I live in the Central Park neighborhood near East Main Avenue and Butterfield Boulevard. Several days ago I was distressed to see the remains of two heritage oak trees near the former flea market site. I looked up the local city ordinance and was stunned that the trees were not protected. I later discovered their removal was approved in the development plan.
Something went wrong. Those trees should never have been removed. At the very least there should have been a noticed hearing with a posting on the trees.
The remains of the trees look healthy and the arborist should have protected the trees and the city should get another arborist if the expert is so indifferent to the such ancient and historical trees. Did the arborist work for the company that removed the trees? The developer should have been required to protect the trees as a condition for approval of the plan. What is the city going to do to ensure this tragedy does not happen again? Will the city toughen the ordinance? I think the city and or developer should replace the lost trees with mature specimen trees in a attempt to mitgate the disaster that was allowed to occur.
Patrick Standifer, Morgan Hill
San Martin incorporation simply doesn't make any financial sense
Dear Editor,
I attended the Local Agency Formation Commission meeting June 4. I am very old fashioned and do not fully understand the new fuzzy government math.
Mr. Van Root stated, as has been said since the inception of this process, that "nothing will change for San Martin." He also advised the LAFCO board to be aware that new cities often are in a precarious situation in the beginning. This comment was in response to residents and Commissioner Blanca Alvarado raising serious doubts about the ability of the new city to not "be bankrupt even before we start." In my simple world, if I start out in a precarious position, and change nothing, I will simply dig myself deeper into the proverbial hole, unless I just start spontaneously raising money.
Does anyone else have trouble with this logic? Am I the only person missing the money showers? Maybe the money showers are over the three-year horizon, just out of sight? Attend the next LAFCO meeting at 1 p.m. July 2. The explanation should be interesting. Bring your calculator.
Maureen Peterson, San Martin
Are we talking about affordable or subsidized homes?
Dear Editor,
A recent letter regarding below-market-rate homes indicated the writer would not own a home without such program. I would ask, has that person personally thanked each of his neighbors who subsidized his home purchase? While many talk of BMRs as affordable housing, they are, in fact, subsidized housing. Someone else pays for the difference between what the house would normally sell for and the price set by the BMR requirements. BMR homes are subsidized by all the other home buyers in a development because the costs are spread over the entire development. Yes, the home itself is smaller and the fittings may not be as pricey as the other homes, but the land it sits on costs just as much as the others and the cost for design, permitting, roads, water mains, plumbing, street lighting, etc... are just as high. This can mean that the non-BMR home prices are increased by as much as $20-40K to cover the cost of the BMR.
Some would argue that costs are really absorbed by the developer and not passed onto the other home buyers. Builders are just like everyone else; they have to earn money to live and thus can not afford to sell homes for less than construction cost. One significant difference between developers and regular wage earners is that they may have to wait years for a pay check. It currently takes five to 10 years, or more to do even a small development in Morgan Hill.
To provide a different view on home costs today I would like to look at condominium/townhouse sales in Morgan Hill/Gilroy for the last year. These ranged from two bedrooms, one and a half baths to three bedrooms, two baths with sale prices ranging from $329,000 to $489,000. This was during the peek of the market. Today this same range is listed from $169,500 to $449,000. For my example I'll take a price of about $400,000 for a condominium/townhouse on the market today. With a historical standard of 20 percent down this would mean home owners would need to save $80,000. With a more current 10 percent down this would be reduced to $40,000. This sounds like a huge amount, but this is only about two times what we managed to save 30 years ago while median incomes have grown by far more than two times over this period. A 30-year mortgage at 5.75 percent the payment would be about $2,100 per month. Assuming this was one third of the buyer's income this would equate to a minimum income under $76,000 per year. This is a bit under the current household median income of $80,000.
The requirement for BMR housing is more commonly referred to as inclusionary zoning. It requires the inclusion of lower priced homes as part of a development. This has been proven in many other areas to actually reduce the affordability of homes and not increase it. Inclusionary zoning only promotes a split market with a few low priced homes while driving up the prices of the rest. If the tactic doesn't work, then stop fiddling with a broken system.
If you really want to promote affordable housing, then encourage development of more homes priced around $400,000. The planned downtown developments may well work for this range and should be encouraged to target this range. This will require permitting of higher density homes to spread out the fixed development costs over a larger number of homes. Morgan Hill is already well supplied with larger and higher priced homes, why should we continue to build this type of home when we have such a dearth of lower priced homes? Why should we continue to spread out and consume land at the edges of the city when we could fill our housing demand for years by developing higher densities in the middle of the city?
Chris Bryant, Morgan Hill
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