San Mateo County Backgrounder: Vol. 2

Article Source: San Mateo County Housing Leadership Council

Subject: San Mateo County Backgrounder: Vol. 2

How Much Housing Should the Bay Area Have Built to Avoid the Current Housing Crisis?

SPUR

Since 2000, the Bay Area should have added 1.05 million housing units. Instead, only 380,000 units were built during this time — 316,000 market rate and 42,000 subsidized affordable units. This means the region fell short by 700,000 housing units.These numbers show that a dramatic shortage of new housing in in fact a key cause of the current crisis — with an important nuance. Who that housing serves is a crucial part of the picture.
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First, I would like to the many of you that took the time to respond to our first issue of the Backgrounder. We agree with your sentiments that the City of San Mateo's General Plan Update process can be improved through more informed discussion. Our intention is to provide you with a such information by reviewing suggestions from our professional colleagues and others involved in similar issues from all over the country. We are not alone in the issues we face, nor do we have a monopoly on creative ideas. We are humbled to know that others have gone before into these issues and brought new and innovative approaches to the seemingly intractable issues of housing and transportation, to mention only two.

Also, thank you, thank you, thank you to Kohar Kojayan (City of San Mateo's Community Development Director) and her staff for turning around a draft Vision statement that truly reflects our fundamental community values. We may have some further comments, but your work truly humanized the process and serves as an inspiration to the county. For that, we are truly grateful!!
Evelyn Stivers, Director, HLC

About the Backgrounder

As San Mateo moves to try and find solutions to the housing crisis, we at the HLC are committed to providing facts and data to help inform our decisions. We are not the only community facing crisis and we can learn from how communities throughout the country are solving problems. We hope you find this information useful as San Mateo embarks on its own process of redefinition.

Stretching the Boundaries: The hunt for cheaper housing is changing what it means

Mercury News

As thousands in search of cheaper housing descend on far-flung cities such as Stockton, Lathrop, Tracy and Merced to the east, they're changing the northern part of the vast Central Valley from a region with a distinct identity to a vast suburb of the Bay Area, whose economic and cultural life is inextricably linked to the vibrant locus some 60 to 120 miles west.
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Editorial: As the Bay Area's housing crisis continues, segregation grows

San Francisco Chronicle

Researchers found that communities of color are particularly vulnerable to rapid increases in rental and housing prices. Since the Bay Area has experienced consistent, dramatic spikes in the cost of housing since the end of the Great Recession, it follows that these communities have been hit the hardest by the housing crisis. But the study lays out a startling portrait of how high the costs have been for these communities — and how quickly they've transformed the Bay Area.
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Class differences

Portland Tribune

City planners devised the plan to require more "missing middle" housing — accessory dwelling units, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes — to provide more affordable housing closer to job sites and promote greater racial, class and age diversity in neighborhoods across the city. Planners project the plan will spur 300 to 400 more triplexes and fourplexes per year within 20 years — about 24,000 units — plus 3,000 added accessory dwelling units.
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Time for Orange County cities to act on housing crisis or Newsom will do it for them

OC Register

"California's housing crisis is an existential threat to our state's future and demands an urgent and comprehensive response," said the governor in a statement announcing the legal salvo against the seaside Orange County town. He's right.
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The biggest economic divides aren't regional. They're local. (Just ask parents.)

New York Times

It may be hard to dislodge the commonly held view that the great American economic divergence is between big and successful metropolitan areas and the left-behind towns and rural counties that heavily supported President Trump. Less populated areas surely have their problems. Mortality is higher and education lower; some have seen large job losses. But any policymaker trying to tackle the country's most significant problems will quickly find the biggest divides in America are not regional. They remain within metropolitan areas — across neighborhoods and local jurisdictions.
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Oregon aims to tackle homelessness, housing crisis

The Wichita Eagle

The bill would require cities and counties to allow duplexes and some higher-density housing in lands zoned for single-family dwellings. Todd Boyle, a 66-year-old retiree in Eugene, said the bill makes sense because there is land, like his, that could be developed further if not for zoning ordinances. "These lots were laid out 100 years ago in the days of horse and buggy," Boyle said. "The lots are too big for todays' urban grown boundaries, sustainability or social justice."
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Atlanta zoning updates could pave way for more 'missing middle' housing

Curbed

Middle housing, which has been called Atlanta's "missing middle," is defined as "the middle ground between single-family houses and multistory apartments," according to Beltline visionary Ryan Gravel, who has lamented the lack of such options. In the same vein, the recently adopted zoning changes could also help shift Atlanta from its car-centric ways.
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Affordable Housing Crisis Reaches a Tipping Point in Charlotte, N.C.

Governing

Charlotte has embarked on a comprehensive approach to create more affordable housing. Last fall, the city more than tripled the amount of money it asked residents to approve in bond funding for the city's housing trust fund. The city will use some of its additional bond money to acquire property adjacent to transit and commercial centers… create mixed-income housing, expand the development of rental housing through Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, and ensure that publicly funded developments set aside at least 20 percent of units for families earning less than 30 percent of the area's median income.
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Robert Riechel

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Source Credit: Evelyn Stivers, executive director - HLC

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