The June 5th City Council Meeting this Thursday will mark the culmination of our collective fight to create the time and space to save the approximately 300 affordable apartments for low-income tenants and reform the city’s flawed and misused DB90 ordinance (item 103). Your relentless truth-telling in emails and calls forced the Mayor to acknowledge that DB90 is broken and to promise a resolution (item 80) to reform our affordable housing regulations. Unfortunately, the draft resolution does not address the problem highlighted by this zoning case: the failure to develop mechanisms to protect existing affordable housing.  It also proposes bonus height entitlements greater than the 30 feet of DB90.

So, before you start your summer,  please call or email the Council  one more time and make these requests:

  1. Postpone the Acacia Cliffs rezoning case for at least 6 months or until a plan to preserve Acacia Cliffs (and like properties) is finalized. Amend the resolution to include an affordable housing preservation strategy that will marshal the necessary resources to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing.
  2.  Reform DB90 to limit its application to pre-existing commercially zoned property, require a one-to-one replacement of any affordable units if they cannot be preserved, and take steps to make its application more compatible with and less destructive of existing residential communities.