Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
County staff outline Missouri Gulch workforce-housing plan and grant-funded design work
Loading...
Summary
Planning staff told supervisors a Strategic Growth Council project-development grant will fund design, engineering and permitting for an 80–120% AMI-targeted workforce housing project at the Missouri Gulch site; Community Housing Works was selected as the project partner and public meetings are scheduled to review concepts.
Planning staff presented an update on the Missouri Gulch workforce housing effort, describing the site-selection process, grant funding and the current design-phase work. Senior planner Ben Goger said the site emerged from a county study of 41 candidate parcels conducted for the county’s Integrated Mobility and Housing Strategy; the county later won a Strategic Growth Council (SGC) project-development (TCC) grant to fund design, engineering and permitting work, not construction.
Will Fassett, design-and-development planner, said the grant-funded work will lay the groundwork for a future SGC implementation application and described three business models that could make 'missing middle' units feasible: tax-exempt bonds, construction grants (including an SGC implementation grant), or mixed-income development that offsets costs by including some permanently affordable units. He said the stakeholder committee aims to target households roughly in the 80%–120% area median income (AMI) band and emphasized that the final program will need subsidy to reach that “missing middle.”
Fassett said Community Housing Works (CHW), a San Diego–based non-profit developer, was selected through a qualifications process as the county’s project partner; CHW is working on a program description that will propose unit counts, income targeting and amenities. Staff also noted site biological and cultural studies have been completed at a preliminary level and that CHW is evaluating whether to incorporate an adjacent Yosemite Conservancy-owned lot into the project footprint.
Public comments raised accessibility concerns for veterans who use the nearby VFW space; staff responded that veteran-service and VFW representatives serve on the collaborative stakeholder committee and will review any designs that could affect access. A member of the public asked whether the units would be rental or ownership; staff said the project is anticipated to be rental apartments for the near term, though staff said they would welcome models that could support ownership if feasible.
Staff announced two upcoming public meetings: a CHW presentation in the boardroom and a collaborative stakeholder meeting the following day at the Creekside Terrace community room, and invited the public to comment and attend. No construction funding has been awarded; current work is limited to planning, design and permitting under the TCC project-development grant.
Next steps include scheduled public meetings to solicit feedback, continued work by CHW to refine a program and potential future application for implementation funding from SGC.
