City fights NIMBY label, faces housing mandate
Neil Park-McClintick reluctantly accepts that his time living in his hometown of Cupertino is running out.
Over the years, the Silicon Valley enclave has earned a reputation for challenging state housing mandates, resisting the redevelopment of the vacant Vallco shopping mall and downplaying the housing crisis when Mayor Darcy Paul three years ago said the situation wasn’t “dire.”
The city — 91% of which is single-family homes, according to UC Berkeley’s Otherings and Belongings Institute — boasts a highly regarded school district along with median home prices well over $2 million and average rents of more than $3,000 a month. That’s not unusual in the Bay Area, where housing costs are among the nation’s highest and prices continue to rise. And some members of the Cupertino City Council say they’ve been unfairly singled out when cities across the Bay Area have struggled to meet aggressive state housing goals in the midst of a deepening affordability crisis.
But for people like ParkMcClintick, a 25-yearold nonprofit worker and founder of the pro-housing group Cupertino for All, the cost of staying in his hometown has come at a high price. Since graduating from UC Berkley in 2019, he’s lived with his dad in a rented duplex that he says has mold, broken pipes and rats. But at the moment, it’s his only option.
“If you’re like me and you’re a young person and you don’t make a ton of money because you’re still early on in your career or maybe you don’t work in tech or finance or something that’s extremely lucrative, basically the city has said to you, you don’t matter,” Park-McClintick said. “And they have repeatedly said that.”
But as Cupertino next faces another critical housing decision this week, some elected officials say the city is changing.
“I can see why housing wasn’t welcomed in Cupertino, but I do feel there is a change of mind even within the council,” said Councilmember Hung Wei, who was elected last year. “I don’t think they’re antihousing, but they’re anti what kind of housing comes to Cupertino.”
The sentiment comes at a pivotal time. California is about to open the door for development of up to four units on single family lots in many neighborhoods.
Ahead of Jan. 1, when Senate Bill 9 goes into effect, cities throughout the state are passing ordinances to implement the law, creating specific design standards and rules. Cupertino began finalizing its ordinance Dec. 7.
SB 9 allows property owners to split a singlefamily lot, adding a second home or dividing the lot in two and placing duplexes on each. The new law has been polarizing in communities like Cupertino, with detractors arguing it will ruin the character of existing single family neighborhoods, increase traffic and put pressure on infrastructure like sewer systems and water supply lines.
A recent study by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley estimated that just 5.4% of the state’s current singlefamily lots have the potential to be developed under SB 9, making construction of up to 714,000 new housing units financially feasible. That’s only a fraction of the 3.5 million new housing units Gov. Gavin Newsom wants built by 2025.
Aaron Eckhouse, regional policy director for nonprofit California YIMBY, expects cities to “stress test” the law as they set design standards for SB 9 buildings that would govern size, height and whether to require parking.
“A lot of cities are trying to rush something in ahead of Jan. 1,” Eckhouse said. “I think in some cases that’s leading to some sloppy ordinances, so I do expect there is a possible litigation that’s going to be happening in some of these cities.”
Los Altos Hills, which passed its ordinance last month, plans to discourage lot splitting entirely and ban the addition of accessory dwelling units on subdivided lots.
In Southern California, Redondo Beach and Solana Beach also are looking to enact strict SB 9 rules, according to Eckhouse.
Cupertino Councilmember Kitty Moore has already said at a recent meeting that she wanted to create standards that are “as strict as possible” and then potentially loosen the design standards later if needed. San Jose, meanwhile, is considering a policy that goes beyond the state mandate and exploring whether to allow property owners in historic districts and areas zoned for duplexes to increase the density of their lots as well.
“I don’t get a sense from the Cupertino City Council that they’re interested in changing their behavior,” Eckhouse said.
But Cupertino officials say the city has been wrongfully accused of being antidevelopment.
“Cupertino has a track record of approving development projects that come to the City Council, including the large mixed-use Westport project approved last year,” city spokesperson Brian Babcock said in an email after refusing to let planning staff answer questions by phone. “More recently, the planning commission approved two multifamily projects on the west side of the city. All of these projects have onsite affordable housing.”
Since 2014, the city has permitted 329 units of the 1,064 the state mandated from 2014 to 2023. None were for low-income earners; 19 were for extremely low and very low income earners. While Cupertino has fallen way short of its state housing target, Babcock said the council in the last six years has approved plans for 3,457 units. But owners of those properties have not yet submitted permits to build them.
Interim City Manager Greg Larson said in a prepared statement that “most of the inaccuracies about Cupertino are due to Vallco, a gigantic wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
The Vallco project moved forward under Senate Bill 35 — a housing law authored by Sen. Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco, that requires cities to approve developments that meet certain standards. Over the years, housing advocates have accused the council of repeatedly trying to kill the project, which would bring 2,402 new homes, 400,000 square feet of retail and 1.8 million square feet of office space to the city.
“There’s a smaller number of cities that have aggressively tried to undermine SB 35,” Weiner said. “Cupertino is the most extreme example.”
Paul — who has stressed in the past that while he supports the development of housing, he doesn’t want to open the “floodgates” and turn the city into a “free-for-all for anyone who wants to build anything” — declined an interview, accusing the media of “scapegoating” Cupertino.
“The truth of our reputation is that Cupertino has been constantly smeared, but if one looks at the specifics of our discussions rather than hunts and picks for negative sound bites, no one gets to the heart and details of issues more effectively,” he wrote.
For Wei though, Cupertino is at the perfect moment to prove things are changing.
Between 2024 and 2031, the city will be required to permit 4,588 new homes — a 331% increase from the last cycle, which ends next year.
“I believe my fellow council members really have a heart for affordable housing,” Wei said. “If you listen to our current discussions for our City Council, we really would like to reverse our reputation of being anti-housing.”
But for Park-Mclintick, change hasn’t happened fast enough.
“We’re on borrowed time,” he said. “And it’s going to fall apart if we don’t do something.”