I-Team Investigation: Growing Palm Springs has some concerned

Are the actions being taken at City Hall pricing some people out of the Palm Springs’ housing market?

Some who know and study just what it takes to have a thriving community say, yes.

It all revolves around the city’s heavy reliance on Planning Development Districts, or PDD’s.

Kathy Weremiuk said, “Developers haven’t been as comfortable building attached condos, because they have to put up guarantees or bonds against litigation because the HOA’s can sue over 10 years.”

Weremiuk says buliding detached homes takes away that liability.

“There’s no longer any single family vacant zoning to speak of,” said Marvin Roos , a member of the City’s Adhoc Committee studying Planned Development Districts.

Roos said, “So much of the early part of the community was in fact some kind of single family. That’s mostly gone.”

We’re asking about a lack of affordable housing. It’s been deemed a “critical problem” in California, in the California Environmental Quality Act.

Yet the city is allowing developers to build higher priced lower density housing on land zoned for high density housing.

Is that living up to state CEQA standards? Is the city even required to comply with CEQA?

And what impact will this have on moderate income residents who want to live in Palm Springs as an increasing number of expensive homes are built, but little to no affordable housing options.

Watch Jeff Stahl’s in-depth report regarding development in Palm Springs on Thursday at 11 p.m. on KESQ News Channel 3.