Neighbors decry process that brought development to their door as Aptos Blue nears completion
by John Chown
It’s October, about a month from when residents are scheduled to begin moving into Aptos Blue and there is still plenty still to do at the construction site. Crews are working day and night, and that is just one of the things bothering neighbors about the affordable housing project located behind the Community Foundation building at Aptos Rancho Road and Soquel Drive.
“There were doing construction until 10 o’ clock,” said Nancey Van Dyke, who lives on Tanias Court, just behind the construction site. “I sent an e-mail to (County Supervisor) Zach Friend’s assistant and then somebody did call to apologize.”
Van Dyke said Friend’s assistant assured here that construction was legal until 10 p.m., but Van Dyke still doesn’t think it’s reasonable.
“There are a lot of working people here,” she said.
And many retired residents as well. Van Dyke moved from Florida about a year ago to take care of her ailing mother, who moved into the Aptos Courtside Homes community more than a dozen years ago. Her plans seem threatened now.
“There’s going to be no parking, it’s going to be loud, and it just doesn’t seem as safe,” Van Dyke said.
The development, being built by MidPen Housing, consists of 40 rental units – four studios, four one-bedroom, 16 two-bedroom and 16 three-bedroom apartments. The historic Castro House, located near the center of the 5-acre property, is being renovated into a community building. With all of 40 units being designated for low-income and very low-income residents, it concerns Van Dyke. She is particularly worried about the more recent news that five units are being set aside for mentally ill residents.
“My mother is 85, she has dementia. I’m worried about who could come to the door — or being burglarized,” she said. “I worked for 9-1-1 in Florida for many years. It doesn’t matter what color or race you are, but the more dense the population is, the more crimes that will occur.”
Many of Van Dyke’s neighbors are also concerned. Some only wanted to speak anonymously, fearing repercussions of some sort.
“Nothing can be done. The county does what the county wants. We will make the best of what we’ve been dealt,” said one resident.
Dave Painchaud, the first person to move into the community 18 years ago, is more forthright.
“This project will go somewhere and wherever it goes, people are going to complain,” he said. “But what doesn’t seem right to me is they changed the zoning to squeeze those units in there.”
The Big Squeeze
In December of 2006, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors picked six sites, about 30 acres in total, to be rezoned to higher residential densities so that workforce housing could be built. The move was made in order to meet the county’s Regional Housing Needs Determination required by state law.
The state, unsatisfied with the county’s progress for years, had finally negotiated a settlement with the county that a minimum of 30 acres were to be rezoned to higher densities (20 units per acre) , and the six sites would fulfill that.
The majority of those 30 acres would be placed in south Santa Cruz County, with 8 acres in Live Oak, 5 in Soquel, 2 in Aptos and 14 in the Pajaro Valley. One of the sites just outside Watsonville, Schapiro Knolls on Minto Road, is complete.
Several sites in Aptos were considered. The Aptos Blue site became a candidate when the previous developer pulled out of the project after the 2008 financial crash. Up until then, the project was planned to contain 40 percent affordable housing units, but when MidPen Housing took over in 2010, the project suddenly became 100 percent affordable housing. The neighbors, according to county officials and MidPen Housing, were given notice of the change and community meetings were held, but many of the neighbors say they never received the notice and didn’t really understand what was going on.
“Mid Peninsula claimed to have sent out cards, but most residences that we talked to never got them,” Painchaud said
Neighbors said some concessions were made, such as increasing the height of the fence around the tennis court, but not much else.
“The first meeting we had, they just asked, ‘What’s wrong? We don’t see anything wrong.’ They never answered anything directly. There was a lot of deception,” said Kevin Painchaud, who moved into the neighborhood two years ago with his family. “There is no way a traffic study was ever done.”
For Kevin, who is Dave Painchaud’s son, the setting looked ideal for he and his wife to raise their child, but now they are not so sure.
“The rules allow for prison convicts to move in, as long as they’ve been clean for seven years, but then we’ve also been told that nobody with a criminal history would be allowed. But when the rules allow something, it generally happens,” he said.
Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) is a common sentiment. One way to avoid neighbors’ complaints is to not let them know what’s happening — and that seems to be what the county chose to do regarding the Aptos Blue project, says Alexander Henson, a Carmel attorney who specializes in land use and zoning laws. Many neighbors within 300 yards of the project site say they were not given notice of a public hearing by the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors on the rezoning changes. If that is true, according to Henson, then the approval amounts to a denial of due process of law.
“Before these property rights of adjoining neighbors can be impacted adversely, they must be afforded an opportunity to be heard to influence the decision,” he said. “It would seem that if the original hearing required notice to be served, then the proposed changes to the project should also be noticed, since the project as amended will still have the impacts that required the notice in the first place.”
Patrick Mulhearn, policy analyst for District 2 County Supervisor Zach Friend, said the decision to develop Aptos Blue predates the current administration, and about the only thing that can be done now is to make sure the county includes the neighbors on future decisions. He said when neighbors complained about construction going on until 10 p.m., his office warned MidPen to do better in the future.
“This was a project voted and approved before Zach came into office. We’ve been trying to make sure the developers and county are inclusive of neighbors as possible under the law,” he said.
Mulhearn would not say whether the addition of the development was good or bad for the community, but wasn’t particularly thrilled with the process.
“Our district often seems to bear the brunt of development,” he said.
According to Julie Conway of the Santa Cruz County Planning Department, regardless of how much of the housing is affordable or whether additional sites in Aptos would have been found, the density of the project had to remain the same because the state requires a density of 20 units per acre. Conway said it was long process to pick the six sites. Aptos Blue was chosen because the county wanted to spread the housing between districts as much as possible, but still needed the sites to be near services and public transportation, while still being in an unincorporated area of the county and inside the urban services line, due to Measure J’s passage in 1978.
“It was a long process to pick these sites,” she said.
Mental Health and Housing
The issue that concerns some of the neighbors the most, they have no control over. In 2004, Prop. 63, the Mental Health Services Act was passed by state voters. It requires each county to form a plan to house the mentally ill. In Santa Cruz County, according to Conway, the decision was made in community meetings to, when possible, spread the mentally ill population and integrate it into the larger community rather than isolating it into one site.
“The decision was to emphasize investment into existing projects, integrate the community rather than build a large MHSA unit,” Conway said. “So those are the values that were adopted.”
So, said Conway, when the county identifies a project that would fit with MHSA housing, it can use the MHSA funds to entice developers to include it. No notification of the public is required to make this change. MHSA units have also been added to a project in Santa Cruz called Nuevo Sol and to the Bay Avenue Apartments in Capitola. Conway said the mentally ill chosen to be housed in these units can live independently; this is not licensed housing for people who need special care.
“These are tenants with the same rights as any other tenant,” Conway said, adding that MidPen Housing puts a lot of effort into screening its tenants for possible problems.
MidPen Housing, at the center of the controversy, but late getting there, was chosen by the county as the developer in 2010.
“I’m not 100 percent aware of the history of the site,” said MidPen President Matt Franklin, but added that he was excited about its future.
“We’re really proud of it. It’s a very environmentally sustainable development. It will be very green with Energy Star appliances, double-paned windows, excellent ventilation, landscaping that will conserve water … solar panels will heat the common areas. It exceeds the state mandates by 17 percent.”
Franklin said there has enormous interest in the property with 476 applications from potential renters submitted for the 40 units. He said the income range of the residents moving in would be from $25,000-$55,000.
“As a general matter, over 80 percent of households in MidPen Housing are in the active workforce,” he said. “It’s a low wage, but a working wage.”
For Van Dyke, it all adds up to a lot of mistrust. She is not happy with how things are shaking out, but realizes that probably nothing will change this late in the process.
“I don’t trust these people. In my opinion, they’ve tried to shove things through. This is not the community that it was supposed to be,” she said.
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To read more about this project and view public documents visit www.tpgonlinedaily.com/aptosblue