Making Your Mark

working together taking San Carlos to an even better future

Fitting Into a Neighborhood

by 2 Comments

I occasionally get asked about whether or not the City has rules requiring that new homes, or significant remodels, have to fit into a neighborhood. The short answer is yes…but they probably don’t cover what many people mean when they talk about a home fitting in to a neighborhood. There are reasons for that, which I’ll try to explain below, based on some conversations I had with San Carlos’ planning staff.

All land use regulations (which includes the rules governing what kind of home you can build) are fundamentally limited by the fact that, in our system of governance, private property rights are pretty fundamental. They are not absolute — we won’t let you live on a residential lot in San Carlos without a functioning bathroom — but they come quite close. That’s because, while we live in communities, we live in them as individuals, with individual rights. Those rights protect us not only from what “the government” might do, but also what our friends and neighbors might do to keep us from enjoying our own property.

The “functioning bathroom” rule illustrates why private property rights are not absolute. We are regulated as individuals from doing things, or not doing things, which might either inflict harm on others, or could be reasonably expected to inflict harm on others. Not having a functioning bathroom creates not only a nuisance for neighbors, but could also cause them to become ill. So the community can and does impose a requirement that constrains your freedom to use your property as you see fit, and which has the weight of the legal system behind it.

There are other, less obvious, examples, too. San Carlos, like most communities, has regulations limiting how much noise you can create on your property, and under what circumstances you can create it. Noise won’t make your neighbors sick. But it creates harm of a different sort, by damaging their quality of life.

These rules also evolve over time. It’s been lawful to build large homes on almost all the lots in San Carlos for many, many years. But, until recently, when the price of land got sky high, not that many people did. The Single Family Home Advisory Commission (SHAC) was set up by the Council to make recommendations on what, if any, changes to our land use regulations should be made now that the economic environment is leading to more large homes being built.

But all these rules have one thing in common: they are balancing acts, compromises, between preserving individual rights and protecting neighbors.

As with all compromises, there is no one, analytically-determinable “solution”. So the specific balancing point a community sets is a political decision (within the broader confines of the Constitution, and Federal and California law).

Some communities, like Hillsborough, require, in addition to the typical home construction rules, that designs stay consistent with a single architectural style. Not necessarily a particular, mandated style; just a single one. So you probably couldn’t put a Tudor front on a fundamentally Mediterranean design, even if that’s what strikes your fancy.

Other communities, like Atherton, have nothing other than basic setback and lot coverage rules. I was surprised to learn this…but on reflection it makes sense. Lots in Atherton are quite large by San Mateo County standards (and apparently can’t be subdivided below a pretty large size). So whatever impacts a design might have on the neighborhood is significantly mitigated by how far apart the homes are, and how far they are set back from the public right of way.

San Carlos falls in between. We have setback rules, lot coverage rules, etc., like Atherton (and Hillsborough, for that matter). We don’t have rules specifically governing what I’ll call the visual style of a home (so you can build something oddball like a Mediterranean with a Tudor front). But we do have rules that target what architects call a structure’s “massing”. For example, we can require that long walls are “broken up” by articulating the surface (i.e., creating recesses or “pop outs”).

Note that I said “can require” not “do require”: some of our rules are triggered only if either the neighbors or the Residential Design Review Committee ask for a design change.

As to why we don’t go further, or why we’ve gone as far as we have, that’s a different question, whose answer grows out of choices made a long time ago. If I had to summarize them, I’d say San Carlos chose to preserve a fair degree of individual choice on design, except when choices create an “overbearing impact” on a neighborhood, irrespective of the visual style of the proposed home.

You might really dislike Tudors while I can’t get enough of them, or I might love to have our neighborhood filled with Arts & Crafts homes while you wish another one would never be built, but we can both agree that having a 25 foot long unbroken wall next door, even one properly set back from a common property line, is too overbearing, regardless of its visual style.

