Palm Desert City Council - Study Session, October 23, 2025

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[00:02:08] Speaker: Good afternoon, the five of you out there. Welcome to Palm Desert City Council study session agenda meeting for October 23rd. It is 3:15. And did you want to do roll call or shall we do that later?
[00:02:26] Speaker: I have the record reflect all council members are present.
[00:02:29] Speaker: Great. Thank you. Okay, let's go straight to it.
[00:02:47] Carlos Flores: The first... Good evening, Madame Mayor, members of City Council. Carlos Flores, Deputy Director of Development Services. The first item in front of you today is going to be an update on our Regional Housing Needs Allocation within the city. This is really a collaborative effort within Development Services, Economic Development, and Finance to bring you a comprehensive update between our Housing Division, Planning, Building. There's a lot of staff members I just want to make sure are recognized on putting together this in front of you. It's going to be a tag-team effort here on the presentation. I can only buy so much time. Sorry.
[00:03:24] Speaker: You got it.
[00:03:27] Carlos Flores: There we are.
[00:03:31] Carlos Flores: All right. So, just a little bit of background of what we talk about when we use the abbreviation RHNA, which again is our Regional Housing Needs Allocation. So cities here in California and the City of Palm Desert were allocated a certain amount of housing units to be built within the city between what we call a RHNA cycle, which is 2022 through 2029. City staff provides an annual update to Planning Commission as well as City Council, which is then sent over to the state that provides, that gives an update of how we are doing in meeting RHNA. So, how many building permits have we issued, and what income category do those fall under? We also provide a lot more detail in it, including entitlement applications that are in progress or completed. So, in front of you here is basically the stats of the reallocation. So, again, City of Palm Desert was allocated 2,790 units that were to be built within this cycle. This is then further broken down between extremely low income, very low income, low, moderate, and above moderate. There's a lot of stats here on the screen, but I also thought it'd be worthwhile to show what it means when we say, you know, how do you qualify for a moderate income or low-income property? It's based off of...
[00:05:00] Carlos: Um, how many people in your household and based off of the median income of the county you're in, in this case, Riverside County. So that's what that table is. Again, we give this update annually and we'll continue to do so, but here we're at more or less the halfway point of our cycle. And so, you know, through the presentation, we're going to show where we're currently at as well as some next steps. So, I'm going to turn it over to Sihei Fernandez to give you further update.
[00:05:34] Sihei Fernandez: Good afternoon, Madame Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Sihei Fernandez. I'm the senior planner with Development Services. So here, let's go to the next slide. So starting off, this is a table that highlights where we currently stand as far as our current RHNA cycle. As of 2025, we've issued building permits for 144 very low, 15 low, and 187 above moderate. In terms of overall progress, we're at 85% for very low, 48% for low, and 13% for moderate. And for above moderate, we've already satisfied that requirement. We currently have till 2029 to meet the remaining allocation, and we're on track to continue making progress towards our goals. Now looking at the entitlement activity from last year, the majority of the projects that were approved were in the above moderate category. Ark Village is the only project from last year that includes very low and low. We had a total of 849 residential units approved through entitlement. This year we've seen several new projects come in for entitlement review, including The Shores, Portola Springs, Affirmed Housing, and Catabina. Altogether, these four projects represent approximately 1,440 new residential units. And with that, I'll go ahead and turn it over back to Carlos.
[00:07:25] Carlos: So, so that's where we're at in our progress. You know, our housing division as well as planning and collaboration with economic development continues to look at next steps, not just through our private entitlement but also on the city-owned properties. The largest effort that we have here, which you'll be receiving an update shortly, is our university neighborhood specific plan, and that is the 170 acres where there is an allocation of at least 220 affordable units. Along with that, again, there's coordination with economic development between housing and economic development on city-controlled properties and any opportunities there to continue to meet our RHNA. We also are excited with our new land management software. Starting with the updates that you're getting today, we'll be able to have even more reporting capabilities of what we're seeing, the types of units that are coming in, and affordability with it. On the right-hand side, what that is here is when the city adopted its housing element, we had to identify throughout the city where would different affordable housing units be allocated to. And so on the right-hand side, it's been an update after that to say, 'Okay, these are the properties that we identified would have affordable housing. Where are those at in the process?' So you have multiple that are under construction, you have multiple that are in some sort of entitlement review, and then you have other properties that we have not seen go through those steps yet, but we'll continue to monitor. All that said concludes our presentation.
[00:09:12] Mayor: Thank you very much. Are there any questions?
