City Leaders Aim to Overhaul Regulations for Accessory Dwelling Units, but Impact on Affordable Housing Remains to be Seen

City Council to discuss spending millions on infrastructure projects during Wednesday's Capital Improvement Plan study session; MUSD School Board honors classified employees of the year

Editor’s note: The following report from freelance writer Tom Lochner on last week’s City Council/Planning Commission study session on Accessory Dwelling Unit regulations was made possible by the financial support of paid subscribers and other donors to Martinez News and Views.

By Tom Lochner

The Martinez City Council and the Planning Commission met jointly last week to discuss Accessory Dwelling Units or ADUs — essentially, second homes on single-family properties — aiming to streamline the approval process to increase housing supply and perhaps help fulfill state-mandated affordable housing requirements.

The city needs to update the Martinez Municipal Code to conform with recent state-level policy changes. The city's ADU ordinance was last amended in 2007, and some of it has become outdated as state requirements and the overall housing situation have evolved.

The ADU ordinance overhaul goes along with an update to the Housing Element that all California cities must perform every eight years while detailing plans for building enough housing for people of various income levels, including low income. Like many other cities, Martinez missed the state's Jan. 31 deadline to certify its updated Housing Element.

A staff report accompanying the meeting, which took place on March 22, includes a table that compares city and state development standards and recommends changes to city rules. The report is available at https://legistarweb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/pdf/1844541/ADU_Staff_Report_20230322.pdf. 

State regulations allow, as accessories to a single-family home, one ADU plus one Junior ADU (JADU) — that's a unit up to 500 square feet carved out of the existing home.

Under the state regulations, local jurisdictions must set "objective" standards for ADU features including unit size, building height, setbacks, parking and landscaping. That means they cannot be subject to personal or subjective judgment by officials, and can be verified according to criteria available to applicants and officials prior to submittal. Assistant Planner Brandon Northart, who presented the report, noted that the city's powers to regulate ADUs are limited under the new state rules. 

After preliminary review by the state Department of Housing and Community Development, expected to be completed in April, the city's proposed new ADU regulations are slated to go before the city's Planning Commission in May, followed by a first reading before the City Council in June and a second reading in July. If adopted, the regulations would be submitted to the state later in July.

Northart sought feedback from the council and Planning Commission in nine specific areas: unit size, height, parking, owner occupancy, privacy, design standards, building separation, the variance or exception process, and affordable housing-related exceptions. 

Not many ADUs have been built — at least legally — in Martinez in recent years. Vice Mayor Mark Ross, who also is a real estate broker, estimated between 50 and 70 in the past 10 years. 

Another problem is the extent to which ADUs can, realistically, help alleviate the city's affordable housing shortage, given current economic conditions and the cost of building an ADU, especially when interest rates are high.

One Martinez resident who said he lives on a one-acre property commented that he had already spent $25,000 and had yet to obtain a building permit for an ADU intended to house his elderly father-in-law. The resident said he has run into a building height problem related to the lot's slope, and has received conflicting information from sanitary district officials as to whether he can build over a sewer lateral. He also reported that he has had to plan for an attached unit after running into problems over his initial plan for a detached unit. "I just thought this was going to be a lot easier than it was," he told the panel, noting that there is "a lot of bureaucracy."

Also commenting during the public comment period was Michael Galloway, representing Leapadu, an East Bay-based company that promotes "luxurious minimalist living" in the form of  quickly deliverable, "vehicular residential facilities" — essentially mobile homes, as one official noted later in the evening, adding that all dwelling units in Martinez must have a permanent foundation. 

Referring to more traditional ADUs, Galloway noted: "Affordable housing, with these interest rates — it's not feasible." While an original idea behind ADUs was that they should be affordable housing, Galloway said, "the ADU industry saw this as a building opportunity," leading to not-so-affordable projects like "yoga studios in people's backyards for $250,000."

Another public commenter mentioned facing a height limit problem with an ADU that her client planned above an existing garage.

AirBnB short-term rentals came up for discussion, too. There are no city regulations addressing them, and therefore they are not permitted, an official said. Another explained that short-term rentals are not residential uses but commercial uses akin to hotels and motels, and are therefore prohibited in residential zones.

Other topics raised at the March 22 meeting that could be discussed in the future included possible affordability covenants in exchange for variances, among other incentives for more development of affordable housing.

In the end, officials opted for a 1,200-square-foot ADU size limit; a 5-foot building separation between a main residential unit and its detached ADU; an 18-foot height limit for most ADUs; no owner-occupancy requirement; and a requirement of one parking space per ADU, but with exceptions for attached ADUs and ADUs near mass transit, or in a historic district, or in areas with parking permits or car share availability. 