Personally, I think San Carlos’ philosophy seems reasonable. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Share

Hillside Overlay Districts

by 1 Comment

Recently, over on a NextDoor thread discussing the expected development of what is commonly called the Black Mountain properties, someone cited a four story home on Crestview Drive as an example of how the Council ignores its own building codes. I was curious about the house in question (268 Crestview Drive), which, while in this Google Maps image isn’t four stories as far as I can tell, equally clearly isn’t the two stories that’s the maximum you get under our 28 foot above grade height rule:

This naturally begs the question, how was it approved? Did someone on staff or the Council make a mistake? Or look the other way? Or wasn’t it approved?

So I thought I’d research what happened. Here’s what I found out.

The project did go through the normal, detailed review and approval by the Residential Design Review Committee (RDRC) that all recent homes (and many remodeling projects) go through. The RDRC approval set various requirements the project had to meet, most or all of which looked pretty typical to me. So that rules out the home somehow being built without approval by the City (which is a good thing…for the homeowners and their contractors, as I suspect the City could require the house to be removed if it wasn’t approved, and probably cause the contractors who built it to forfeit their licenses).

But that still leaves us with the question of how a house that appears to be taller than 28 feet above grade got approved.

Answering that question starts with a review of the project file (the City maintains a file on each and every project that it reviews and approves). That file is a public document, so if anyone wants to check what I say here, you can go to the City Planning Department and ask to review the file (which is what I did).

The file contains the approved architectural plans for the project (which is what defines what can be built, and woe betide any developer who builds something other than what is approved). A quick examination of the plans shows that the two stories sitting on top of the garage have a maximum height of 24 feet, 11 inches, well below the 28 foot height limit.

But the garage is 9 feet tall, making the height from the driveway to the top of the building 33 feet, 11 inches, well above the 28 foot height limit for a single family home. What gives?

It turns out — I didn’t know this until today — that San Carlos added a Hillside Overlay District to its zoning code back in 2011. You can find it here. The relevant parts of the Hillside Overlay District for our discussion are these:

  • Single family homes built on lots exceeding a defined slope have to meet additional requirements. The 268 Crestview lot was found by a surveyor to exceed the threshold slope.
  • But they are also allowed to be somewhat taller (up to 35 feet above the lowest developed grade)

City staff explained to me that these changes were adopted by the Council in 2011 (that was slightly before my time) to do a better job of preserving the character of steeper lots, reduce the risks to adjacent property owners from construction, and reduce the visual impact — what architects call “mass” — of the home that gets built.

Those sound like reasonable and prudent goals. But why would that entail increasing the maximum allowable height, even if it only applies to part of the structure (i.e., as with 268 Crestview, there’s a part that’s built into the slope)?

The reason is this: allowing a somewhat greater height, when coupled to the other constraints in the Hillside Overlay rules, reduces the amount of terracing that used to be done when building a home on a steeply-sloped lot. In other words, when you’re limited to 28 feet, but allowed to do more grading, architects create “stairstepped” designs:

This tends to result in more “massive” (in the architectural sense) homes, when viewed from the street.

If you constrain terracing, but allow somewhat greater height, you pull the stairsteps together, reducing the visual mass by consolidating the elements of the design:

Please remember that I’m not an architect, so this is meant just as a simple illustration of what the 2011 zoning code change was targeted at accomplishing. If you want a better/fuller explanation, contact Al Savay, our Community and Economic Development Director, who can do a much better job of explaining things.

So that’s why 268 Crestview was approved to be built the way it is. It was compliant with the Single Family RS-6 zoning rules, and those additional rules spelled out for Hillside Overlay Districts.

And I have to say, it’s a beautiful design, and one that I’m sure the owners are understandably proud of. Your mileage may differ on that, of course.

Share

Deciding on Behalf of the Community

by Leave a Comment

Recently the Council changed the way the Residential Design Review Committee is structured (this is the commission which reviews and approves home remodeling and construction projects). The change involves hiring individuals with design expertise (e.g., architects) to sit on the RDRC.

One of the arguments staff gave for the change was that it would help to level the playing field between design experts representing applicants and the RDRC. It was felt this would lead to neighborhood concerns being better addressed, because RDRC members lacking design expertise can hesitate to push back against an applicant’s expert(s) arguing that some change to a project’s plans cannot realistically be made. Although I voted against the recommendation, I am not strongly opposed to it.

