The Paso Robles City Council convened Tuesday over the preliminary stages of a new housing plan. This plan, if approved, would include the construction of accessory dwelling units in residential areas and rezoning along Olive Street.
City of Paso Robles Community Development Director Warren Frace explained that these meetings merely mark the preliminary stages in planning for the city’s housing.
The planning alone is expected to take 12 to 18 months to complete if the housing plan is even executed.
“The city has a housing committee - it makes recommendations about increasing housing production in the city. A recommendation they recently made was to consider some changes to zoning on the west side of the downtown core,” Frace said.
If approved, those changes would include rezoning along Olive Street and building ADUs for willing residents.
“It would all be in-fill development because almost every lot currently has a house on it. But most of the houses have alleys and usually along the alleys you maybe have the opportunity to take down an old garage and rebuild that with an accessory dwelling unit or an alley duplex unit,” said Frace.
Frace also stressed that installing these buildings would be up to the homeowners themselves. Similarly, individual homeowners would choose who lived in the ADUs.
The Paso Robles community could also voice their opinions during neighborhood workshops - prior to the start of the housing project.
However, one homeowner of 55 years, Erwin Mueller, feels that increasing housing in the city exacerbates the Paso Robles’ population problem.
“Most houses here on Vine Street already have houses in the backyard,” Mueller said. “I think we need to just cut back because we can’t handle the traffic. The traffic is terrible. Vine Street has turned into a freeway. We just need to cut back on residential.”
The Paso Robles City Council will have more updates regarding rezoning and housing plans for the city in the upcoming months.