They also recommended keeping the current variance standard for projects exceeding design and development standards while replacing the Conditional Use Permit process with a less burdensome "exception" process. 

The City’s existing regulations for ADUs (referred to as “secondary housing units”) are in the Martinez Municipal Code Section 22.12.085 as a subsection to MMC Chapter 22.12. Here is the link: https://library.municode.com/ca/martinez/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=CD_ORD_TIT22ZO_CH22.12REDI_22.12.085SEHOUNPEUS.

The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) has approved the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) Plan. A report is available at https://abag.ca.gov/our-work/housing/rhna-regional-housing-needs-allocation. 

HCD's ADU handbook is available at https://legistarweb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/pdf/1844544/Attachment_1_-_ADUHandbookUpdate.pdf

Meanwhile, in other news this week…

Capital Improvement Plan study session planned for Wednesday

The City Council continues its string of study sessions on various topics tonight (March 29) with a discussion of the city’s proposed five-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) starting at 7 p.m. It will be held in person at the Council Chamber and on Zoom.

The plan, which focuses heavily on roads, water, parks and other infrastructure needs, will cover the 2023/24 through 2027/28 fiscal years. The council adopts an updated five-year CIP every two years, allocating funding for current and proposed projects over the following two-year capital budget cycle. That will cover the 2023-24 and 2024-25 fiscal years this go-round. The council is expected to adopt the budget in June.

Among the major continuing projects proposed for additional funding over the next cycle:

• J Street Bridge – west bank repairs under bridge: $260,000

• Alhambra Creek vegetation management and sediment removal: $150,000

• City Hall improvements: $200,000

• Park at Pine Meadows – Phase 1: $2 million

• Hidden Valley Park Pickleball: $1.6 million

• Mountain View Park Basketball Court Replacement: $300,000

Topping the list of proposed projects over the next two years are a $6 million pavement resurfacing project for 2023-24 and another $6 million toward pavement rehabilitation in 2024-25.

In terms of water, the big-ticket items are $2 million water main replacement projects in both 2024 and 2025 and another $2 million dedicated toward the Arnold Drive pump station replacement.

Speaking of water main failures, it’s a growing nationwide problem that was recently addressed in this Washington Post opinion piece titled: A mostly hidden problem wastes appalling amounts of water. A snippet:

Much of the country’s water infrastructure was built after 1972, when the Clean Water Act was passed. That means a good portion of the system is reaching the end of its life span. One study found that water main breaks increased 27 percent between 2012 and 2018. The American Water Works Association projects that most of the nation’s drinking water pipes will have to be repaired or replaced by 2040.

Finally, staff is proposing to spend $2.5 million during the next cycle on fishing pier renovations and repairs at the marina.

Looking to 2025 and beyond, major proposed projects include more water main replacements and pavement resurfacing; $1 million for a new pool deck at Rankin Aquatic Center; $7 million for the Muir Oaks tank and hydro-pneumatic replacement; and $4.6 million in marina-related work (improving the eastern seawall and dredging). They won’t receive funding until the next two-year budget cycle is adopted in 2025.

The full staff report on the five-year Capital Improvement Plan, listing current and proposed projects, can be found here: https://legistarweb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/pdf/1857229/Staff_Report_5_Year_CIP_Workshop_with_tlh_comment_re._J_Street_bridge.pdf

The agenda for tonight’s study session, including Zoom log-in information, can be found here: https://martinez.granicus.com/DocumentViewer.php?file=martinez_59fc9c483d409accda63032bd231b544.pdf&view=1

School District honors classified employees of the year

The Martinez Unified School District honored its site classified employees of the year, including the districtwide classified employee of the year, during a presentation at Monday’s School Board meeting.

Alhambra High School office manager Gardner Daniels was named district classified employee of the year.

Caroline Cota, the district’s director of personnel services, said the following in presenting the award to Daniels:

He always lends a helping hand to anyone who needs it, no matter how big or small the task may be. Whether it’s answering a question about school policies, managing administrative tasks or simply lending a listening ear, Gardner is always there for us. He had to take a day off, and we were afraid we were going to have to close the school.

Other classified employees of the year for school sites are as follows:

• District Office: Glenn Howell, groundskeeper

• John Muir Elementary: Denise Brown, licensed vocational nurse

• John Swett Elementary: Samantha Casanova, paraeducator C

• Las Juntas Elementary: Iliana Ruan, paraeducator bilingual

• Martinez Adult Education: Alisia Swafford, secretary

• Martinez Junior High School: Lisa Holliday, paraeducator health attendant

• Morello Park Elementary: Maureen Rumbaugh, paraeducator health attendant

• Vicente Martinez High School/Briones: Kristen Canepa, campus supervisor

The meeting video with the awards presentation can be viewed here, starting at about the 1 hour, 11-minute mark:

Congratulations to all!