How much more extreme is SJ's Opportunity Housing plan compared to SB9?

Gov. Newsom signed into law SB9, the wide-ranging upzoning law that effectively abolished single family home zoning in California and stripped cities of control of their own residential areas. Now, SJ housing advocates are promoting an even more radical local effort, euphemistically named Opportunity Housing, which takes SB9's increased densification, and nearly doubles it. Get ready for seven housing units on what used to be a one-unit lot. Former SJ Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio (who served on a prior SJ City General Plan Task Force which protected neighborhoods) and Families and Homes leader Tobin Gilman survey the potential damage.

Opportunity Now: Let's compare Opportunity Housing with SB9: Which is more extreme? Does one allow for greater densification than the other?

Pierluigi Oliverio: Opportunity Housing is much, much more extreme. With SB9 you can get four new units on what is now a single family lot. With Opportunity Housing, you can get seven.

Tobin Gilman: SB9 requires you to at least formally subdivide your lot. SB9 also requires owners to live in the subdivided lots for three years. Opportunity Housing doesn't do either of those things, offering a substantial incentive to big developers to start tearing down old buildings and neighborhoods as soon as it passes, if it does. SB9 also doesn't allow for multiple ADU's, the way Opportunity Housing does.

ON: Let me get this straight: you are saying that Opportunity Housing allows for a 700% increase in densification over what has been San Jose's historic zoning restrictions (pre-ADU's)? And SB9 increases it by 400%? Wow. We didn't see that in the Merc.

PO: Yes. Both are very dramatic potential changes to the neighborhoods most people currently live in and expect to live in.

ON: One of the best practices of business and governments is to test small before you go big. The state--or city--isn't doing that with SB9. It sounds premature to consider Opportunity Housing--on top of SB9--when we don't have a few years of experience with SB9 to see how it works. For that matter, in SJ, we didn't even test the urban village model before we pre-empted it with SB9. From a governance perspective, why on Earth would a local government implement an even more extreme effort on the heels of a statewide effort that hasn't even been tested yet? Isn't that reckless?

PL: Yes, it is. Pragmatism would have you wait to see what the results are of the state law and its impact. However, for those that are pushing to eliminate single-family home zoning, they want to have it done as quickly as possible and would probably want even more extreme measures.

ON: During the advocacy period of SB 9,proponents said we really need to pass it because of our housing crisis and all the new housing it would bring. Now that it's passed, you read a UC Berkeley report that says, well, the problem with SB9 is that hardly anybody is going to do it and if we want to make a dent in the housing crisis we need to be much more aggressive. Is that the sound of goalposts moving?

TG: Throughout the Opportunity Housing debate in San Jose, we've been hearing people talk out of two sides of their mouths. On one side, it's about creating opportunities for the missing middle. But then on the other side, at the same time, they were saying that current homeowners shouldn't worry, it will be light and spread out. There have been two narratives and I think it's whatever narrative works for whatever audience you're talking to. But regardless of what it ultimately does, these bills are clearly a first step. It's not the end game for the housing advocates. So anything they can do to start making progress toward the goal of universal densification is what they want to do.

PO: It's worth pointing out that the proponents of these bills did not choose just parts of California or San Jose as eligible for this upzoning--they chose the whole state and the whole city. It's illogical to suggest they are creating this model knowing it won't apply to a large swath of the affected areas. They want more dense housing everywhere, that's why these bills are written the way they are.

TG: And all it takes is one or two new duplexes or quadplexes on a street to utterly change the character of the street. It's going to be pretty traumatic to the people in those neighborhoods.

ON: In the current discussion of increasing housing in San Jose, in the Bay Area, it's always about citywide densification. There's another way to increase the housing supply without densification, and that's to build more affordable, small homes in the 80% or 90% of Santa Clara County that's rural. Why do we treat the urban growth boundary as sacrosanct? Why can't we loosen that up just a bit and take, say, five percent of Coyote Valley and build a lot of really affordable housing there? If we like, we could zone it for super dense, also. Remember, not so long ago, South San Jose was rural land, too. The world did not stop when we developed it.

PO: Environmental groups do not want building in rural areas surrounding metro cities, even though that would work for the argument of 'more housing is always good.' Environmental groups prefer not to see that because of the belief in the vehicle miles traveled would be extended and more devastating to the environment. The housing advocates have made their alliance with environmental groups, so they push other methods such as densifying inside a growth boundary decided on nearly 50 years ago. If everyone's concerned about the lowest cost of housing possible, then clearly allowing housing to be anywhere and everywhere should be something that they would consider and study.

Ultimately, you have to balance new housing growth with quality of life. I think the current general plan in San Jose does that by locating housing in a smart growth manner, which is good for the environment, and affordability. And doing so in a way that creates a sense of place, a bigger, grander downtown with avenues that are on transportation corridors, does all that, which increases the population by 40% while simultaneously preserving single-family house neighborhoods.

TG:. San Jose always does more than its fair share of housing, but it has done it, historically, in a way that still preserves what makes San Jose a great city: vibrant neighborhoods that people enjoy. Where they can really build relationships and friendships on their blocks. Where they can appreciate the aspects of the lifestyle that they sacrificed for and saved for. It's just not fair to change the rules on those people without their input and voice.

A lot of the people that want to come to San Jose-- or that live in San Jose and want to stay in San Jose--dream of someday having their own house. And while we don't know what the adoption rate is going to be of converting single-family houses to duplexes, we do know this: It will shrink the inventory of single-family houses, which will just make single-family houses even less affordable to that first time homebuyer than they are today.

PO: One thing that's disappointed me on this discussion is this: Housing advocates, even Housing Department staffers, say "Oh, only wealthy people own single-family homes." That is divisive nonsense. San Jose is so diverse, so many different neighborhoods. To tell someone who sacrificed a lot and say that they're now "wealthy" when they have to service a huge mortgage and pay all the associated taxes and upkeep of the property is just wildly out of touch with the financial reality the vast majority of homeowners live with every day.

Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity.