A Win for Housing in Clayton

We are happy to announce that, last week, Yimby Law’s latest effort has resulted in the approval of 81 units of senior housing in Clayton. The project was denied by the Clayton Planning Commission in early 2020 but was successful on appeal with the Clayton City Council voting 3-2 in favor of granting the project permits. This new housing will be an important addition for a city that has struggled to add new housing supply as its population ages.

Clayton is a small city of 11,076 people that sits in the shadow of Mount Diablo, just Southeast of Concord. Even compared to other cities in the far east bay Clayton has a relatively old population. Clayton is, however, very similar to other cities in the region in that it is composed of primarily single-family home neighborhoods with a small downtown core. For these reasons, a senior specific housing development right next to the downtown commercial area makes a ton of sense in Clayton. Not only does it provide new, high quality accessible units it also locates residents closer to the city center and reduces the need for car trips.

Unsurprisingly, many of the project’s neighbors in Clayton were not particularly enthused by the proposed development. They felt that the project was too large and inappropriate for the area. The project is taking advantage of the State Density Bonus law to add more units and so some neighbors asserted that the city should not honor state law and restrict the number of units that could be built on the site.

In the initial planning commission meeting for the final version of the project commissioners expressed concerns about the quantity and type of parking that the project committed to provide. Commissioners felt that the project should be required to provide additional parking and fewer compact-car spaces. The reasoning for this was that neither the city, the developer, or the independent third party contracted to study the project could have possibly adequately assessed the amount of parking and car-use the project would require. This is ridiculous on its face. Commissioners also felt that the city had improperly implemented the State Density Bonus Law by calculating the density bonus for the whole project rather than on a building by building basis. Both these concerns were dismissed by city staff as uninformed and improper grounds for denial.

Despite this, at the next Planning Commission meeting on the project the Commission adopted findings of denial, citing safety concerns relating to traffic to justify denying the general plan and zoning compliant project. By this point we had already submitted several letters notifying the Commissioners of their responsibilities under the Housing Accountability Act. They were aware enough of requirements to attempt to couch their denial in safety concerns but not enough to think through the potential strength of those arguments in a lawsuit. Were this case to progress to a lawsuit we are very confident we would prevail due to the lack of objective findings in the finding for denial approved by the Planning Commission.

Thankfully, the City Council saw through the neighbors’ opposition and were very cognizant of the legal liability the city could face if they denied this project. Several of the City Councilmembers were very well-informed on the legal issues facing the city and were able to clearly enumerate them to their colleagues and the public. Ultimately, though two of the City Councilmembers were opposed to the project three of them voted for it, thereby ensuring the Planning Commission’s denial was overruled and the project was approved.

This is a fantastic victory for us. We were prepared to file suit in the event that the project was ultimately denied and we successfully conveyed that to the city. They took our threat seriously and understood the consequences well enough that they were willing to approve the project despite significant opposition from neighbors. This is exactly how our model is supposed to work and we look forward to many future successes along these same lines.