Council to Vote on State-Required Housing Plan

Originally published at 5 a.m. Oct. 8.

Ordinances allowing homeless shelters and 30-unit-per-acre apartment complexes are among the items Murrieta City Council is set to consider tonight.

Council will meet at 5 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, One Town Square, for the final public hearing before the city’s eight-year plan to meet state affordable housing guidelines is submitted.

The City of Murrieta’s Housing Element 2014-2021 requires a number of zoning changes and code amendments to fulfill the requirements set out by the State Department of Housing and Community Development.

Murrieta needs to allow for emergency and transitional housing that temporarily provides services for homeless people or those transitioning from a homeless situation, according to a city staff report. Currently, city code allows these as conditionally permitted uses.

The new city code will allow shelters for up to 30 overnight occupants per site, which can not be located within 300 feet of another, nor within 1,000 feet of parks, schools, day care facilities, businesses that sell alcohol or the residences of probationers or parolees.

Also, to meet its obligation of offering housing for those with very low, low and moderate income levels, the city was required to identify and accordingly rezone areas that can accommodate a minimum of 30 multifamily dwelling units per acre—in zoning terms, Multi-Family-3 (MF-3).

It was determined that Murrieta needs to zone for 289 housing units for residents with moderate incomes; 262 for those with low incomes; and 395 for those who fall in the very low income-earners bracket. The income levels were determined using the city’s 2010 census data.

“...The City conducted an extensive evaluation on appropriate properties to designate at this new threshold density and ultimately determined to re-zone three properties owned by the Murrieta Housing Authority (formerly the Redevelopment Agency) and to establish a transit oriented development overlay district,” City Planner Cynthia Kinser wrote in the staff report.

One of the Murrieta Housing Authority properties that will be rezoned to Village Residential Multi-Family-3, or VRM-3, is located on six acres on Adams Avenue, north of Ivy Street. Because the property falls in the Historic Downtown Murrieta Specific Plan, the rezoning to allow a minimum of 30 residential units per acre—approved by the Historic Advisory Ad Hoc Committee during a meeting held Sept. 10—must be noted with an amendment.

Another two properties owned by the Murrieta Housing Authority on the west side of Jefferson Avenue, north of Murrieta Hot Springs Road, will be rezoned to MF-3.

As for the transit overlay district, it is 374 acres between Los Alamos Road to the north, Jefferson Avenue to the west, Vista Murrieta and Hancock to the east, and just north of Guava and Murrieta Hot Springs Road to the south. The current zoning in that area is office and commercial, but it will be rezoned to MF-3. Kinser stated that the preferable use for the transit overlay district—urban-scale development that encourages pedestrian activity—would be mixed, with commercial/office uses on the first floor of future buildings. Upper floors would be residential units.

The city does not construct the dwellings, but may subsidize the developments by waiving permit fees.

Public hearings regarding the Housing Element 2014-2021 were held in February and September before the Planning Commission, and in March before the City Council.