|  | | Housing wins this election! ✧Menlo Park's Measure V update✧ |
|  | This campaign had the awe inspiring support of 105 volunteers, over 190 donors, organizations including churches, businesses, foundations, racial justice, environmental, and neighborhood groups, elected leaders and democratic clubs - all working together to push back against the fear of new homes for teachers and staff. We are so grateful for the time that the volunteers took to spread the word. For all of the generous donations. For people taking a stand on political issues even when it wasn’t comfortable or easy. We are so relieved that Menlo Park Voters agreed that Measure V was a very bad idea. Measure AA - San Francisco South San Francisco residents voted yes on Measure AA, authorizing the development, construction, or acquisition of housing for low-income households. “Measure AA asked the voters of South San Francisco for permission to authorize the development, construction, or acquisition of housing for low-income households by the City, allowing for the creation or acquisition of up to 1% of South San Francisco’s total housing stock annually for an 8-year period.” - Jordan Grimes, Greenbelt Alliance Measure CC - San Mateo San Mateo residents voted yes on Measure CC, funding affordable housing, infrastructure, climate adaptation goals, and more! Measure CC will increase the already existing tax on any real estate sale or transfer valued at over $10,000,000 by just 1%, from 0.5% to 1.5%. Measure L - East Palo Alto East Palo Alto residents voted yes on Measure L, funding affordable housing, providing tenant rental support, and avoiding further displacement and homelessness. Measure L will increase the already existing business tax of 1.5% of gross receipts on landlords with five or more residential units to 2.5%. This new tax cannot be passed on to tenants. |
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| |  Housing Elements Review The County of San Mateo has finally released the 30-day public review draft for their housing element! Public comments will be accepted until December 18. With its current draft housing element, the County plans to concentrate almost all new affordable homes in the North Fair Oaks (NFO) area. NFO is a great place for new homes, but it’s not the only great place. The housing element makes a lukewarm commitment to “rezone up to 89 parcels constituting up to 30 acres in the unincorporated Colma, Broadmoor, and Harbor Industrial areas” by August 2025 (p. 40 of the draft housing element). The devil is in the details: By only committing to rezoning “up to” a certain amount, the county is actually not making a commitment at all. These are great locations for affordable homes, which the county should firmly commit to rezone by the end of 2023 in order to make the sites available for development. Furthermore, the County’s draft housing element takes no substantial action to address the need for farmworker housing, a unique issue for the County. The housing element recognizes that “past development trends indicate that appropriate policies, incentives, and other assistance remain needed to encourage the creation of additional suitable farm labor housing” (p. 132). However, none of the five proposed programs that theoretically support farmworker housing in the County’s housing element commit to implement new policies, incentives, or other assistance. To the contrary, the housing element proposes to “Engage with community organizations, regional collaborative groups, agricultural stakeholders, and regulatory agencies to identify barriers to creating affordable housing for farmworker households”—outreach that is legally required to have already taken place as part of the housing element’s Needs and Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing analyses. The housing element must include actual solutions, not just analysis. Because nearly all of the affordable housing developments in San Mateo rely on the County for funding, it is crucial that the County creates a good housing element. In order to create a good housing element, the county must perform stakeholder outreach before housing element adoption and make real commitments to policy change. More on that in our next newsletter! We’ve had our hands full with projects all over the county recently. Last week, HLC Policy Manager Jeremy Levine delivered a presentation summarizing fair housing obligations in the housing element to our partners at Pacifica Housing for All. We also got some coverage in Atherton, where we urged the city to plan for true affordable housing, not just ADUs that may or may not be used as housing. Lastly, we attended a City of San Mateo Council meeting, where we advocated for new policies to promote affordability. As quoted in the article, “‘If San Mateo were to attempt to adopt its current draft housing element without first implementing significant revisions, it would be asking for a lawsuit.’” The city is not currently planning for many revisions. The whole point of a housing element is to make legally binding commitments to promote affordable housing! Unless San Mateo recognizes the significant deficiencies in its current draft housing element and begins taking action to address them with substantial policy changes, the city is on a crash course for noncompliance. In other news… - Foster City started their second round housing element review this past Tuesday. Similar to San Mateo, Foster City’s planning staff are under the impression that they can analyze their way to compliance with housing element law. However, most of the sites included in Foster City’s site inventory are infeasible locations for affordable housing. Analysis does not build affordable homes, policy changes do. Without substantial rezonings and commitments to remove other governmental constraints to housing, Foster City is also headed toward noncompliance.
- Portola Valley received their HCD review letter last Wednesday. Of note, HCD asked Portola Valley to decrease its estimates of ADU production. Many Portola Valley residents had requested the city abandon plans to dedicate 2.48 acres of city-owned land in favor of an ADU-dominant strategy, which would have involved more than doubling the estimated number of ADUs. Clearly, ADUs alone are not a viable strategy for affordable housing or compliance with state law. Portola Valley’s city council deserves a lot of credit for maintaining the town’s plans to pursue affordable housing on town-owned property.
- San Bruno and Colma have both received housing element letters, but neither has yet made plans to respond to them yet as far as HLC is aware.
- Belmont will receive their HCD review letter next week.
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| | Get Involved ✧Big Moves for Housing and Economic Security✧ |
|  | All Home and the Regional Impact Council are excited to introduce the Big Moves for Housing and Economic Security— five visionary proposals to address the root causes of homelessness and poverty. The Big Moves would help make the Bay Area a place where all people can thrive. Moving boldly towards that future will benefit everyone in the region. The complete document has concrete action steps and an implementation guide for each of the five Big Moves. |
| | | | HLC is launching our very first monthly giving program: Friends of HLC. With your continued financial and political support, we can build a more equitable San Mateo County and bring affordable homes to our community. ✧Donate every month and become a part of the Friends of HLC!✧ Our goal is to gain 10 new monthly supporters by the end of 2022! That’s 10 more people as part of our pro-housing movement. |
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| ✧Mark your calendars: Giving Tuesday!✧ |
| Mark your calendars! November 29 is #GivingTuesday - a global day of generosity! This year, HLC has achieved so much, thanks to our supporters! Your gift on #GivingTuesday will help us continue to advocate for #HomesForAll. Join us November 29 or get a head start and donate today! |
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| | | ✧Menlo Park Endorsement Committee✧ |
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|  | HLC will be holding an Endorsement Committee meeting for our City of Menlo Park members on Wednesday, November 30th, from 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm! All are welcome to attend, but only dues paying members may vote. We’ll hear from both the Sobrato Organization and Habitat for Humanity of Greater San Francisco teams about their 123 Independence proposal located on the corner of Independence and Chrysler Drive! It’ll include 432 homes - 56 set aside as affordable for rent and 18 townhomes for ownership! To join the discussion, please visit our registration page. If you have any questions, please direct them to kchan@hlcsmc.org. |
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| | Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County
2905 S El Camino Real | San Mateo, California 94403
650-242-1764 | info@hlcsmc.org |
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