CONSTRUCTION HALT PROMPTS PROTEST
Sunnyvale homebuilder goes on a hunger strike over permitting issue
A home developer is taking an unusual and dramatic stand after the city halted work on his construction project. He's on a hunger strike — and he says he won't eat until his crews can get back to work.
Navneet Aron, founder and CEO of Aron Developers, says he hasn't eaten since last Friday morning. He has spent every weekday since then camped out in City Hall with a sign proclaiming, “On hunger strike until death!”
He's protesting the city's decision to stop construction of 18 townhomes on North Fair Oaks Avenue after his team forgot to obtain an approval from Santa Clara County's Department of Environmental Health. Aron worries that fixing the issue could take months, which could mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in delayed construction costs.
Now he's pleading with city officials to let him keep building while he obtains a green light from the county.
“This is simply, I believe, a bureaucratic exercise between the two agencies,” Aron said. “And we are simply suffering and forcing our people who have families and kids and live paycheck to paycheck to not be able to work on-site. They don't have any other income. So that's why I'm here. … I don't know anything else to do.”
On Wednesday, Aron was camped out on a couch in the lobby of City Hall in front of the planning and building department, his lap covered with a brown blanket. A sign propped up behind him said “Day 6,” marking six days consuming nothing other than water, coffee and chewing gum. City employees hustled to and fro around him, and people lined up nearby to ask staff permitting questions.
While Aron's approach is extreme, these types of construction hurdles are familiar to developers throughout the Bay Area. Small operations like his are particularly impacted as they often lack the resources or expertise to navigate a city's bureaucratic and costly permitting process. Experts say those challenges make building harder and more expensive, exacerbating the region's housing shortage.
At issue in Aron's case is a sheet of plastic, less than an inch thick, installed beneath the foundation of his townhomes. The plastic, called a vapor barrier, is designed to mitigate health risks. It prevents toxins in the soil from rising as vapor through the foundation and into the home, potentially impacting the residents. Aron installed those barriers, but he failed to get the county's Department of Environmental Health to sign off before he did so.
City spokesperson Jennifer Garnett wrote in an emailed statement that the
city has no intention of letting work proceed until the county has given the OK. “Developers are ultimately responsible for having a compliant project. The city had to issue a stop work order because Mr. Aron failed to meet health and safety conditions for his project,” Garnett said.
Aron has submitted paperwork to the county to remedy the situation, which he says won't involve ripping out the foundations, but he's heard approval could take up to 45 days — longer if there are any issues. Larry Little, a spokesperson for the county Department of Environmental Health, said Aron didn't submit the paperwork through the proper online portal — and the county can't process it until he does.
Though Aron may be the first to launch a hunger strike over the lengthy, costly and confusing permitting process, it is an issue developers have struggled with throughout California. A 2020 study by UC Berkeley's Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that the cost of building — including development fees and permitting delays that increase costs — exacerbates California's housing shortage. Last year, townhomes built in East Oakland for eight homeless families were held up more than a year as the developer, nonprofit Poor Magazine, got caught up in unexpected city fees and permitting problems.
Jeff Zell of property management company Zell Associates has felt that frustration firsthand as he navigates San Jose's permitting process to convert a recreation room on his property into two studios. He's been working on the project since 2017, and it still isn't finished.
“There's so many components to building law you just don't know until you all of a sudden stumble across it,” he said.
The North Fair Oaks project is Aron Developers' first large-scale multifamily project, which may help explain the challenge. While Aron said he intended to follow all the rules, he admits the vapor barrier approval slipped through the cracks amid myriad other permits and requirements. But he thinks the city dropped the ball as well. In one 2021 document that lists the corrections needed for the development, the city said Aron needed to obtain county health department approval. In later documents, that requirement isn't mentioned — and Aron says the city didn't bring it up again until it unexpectedly shut down his project last month.
Garnett said the requirements have been clearly documented and expressed to Aron from the beginning.
While Aron waits for approval, the costs rack up. He's paying $15,000 per day in interest on his construction loan. Payroll for his 17-person construction team is $25,000 per week. He worries he'll have to lay off workers soon.
The delay “could break us,” he said.
And to make matters worse, his team already lost several weeks of work because of the recent storms.
That has been difficult for Aron's team of workers, who have been getting paid for half days since building stopped — and are missing out on muchneeded wages.
“We just want to continue working because we want to put food on the table for our families and continue paying our rents,” said Miguel Betancourt, who had been managing construction at the site.
Aron, who occupies City Hall every day until it closes at 5 p.m., says he has been experiencing cramps, dizziness and lethargy as a result of his fast. His 9-year-old daughter is worried about him and is insisting he stop the strike Thursday. But Aron says he will continue until work on his project restarts.
He has been turning heads. Councilmember Alysa Cisneros, alarmed by the hunger strike, met with Aron and has been looking into his case. In the end, she said she supports the decision city staff made to halt construction.
“I do have a lot of sympathy and want him to succeed, but we have to be fair in our permitting process,” he said. “We can't say, `OK you can make some mistakes and you won't have to deal with the consequences.' ”