“I want to make sure my son, who is in kindergarten, can come back [one day]”
— Adrian Covert, founder of Santa Rosa
realized that downtown Santa Rosa has good bones, and more people should take advantage of the area. He reached out to YIMBY Action in San Francisco, which works with groups committed to solving the housing shortage, found out that Santa Rosa didn’t have a YIMBY chapter and started one. “I want to make sure my son, who is in kindergarten, can come back [one day],” he says,
nut, joined Napa Solano for Everyone, a YIMBY chapter, as a volunteer in 2021. “I was running a small business in Napa in the wine industry, and my team just couldn’t afford to live in Napa. So many of the people who work in Napa live in Solano, and it’s not because we love commuting,” he says. “We’ve got San Francisco firefighters living in Napa,” while Napa firefighters live farther afield, he explains. “It’s a regional need. The more we can right-size housing, the less extreme the burden will be on every community.” He finds downtown Napa with its walkable character ideal for condominiums and apartments, but multifamily housing still gets pushback—and he believes attitudes need to change. “That’s why some of these statewide rules are helpful,” he says. State legislation allowed the City of Napa to approve the First Street Napa Phase II Project in June 2025 without many of the previous restrictions, allowing a residential building with 78 condominiums and a hotel with up to 161 rooms. In another notable project, the Napa First United Methodist Church is dedicating a piece of its land for housing and is partnering with Burbank Housing and Napa Valley Community Housing to build 46 affordable workforce apartments. What works in Napa and American Canyon, however, doesn’t necessarily work for smaller towns up the valley, and O’Connell finds that townhomes are a better fit. In addition, “ADUs are a really fascinating element in the housing picture,” he says, pointing out that construction is fast, and they’re a way for homeowners to add single units without changing the character of their neighborhoods. He reports that one in five housing units built annually in California is an ADU, and Napa County offers homeowners up to $105,000 through a forgivable loan program if they build an ADU and keep it affordable for five years. A dozen have been completed, and O’Connell considers it one of the best programs in the state.
Adrian Covert, founded Santa Rosa YIMBY
explaining that young people should be able to buy homes in the towns where they grew up and raise their own families there. For the past year, much of Santa Rosa YIMBY’s focus has been on state legislation. It supported the passage this year of California Assembly Bill 130 and its companion legislation Senate Bill 131, which make changes to the California Environmental Quality Act and exempt qualifying urban infill projects from environmental review if they are consistent with a jurisdiction’s general plan and zoning standards. Downtown development is also a priority, with proposals to identify underused parking facilities as potential sites for housing and closing part of downtown to cars and making it a pedestrian area. He explains that half of downtown is car infrastructure, and 75% is not used, even on busy days. “There’s a tremendous amount of space that’s wasted on cars,” he says, and one of the Santa Rosa chapter’s current actions is petitioning to convert Garage 5 on Third Street into housing. A second petition promotes converting Fourth Street between B and D streets into a pedestrian area. “We want a vibrant, active downtown with lots of people,” he says. His team has also been discussing the redevelopment of Santa Rosa Plaza to include housing. “We’re excited to see what the plaza has to say about the future of the largest building and the largest parking structure in Sonoma County,” he says. In addition, the City of Santa Rosa streamlined its permitting process and cut fees earlier this year. “We supported efforts to reduce the cost of permits,” he says, explaining that builders can’t keep up with the demand if the city is saddling them with big fees. He believes the single most important tool for increasing housing is building enough to the point where landlords will begin competing for residents instead of the other way around.
Resistance reconsidered Jenny Silva, executive director of Call Home Marin (formerly Marin Environmental Housing Collaborative), became aware of the need for more housing when she was running an ecommerce company that sold sheet music from all over the world and was unable to recruit experienced staff, because no one could afford to live in the Bay Area. She decided to become an advocate for increasing housing and started
Valley vibes Ryan O’Connell, who describes himself as a full-time housing
Jenny Silva, executive director of Call Home Marin.
December 2025
NorthBaybiz 31
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