Ventura County Civic Alliance — Livable Communities Newsletter – February 15, 2023

Higher-Density Housing in Ventura

by Dawn Dyer

As a housing market analyst with over 30 years of experience in Ventura County, I was asked to offer my perspective regarding the new higher-density residential buildings being developed in the City of Ventura; and how they fit into the existing housing market. In my professional opinion, the addition of higher-density infill housing is good for the community and is exactly what should be happening at this point in the housing cycle.

Ventura, like the rest of the state, has a housing shortage that has contributed to a housing affordability crisis. California has been under producing housing for decades. The Legislative Analyst’s Office concluded that the state should have built 70,000-100,000 more housing units per year, each year from 1980 to 2010 to keep up with demand, resulting in a shortfall of nearly 3.5 million new homes that Governor Newsom says are needed by 2025. Numerous new laws have been passed in recent years to support the creation of required housing, and to limit the discretionary authority cities have historically used to limit or deny new developments.

Although Ventura County is part of the dynamic Southern California region, growth control measures have been in place for decades that restrict development to within urban growth boundaries. With nearly 97% of Ventura County’s land area designated as agriculture or open space, developable land is limited, and falls far short of what’s needed for new housing. In recent years, the price of land has increased along with other development costs from lumber to labor, governmental fees, and insurance. As a result of this structural imbalance between the demand for and supply of housing, home prices are rising much faster than incomes. By the end of 2022, only 16% of Ventura County households could afford to purchase a median-price single-family home (CA Assoc. of Realtors)–down from 24% of households in 2021.At $818,000 in December 2022, the Ventura County median home price has soared 83% in ten years, from $446,150 in December 2012.

The local housing shortage is also evidenced by the perennially low vacancy rate for Ventura County apartments, which has remained at or below 3% for most of the past three decades–far less than the 5% vacancy rate that is deemed to represent a healthy housing market. Due to tight market conditions, local rents have also been escalating at a faster rate in recent years, with the countywide overall average rent in July 2022 at$2,454/mo., up 67% from $1,467 in July 2012 (based on the Dyer Sheehan Group study of nearly 21,000 apartment units countywide).

In the City of Ventura, housing production since 2010 has dropped off sharply with an average growth rate of only 2.7%, compared to 7.6% growth between 2000-2010, and has been much slower than the countywide housing growth rate of 3.7% since 2010, and 11.9% from 2000-2009. (City of Ventura 2021-2029 Housing Element).

Housing availability and affordability are issues at all income levels and impact employers’ ability to attract and retain qualified employees. The city has an Inclusionary Housing Ordinance that requires a specific percentage of units in newly built housing developments to be designated as “affordable housing”. In addition to more “deed-restricted” affordable housing to serve lower-income residents, Ventura also needs more quality market-rate housing to provide homes for our local workforce. While the City of Ventura’s employment base has been expanding, with the largest job clusters in the relatively well-paying health services and business services sectors, the shortage of housing options represents a definite threat to the City’s economic vitality. Ventura has done a great job of incubating some very successful companies with employees who, despite earning strong salaries, are not yet ready to buy a home. Instead, they seek quality rental housing, preferably located within walking distance to restaurants and services. Based on the DSG study of nearly 4,000 apartment units in the City of Ventura, the average property is 50 years old, most offering smaller apartment units lacking modern amenities, and many of which have deferred maintenance. Young professionals working in our community deserve the option of living in modern, clean, safe, and attractive apartment homes like those being built today.

In 2005, consistent with the community values expressed by voters to protect open space and agricultural lands, Ventura adopted a General Plan Update that focused on infill development, intensification, and re-use of underutilized sites to meet its future housing needs. Design standards were adopted for many community areas that reflected these goals. These higher-density projects being built reflect the City’s infill development strategy, combined with state laws that allow increased density for projects that provide additional affordable housing.

Home prices and rents, as well as investment in new development, are all influenced by a myriad of factors, including macro-economic conditions, interest rates, demographic trends, legislation, and public sentiment. The growth in the number of multi-family projects being built in Ventura, and elsewhere, is in response to increased demand for new apartments from a growing segment of the population.

In addition to traditional renters, there has been a sharp rise in “renters by choice”, including active seniors, who love the lock-and-leave freedom of apartments, and people living alone, who in 2019 made up 29% of Ventura households. Many young professionals are simply not yet ready to settle into owning a home. They want to keep their options open to pursue other opportunities and prefer spending free time surfing rather than mowing lawns. Even households with strong incomes and credit scores may not be able to save the $160,000 needed for a 20% down payment, nor have the income needed to qualify for a mortgage given the sharp rise in interest rates. Many of the newer projects being built in Ventura are designed for these non-traditional types of renters.

