period on the housing needs allocation methodology for the 2007-2014 period closes on Jan. 18, 2007. On that date, ABAG staff will recommend a final methodology that includes responses to all comments received on the proposed housing needs allocation.
The Draft Regional Housing Needs Allocation Methodology can be downloaded at www.abag.ca.gov/planning/housingneeds.
Tony Burchyns covers Morgan Hill for The Times. Reach him at (408) 779-4106 ext. 201 or tb*******@*************es.com.
