At its Oct. 13 meeting, Los Altos City Council unanimously approved new Below Market Rate (BMR) guidelines.
In doing so, the city aims to consolidate the program’s requirements to offer greater clarity and consistency, according to the resolution’s staff report, prepared by city Housing Manager Monica Gallardo-Melkesian.
“(Los Altos) does not have comprehensive, publicly available guidelines consolidating the program’s requirements, procedures, and expectations,” the report reads. “The proposed BMR For-Sale and Rental Housing Guidelines provide a clear, consistent reference for City staff, developers, property managers, BMR homeowners, applicants, and residents.”
Los Altos’ BMR program deals with income-restricted, or affordable, housing. This update establishes two priority categories for program eligibility, whittling down the program’s previous four priority categories.
The first priority category applies to public or charter school district employees, city employees and Santa Clara County Fire Department employees who work at one of the two fire stations located in Los Altos The second category applies to anyone who lives or works in the city of Los Altos.
Previous guidelines drew a distinction between how long a person had lived or worked in the city, or how recently they had lived or worked in the city.
“I think it’s going to be a tremendous improvement, I really favor the two categories,” said Los Altos Mayor Sally Meadows. “I do think the nature of public employees of all the varieties that we’ve captured really have their jobs lend themselves to longevity in the community…. I would prefer the opportunity to offer public employees the first priority.”
Doing so would allow these prioritized groups to establish stronger community connections, added Vice Mayor Larry Lang.
Councilmember Pete Dailey noted that the exclusion of private school employees may be cause for concern, as private school employment does not necessarily equate to higher wages. He said, however, that these concerns were not strong enough to sway his vote against the resolution.
Additionally, the new guidelines do away with application ranking on a first come first served basis, opting instead for a lottery system with the aim of being more equitable.
These new guidelines will be applied moving forward for BMR for-sale and rental housing, but will not be retroactively applied for projects already in the works.
For more information, see tinyurl.com/LA-BMR-guidelines.