It should also be noted that due to the lengthy timeframes required to secure entitlements and financing for new development, many of the projects currently coming out of the ground in Ventura have been in planning for years. Real estate is cyclical. One of the reasons we are seeing new apartments being built now is that they finally make economic sense. For many years, rents in Ventura did not support the cost of building new market rate apartments. Apartment developers simply could not compete with condominium developers, who could pay significantly more for the limited amount of land zoned for multi-family. However, over the past decade, the impacts of construction defect litigation, combined with mortgage rule changes after the Great Recession, made condominiums less attractive to build and harder to finance. Resulting market conditions currently create a window of opportunity for apartment construction that will not continue indefinitely. Rent appreciation will be limited by wage growth. With construction costs rising and increased interest rates, it’s becoming harder again for new projects to make economic sense. We must take advantage of this opportunity now to create new apartments to serve our community and support our economy.

Taking a Drive by Ventura’s New Higher-Density Housing

by Kerry Roscoe

Starting on Main Street in a stretch across from Ventura High are several construction sites for higher-density housing in Mid-town. The first section, shown above, has a distinctly modern feel, but is contiguous with units of a more traditional Spanish style that are a step down in height as they move down the block to where single-story houses are the norm.

Dropping down to Thompson Blvd and continuing toward town, we find another traditional style that has kept the existing trees, softening the building’s impact. Height varies across the building.

Just beyond the intersection with San Jon, more contemporary housing is being erected that is within walking distance from the beach.

It spans the depth of the block toward Santa Clara Street. Adjacent is open land for development.

Ventura’s new higher-density housing is not limited to mid-town and downtown. In the east end along Wells Road in Saticoy there are several new projects. One is adjacent to a medical clinic there.

Another is adjacent to earlier varied developments at Wells and Darling Roads where there is still plenty of land to be developed. This building has a commercial element with a small market on the corner at street level.

Connecting Transportation and Land Use –

Getting Over Our Fear of Congestion

by Vanessa Rauschenberger

Transportation for America’s “The Congestion Con” (https://t4america.org/maps-tools/congestion-con/) examines why eliminating congestion might actually be the wrong goal for us to have when thinking about our cities future population growth. The case is made for embracing some acceptance of congestion as an ally in keeping streets safer by reducing speeds and encouraging people to consider investing in other modes of travel vs. spending billions to expand roads that can make congestion worse by a counterintuitive but well-documented phenomenon known as induced demand.

While for many of us driving in our cars is a fact of life that we don’t think will change anytime soon, we should not ignore the fact that in Ventura County (State of the Region Report in 2021) about 30-40% of the population around us is comprised of those under 18 and over 65. These population groups are more likely not to want to drive as much as the rest of us, and have traditionally relied more on alternative modes of travel in order to access the places they need to go.

Letting go of the focus on “reducing congestion” is going to take a long time to change, especially after many decades of policies and laws that required using “Level of Service or LOS” to measure impacts of a development.

Letting go of this focus, enables us to focus instead on opportunities to look for better and more effective ways for people to get around at all stages of life. When considering the high cost of housing and car ownership, as well as the value of land, the opportunities for land use changes become apparent almost everywhere you look. In the Google Maps image below, a shopping center parking lot is an example of an opportunity to rethink the use of space. Most of the year it is half empty, no one enjoys walking across and it is difficult to serve by transit.

Investing in training and education about retrofitting spaces like this can be beneficial for the current and future residents of Ventura County, serving more people within the same land use footprint, generating more economic value per acre, and lowering transportation costs for cities.

Being comfortable with accepting some “congestion” allows us to look differently at the spaces we have around us, and opens up our thinking about how to make them more accessible by walking, biking, transit, with opportunities for relaxation, shady green places for strolling, dining and enjoyment outdoors.

Looking around Ventura County and thinking about the popular destinations people gather at today, can be a good starting point. Take, for example, Main Street or The Collection which are popular really because of the slower street speeds that allow the ability to walk from place to place, not because of wide open streets or big parking lots. As congestion and traffic grows, so does the demand for alternative solutions like walking, biking and transit – making them more cost effective to provide, especially when the destinations are connected along corridors.

Planning for more people with less focus on reducing “congestion” and more on connecting people in a variety of ways provides numerous cost and safety benefits:

So, next time you’re feeling fear of congestion, take a moment to contemplate it as a necessary step in motivating action toward a more livable community for future – a place where people of all ages will want to be.