The affordable housing crisis is now the most serious threat to California’s future standard of living and quality of life. Rising homelessness is a graphic reminder of grotesque inequities and our fraying social fabric. We must make progress against the frightening spread of blue tarps and tents to rebuild our faith in a just and safe future.
Montebello is committed on a course toward making decent and affordable housing both a community benefit and a human right. The Montebello General Plan update currently underway is charting a new course for the future. The Housing Element is one of the seven required elements of the General Plan. This Housing Element update is being developed in conjunction with the City’s overall General Plan update. This provides an unprecedented opportunity to develop the General Plan and Housing Element from the ground up based on a renewed community vision and a system approach to planning, where housing is in complete sync with the transportation, economic, environmental, health, safety, cultural, recreational policies, and programs.
Downtown Montebello provides a huge opportunity for repurposing vacant and underperforming sites for infill housing. In conjunction with the General Plan Update, the City is also preparing a Downtown Specific Plan that will facilitate the building of more housing in the Downtown area.
These efforts will go a long way to promoting a more fiscally sustainable development environment and serve as a foundation to develop a Housing Element that will carry the city into the future. The updated General Plan, Downtown Specific Plan, and Housing Element will reinforce and leverage the momentum and commitment to affordable housing.
The purpose of the 2021-2029 Housing Element is to find community support for building substantial new housing, especially affordable housing, among their residents. Success will require patient dialogue, coalition-building, and political will to put policies into action.
The Housing Element identifies and analyzes the current and future housing needs of residents within Montebello and establishes goals, policies, and programs to meet Montebello’s housing needs. The City seeks to conserve and rehabilitate existing housing as well as provide opportunities for new development. The Housing Element will enlist Montebello’s diverse constituencies to come up with workable solutions. The Housing Element seeks to improve coordination and manage results. The best way to secure more funding is to more effectively deploy the money we’re already spending.
A Housing Task Force is working with the Planning Commission to provide direction and input on how the City’s programs, regulations, and processes can be structured to formulate policies that protect Montebello’s stable neighborhoods while providing desperately needed affordable, high-quality housing for all residents.
Click here to access the City Council Presentation (6-22-22)
Click here to access the Planning Commission Hearing Presentation (1-18-22)
Click here to access the 2021-2029 Housing Element Plan
Click here to access the Draft Initial Study — Negative Declaration
Click here to view the recorded 1st Housing Element Task Force meeting.
Click here to view the recorded 2nd Housing Element Task Force meeting.
Click here to view the recorded 3rd Housing Element Task Force meeting.
Click here to view more information on the Housing Element Update.
