Campbell is making it easier for residents to create a wide array of housing options in their own backyards.
The Campbell City Council unanimously voted Monday to implement a temporary policy to make the city compliant with Senate Bill 450. The law, enacted Jan. 1 after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it last year, makes it simpler for homeowners to turn their properties into duplexes and fourplexes. Campbell is one of the first cities in Santa Clara County to address the law, which will primarily affect the San Tomas and Campbell Village neighborhoods.
All new home and add-on proposals in those neighborhoods zoned for single-family use will no longer be required to complete an architectural review with public notice or be reviewed by the Campbell Planning Commission. The neighborhoods have historically required 10- to 20-foot setbacks, which have been reduced to 4 feet.
Vice Mayor Dan Furtado said while the state law is unfortunate for established communities, it supersedes local control.
“Generally, we have no choice whatsoever,” he said at the meeting. “It’s not something that we necessarily want to do, but we’re required to do.”
“(New laws create) a lot of changes to local processes, especially when it comes to design review in single-family neighborhoods when cities and neighborhoods want to maintain a certain level of character and similarity,” Sapirman told San José Spotlight.
Campbell resident Chris Bracher, who’s lived in the San Tomas neighborhood for about 20 years, said he has no problem with the smaller setbacks because the city has consistently enforced setback policies. His family settled in Campbell more than 100 years ago.
“If it’s only 4 feet, that’s better than nothing,” Bracher told San José Spotlight. “At the same time, over in the San Tomas area, it’s kind of a unique neighborhood. We like the single-family home feel to it.”
Campbell has several housing projects in the pipeline, including a 20-townhome development near downtown and a 100% affordable development in collaboration with VTA. The city aims to create 3,870 new homes by 2031 to meet state mandates, 1,542 of which must be affordable to low-income residents.
Sapirman said they’re optimistic about SB 450’s changes for the whole Bay Area.
“It’s really good to build affordable projects, or even mixed-income projects in high resource neighborhoods,” Sapirman said. “So (I’m) just very hopeful that by laxing the zoning, by laxing the costs, it will be more affordable, it’ll be faster to get more affordable homes online.”
