REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Public Hearing: Action to Waive First Reading and Introduce the Citywide Objective Design Standards for Multi-Family and Residential Mixed-Use Projects Ordinance Updating the Santa Clara Zoning Code
Report
BACKGROUND
In recent years, the State Legislature adopted a series of bills to address the State's housing shortage and high housing costs. For a variety of multi-family and mixed-use residential proposals, cities are now required to provide a streamlined ministerial approval process to facilitate and expedite the construction of housing. Laws like the Housing Accountability Act, the Housing Crisis Act (also known as Senate Bill [SB] 330 (2019)), and SB 35 (2017) expedite the review process for qualified projects and limit local governments' authority to impose zoning and design standards that are not "objective" criteria. Both the State statutes and the Guidelines of the California Department of Housing & Community Development (HCD) define "Objective Standards" as "involving no personal or subjective judgment by a public official and . . . uniformly verifiable by reference to an external and uniform benchmark or criterion". Importantly, the standards once established are applied ministerially. The purpose of Objective Design Standards (ODS) is to streamline the approval process, comply with State Housing Law, increase certainty, and transparency, while still allowing the city to maintain design quality Typically, these types of standards apply to items such as fa?ade materials, setbacks, landscape, massing, and building form. The proposed Objective Design Standards will apply to Multi-Family and Residential Mixed-Use Projects.
Policy A-3 of the City's certified sixth cycle Housing Element is to "utilize objective design standards to streamline the housing development process." Currently, architectural review is still required for most residential projects, including multi-family developments, as well as single-family attac...
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