Getting Into the Zone Changes
The Planning Commission provided feedback on changes to City zoning that will affect future development in Hayward
City Staff brought some proposed changes to zoning before the Planning Commission on Thursday night. The City has been conducting the “Hayward Residential Design Study” to try to align local laws with California State Law, rely more on “objective” standards, and make it easier to develop within the City.
The suggested changes that Staff asked for feedback on were, in summary:
Some changes to residential zoning
Making the standards more “objective” to align with state law
Changes to off-street parking
Small changes to the zoning map which doesn’t change much.
Residential Zoning
The proposed changes to residential zoning are part semantic and part substantive.
The idea is to actually allow more density in places so that, maybe, things can be built faster and not with big ol’ planned developments. That’d be kind of amazing!
The one thing I take issue with here is the ordinance saying that you have to have smaller upper stories than lower stories. The idea is to stop buildings looking blocky. To which I say, blocky isn’t necessarily bad. I won’t take up time here going deep into it, but opening things up in high-density areas actually makes them less pleasant to walk in. There’s also the fact that blockier buildings can be reused for multiple purposes without demolition which is both more cost-effective and environmentally friendly. And, they can look nice if you try. Promise.
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Objective Standards
State law wants some of the development standards to be more objective so that there’s less guesswork for developers about what the City will allow. “[A]n objective standard must be written in such a way that anyone reading it would have the same understanding as to what the standard requires.”
This takes power from the hands of the Planning Commission because there will be fewer things that they’ll have the ability to provide judgement on. Some things just won’t be discussable because it’ll be allowable by-right and not subject to their whims. This is good news for both developers and the larger community because things should be approved with fewer revisions.
Changes to Parking
There are also some changes to parking:
Parking can be unbundled from dwelling units (save money to not have one)
Under certain conditions, fewer parking spaces are needed for multi-unit buildings
Fewer parking spaces needed for senior and special-needs housing
Driveways count as uncovered parking and tandem parking is OK for single-family homes
All this means less parking spaces needed, which is great news! It can also allow folks who don’t need a car to save some money, which is a good reason to try public transit. Unfortunately, the entire way the city is designed still means are expected to have a car in order to get around. Having biked around South Hayward recently, if you wanted to get to a grocery store, a car is almost required both for safety and just to get there, unless you’re a fan of shopping at gas stations or liquor stores.
Planning Commission Comments
Wow, that sure was a lot of boring complicated stuff. Now on to what the Commissioners had to say.
Playing Around the Edges
If you were looking for an ambitious vision for what this process could do for the City, the Commission definitely was not where you should look. They made small comments and suggestions here and there (e.g. change points values, fiddle with setback size, how to do transit alternatives, etc.), and brought up a few good questions (about fire and flood safety from Commissioner Arti Garg and concern about developers gaming the points from Commissioner Robert Stevens) but it became clear that City Staff and the Commission mostly don’t want things to change.
Maybe it’s because they like it (though traffic and parking were complaints several times) and maybe they’re worried about pissing people off. But this is why we’re in a housing crisis: nobody wants to see anything change, despite most of the city being built 60 years ago. Much like Mayor Mark Salinas, they like the idea of high density housing, but only if it doesn’t change the character of the single-family car-centric suburban neighborhood.
The closest thing we got to dramatic change was City Staff putting forward the idea of developing “small lot single family home” development processes, so big single-family home lots can become multiple single-family homes. Doubtless each with enough parking for 2 cars, plus some overflow onto the nearby City streets.
I understand that this is a grant-funded initiative with a limited scope, but so much needs to change to make our City more livable, walkable, and sustainable (both financially and environmentally), that we’ll need a bolder vision for what this City should be. I’m just not sure the Planning Commission, in its current form, can provide that.
The item will now go before City Council on September 12th for their feedback.