Megan Miller sought to counter what she said was misinformation concerning the housing developments underway in Crescent City. But few stuck around past the public comment period at Monday’s City Council meeting to hear it.

Miller, Crescent City Housing Authority executive director, specifically spoke to Battery Point Apartments — a 162-unit complex that will house seniors and families — and the narrative that its tenants won’t be from Del Norte County.

“The waiting list for Battery Point Apartments, the senior units… there are 78 applicants on that list (and) there are 40 units,” she said. “Out of those 78, 72 of them are local residents. All 72 applicants are automatically ahead of those six who are from out of the area because anybody with a Del Norte County address steps ahead of somebody without one regardless of the application date.”

Miller’s presentation on the Housing Authority’s fiscal year 2026 Public Housing Agency Annual Plan came after residents spent more than an hour airing concerns about Battery Point Apartments, the Redwood Downtown and other multi-family facilities in various stages of development.

Some, like former Del Norte County supervisor Roger Gitlin, said developments like Battery Point Apartments would degrade the community. Others, like 79-year-old Jim Nelson, a realtor, urged the City Council to slow the developments of multi-family housing down, arguing that they were competing against other property owners that want to find renters.

There were also some who said that despite the number of units coming online in the next year or two, housing is still a dire need. Debbie Lewis, who joined True North Organizing Network in 2018, noted that middle income residents are also feeling the housing shortage.

“Have you ever listened to some of these people?” Lewis asked. “They’re school teachers, they’re police officers. There’s a whole array of people who come here to work and they don’t have housing.”

One resident, Cate Classen, who opened a yoga studio about nine years ago, questioned the way city staff presented California’s state density housing bonus law to planning commissioners Thursday. This definition played a role in the Planning Commission’s approval of the Redwood Downtown, Classen told the City Council, despite people asking for the roof of the proposed development be lowered and parking be considered.

“The city manager’s language during the commissioners’ hearing states over and over, ‘mandatory state guidelines,’” Classen said, accusing city staff of influencing the outcome of the Planning Commission’s decision. “The misdirect is that those guidelines are only in place because those developers have written grants asking for public funds to build their private projects. If they choose to receive public money, the mandatory is 20% low income housing, and others.”

On Thursday, three planning commissioners approved a site plan and an architectural review for the Redwood Downtown. Planning Commission Ray Walp was absent and Commissioner Shawna Hyatt recused herself.

Spearheaded by Community System Solutions, the Redwood Downtown is a 36-unit mixed-use development that will replace the former Daly’s department store building at 3rd and J streets. The development would consist of two three-story buildings with the first housing retail on the ground floor below residential units and the second completely devoted to housing, CEO Mike Bahr told planning commissioners.

The Redwood Downtown went before the City Council twice. Last month, Councilors amended a loan agreement between the city and CSS that provided the nonprofit with $650,000 in Pro-Housing Incentive Program dollars and $350,000 in Permanent Local Housing Allocation money. That funding came to Crescent City in 2024 from the California Department of Housing and Community Development. The city is required to use those dollars to build at least four units of affordable housing by 2030.

Crescent City is also pursuing a further $650,000 in PIP funds, which, if awarded, it will loan to CSS for the Redwood Downtown.

The estimated cost to build all 36 units will be about $12.9 million, Wier told planning commissioners. Its proposed location is within the city’s downtown business district and is within the business-professional general plan use designation.

According to Ethan Lawton, a planner with SHN Consulting that’s contracted to work with the city, Bahr and CSS are taking advantage of California’s State Density Housing Bonus law to construct the Redwood Downtown. Becoming effective in 2021, the law allows developments to exceed the maximum density local land use designations establish if they further the state’s supply of affordable housing.

Under the State Density Bonus law, a development has to be 100% affordable, which means that 80% of the units have to be designated for lower income households, while 20% can be designated for moderate income households. 

According to Lawton’s presentation, 29 out of the 36 units proposed for the Redwood Downtown would be rented to households that make within 50 to 80% of the area median income, which for a family of four in Del Norte County is $93,900. Under the state law, those units must remain affordable for 55 years.

The Redwood Downtown is also eligible for additional incentives because it’s within a mile and a half of a major transit stop, Lawton said. As a result, the city can’t impose minimum parking requirements on the developer, he said. 

CSS’s proposed development calls for two off-street parking spaces, according to the staff report

The State Density Bonus law also allows the Redwood Downtown to exceed the number of units the city’s general plan allows for the area, which is up to eight units. The zoning designation from the development, the city’s downtown business district, allows for a maximum of 15 units. The Redwood Downtown would consist of 36 units.

The Redwood Downtown is also granted an additional 33 extra feet in height under the State Density Bonus law, Lawton said. 

“The height requirement for this zone is 40 feet,” he said. “The density bonus law increases that by an extra 33 feet, so what’s allowed is 77 feet. This proposed project is well under 77 feet. With the density bonus, staff believe it’s consistent with zoning regulations.”

The Redwood Downtown’s proposed height is 44 feet 8 inches, according to Lawton’s staff report.

It’s the developer that crafts their project to fit the State Density Bonus, Wier told Redwood Voice Community News. If it meets those stipulations, local government can’t regulate against that. If local government does try to block a housing development that meets the State Density Bonus criteria, the developer could sue, Wier said.

“The planning commission’s job in that capacity, it’s called quasi-judicial capacity,” Wier said. “They’re really like a judge at that point. It’s not a matter of if they like the project or not — they can certainly bring up concerns and work with the developer — but in the end they need to make certain findings. If a project meets those findings, and often it’s either yes or no, when it comes to that, their job is to say yes, this project meets those (requirements) and needs to be approved.”

Wier, who noted that the state would rather have a parking problem than a housing problem, said a measure the city could establish to ensure patrons and residents aren’t competing for spaces include implementing two-hour parking on 3rd Street. 

During her public testimony, Pacific Northwest Physical Therapy owner Heidi Kime, who was on the City Council from 2016 to 2020, said her commercial property shares a narrow strip of parking with the city. The building across the street, however, “does not have a single parking place” for the businesses that reside in it, she said. Under the city’s parking ordinances, developers are required to provide “a certain number of parking spaces, but that’s not being enforced, she said.

Though she — and other speakers — erroneously stated that the Redwood Downtown would consist of 42 units, Kime said it didn’t make sense to her that the developer was permitted to provide two off-street parking spaces.

“If your building that you are intending to build does not have the foundation to support ground parking and however many stories you want above that… we shouldn’t be allowing  this building to be built,” she said. “I’m already playing parking police and, god forbid, if any of you require physical therapy, you too will be fighting for a parking space unless I am out there with my clipboard and writing down license plates.”

Dana Gill, pastor of the Crescent City United Methodist Church, said she remembered when the City Council approved a resolution to end homelessness in 2018. She commended the work that Miller and Wier are doing to urge balanced housing, which reduces pockets of poverty

“Anyone who works in housing around Del Norte or who has looked for housing knows we are desperately under-housed here in Crescent City,” she said. “As a United Methodist minister it’s important that we love our neighbors. That means we care about the quality of housing that our neighbors get regardless of who they are.”