Last month, Ventura County based Housing Opportunities Made Easier (HOME) hosted their 17thannual Housing Conference at the Ventura County Schools Offices in Camarillo. All presenters responded to the conference theme of Leading the Way: Challenges, Innovations, Solutionsby sharing their insights, ideas, and experiences with creative methodologies meant to respond to the complexities of housing development in the State of California, and the County of Ventura.
Previous conferences have long ago established infill housing as the only appropriate model of development for Ventura County. With land use policies which focus development into existing urban settings, and a need to respond to a younger generation of workers that seek alternatives to single family detached housing typologies, the production of infill housing has become our only means of meeting our housing crisis.
Last year the focus of the discussion was the need to respond to our political challenges: How can we help our elected officials build enough political will to stand tall in the face strong public resistance, and approve often controversial infill projects of higher density? The response to that question: form broad-based coalitions of citizens whose membership includes not only developers and builders, but business owners, social equity organizations, and students about to enter the workforce — anyone faced with finding a place to live in our region.
Given last year’s call to action, Dr. Matthew Fienup, an economist and executive director of the California Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting has been instrumental in the formation of the Housing Solutions Group Collaborative, a coalition of County residents and community leaders that serve as advocates for policies that support housing development.
The panel that followed presented innovative new tools to help municipalities and developers identify new housing opportunities through creative solutions to land-use issues.
Don Monti, Renaissance Downtown USA, spoke of the need to build positive supportive partnerships among developers, government, and residents built on a shared vision that looks at the “big picture.” Mr. Monti touted what he called the “Triple Bottom-Line Analysis” where any plan that hopes to receive broad based political and community support must insure that Social, Environmental, and Economic Responsibilities are all integrated into the community’s master plan for development.
The second member of the panel, Noah Ornstein, co-founder of Leap of Faith Partners LLC, oversees a Los Angeles-based investment firm that focuses solely on the production of modular housing. Leap of Faith is in the process of entitling a project on the westside of Ventura that features modular construction, mechanized stacked parking, and sustainable landscape and building technologies.
Tyson Cline, an architect for Roseling Nakamura Architects, and a long-time member of Ventura’s Design Review Committee, asked the question “Who are we building for?” Cline argued that “when planning housing development, a city’s first step should be to determine what kind of housing — whether it be affordable housing, high-end homes or anything in between — would best fit an area and its residents before moving forward with actual development.” He urged the audience to “stop talking about building affordable housing, and start talking about building housing that is affordable.”
The closing keynote of the conference was the well-known Dr. Mark Schneipp, Director of the California Economic Forecast, whose presentation focused on the changes that self-driving cars and new transit technologies will have on land use planning.
This year’s takeaway: there are ways to respond to the challenges of building more affordable workforce housing through the use of new technologies, new materials, and housing typologies with smaller footprints. However, something became clear during the ensuing dialogue among the speakers and audience members: our housing zone ordinances, building codes and requirements, and our existing land use policies often serve as impediments to innovation and creativity. In response, the coalitions that have formed to support housing development must expand the breadth of their advocacy to include presenting and supporting policy alternatives to building using land use models no longer applicable.
