Near the end of Tuesday’s Planning Commission meeting, Planning Manager Patrick LeClair announced a significant first for the city of Santa Clarita: a study session on affordable housing is being scheduled ahead of the City Council meeting next month at Santa Clarita City Hall.
The housing crisis is a hot-button topic throughout California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom has created goals for millions of homes to address a statewide shortage.
“We are holding a study session with the City Council on affordable housing on Oct. 7,” City Manager Ken Striplin wrote Thursday in an email from Carrie Lujan, director of communications for the city. “The focus is to review the current affordable housing programs and to seek guidance on creating an overall policy on affordable housing to guide future efforts and to prioritize funding.”
In terms of affordable housing, the Santa Clarita City Council has seen very few projects make it through the city’s planning process to the dais for council review.
There have been two recent discussions on the topic: an affordable-housing project was pitched for Flying Tiger Drive in Canyon Country; and another off Soledad Canyon Road, where the developer asked about paying the city instead of building the affordable-housing component of its project.
The Southern California Association of Governments assigned Santa Clarita a regional housing need of 10,031 homes for the current eight-year cycle, including 5,131 units affordable to lower-income households, per the city’s housing element.
“While the city is not obligated to build these units, it is obligated to ensure that sufficient sites with appropriate zoning are available throughout the planning period to accommodate the city’s RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Allocation), by income group,” according to the element. “Only a small fraction of the units constructed in Santa Clarita over the last planning period have been provided as affordable to lower-income households.”
Santa Clarita Mayor Pro Tem Laurene Weste said in an interview that an affordable-housing policy is something the City Council has talked about for “eons.”
“First of all, I want to know opportunities, and we’ll look at funding, and look at design, size, places it can fit,” she said, “and all the opportunities that are necessary to make good, balanced, affordable housing.”
Weste and Councilwoman Patsy Ayala also said there’s a need to look at the demographics for the city in terms of need and see how the issue can be addressed.
“I think one of the things that’s really necessary is to look at who needs housing most desperately,” Weste said. “And I would say a lot of it is single moms with kids. Of course, we need affordable housing for all populations. But it can be a model to be efficient, smaller — a lot of discussion about efficiency and size.”
The city’s lack of a formal policy has come up more than once in recent months.
During the discussion of Metro Walk, a Lost Canyon Road subdivision that the Planning Commission is expected to review again soon, the developer asked about the potential to pay an in-lieu fee instead of building affordable units.
City staff said that with no policy or justification for what it might charge, it would not be advised to assess such a fee and instead gave the developer more time to find funding for the affordable-housing component.
Santa Clarita’s element notes “affordable housing” costs no more than 30% of a low-, very low-, or extremely low-income household’s gross monthly income.
For rentals, residents may pay up to 30% of gross income on rent, plus tenant-paid utilities. For homeownership, residents can pay up to 30% on the combination of mortgage payments, taxes, insurance and homeowners’ dues, according to the city’s housing element.
The housing element also looked at the spread of income throughout the Santa Clarita Valley, which noted in 2021 that 8.2% of households were experiencing poverty, with the county average just under 15% at the time.
“Median incomes over $125,000 in Santa Clarita can be found dispersed throughout the northern, central and eastern tracts,” according to the housing element. “Households earning less than $87,100 are primarily located in central Santa Clarita, while households earning between $87,100 and $125,000 are located more towards the outer edges of the city. Twelve census block groups have households that earn less than $55,000, and one block group in western Santa Clarita near Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital has a median income that earns less than $30,000.”
Ayala’s District 1 includes Newhall, parts of western Canyon Country, and some of the few areas, including Walnut Street, where affordable housing has been planned or already exists in the city.
When asked in an interview if she thought affordable housing was an issue in Santa Clarita, she said affordability was an issue in general. “But of course we need to understand that we have different families, different incomes, and I think it’s good to address the studies to address that issue.”
She also said there wouldn’t be any action taken at the study session, but it would be a chance to “analyze the reality of the housing needs and demographics in our city.”
