A consultant working with the city to update the Housing Element of the Ceres General Plan said it will be tough for housing goals to be met.

Ande Flower of EMC Planning Group made her remarks Monday evening as the Ceres Planning Commission meeting got a brief overview of the housing shortage in Ceres and throughout California.

“We have a tall order here in the next eight years,” commented Flower.

Ceres will need to build 3,361 housing units to satisfy need through 2031, according to the Stanislaus Council of Governments (StanCOG). Countywide, it’s estimated that 34,344 new units will need to be constructed over the next eight years. Flower said 60 percent of those additional units are required to be affordable.

She said that Ceres has done will be annex new land to the city limits to allow the capacity for more housing to be built but the city will be tasked to make sure affordability is made possible.

Like many cities in California, Ceres has had little success in meeting its housing needs since the Housing Element was last updated in 2018. The shortfall was not the fault of the city but of a number of factors, including materials cost and availability, labor shortages and market conditions.

The commission learned that in the last Housing Element cycle that ran from 2014 to 2023, the city of Ceres only issued 79 housing permits. That number was only a small fraction of Ceres’ Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), which called for the construction of 2,571 new housing units. Of the units built, 71 were for above moderate-income housing, seven were for moderate-income housing, and one was for low-income housing.

The region is woefully short of affordable housing, which the state identifies as the cost of rent or a mortgage with utilities being no more than 30 percent of a family household income.

Flower doled out some interesting facts about Ceres housing:

• 11 percent of renter households are experiencing overcrowding, and of that two percent are experiencing severe overcrowding;

• 17 percent of Ceres households spend more than 50 percent of their income on their housing, classifying them as “severely cost burdened.”

• Ceres home values have gone up more than 30 percent since 2019;

• 61 percent of units in Ceres are owner occupied.

• Apartment rents in Ceres are as high as 87 percent higher than what HUD considers as fair market rates.

The city is seeking more public feedback about the housing element and needs to be submitted by August 17. More information is available at https://engage.emcplanning.com/cereshousingplan

The 2021 Stanislaus County Demographic and Employment Forecast calculates that the StanCOG region will add 50,796 new households between 2020 and 2050, a 28 percent increase. 

The demand for new housing will only increase in the coming 30-year period, the consultant told the commission, since the Stanislaus Council of Governments (StanCOG) region is projected to add 64,266 jobs, which represents a 27 percent increase.

“These changes will increase demand for housing across all income levels, and if the region can’t identify ways to significantly increase housing production, it risks worsening the burden for existing lower-income households, many of whom don’t have the luxury or skill set to move to new a job center but that are nonetheless faced with unsustainable increases in housing costs.”

Flower said her firm will attempt to get Ceres designated as a “pro housing community” since it was be a pre-requisite for much of the funding coming from the state for affordable housing.

“We’re hopeful that this will attract non-profit builders who will make sure that as the ACE train comes and as Ceres might look a little different through this 10-year cycle – there might be a little bit of a boom – we want to make sure … that there’s an ability for folks who have lived for generations in Ceres to continue to be able to afford to live there,” she said.

Planning Commission Chairman Bob Kachel commented that it seemed the Housing Element was a “massive failure” given that 2,571 new housing units were intended to be built and only 79 building permits given out. He asked if the new regional housing need of 3,361 units is in addition to the past shortfall and Flower said they were not combined.

She praised the city has done well to prepare for more housing with the annexations of the Whitmore Ranch and West Ceres annexations.

A number of recent laws passed by the state Legislature have been passed, few of which lower the costs of building housing. In 2019, several bills were signed into law that include requirements for local density bonus programs, surplus lands, accessory dwelling unit (ADU) streamlining, and removing local barriers to housing production. Among state changes:

AB 68, AB 587, AB 671, AB 881, and SB 13 further incentivize the development of accessory dwelling units (ADUs), through streamlined permits, reduced setback requirements, increased allowable square footage, reduced parking requirements, and reduced fees. In March 2020, the City amended its regulations and procedures to make it easier and less expensive to build ADUs.

Additionally, the city has invested in designing five distinct ADU building plans property owners may choose from, eliminating costs of structural design plans for property owners. Further changes will be incorporated into the Ceres Municipal Code to ensure compliance with new legislation.

In addition to these actions, the city will identify options for incentivizing the construction of ADUs that are available specifically for, and affordable to, lower-income households.

AB 1763 requires cities to provide a density bonus to development projects that restrict all units as affordable to lower- and moderate-income households.

Senate Bill 330 will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025 which calls for cities to give priority processing to housing developments. It also prevents cities from decreasing the housing capacity of any site, such as through downzoning or increasing open space requirements, if such a decrease would preclude the jurisdiction from meeting its housing targets. It also requires that any proposed demolition of housing units be accompanied by a project that would replace or exceed the total number of units demolished.

Kachel expressed his opinion that housing elements re largely shelved and make little impact on growth. He also expressed concern that nobody has gotten a handle on homelessness in California.