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Ojai council narrows affordable-housing priorities, asks staff for work plan
Summary
At a June 17 special meeting, the Ojai City Council agreed on top priorities for affordable housing goals — researching a housing trust, identifying workforce-housing opportunities and exploring a housing commission — and directed staff to return with tactics, timelines and cost estimates.
The Ojai City Council on June 17 narrowed its list of affordable-housing tactics and directed staff to prepare detailed reports and a work plan for the council to consider.
The council prioritized three items as its top actions under the council—adopted goals: researching and establishing a housing trust; identifying opportunities to create workforce housing; and exploring creation of a housing commission. Mayor Ben Gilman and council members framed the step as an effort to move from discussion to implementation.
"If we could settle on the tactics that we've got now, we prioritize them in some way to say to staff, this is what we'd like to see first," Council Member Whitman said during the meeting. Staff and council agreed these prioritized tactics should be returned as staff reports with recommended next steps, timelines and estimated costs.
Council members said they wanted staff to treat many housing items currently listed as "research" as discrete assignments: either a staff report or referral to a commission that could perform deeper study. "Part of the plan or program needs to be the identification of a process of potentially attracting a nonprofit to assist us with that," a councilmember said, referring to establishing a housing trust.
Public commentators urged faster action. At least one resident asked the council to fund a housing trust and take concrete steps to support low-income homeowners and workforce housing, while other speakers recommended targeted programs such as deed restrictions to preserve affordability.
The council used a quick, internal prioritization exercise to produce a short ranked list for Goal 1 (Affordable Housing). Council members generally put "research and establish a housing trust" (coded on the council spreadsheet as 1f) as top priority, followed by "explore creation of a housing commission" (1g) and "identify opportunities to create workforce housing" (1e).
Council direction: staff was asked to return recommended tactics in a format that includes priority, timeline (for example: 6 months, 1 year), and preliminary cost estimates so the council can build a work plan and include needed items in upcoming budgets. The council did not adopt any ordinance or allocate funds at the meeting.
The council scheduled follow-up goal-setting work for later in the summer to continue prioritization and to translate chosen tactics into specific agenda items and potential contract or grant requests.
