Cupertino could miss housing deadline
All cities need a plan for building new homes OK'D by Jan. 31; approval may take months
As one of the last Bay Area cities to release its state-mandated housing plan, Cupertino is on the verge of missing a crucial deadline to fully detail just how it plans to build more homes to alleviate the ever-worsening housing crisis.
The report — released in November — followed months of criticism from residents and local housing advocates who warned the city it was in danger of missing the deadline set by the California Department of Housing and Community Development.
But it appears to be too little, too late as the plan requires a long, arduous approval process that can take several months.
This year, all local governments in California were tasked with coming up with a housing element as part of their general plans for the next several years. The housing element is essentially a road map that explains how the city will meet state-mandated housing goals, and cities and counties in the Bay Area are expected to approve over 441,000 new homes to be built from 2023 to 2031.
By failing to do so, local governments risk missing out on affordable housing and infrastructure funding, and could put jurisdictions in jeopardy of lawsuits, fines and the loss of local control over land use decisions. Cities and counties are also at risk of the builder's remedy — the 3-decade-old law forces noncompliant cities to accept large housing projects, even when the developments far exceed local zoning limits, as long as they contain some affordable units.
“I think it will, unfortunately, create a lot of areas of concern, especially if we start to see large numbers of applications,” said Cupertino City Councilmember J.R. Fruen, who took office after the housing element draft was released. “Especially if they're in places that would not be places where you would typically see larger buildings, or if they are, they're not in forms that people would ordinarily expect.”
Residents and local housing advocates have criticized Cupertino's initial housing plan to build 4,588 new homes over the next eight years as incomplete and misguided. Many maintain that Cupertino's draft is overly reliant on housing projects that don't appear realistic and are unlikely to be built in the years to come.
The city's initial draft also had pages of red text with words struck through, notes describing information to be included later and a vague description of the programs and policies that'll be implemented over the next eight years.
“It's only a couple pages, and it's supervague — it's more of a statement of values than anything,” said Neil Park-mcclintick, the president of the local advocacy group Cupertino Matters. “It doesn't really articulate actionable timelines or actionable approaches … it's really hard to critique the merits of it and address the technical aspects of it.”
According to the current draft, the city has allocated 1,193 homes for very-low-income residents, 687 homes for low-income residents, 755 homes for moderate-income residents and 1,953 homes for those with above moderate income.
But it's uncertain whether all of those units are actually likely to be built — for instance, over 500 of the planned units are in the Vallco Shopping District, a 50-acre site that hasn't seen any of the redevelopment that was approved in 2018 to convert the abandoned mall into a mix of housing units, office space and retail space.
“The city has spent an awfully long time making it more difficult for that project to proceed,” Fruen said. “It's not very clear, unless there's a change in how the city approaches that project, that it could be built. And even if it were, it's a very, very large project — the chances of it being finished within the eight-year planning period are fairly small.”
An additional 22 units are planned for construction along Bubb Road, where many of the existing buildings are owned and used by Apple to lease to other businesses.
“Apple has specifically said that the leasing is going well and they have no intentions to build housing over their land,” Park-mcclintick said. “So why are we picking sites on Bubb Road? There's only one explanation — we're picking places that won't get built.
“Since it is so incomplete … we will not get anything back from the state for a good four months,” he added. “That puts us really late into the game, into March or April.”
In the interim, the builder's remedy can go into effect. The controversial measure never has been implemented in Cupertino before, leaving a “huge question mark” as to how it could impact the local community, Park-mcclintick said.
“We're going to find out in 2023 for sure,” Park-mcclintick said. “The builder's remedy is not new — it's been around for a while — but it hasn't really ever been used.
“I feel like if you've gotten used to having things done a certain way in terms of local control, it's hard to imagine that you could potentially lose all of it,” he added. “It just doesn't seem real … but the reality is, this is what's going to happen. It's already happening across the state, and this is our fate.”
But in spite of the limbo that Cupertino could find itself in after Jan. 31, Fruen said he's hopeful about the new council's ability to polish up the housing element and bring it up to the state's standards of compliance as quickly as possible.
“Usually, a housing element is substantially comprised of specific policies,” Fruen said. “That's not evident in this document, so there's a ton of things that can be done to help foster individual projects so that they're completed and built in a way that's likely to produce more affordable housing, or housing that's better suited to what the community needs and what people want.”
Fruen said he's optimistic that he and his new council colleagues can “get to a much better place” with the housing element, even if it's “unfortunate that we will have to do so with the builder's remedy hanging over our heads.”
“It's our job to try to produce the best document that we can, and I certainly see it as our obligation to the generations that are to follow us to try to make a real effort to producing enough housing, and enough housing of different types, so that the city can become more affordable and walkable,” Fruen said. “I think we can do it; it's just unfortunate that we're having to start off from this position.”