The Housing Crisis; Emphasis on Crisis

By Chris Herrod

8/2026

My pro-housing position is based on a single goal: greater affordability for families wishing to stay in Healdsburg. I’m fighting for them, and will always put their interests first. I’ve sat with them, talked with them, and knowing their pain and worry propels my urgency on this issue.

What drives affordability? Inventory. We can’t gain affordability without inventory, and if we are realistic, we won’t gain inventory without concessions. Housing is not a policy arena that invites perfection.

The current housing crisis, which creates such hardship for working families, is predicated by a shortage of units. Stay with that simple and ultra-relevant fact. Not units of this or that type; just a basic shortage of homes. It’s accepted that even if, hypothetically, all new housing only came in a type which is not a priority (e.g. single family homes with a yard), this new housing would still relieve pressure on the market and support the emergence of greater affordability across the income spectrum.

Of course it makes sense to, instead, try and build that which we have the greatest need for. Our zoning and planning efforts are pointed towards this outcome. A variety of citizen-informed Healdsburg planning efforts (climate, DEI, SDAT, Housing element) all call for multi-family units (apartments, quadraplexes etc.), greater or mixed density, close to transportation and jobs. I accept this direction. But this kind of housing is routinely discouraged by the adoption of the following policies:

1. The Growth Management Ordinance or GMO. The GMO has created a blockade against multi-family housing for over 25 years now because each unit built counts against the GMO's meager yearly allotment. Affordable deed-restricted housing, or senior housing, are the only exceptions, so that's what we are seeing now -leaving nothing for first-time buyers and workers who make too much to qualify for low-income/affordable units. In addition, the GMO makes developments so rare and unlikely, that the only projects that end up 'penciling out' are luxury developments. Witness the Mill District, the North Villiage, Montage and now The Hudson.

2. Deed restrictions.. A deed restriction means that only renters within a certain income bracket are eligible to rent, and in turn, the rents are offered with a certain affordable bracket. But what we know is that deed restrictions are kryptonite for development. This tactic is only applicable to truly low income housing projects (which we have been very successful in creating in Healdsburg), and even there it’s problematic for renters. Only very rarely does it work for any other kind of project focused on middle-class or first-time owners. Most of the time it’s a brick wall.

3. Excess Parking. A development that puts too much emphasis on relegating space for cars and not humans (housing) inevitably tips the scale away from affordability for residents, and feasibility for developers. Parking restrictions bring a host of complaints, but are an essential component of creating affordable projects.

4. Overly restrictive design standards. Density is the foundation for affordability and needs to be accommodated for with allowances for ample height etc.

Enacting these requirements, and making these demands, slows progress even when adherents admit there is a need to build more units. This approach is bogged down by a lack of urgency, and often complacency with the status quo. When projects die (or never arrive) we hear claims that developers were too greedy to heed to community demands. Too often they demonize ‘development’ outright, exaggerating that it always comes hand in hand with greedy opportunism. Like it or not, we are stuck needing to work creatively with the financial realities of developers.

Most developments will never thread the needle in terms of delivering ideal price-points for units. Not without stifling, deal-killing deed restrictions. Not in modern-day Healdsburg. But that failure is just a temporary concession in order to gain the inventory, and ideally the housing type, that we need most (higher-density, multi-family etc). Multi-family units of a reasonable size will inevitably slip into greater affordability over time. And even if, remarkably, they do not, they still work to address the pinch that insufficient inventory puts on working families. And that’s a huge win. Some may say "we can't be 100% certain that affordability will be the result if the units are only affordable now to wealthy people". But the need for that kind of unrealistic certainty is not something that any community is entitled to, and in the end, to take this stance is identical to embracing the current, repressive status quo. The result is stagnation and skyrocketing housing costs.

Inventory is the prime mover of affordability. Not design, not deed-restrictions. Our housing policy will always fail, and will provide a dis-service to working people, so long as we stand opposed to this overarching fact. A truly progressive housing policy, attentive to the crisis we are experiencing, should never nit-pick at opportunities to deliver new inventory by “making the perfect be the enemy of the good”.

Our city needs to work squarely within the economic realities of the moment, restrictive though they may be. Avoiding developers would require a version of socialism that introduces huge taxes to fund housing from within the government, avoiding the needs of private development entirely. This may lead us directly to the outcome the community wants, but even within the emergent left, there is no appetite for this kind of extreme taxation -not at the local level. Taking this direction would take a tremendous amount of time, and patience of this sort would stand directly opposed to the recognition that the current housing crisis requires timely action.

A self-proclaimed pro-housing person, whose conditions and requirements for housing remain narrow, restrictive, and idealistic, is not at all “pro-housing” by my definition. And they’re not listening to the needs of the people to whom attainable housing, and living in Healdsburg, is not a luxury, but a necessity.

As soon as the community finds a way to relinquish the oppressive GMO, we will have the flexibility we need to drive development (through zoning and planning) towards the kinds of projects the best fit our need. City leaders are committed to taking action to address the housing crises. Until the time when the GMO has been adequately modified or is deemed illegal by the state (neither is quick remedy to this impasse) we simply must say 'yes' to the mutli-family projects that press forward the main driver of affordability: inventory.

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