NASA to build more than 1,900 housing units
Out of the skies comes a plan to put a dent in the region’s housing crisis: NASA expects to build at least 1,930 housing units on a 45acre federal site at Moffett Field.
The new housing campus would be devoted to rental units, with 10 percent set aside as affordable. The NASA Ames Research Center — which expects to begin searching this fall for a private development partner for the project — said individuals who work or go to school on Ames-owned property would get first dibs on the new units. Up to 8,000 workers would be able to apply for such “priority access,” including NASA civil servants, contractors and others employed by dozens of other organizations at Moffett.
“Housing in Silicon Valley is in high demand, and there’s a significant need for our employees and our community to have more options,” said Ames Research Center director Eugene Tu. “Plus, this housing will mitigate some of the increasing traffic and air emissions in the region.”
The project arrives as the Bay Area struggles with a housing crisis that continues to re-shape the region. A household income of $179,000 is now required to qualify for a medianpriced Bay Area home, according to a recent report, and many one-bedroom apartments in the San Jose metropolitan area carry monthly rents of well over $2,000. Such financial burdens are driving out many service workers and middle-income earners — including federal employees at whom the new proposal is directed.
This early in the planning process, the price tag for building the new housing campus is unclear.
The mixed-use project calls for 100,000 square feet of retail space in addition to the rental housing, which would be built over the next three to five years alongside Highway 101 on the southern end of NASA Ames’ property at Moffett Field. Deborah Feng, associate center director for mission support at NASA’s Ames Research Center, said no rezoning would be required.
The proposal “would definitely fall into the bracket of `win, win, win,'” said Matt Regan, senior vice president of public policy and government relations for the Bay Area Council. “It means more units. It’s in a part of the region that desperately needs more units. And it also is on a large parcel of land — Moffett Field — that has been off the radar screen a little bit. So it has great potential.
“Every time we see a development like this, we’d like to see it a little bit bigger and a little bit more ambitious,” he added. “But we also live in the world of political realities. This looks like a very good project.”
Housing advocate Lenny Siegel, vice mayor and member of the city council in neighboring Mountain View, welcomed the proposal: “I’ve been asking for a large amount of housing to be built at Moffett since 1990.”
NASA officials have met with city officials, he said, to discuss the proposal and underlying issues: the need to improve transit, expand schools and make inroads into the housing affordability conundrum as Moffett and surrounding areas get built out in the coming years.
“One of the loopholes in the social contract around here is that it’s very difficult for federal employees to afford housing,” Siegel said. “I’m hoping the city can work with NASA to create some new programs. Just like we want to target teachers (who are being priced out of the region), we want to target federal employees. They make a little bit more than similar federal workers in other parts of the country, but not enough to afford housing here.”
The fact that the proposed housing tract sits on a Superfund site presents a challenge that can be met, he said.
“It can be done,” said Siegel, who also is executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View. “The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) would have to check that the concentrations aren’t too high. But Mountain View essentially leads the nation in knowing how to build homes above volatile organic compounds.”
Siegel said he hopes NASA can be persuaded to increase its proposed allotment of affordable rental units from 10 percent to 15 or 20 percent, as Mountain View expects to do for the 9,850 new units it has planned for the North Bayshore area.
NASA’s new housing plan for Moffett Field would add to the public-private developments proposed there. Google plans to build a 1.1 million-square-foot office project on Moffett’s western edge and create 300 units of modular housing there as temporary accommodations for employees.
Even so, Siegel pointed out, that same office campus could generate 4,200 jobs: The proposed 1,930 units at Moffett Field “won’t make up for that,” he said.
As always, the region’s housing supply will struggle to catch up with its job growth. Pondering the chronic imbalance, he offered a quote from author Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass”:
“‘It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.’ That’s kind of where we’re at,” Siegel said.