In response to the Mercury News article in Sunday’s paper (April 3) on the reluctance of property owners to split their lots and build more units of housing in their communities, as Senate Bill 9 (SB 9) has offered, it seems important to understand the unintended consequences and the reasons behind this reluctance.
Here I address another situation not addressed in that article: the dramatically increased demands of the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) for increasing urbanization of rural California towns. This is closely tied to the SB 9 debate.
Everyone agrees that the Bay Area does need more affordable housing. The question is how best to encourage it, where to build it and whether individual residential property owners want to (or can afford to) build it. SB 9 and its lot-splitting option does not provide an adequate answer.
Meanwhile, the governments of our rural towns face serious obstacles to remaining rural, confronted with much higher quotas for housing development (especially affordable housing, including multi-unit housing) assigned to them by regional authorities. What is more, local governments are being threatened by legal and financial penalties from the state of California if they do not work up plans that demonstrate how to achieve these quotas, which include significant chunks of “affordable” housing.
My town, Woodside, with a population of approximately 5,500 inhabitants, has been assigned 328 housing units, of which a third are designated to be affordable. To meet such quotas would lead to a potentially significant increase in population without the infrastructure to support it.
In early 2022, our town council appointed a committee to identify all the undeveloped lots in the town and to provide estimates of how many units of affordable housing could be built on each. The process did not take into account any other criteria such as proximity to sewers, services, transportation and general suitability — all factors to be addressed subsequently. This resulted in some pretty spectacular and inappropriate designations. Here is the most egregious example.
On the north end of Woodside, the committee proposed that a 1.77 acre parcel located at the very northern edge of town could theoretically site 35 units of rental housing, i.e. a multi-story apartment complex with several buildings and not much space for anything else.
This location is highly problematic. Located at the intersection of Runnymede Road and Raymundo Drive, this property has no sewer access and the internet and cell service there is inadequate. There are no street lights, and no sidewalks along Runnymede. Parts of this property are low-lying and can flood when we get rain, and the entire area to the northwest of this proposed complex, which encompasses thousands of acres of fenced-off wildland, is susceptible to wildfires.
The property has only distant access to services, being nearly 3 miles away from Woodside’s village center — the closest place where one can buy groceries or gas, or mail a package.
Increased road traffic would become a serious, even dangerous, problem. If ever built, 35 units of apartment-style housing on this small property would create a nightmarish traffic scenario. In case of evacuation for fire or earthquake, there is only one way out (Runnymede) and it would be clogged with cars. There is no public transportation anywhere near; the closest Samtrans bus service is at Ca?ada College, at least a mile away.
Furthermore, there are health considerations. By being located right next to the freeway, prospective low-income residents would be situated very close to the noise and exhaust fumes from the ever-increasing traffic, which has serious implications for residents’ health. This is assuredly not a viable situation!
Finally, this hypothetical designation of a 35-unit enclave in a highly rural and horse-friendly part of our town would be totally out of character with its immediate surroundings and with the town’s General Plan commitment to staying rural. Add to that the fact that the high construction costs in this area would probably never be recouped by the property owner even after years of collecting “affordable” rents.
This urbanizing approach for development in a rural community such as ours, even hypothetically, is unacceptable on all counts
Karen Offen is a 54-year Woodside resident.
