Paso Robles moving forward with 30-unit senior affordable housing complex
A 30-unit affordable housing development for Paso Robles seniors is officially in the works.
On Tuesday, the Paso Robles Planning Commission approved a new affordable housing development at 298 Niblick Road that will serve people over the age of 55.
Proposed by the Affordable Housing Development Corp. and Paso Robles Housing Authority, the Highlands Senior Affordable Housing Development is intended for seniors making less than 60% of the area median income, or around $35,000 for a household of one.
Affordable Housing Development Corp. executive vice president Laurie Doyle said she expects the project’s units to fill quickly once it’s ready to open.
The affordable housing provider’s previous projects, the seniors-only River Walk Terrace and family-oriented Sunrise Villas, were full of residents within days of opening and currently have waiting lists of 700 and 1,500 households, respectively, she said.
“Relative to the wait list and the absorption of affordable housing, I think we’re all aware that we need more affordable housing,” Doyle said. “We need as much as we can get.”
High-density project requests concessions on height, parking
By limiting its residents to people over the age of 55 who make no more than 60% of the AMI, the Highlands project qualified for an 80% density bonus, giving the developer the right to request five concessions from the city’s building code under the state’s density bonus law, according to the staff report.
Though the 2.1-acre site was originally zoned as open space, in 2020 the City Council rezoned the parcel for both mixed-use and open space uses, allocating 20 surplus density units — affordable units that are planned by municipalities for underused plots of land — to the project site, according to the staff report.
Chief among the concessions requested by the developers was a 50% density bonus, which allowed the developer to exceed the 20-unit allocation of the City Council in favor of a 30-unit plan that would stand three stories high.
With the added units, the developer used a second concession to request an exemption that allows for a maximum height of 37.5 feet rather than the city’s maximum of 32 feet, and another concession to allow for more exposed foundation than usual, with the project site’s sloping terrain necessitating an 11-foot exposed foundation facing a grove of oaks on the southern side of the property.
As has been a theme with many dense projects approved in recent years, the developer also requested a parking reduction that would bring the on-site capacity down from a required 54 spaces to 38, along with a concession on shade coverage of the parking area from 25% coverage to 17%.
People entering and exiting the parking lot will be able to turn both left and right onto Niblick Road, though, no street parking will be available surrounding the property.
The developer also used a concession to lower the amount of open space allotted per unit from 100 square feet to 51 square feet in the form of patio and common spaces, according to the staff report.
Featuring 25 one-bedroom units and five two-bedroom units, the project was able to cut down floor space for individual units by providing a shared laundry facility on all three of the project’s floors, according to the staff report.
A property manager will live on-site in one of the 30 units.
A creek and bike trail surrounded by a grove of oaks runs through the southern end of the property but is not expected to be impacted by the new construction, according to the staff report.
Project gains unanimous approval
After a limited public comment period and discussion by the Planning Commission, the project was ultimately approved 7-0, meaning it only needs a final approval by the City Council to get underway.
As part of the conditions of approval, the Planning Commission required the developer to enlist the services of an archaeologist and Native American monitor who can help carry out mitigation measures if evidence of Native American artifacts is unearthed on-site.
While a handful of residents were critical of the structure’s dense form factor and reductions to parking, the commissioners were less concerned with those aspects of the project — and if they were, it would matter little because fighting the state’s density bonus guidelines would be a costly uphill battle.
“My first concern was parking, so I hear the public comment,” Commissioner Ty Christiansen said. “I think that they also have to consider that this is a low-income (project), so concessions take a lot of that out of the city’s hands in a way that kinda handcuffs us, to a certain extent.”