But it highlighted an aspect of public decision-making I wanted to share, and which I hope will make its way to all the residents we appoint to our various commissions. These are my personal views, and not necessarily those of the Council or the staff.

Serving the community as a commissioner is an always challenging and sometimes-thankless task. In part, that’s because commissioners are called upon to take positions or make decisions outside of their areas of expertise. Reasonable people tend to find that daunting, because they want their decisions to be fully informed.

In practice, that’s generally not achievable. Most of the decisions reaching, say, the Planning Commission or the RDRC, involve applying an involved set of rules to specific situations. The rules are involved to provide applicants with a degree of flexibility in meeting their own desires while complying with community requirements. Consequently, commissioners mostly deal with challenging matters, situations involving choices which, while based on analysis, also require intuition and judgment. When coupled to the breadth of issues that come before our commissions, this creates an important role for subject-matter experts, who generally need to be paid for their expertise.

But hired guns don’t necessarily make the best community decision-makers if they themselves are not residents. My most important private sector mentor taught me this, in the context of our merger-and-acquisition department’s work with corporate attorneys: the lawyers are there to advise us on how the law impacts or influences our business decisions. But the business people make the final call, because we are the ones ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the enterprise. It’s unlikely a non-resident hired gun will feel as much of a stake in the outcome of something as a commisioner who lives in our community.

Resisting the temptation to “go with the experts” is hard for a commissioner trying to be reasonable and objective. Which is generally the kind of person the Council looks to appoint to our commissions. In fighting the temptation it is worth remembering that, whatever the knowledge and skill of the expert coming before you, you are the expert on what it means to be a San Carlos community member…and you speak with the voice of 30,000 people.

The experts are there to answer your questions and present their educated perspective. But it is you who are responsible for judging their input, and incorporating it into a decision that best serves the interests of San Carlos.

Sometimes that may involve rejecting outright what they have to say. More often, it may involve telling them to come up with a different approach. One you need not define, and may not be able to define; you’re not the expert, after all. You just know the rules and regulations the community of San Carlos has adopted for itself, to be the City of Good Living.

It’s also worth remembering not to be stifled by expertise appearing before you. The best experts not only know their stuff, they know how to explain it. Put another way, if a commissioner doesn’t understand something after hearing from the experts, that’s not the commissioner’s problem. It’s the expert’s problem: they were unsuccessful in getting a decision-maker to understand something they believe to be important.

In closing, I hope you will keep this in mind when you take the plunge, and apply to become a commissioner. There’s no better way I’ve found to become a better citizen than to learn how to make decisions on behalf of your community. 

And for those who already serve San Carlos, thank you for all you do. Keep up the good work!

Share

SHAC: An Interim Perspective

by Leave a Comment

Last year, based on community input, the Council established a Single-family Housing Advisory Commission. The commission’s charter was to review our current zoning rules governing single family homes, and see what, if anything, ought to be revised, in light of the increasingly-significant level of home remodeling and reconstruction in San Carlos.

The Commission recently released its findings, which are now working their way through a public review and comment period, after which they will come before the Planning Commission for further review and, ultimately, before the City Council for final review and possible adoption. The recommendations can be revised or sent back for further work at any point during this process (i.e., there is no obligation to adopt what SHAC proposed, or even to adopt anything at all — it’s a process of making choices which will impact San Carlos’ future, not a done deal).

As SHAC’s recommendations are publicly aired, they are inspiring feedback. This post is an edited version of a reply I sent to one resident, which I thought might be of more general interest.

I have no problem giving the community more time to work through this process [the author was concerned about SHAC’s recommendations being approved too quickly]. Housing regulations are a big deal in a place like San Carlos, which is dominated by single family homes.

I would caution you, however, that any eventual outcome of this review process is likely to be what I describe as the “least bad” solution, from any one individual’s perspective, rather than something that a majority, let alone everyone, will be happy with. That’s in the nature of these kinds of community choices.