[00:09:16] Unknown Speaker: And just to add, you know, one of the things when you talked about the state mandates, how much of each type of housing must be built, then it is sent to the metropolitan planning organizations. And from there, sometimes there's a little bit different formulas how they achieve what is allocated to whom or and to which city. And the last RHNA allocation effort was based on—it's really easy to see there's a bunch of empty land out there, therefore they should put housing out there, but that destroys all the transportation plans and all of our efforts with sustainable communities and good air. So
[00:10:00] Speaker 1: We really looked at the last time when we tried to figure out the RHNA allocation is where are the jobs, and let's put housing close to the jobs. And that's a difficult—as the whole, this whole process is difficult. That lent—it was logical, it made sense, but it did lend some difficulties. But I think we made some great progress putting things through that lens.
[00:10:25] Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
[00:10:27] Speaker 3: Hey, Carlos, just do have a question if you don't mind. Um, so in an eight-year period, we're supposed to have 2,800 of what are considered affordable housing units come online. Is that correct? This is between '21 and '29, 2021, 2029.
[00:10:42] Carlos: So, there's—it's 2,790 total units, 1,596 which are considered affordable housing, so for moderate, low, moderate, or low income.
[00:10:56] Speaker 3: Got it. Okay.
[00:10:58] Carlos: This table here, the column on the left shows what that allocation is broken down.
[00:11:03] Speaker 3: Got it. And currently, what is our inventory of what is considered affordable housing within the city?
[00:11:10] Carlos: Meaning like what?
[00:11:12] Speaker 3: Well, existing units.
[00:11:14] Carlos: Sorry. So, the way it works for purposes of reporting in the cycle, you report the number of permits that you have issued. So, it's not necessarily taking your existing inventory and then counting that toward your cycle. It's you have to issue 675 building permits within this time period that are allocated for a very low unit. So, that's what this table shows here. 2022 we issued a certain amount, and that's when you can count it for purposes of RHNA.
[00:11:50] Speaker 3: Right, but just to give me perspective, our current inventory of what is considered affordable housing units—yeah, like what do we have to date that we can submit to RHNA and say we currently have so many affordable housing units? I just want some idea of scope and scale on what's coming down the pike versus what we already have. Does that make sense?
[00:12:09] Carlos: So you're talking about—sorry, just to make sure I understand—are you wondering the total projects you have under construction...
[00:12:17] Speaker 3: ...or that have already been built, or that exist. Yeah.
[00:12:19] Carlos: Oh, that exist. Okay. So, we do report that as part of—that's more of an effort in part of our housing element to say these are all existing affordable housing properties. So, those are like the 13 Palm Desert Housing Authority-owned properties, right? The Car Card Villas, One Quail Place. So, you do include that in your housing element. And then we also have all of the projects that during this cycle were under construction and done, right? You have the—they're called the Agate Apartments next to Spanish Walk, Millennium Apartments, Palms Community, all of those are under construction. So when you develop this map that I'm showing here, right, for your housing element, you do identify, I guess, everything that's existing, but when it comes to what they allocate, everything has to be new. It's like, okay, that's great that you have all that existing, but we're saying you need to issue new ones. You're not counting those anymore. You're issuing permits for completely new projects within these categories.
[00:13:20] Speaker 3: Okay. And the number of existing—I've heard the figure of like 12,300 roughly.
[00:13:25] Speaker 4: If I could interrupt, we could provide you with—so, if you're asking for the total number of affordable units that we have in the city currently, we can provide you with that number. We currently don't have it today.
[00:13:34] Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes I'm...
[00:13:35] Speaker 5: Send it to all of us.
[00:13:36] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. Perfect. I just get asked that when I'm out and about occasionally. So, I appreciate that. Thank you.
[00:13:40] Speaker 1: And it's important to know with RHNA, cities don't—especially since redevelopment went away—cities don't build this housing, but we do have to plan for it, and we do have to make it easy for it to get there. But they do hold our feet to the fire, as you showed with those matrices.
[00:14:04] Carlos: Sure.
[00:14:07] Speaker 7: Um, can you state what the average median income is? Do we know the AMI threshold for the county at this moment?
[00:14:19] Speaker 7: What's the annual? Because I saw just the numbers, but I don't think if it slipped through on what the income per household was.
[00:14:27] Carlos: It is. So, this table here shows you, depending on numbers of household, right? So the median for a single household in Riverside County is 72,750. For a two-person household, 83,100; three, 93,000.
