19.34.020 Findings.

(A) California's Unruh Civil Rights Act (Civil Code Section 51.1 et seq.) expressly allows private parties to establish housing for senior citizens and the Federal Fair Housing Act (42 U.S.C. Section 3601 et seq.) expressly allows for "housing for older persons."

(B) State law encourages "senior citizen housing developments." Specifically, Government Code Section 65915 requires cities to provide "senior citizen housing developments" density bonuses for development of such facilities and provide lower parking standards. Therefore, by law, "senior only" housing facilities may receive concessions and incentives that non-senior facilities do not receive.

(C) On average, senior citizens make less impact on the environment than do non-seniors. Occupancy rates for seniors are significantly less than non-senior occupancy rates. Seniors make substantially fewer trips than non-seniors. Seniors drive fewer vehicles, and therefore require fewer parking spaces per housing unit than do non-seniors. This chapter acknowledges these facts when it applies a lower parking requirement for certain senior housing facilities than would have otherwise applied.

(D) Because, on average, senior citizens occupy few persons per dwelling unit than non-senior citizen residents, seniors use substantially less water per household than non-seniors. Therefore, if there is no discretionary process to administer changes from senior to non-senior mobilehome parks, the city's zero water footprint policy will not be applied to such land use changes. This will further jeopardize the city's ability to supply water to its residents in accordance with the fee structure adopted by the city council.

(E) Based on the foregoing, newly created or authorized non-senior facilities have a greater impact on the environment than do existing senior facilities. Therefore, the city determines that all conversions, as defined in this chapter, are "projects" within the meaning of Public Resources Code Section 21065.

(F) Government Code Section 65595 et seq., permit all of the following developments to pay lower developer fees to schools: developments which qualify as "senior citizen housing," "multilevel facility for the elderly" or as a "residential care facility for the elderly," and manufactured homes and mobilehomes in certain communities limited to older persons.

(G) Government Code Sections 65595.1 and 65595.2 demonstrate that cities should often disallow these senior housing uses from converting to

non-senior housing uses until the full amount of school fees that would have otherwise been required to be paid were, in fact, paid.

(H) If a previously approved facility obtained concessions or incentives because it indicated that it would qualify and operate as a senior housing project but subsequently lost its qualifying status, the development facility should mitigate the impacts on the community, including but not limited to offsetting the concessions and incentives previously received.

(I) If the city applied reduced public park dedications for senior restricted developments, or lowered fees for vehicular parking, transportation, and/or schooling because the project originally qualified as a senior housing project and then that project later converted to non-senior housing, the public would be harmed to the extent that the converted project did not provide the full amount of mitigation that would have been otherwise required. If a conversion occurs, the city should require that all impacts from the conversion are mitigated.