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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

November 4, 2005

Greenbelt group look to support affordable homes

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The Greenbelt Alliance, a regional policy advocacy group that studies the nine-county Bay Area, is looking to alleviate that trend.

In a report released Thursday, called "Through the Roof: Solano County's Housing Crisis," the alliance documents the local housing problem and advocates for local governments to create policies that promote much more affordable housing.

Up to 20 percent of development in the county's fastest-growing cities should be subsidized and reserved for affordable housing that could be purchased by teachers, firefighters and low-income residents who are part of the community.

"Just as you require sewer and parks, you require a developer to provide affordable housing," said Evelyn Stivers, with the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California.

The buzz word for government intervention in California's expensive housing market is "inclusionary housing" policies.

And some Bay Area municipalities are leading the way. Livermore, for instance, has created a program that helps subsidize homes for low-income residents and first-year teachers, Stivers said.

Locally, Benicia has introduced an ordinance that promotes affordable housing, but development is so minimal in the city that it will have a small impact on the county as a whole, said Kate O'Hara, regional issues organizer of the Greenbelt Alliance.

"Twenty percent of zero is still zero," she said.

Advocates have their sights set on some of the fastest-growing cities in the county - Vacaville, Fairfield, Vallejo and Dixon - to pass some incentives to create more affordable housing.

The Alliance's report, completed jointly with the Solano Housing Coalition, shows that there definitely is room for improvement.

Between 1999 and 2003, Solano County and its seven cities approved many more market-rate homes than they did houses intended to be affordable for families earning the median income or below.

The dynamic creates some strange trends. While former Bay Area residents come to Solano for less expensive housing, some people already in the county are displaced to the surrounding area.

Linda Gunnerson, 51, a child support worker in Solano County, said she couldn't find a suitable house in the Fairfield even with a job that pays her more than $40,000 and despite the fact that she qualified for a first-time homebuyer program.

Gunnerson recently bought a home in West Sacramento and will leave her employment soon to avoid the 45-minute commute. She said that, had there been townhomes available in Fairfield, she'd have stayed, shopped downtown and avoided the freeways.

"Right now I leave when its dark, I get home when it gets dark," she said.

Jason Massad can be reached atcounty@thereporter.com.

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