NEWARK, Calif. — The city of Newark is planning on incentivizing housing projects on land long designated for residential development with the creation of a new by-right housing overlay district.
On Thursday, Dec. 14, the Newark City Council is set to discuss amendments to the city’s municipal code, zoning code and zoning maps that would create the new overlay zoning district and rezone 26 parcels with the new overlay. The aim of the new zone is to allow housing developers on certain sites to bypass environmental reviews and public hearings as long as their projects guarantee 20% of the units are affordable to lower-income households and comply with all the objective standards and criteria for development.
In order to qualify for the by-right housing rezoning, the sites need to be large enough to accommodate at least 16 units and residential densities of 20 units per acre. Some smaller parcels that could be combined to create a larger housing development, many on Thornton Avenue, are also expected to be rezoned.
At a Newark Planning Commission meeting last month, Community Development Director Steven Turner said the changes will align local laws with state laws. The intent, he said, is to make sure cities are promoting housing construction and not just continually recycling housing sites from one housing element to the next without building anything.
Each city and county is required to maintain a general plan, which offers a decadelong roadmap for land-use development, and each general plan must include a housing element. The housing element outlines how a jurisdiction will meet its state-mandated housing goals and includes an inventory of sites that can be developed into housing or redeveloped into higher density housing.
In order to continue including sites from previous housing elements in the inventory, the state is requiring local jurisdictions to allow ministerial approval of housing projects on those parcels.
Planning Commissioner John Becker said he wasn’t a fan of by-right zoning because it took control out of the community’s hands but understood the challenge the city is facing in trying to meet its state-mandated goal of producing 1,874 over the next eight years, referred to as the regional housing needs allocation.
Typically, the road to permit approval starts with a developer conducting an initial environmental review to determine if their project is going to significantly impact the environment in any way. If it will, a more extensive environmental impact review is conducted along with public hearings. The planning commission ultimately decides whether or not to approve a permit and with what conditions, though the city council has the final say if that decision is appealed.
At times, the permit process has been abused by people who do not want any development in their area or has led to identical projects having different conditions of approval. In recent years, the state has been passing laws to ensure the conditions for project approval are objective and applicants are not subjected to arbitrary or selective scrutiny.
The public hearing for the zoning amendments is set to take place at the City Hall Council Chambers at 37101 Newark Boulevard in Newark at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 14. The meeting can be viewed at that time on the city’s YouTube channel and cable channel 26.
Sonia Waraich can be reached at 510-952-7455.
Photo caption: A map of Newark shows which parcels will be rezoned with the new by-right housing overlay district. (Courtesy of city of Newark)
