A group of Carmel residents have come up with a creative way to meet the state’s housing requirements.

Pam Marino here, with news of something potentially truly groundbreaking taking place in Carmel. In fact, the city is poised to be a model for other cities in the state to follow.

Last August I reported how some Carmelites had formed the group Affordable Housing Alternatives, AHA for short, in response to the city’s housing element being certified by the California Department of Housing and Community Development. In a rush to beat a state deadline, Carmel’s housing plan locked the city into a promise to develop 149 low- to very low-income units on city-owned parking lots.

Residents were alarmed at the plan to put a large low-income apartment complex on city property. They felt it was totally out of character for the little town with a Bohemian past, full of cottages and small businesses. Around 40 or so residents volunteered over the past 14 months to find another way to meet the state’s requirement to provide the 149 units.

I will admit I was skeptical that a group of residents with limited land use experience could come up with an alternative plan that would satisfy HCD officials, but it appears they are on the precipice of just that after the volunteers put in thousands of hours in research and data collecting and ponied up the money to hire their own consultant to advise them.

“We kept looking for ways to do things the Carmel way,” said Councilmember Hans Buder, one of the founding members of AHA, before he was elected to office in November, speaking during a special joint session of the Carmel City Council and Planning Commission on May 20.

“I can say with confidence, this is our plan,” Buder said. “These programs weren’t created by a consultant, or even city staff—we certainly benefited from their expertise. They were created by your friends and neighbors.”

The programs Buder referred to are five strategies to sprinkle affordable units throughout the city, including: converting hotel rooms into residential units and allowing transfer of hotel rooms (called “keys” in the industry) to other hotel businesses; incentivizing mixed-income building in downtown; a live-work program downtown; encouraging accessory dwelling units, aka ADUs; and building housing on church properties.

Carmel Assistant City Administrator Brandon Swanson told the councilmembers and commissioners that HCD officials said they had never seen such efforts before in any other cities.

There is still more work to do before the city presents the draft changes to the housing element to HCD sometime this summer.

In his remarks, Buder had something poignant to say about why Carmel needs to follow through on AHA’s programs.

“The number one threat to Carmel's character is something that’s not on most people’s radar, and that's the long-term decline in the year-round population and the hollowing out of our community,” he said. 

In 1980 Carmel had 4,800 year-round residents and today it has 3,100, he said. The decline has accelerated since 2016, when there were 3,900 residents. The median age went from 53 to 65 in that timeframe. Buder, a dad with young children, said he feels the changes acutely in his neighborhood where there are only two school-aged children.

“You look at these numbers and I think the conclusion is inescapable: This is a dying community,” Buder said. The housing element process gives Carmel an opportunity to reverse the decline and make it a more vibrant city for all. 

“If you want to keep Carmel Carmel, surely one of the most important imperatives is to not lose the people who call it home,” he concluded.

Well said, and something that we could all say about any community in Monterey County. Let’s not lose the people who call it home.