WHILE LANDWATCH Monterey County is using affordable housing as a selling point for its proposed general plan, the initiative would kill Rancho Cañada Village, the Peninsula’s only promising affordable housing development.
The LandWatch general plan, now being circulated on petitions which aim to qualify it for the June ballot, is the group’s alternative to an updated general plan being considered by the board of supervisors.
The very first rule for Carmel Valley in the LandWatch document states that development would be limited to “existing lots,” which would kill the 280-home project proposed by Nick Lombardo before he died last May.
Half of the houses at Rancho Cañada would be priced from $150,000 to $370,000 for families with low and moderate income levels — providing what Lombardo said was badly needed housing for people who already work in Carmel Valley.
At his funeral May 7 at the Carmel Mission, Lombardo’s son, land-use attorney Tony Lombardo, promised to see his father’s vision come true.
“We owe it to my father for all he gave to this community to finish this work. And we will finish it,” Nick Lombardo said.
But the LandWatch initiative would stand in the way.
“It would require us to have another public vote,” said Keith McCoy, project manager for Rancho Cañada Village.
If the LandWatch initiative is enacted, all general plan amendments — typically handled by the board of supervisors — would require public approval, with the proponents of any amendment forced to bear the costs of the election.
In the case of Rancho Cañada, going back to the voters would cost $1 million and delay the project for years, something McCoy said would raise the ire of families seeking affordable housing.
“I get calls every week from people who work on the Peninsula and in Carmel Valley who want to know when we are going to start building,” he said. “I say it could be a year or two years or five years. That’s the sad truth.”
LandWatch executive director Chris Fitz and county supervisor Dave Potter, who is one of the initiative’s principal backers, haven’t publicly opposed Rancho Cañada, saying the project deserves a “serious look” and is “interesting.” But both agreed the development would be a casualty of the initiative.
“We have a representative government that is broken,” Fitz said. “So faced with that, we have to make the tough decisions.”
McCoy, who maintains that only “a vocal minority oppose Rancho Cañada Village,” said he has a waiting list of 500 people interested in owning a home at Rancho Cañada Village. “We are talking about firemen, policemen, teachers, not to mention all of the people who work in hotels,” he said. “You need to have places for them to live.”
The development’s market-rate homes would subsidize the affordable units, McCoy said.
The LandWatch initiative, which three county supervisors have condemned and agricultural leaders have said would harm the county’s economy, would limit growth to existing cities and five community areas: Boronda, Chualar, Castroville, Fort Ord and Pajaro.
“They [LandWatch] are telling people their plan is all about affordable housing, and sure, they promote that,” McCoy said. “But you can’t push all of the affordable housing into the cities. There’s not enough room. And cities don’t want all the affordable housing in their area.”
In their draft general plan, supervisors have designated the area from Highway 1 to the end of the four-lane portion of Carmel Valley Road as a “rural center” which would be “allowed to develop in a semi-rural character.”
Fitz said petitioners, some of whom are paid to collect signatures, are still gathering the required 9,000 names to place the LandWatch measure on the June ballot.
