ENCINITAS — The General Plan Advisory Committee, (GPAC) met Monday to discuss mapping out the city’s future affordable housing placement.
The meeting followed on the heels of two housing workshops where the public participated in mapping exercises to help determine the housing placement.
150 “dots” were placed in quadrants throughout a map of the city. Each dot indicated where higher density, affordable housing should be placed. The activity was done in conjunction with updating the general plan.
In accordance with the state’s requirement to update each municipality’s housing element within its general plan, the city is seeking public input on where affordable housing should be located.
After reviewing the results of the mapping exercise by the group in April, members had plenty of feedback.
“There’s an awful lot in Leucadia,” said Gene Chapo, a former planning commissioner. “Just logically, we should all share the pain, should there be any. I’m not thrilled with the mapping exercise.”
Carolyn Cope said the results lend themselves to optimal affordable housing locations. She said the city has to focus affordable housing around public transportation and schools.
John Gjata said close proximity to public transportation need not be an overriding factor, as many people who qualify for affordable housing have their own vehicles.
There was no consensus among the group on creating greater dispersion of affordable housing within the current map. The current map, based on the committees’ choices, reflected the following dispersion of affordable housing: Cardiff with12 percent; Olivenhain at 8 percent; Leucadia at 24 percent; New Encinitas at 29 percent and Old Encinitas at 27 percent. The map was made up of 150 dots, with 15 people placing 10 dots each.
Lee Vance asked to what extent the map would shape city policy.
“This ends up giving direction to developing the policy map, obviously that goes through a process,” said Planning and Building Director Patrick Murphy.
Almost 500 people have participated in the mapping exercise according to Peder Norby, the group’s facilitator.
Patricia Klaus said the area that made the most sense was “the four corners” at the intersection of Encinitas Boulevard and Rancho Santa Fe Road. “There have been other attempts to develop,” she said. “The neighbors are going to protest no matter where we put 30 units per acre.”
Murphy said tabulations of the dots made during the public workshops had not begun, and the public is encouraged to participate in the mapping exercise from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. until May 24 at the city’s planning department.
“Everyone’s trying to defend their turf. That’s natural,” said Virginia Felker, a planning commissioner. “It would have been nice to have an overlay map that gave us some possibilities of where the dots could go.”
“It’s not a perfect science to be sure,” Norby said. “But it gives staff good direction.”
Kathleen Lees a Leucadia resident said, “We’re discussing raising density, not affordable housing.”
New housing developments in her neighborhood are a “nightmare,” she said, with lot line to lot line developments in the middle of existing, older homes.
3 comments
Good points made by kathleen2. No matter what the values of our community members–the actual citizens ALWAYS lose, and the developers and the City win. Many Encinitas residents are interested in seeing affordable housing so that their adult children and people who work in the area in low-paying industries can afford to live here. The truth is that developers dangle the incentive of building low-income housing in order to get maximum density, then they kick the low-income people out and make them live in rentals by the railroad tracks and convert the high density developments into market-rate homes. Think that Baumann Property.
As far as Pat Murphy and his planners using the dot exercises to come up with a plan, why would we assume that any valid conclusions could be reached at all since they gave the participants maps with errors and misleading information, and there were no controls–not even dots that they couldn’t move arround. The Planning Department is not qualified in any way to do this since the lack the educational qualifications and all previous attempts have been a complete failure. The Planning Department and Peder Norby, with their history of dishonesty, reflect poorly on the entire City and its workers–which is unfair to those who are actually dedicated to their jobs.
The future of Encinitas: GHETTO.
Supposedly this is being done to provide low income housing which in and of itself is homorable but the Catch 22 is that if you make the density 30 units or more per acre than you don’t have to have any of them be affordable!!! They can all be sold at market rate. This is not about low income housing.This is about increasing density along the coast so that developers can sell their condos at maret rate, ie plus or minus one million and the residents in the community get nothing. ERAC developers and realtors put all their dots in Leucadia, aong the coast and at Manchester and Interstate five, where one Carlsbad developer/realtor said he envisioned hundreds of condos.
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