San Carlos makes plans for new housing

Many of those changes include upzoning and increasing density in residential areas to accommodate about 3,900 new housing units, well over what the state is demanding of the city. But unlike the city’s draft housing element, which has yet to be approved by the state, the updated general plan would identify enough sites for 4,900 units.

Planning Manager Lisa Porras said the general plan calls out more housing units because the document doesn’t have to face the same scrutiny the housing element does from the state which expects there to be a feasible understanding the site could be redeveloped.

Without that requirement, the city can include sites that are not likely to be developed in the next few years within its count. Unlike the housing element, the general plan also calls out housing on school district facilities as an acceptable use of the grounds.

Planning Commissioner Ellen Garvey said she was happy to see housing on district-owned property added as a policy in the general plan and noted many education agencies have either pursued or have begun to explore the idea.

The San Mateo County Community College District now has three sites of its own, the Burlingame School District has begun discussing the idea of building staff housing and South San Francisco School District officials have called out the use as a goal in its bond measure campaign.

“I enjoyed many of the new things that are in the draft doc that you sent us, one of them was recognizing that housing is an allowed use on school sites,” Garvey said. “I don’t know if San Carlos [School District] has the real estate to do that but it’s nice to see it contemplated from a policy standpoint.”

Other proposed policy changes within the general plan include a suggestion the city consider reducing parking requirements for multi-family residential developments, expanding noise policies across the city, requiring developers to follow adhere to updated zoning ordinances when redeveloping or restoring existing structures and potentially reducing groundfloor commercials requirements for developers seeking to build mostly residential units along commercial roads.

Commissioner Kristen Clements suggested staff revisit the commercial requirement change out of concern it could negatively affect the types of uses in mixed-use areas. That policy was also called into question by the City Council that, when considering the draft housing element, agreed it should be further discussed and studied as part of the city’s downtown specific plan process.

“I just want to make sure we support a variety of uses over time, as long as the rest of the allowed uses are compatible, so we’re achieving a wide variety of possibilities in these places,” Clements said. “I’m sure of course they want to build something that allows for more income-producing above. I totally understand that but you would think they would also want to maximize uses on the ground floor.”

Commissioners will revisit the general plan update in early January, giving staff just more than two months to field additional questions and make adjustments where needed, a time frame Porras said is tight given the state’s housing element timeline.

The state has not yet certified the city’s housing element which likely won’t be formally adopted by the council until closer to the state deadline of Jan. 23. If the city does not have a housing element that’s been approved by the state and adopted by the deadline, a builder’s remedy would kick in, removing land control from the county and allowing developers to bypass zoning laws if their projects contain an adequate amount of affordable housing.

“Quite frankly, what we’re under pressure for is the deadline required by the state Department of Housing and Community Development for an adopted housing element,” Porras said. “So that makes it in our best interest to try to answer as much as we can upfront to make sure we’re very successful at getting the housing element adopted by the end of January.”

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