I agree the current effort is unlikely to have much, if any, impact on the affordable housing problem/crisis [the author had raised this as a specific concern]. That’s not because we’re ignoring that problem; it’s that the goal of the Single-family Housing Advisory Commission was to see what, if any, changes should be made to the rules governing single family home construction and remodeling, not address affordable housing. Both issues involve housing and what a community looks like, but they are also quite different (e.g., almost every approach I’ve heard of for addressing the affordable housing situation involves increasing housing density, through construction of apartments, condos, accessory dwelling units, etc., which are different from the issues that led to the Council establishing SHAC). I encourage you to keep pushing for addressing the affordable housing situation in San Carlos, as it continues to deteriorate.

Regarding land value and home sizes, I think you’re on to something. But I believe it works out differently from what you may think. Land is very valuable in San Carlos (a totally bare dirt single family lot, anywhere in town, would probably fetch over $1,000,000 these days). But that’s the result of all the people with a lot of income and capital who want to live here (e.g., higher level employees of major tech and biotech firms) driving up the prices of a commodity that’s limited (lots on which to live in a home). No one lives on dirt (in fact, it’s against the law to live on the land in San Carlos without, among other things, a functioning bathroom)…and if you’re going to pay $1,000,000 for the dirt, you are almost certainly going to want to live in a home that “justifies” that high cost…which means a bigger home than was the norm 30 or 40 years ago when San Carlos was originally built out. Otherwise, you’ll choose to live in a community where the dirt is less expensive.

There are other demographic factors that tend to lead to larger homes. Paying for a home in San Carlos now often requires both spouses to be working…which means both spouses generally want a home office. A growing response to “how do I care for my aging parents?” also leads to larger homes, courtesy of “in law” suites. When you combine all these other factors with the high cost of San Carlos dirt, it’s not surprising that larger homes are being built. Given the average lot size in San Carlos, and the desire of most families to have yards, these forces also generally move people towards building two story homes.

Could the trend to larger/taller homes be stopped? Probably not totally, as much of it depends on forces (e.g., the enormous economic success of the Bay Area) that San Carlos does not and cannot control. But there are things we could do. Unfortunately, all the ones I know of involve making San Carlos less attractive to home buyers (i.e., they address the supply/demand imbalance by reducing demand, by making San Carlos less attractive to people wanting to buy or build a home). That would directly, and negatively, impact every current homeowner in San Carlos. Put another way, the more we cut down the real and perceived impacts of new home construction, the more we reduce the equity current homeowners enjoy. That’s a trade-off that has to be pursued gingerly.

In addition, changes that make San Carlos less interesting to new buyers and builders would also likely put our housing stock on a downward spiral. Homes do age, even with upkeep, and the way they, and the community they’re a part of, get rejuvenated is for new owners to commit their personal wealth and income to modernizing or replacing them.

Regarding developers flipping property [this was another specific concern cited by the author]: homes built “on spec” do have a tendency to cause more issues in neighborhoods than homes built by people who are going to live there. But I believe that’s less due to developers focusing solely on making a buck (although, like with any other business person, that is their job) than it is that they, personally, have little stake in the neighborhood, so they are less motivated to be flexible.

An example drawn from personal experience (my wife and I tore down a 1940s one story rancher a few years ago and built a two story craftsman on the lot): after my living room window wall was framed, I realized I was going to learn a lot about how my neighbor Karen cooked, because the window looked right into her kitchen. So we raised and shrunk the main window, and commissioned a piece of stained glass artwork to go into it, blocking the sight line (we’d previously replaced windows in a second floor bathroom with sky lights for similar reasons).

Would a developer have done that? Probably not. We did, because we were going to be living in the house after it was built, as opposed to buying it “as is” off the market.

The takeaway, for me, is to create incentives for developers building homes “on spec” to act more like people who are going to live in the homes they build. That turns out to be challenging, because laws and regulations generally have to apply to everyone equally: having different rules for construction depending upon whether or not the builder will be living in the home can easily violate private property rights.

Balancing all this out is difficult and complex, which is why I mentioned the outcome will more likely be a “least bad” one, rather than a “good” one. But to get a “least bad” outcome, we need people to stay involved. So keep lobbying for what you believe should happen. Just don’t be too disappointed if what comes out the other end isn’t all that satisfying.

Share

Recent Posts

Subscribe to Stay Informed


 

Meta