[00:14:44] Speaker 7: What is the base? Okay, so maybe it's—the county is based on, I think it's the federal, or is it the poverty line? I think it's what it's based on. Sorry, that's the number that I was, I guess, referring to. And it's okay if you don't have that off the top of my head. Okay, sorry, that kind of took me to...
[00:15:01] Councilmember: Backtrack. And also, do you have any rough idea of how the other cities are doing in comparison with their RHNA numbers? I know it was brought up with the possibility of having cities collaborate in a unique way. So, just again, off the top of my head.
[00:15:18] Staff: No, I don't know.
[00:15:20] Councilmember: Thank you.
[00:15:21] Staff: Yeah, I don't know.
[00:15:22] Councilmember: I know that was a pop.
[00:15:23] Staff: I would comfortably say, at least in the Coachella Valley, we're doing well compared to other cities, but I don't know the exact... That is all, you know, every city has to or should be reporting it on an annual basis. So that's public information that can be gathered.
[00:15:43] Councilmember: Yeah, it was just a... It was presented in a different scope about the possibility of some cities joining a or creating a housing JPA. So I just thought maybe this is the opportunity to get some info for context down the line. Thank you.
[00:16:00] Staff: And when they, before they go out for the RHNA allocation, the possibility of creating sub-regions using cities that abut each other is a possibility, but it has to be done before the process begins. But of course, it's a rolling process, so we're just waiting for the next one to start, and that ability exists.
[00:16:25] Staff: If I may just briefly, Mayor and Council, at yesterday's Cove Communities Commission, we presented a series of topics for the three cities to collaborate on, one being affordable housing and RHNA. So that will be working through the process and ultimately come to the Council.
[00:16:41] Councilmember: Thank you.
[00:16:42] Mayor: Okay. Any other questions or thoughts?
[00:16:47] Mayor: Did you... Are you finished?
[00:16:50] Councilmember: Yeah.
[00:16:51] Mayor: Okay. You're still talking. Okay, it's you again.
[00:16:59] Carlos Flores: All right. Thank you again. Carlos Flores of Services here to give you an update on the University Neighborhood Specific Plan. So again, for those that don't know, UNSP, the original UNSP was adopted in November 2016 for approximately 400 acres, a lot of which has already been developed. There remains approximately 170 acres, which here in the aerial is that vacant site right there. It's controlled by the successor agency to the Palm Desert Redevelopment Agency, or SARTA. About two years ago, this Council awarded Interwest Consulting Group to update our UNSP for multiple reasons, multiple angles on why, and that includes planning for the future of this 170 acres, including a park space, community facilities, and residential. So as mentioned, there is a requirement for at least 220 affordable units here, and also to develop some commercial uses. Our consultant and city staff, really over these two years, and a lot occurred in 2024 with multiple community meetings and some study sessions to try to develop this land use plan. The idea, regardless of where it landed, and there are a lot of variables in terms of meeting the specific amount of residential units that have to be on there, having some space for a park, for parking, for commercial, and then also making sure that there's enough space for retention and open space and things of that nature. Regardless of how it landed and where we were at, the other component that we wanted to make sure was built into here was flexibility. You know, we understand that we're laying out a framework and trying to understand what's the amount of residential, where could it go, where's the run of commercial, what would it fit. It's not just pie in the sky, but if we actually put together some numbers, would it actually fit on this site and be realistic? So after some... Again, we had some community meetings where different land use plans were shown, and then including this one. Through different feedback that we received, this was the land use plan that was landed on, which has a bunch of colors on it. Let's see if I can use this... Well, probably not. But what you have here is, again, what I'll call the top part, the north part, all of that is existing. So there's identification of what's already been entitled with the residential. That pinkish spot that you see near the top is the medical office area that the City Council approved a few years back. But really, that focus is on that 170 acres, which lays out open space running diagonally through the area, residential...
[00:20:00] Carlos: commercial bordering the southern part, a mixed-use area, and then an area for a public facility and a park. That red square there that you'll see is about 22 acres. That is left for a future park. The specific plan itself does not give specific programming or design of the park. That is more about making sure that there's allocation of an area for it. There's multiple ways that a park can be designed there, as well as the specific plan has language on everything from, you know, how it's financed to how it can be designed and how it's laid out. Where we are at now is the consultant is going through the final text and working with staff and reviewing all of the text again to make sure that it meets what we're looking for and our goals and our intents for this document to be something that can be developed by, you know, developers coming in, and also give staff assurances that we can have the flexibility to do what we need to be done. We're also going through the final stages of the CEQA review. So, there's actual collaboration between this consultant as well as our circulation element consultant to make sure that everything's being analyzed correctly so that future projects, as they come in, can use that environmental and have a more streamlined process and not have to do, you know, a bunch of traffic studies or things like that in the future. They can use the existing analysis we're doing. So, there's some collaboration going on there. Our goal right now is, you know, after this update, to take it to our planning commission and then in front of you with, again, the full refined text and diagrams and all of that sometime around the end of this year. There's my presentation.
