Jul 17 2008

Green Building Standards and Workforce Housing - Are they at Odds?

by Toby Brink
(BayPress - Tri-Valley Herald)

The California Building Standards Commission (CBSC) is currently considering several options for the development of green building standards that will address building efficiency from initial design and construction to the deconstruction and removal of the structure.

There is not doubt that these efforts are well intended and, in the long run, essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

However, is this effort and the Leed rating system going to far, too fast without fully examining the consequences?

Lack of workforce housing close to job centers continues to worsen the traffic sitaution in the Bay Area. Implementing more comprehensive Green building standards along the lines of a Leed rating system, in many instances, discourages the building of workforce housing.

Rather than providing disincentives for developers, the state and federal government need to explore programs to encourage developers to build workforce housing.

Extensive public input, appeals that question the thoroughness of EIR’s, and lawsuits have turned the process of building new housing into an expensive and overly contentious enterprise.

The Faria Project in San Ramon is a perfect example. The original plans for the project included an allotment of 25% workforce housing. After waiting five years, cutting the project size in half, facing appeals of the EIR and a lawsuit, the developer is burdened with enormous costs that were not included in the the original project estimates. To recap the loss the developer is forced to increase the revenue from the existing units.

Since much of the workforce housing is subsidized by the market rate housing units, the allotment of workforce housing is the first to go.

This series of events leads to a vicious cycle that is all too common in the Tri-Valley.

Failure to provide workforce housing affects the regional workforce, quality of family life, and contributes to regional traffic congestion.

Many critical service workers (police, firefighters, teachers, nurses, retail clerks, waiters, etc.) cannot afford to live in the area.

Because people need to go further out for housing it puts more cars on the road and increases traffic congestion.

It is true that, to a large extent, the market drives housing prices. However, holding developers to higher standards when they are already burdended by a cumbersome public process may very well futher discourage developers from building the quantity of workforce housing that is necessary for the Tri-Valley region to remain competitive and avoid a dramatic increase in traffic gridlock.