Editorial: Approval of Novato’s Landing Court illustrates how Sacramento’s seems are showing

Sacramento lawmakers don’t have to live next door to their decisions.

But Novato neighbors of the city-approved five-story 302-unit apartment building on Landing Court, south of downtown Novato, will.

State housing laws that have undermined local control over the size and scope of new residential buildings left the City Council little choice but to approve the developer’s plan for the two-acre lot.

There should be no debate that housing is needed, especially affordable housing.

But recent state laws, aimed at eroding local building restrictions, have changed land-use rules, in favor of developers maximizing their real estate and plans, even though it may be way out of scale compared to neighboring properties and residents who will find their small single-family houses and mobile homes loomed over by tall apartment buildings and will be living with the demand for parking spaces the developer is not required to provide.

The Landing Court project, which is more than twice the size of downtown’s Millworks apartment complex, takes advantage of layers of size-enhancements state lawmakers built into their housing agenda.

Among them is a development bonus for building housing near two public transit hubs – the downtown SMART station and the Redwood Boulevard transit center.

The project, built on land now used for parking recreational vehicles and boats, is a step toward the city’s quota to build 2,090 new residences by 2031. Its number of units for affordable housing for lower-income renters is a significant step in meeting the requirements of the city’s quota.

Meeting the need for housing is certainly a better use of the land than an RV parking lot. Building affordable housing in our high-priced county is needed, but state lawmakers have passed a host of pro-housing laws that promise to alter the landscape of suburban towns like Novato.

In voting to approve the project, veteran Councilmember Pat Eklund said, “This is not the right location. I wish I could vote no. If we vote no we would put the city in jeopardy.”

The city can’t afford a legal fight with the state or losing its remaining discretion over land-use decisions.

So, Novato residents, not lawmakers in Sacramento, will be living with the landscape-altering ramifications of the state Legislature’s actions. They won’t have to deal with a five-story apartment building looming over their homes. They won’t have to deal with the parking problems the project promises to cause.

At least the developer concedes, the bonuses that reduce its requirement for tenant parking could leave the project short in meeting tenants’ needs and the project may be redesigned.

Eklund went so far as to say the lawmakers should be recalled.

At the very least, lawmakers need to look beyond numbers and quotas and see for themselves how their law has tied the hands of local decision-makers – those who have to live near the decisions they make – in significantly limiting their discretion over protecting existing neighborhoods from building that is out of scale and scope with its surrounding and the effects that building will have on the the quality of life of their neighbors.

Marin needs affordable housing. It needs affordable apartments. Unrealistic, overly ambitious housing quotas are not making for good decisions. Finding the right site and a complementary design for needed affordable housing is the challenge, one that Sacramento lawmakers have overlooked with their out-of-balance housing laws.