[00:22:02] Mayor: Okay. Thank you. And you have a question? Sure. Go.
[00:22:07] Council Member 1: So in terms of this whole process, community outreach with mailing of postcards and whatnot, that will be done too, correct? So there's no surprises with the neighbors.
[00:22:19] Carlos: Yes, that would be done again. So we did have a community outreach meeting already on this and had on our Engage page to receive feedback in multiple ways. When the specific plan goes out to Planning Commission and City Council, there will be mailings done to existing and surrounding residents within there to be able to comment on it. Also, for the CEQA review, that itself has public comment and public review necessary. So there's multiple...
[00:22:50] Council Member 1: Okay. And then when the postcards get mailed out to the surrounding neighbors, is that the developer pays for it, but do they actually mail it out as well, or how does that work? So we have proof.
[00:23:03] Carlos: So in this case, it would be the City, right? Since we are doing the specific plan update, we would do the mailings ourselves. Now, a future developer coming in per project, they provide us the mailing labels, and those projects themselves would also have notification. But right now, this is a City-done project, so we'd be doing that mailing.
[00:23:23] Council Member 1: Very good. Thank you.
[00:23:25] Mayor: Okay. Questions or comments?
[00:23:27] Council Member 2: I do.
[00:23:30] Mayor: Please.
[00:23:30] Council Member 2: Carlos, the concepts here, do the intended designations map to the existing zoning? So like neighborhood low is the same as low density on these concepts?
[00:23:47] Carlos: Yes. So these original... yes, this was the original ones here, and then they refined it in this one here, this final one.
[00:23:56] Council Member 2: Okay. So the uses map to the... okay, so roughly that's...
[00:24:01] Carlos: Yeah, and also map... sorry, another part of that was making sure there had to be some consistency with your existing specific plan because of the entitlement that already happened, to make sure you're not changing it up too much and creating some nonconformity. So it maps to that as well.
[00:24:17] Council Member 2: One of the things that I like in both of the concepts, but particularly in this Concept 1 — I'll just share some thoughts right now — is it appears to create a community corridor with some public facilities along a corridor of commercial, where I can imagine shops, and you're basically creating a mini city core. And I think that one of the things that I've noticed is a lot of public parks don't leverage the number of people that come through. And what I mean by that is, on any given weekend during season here at Civic Center Park, the parking lot is...
[00:25:00] Councilmember: ...full of people and then I can imagine that if there were nearby adjacent commercial spots, coffee shops, restaurants, they would be packed over the weekends. What I like about this is the proximity of the commercial and the parks creates that kind of open space and coordination that really brings some synergy. So, directionally I like especially where that concept is coming where you're creating a little mini corridor, some commercial and bringing the parks in to create that kind of vibrant living space. So, I like it.
[00:25:40] Councilmember: Hey, thank you, Carlos. You mentioned in this particular diagram that the, kind of northeast, sorry, that would be the southeast corner with the two red squares. Those two red squares total about 22 acres. Is that right?
[00:25:54] Carlos: No, the 22 acres was, sorry, was this area here for the park. This red one here is 12.13...
[00:26:05] Councilmember: ...and those squares are intended for commercial. Okay. All right. I misunderstood then. Good. Because I like where the park is.
[00:26:13] Councilmember: That large green square would be roughly 30 to 40 acres.
[00:26:16] Carlos: No, that green square is this one here is 22.3 roughly.
[00:26:20] Councilmember: Oh, that is okay.
[00:26:21] Carlos: Mhm. And then with some, so not inclusive of that, which is not just for a landscape buffer, but there's our intent and goal is also a little bit of passive area, walking trails and things like that that can still be used, but it's not just purely landscaping.
[00:26:40] Councilmember: Perfect. Thank you.
[00:26:42] Chair: Any other questions or comments? Okay, I guess that's it.
[00:26:47] Carlos: Thank you.
[00:26:49] Chair: Is there anything else? Yeah.
[00:26:52] Chair: Okay. So, we will close this meeting. We have 3:45. We're back here, right? Okay. 6 minutes. Go crazy.