Letter: Amidst political division, we can agree on housing solutions

In a time of divided national politics, nearly everybody I talk to here in South Lake Tahoe agrees that the most important issue we need to face at the local level is the crisis of skyrocketing housing costs. Widespread agreement is an opportunity for far-reaching collaboration, and if I'm elected to City Council I will be a champion for partnerships with the TRPA and the State of California to tackle the housing shortage head-on.

Fundamentally, the housing shortage is just that: a lack of availability of places for residents to live. As we compete over the same few houses, prices have gone through the roof and we are losing members of the community who are fleeing the basin for need of affordable housing. But we can cut the red tape and let the private sector build more homes, and we can partner with the state to fund public housing projects for those who need it most. And we can do it all while enhancing green development standards that protect our climate and the lake!

Recent Progress

While the crisis now feels worse than ever, there has been important progress in recent years. We just broke ground at Sugar Pine Village, the largest affordable housing project in the City's history. The Tahoe Coalition for the Homeless has used Project Homekey funding to convert old motels and reduce unsheltered homelessness by 80 percent. Jurisdictions around the lake, including South Lake Tahoe, have piloted the Lease To Locals program, providing cash incentives to homeowners to begin renting out their properties.

Fundamentally, the key to sustainable development is increasing density in town centers while protecting the forest ecosystems around us. Multifamily buildings share heat between adjacent units, cutting our number one source of greenhouse gas emissions. When people live close together, walking, biking, and transit become more viable, which cuts our number two source of greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, existing homes will remain unchanged, but creating new types of homes provides a way to meet our housing needs without sprawling out into the county.

The City and the TRPA have been working in tandem to allow more density with sustainable development in mind. They legalized Accessory Dwelling Units, letting homeowners build small additions on their properties, and provided incentives if these units are occupied by people working in our community. They have granted exceptions to parking requirements for projects like Sugar Pine Village and increased density limits to allow the conversion of motels. The Public Utility District has restructured its fees to help make building workforce housing more cost-effective than second homes.

There's More To Do

If you elect me to City Council, we can keep the momentum up to align our funding and our regulations towards the sustainable development that we want to see. This will create local jobs and open up housing availability.

I’ll establish a city-wide area plan, which will assert local control over our zoning and enable the City to set development standards that encourage walkable multi-purpose town centers with more multifamily housing at lower price points.

Our area plan can allow for increased height limits in our town centers so that more people can live close to jobs and we can disturb less land for new development. The hole in the ground at Stateline is a ripe location for an apartment building!

We can reduce minimum parking requirements for housing close to transit so that residents who can't afford a car are not forced to pay for a parking space, and we can fit more homes with less distance between them. Of course, parking will always be allowed, but it doesn't need to be required for those who don’t want it.

Setbacks and coverage limits have contributed to a situation where most of each parcel is not eligible for construction, increasing the costs and creating a bias towards spaced-out single-family mansion development. We can update these rules to account for the past decades of learning and flip the incentives to build the workforce housing we need.

With Measure T, the voters banned vacation rentals from residential neighborhoods, but some of these houses are not yet being used for long-term residents. I’ll meet with property owners to understand their perspectives and create an incentive structure that encourages long-term occupancy. Roughly half of the houses in our city are not lived in full time, and with limits to the development capacity in the basin, it's the government's responsibility to establish efficient utilization of what already exists.

Our government has the power to get housing costs under control, and you have the power to elect leaders that prioritize it. On November 8, please vote for Nick Speal to make South Lake Tahoe a more affordable and sustainable place to live.

- Nick Speal is a candidate for City Council in South Lake Tahoe