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A view of Oat Hill in American Canyon from near Highway 29. The city has approved having multi-family homes there.
American Canyon is one Napa County community that isn’t going through handwringing about having to comply with new state house-building mandates.
The south county city must make room for 446 new homes from 2023-31. Forty percent of them are to be affordable.
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Plus, American Canyon has transfer agreements with Napa County that takes some of the state-mandated new homes assigned to rural, unincorporated wine country. The county has requested the city take on another 176 homes.
That means American Canyon over eight years must make room for at least 622 new homes. City leaders during Tuesday’s City Council meeting seemed to take the number in stride.
American Canyon is fortunate to have the land to build on, Mayor Leon Garcia said.
“Unfortunately, some areas — well, cities to the north of us in this county — they’re very constrained,” he said.
The city in recent years approved Watson Ranch, which is to someday have about 1,200 homes. It approved its Broadway District Specific Plan that allows 1,200 new housing units along Highway 29. Both efforts will take years to come to fruition.
City Councilmember Mark Joseph said the city is in a position to have “a little bit of bragging rights, to say, ‘We can deliver.’ ”
California assigned 441,176 new housing units to the Bay Area for 2023-31, compared to 187,990 for the present housing cycle. The Association of Bay Area Governments split the regional number up among nine Bay Area counties and their cities.
The number is called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment allocation. American Canyon must update its general plan housing element to show how it will meet its mandated number. The housing element must be certified by the state by Jan. 31, 2023.
That means identifying where those 622 new housing units will go.
Having a state-certified housing element avoids state litigation. It maintains local control over housing. It maintains state funding eligibility for housing, parks, transit, bike lanes, and other projects, said Luke Lindenbusch of the Napa Sonoma Collaborative.
“Hearing the progress American Canyon is making, I’m not too worried about American Canyon getting a certified housing element, or needing to be too worried about this,” he told the City Council.
He recommended the city plan for more homes than its housing mandate number, creating a buffer in case some sites don’t work out.
“The state is checking to make sure your inventory remains valid with every year,” he said.
Garcia saw an advantage to creating the housing.
“If you’ve got housing, you can draw corporate business into town," he said. "They need it for their workforce.”
American Canyon presently has about 6,300 housing units.
Housing mandates have caused bigger headaches for other jurisdictions. For example, Napa County is struggling to find room for 106 state-mandated homes, 61 of them low-income, within the unincorporated county outside of cities. Constraints include agricultural protections, wildfire danger and a lack of water lines, sewer lines, and mass transit.
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The outside of Colin Petheram's and Karteek Patel's prefab Napa home.
Napans Colin Petheram and Karteek Patel (left) chose Stillwater Dwellings for their modern, prefab home.
Stillwater Dwellings built this prefab Napa home.
This prefab Napa home, by Stillwater Dwellings, includes a pool and other outdoor gathering space.
Stillwater Dwellings created this modern, prefab home for Napans Colin Petheram and Karteek Patel.
Inside a prefab Napa home built by Stillwater Dwellings.
You can reach Barry Eberling at 256-2253 or beberling@napanews.com.
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Barry Eberling covers Napa County government, transportation, the environment and general assignments. He has worked for the Napa Valley Register since fall 2014 and previously worked 27 years for the Daily Republic of Fairfield.
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Vines have started to wake up and peek out from dormancy based on different site-specific factors, and the Napa Valley Grapegrowers estimate the whole valley will be budding by mid-March.
A view of Oat Hill in American Canyon from near Highway 29. The city has approved having multi-family homes there.
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