This Thursday, the City of Cupertino will host a public Workshop for the Housing Element. Your voice is needed to make sure Cupertino becomes friendly diverse, affordable types of homes.
The RHNA / Housing Element process is the most important California administrative process that you’ve never heard of. It represents our best chance to build dramatically more homes statewide — but only if you get involved.
In 1969, California passed a law that calls on each California city to regularly plan for the housing their community will need at all income levels. This legislation was a success of the civil rights movement: it was designed to prevent local communities from perpetuating racial segregation by zoning out affordable housing. The law requires that every city must include a Housing Element.
in its comprehensive plan (it’s “GeneralPlan”). Thus the RHNA / Housing Element process was born: a complicated interplay between the state government, regional associations called councils of governments (COGs), and local governments (cities and counties), designed to make California an integrated state with enough homes for everyone.
Cupertino has failed to build its fair share of Housing, but now we have an opportunity to build a more inclusive city and region for generations to come.
Persuasive Points for an Ambitious Housing Element
When making these points, it’s good to explain how they advance the bigger society goals of reducing displacement, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, etc.
“I think a repeal of the multifamily housing ban is important because…”
“I think we should legalize fourplexes everywhere because…”
“I think it’s important to build more homes because…”
Some research + more talking points
Sustainability & Quality of Life
Less Car Reliance/Emissions: Relatively dense, thoughtful design is conducive of a sustainable City. With allowed density on key corridors, we are more likely to see mixed-use developments emerge, such as Main St. Cupertino. These developments are essential for reducing car dependency because it means that we can build abundant housing, while also promoting important business in close proximity to each other—such as grocery stores, restaurants, social spaces, or work space.
Saving the Bus: VTA has long-sought to have a Bus-Rapid Transit corridor running along Stevens Creek. We know that bus lines are more likely to be used, and will receive more public approval, if we provide plentiful destinations along its route! We can achieve this with an ambitious Housing Element that allows us to promote such vibrancy.
Heart of the City: Even with our current Heart of the City Plan, which loosens land use restrictions along Stevens Creek and the surrounding area, we still cannot build to scale the amount of homes that we need for this cycle. As part of this Housing Element Update, we should amend the heart of the city plan to be more ambitious and to allow for more types of sustainable development than what is currently possible. An ambitious housing element goes hand-in-hand with the intent of the Heart of the City Plan.
Returning to our original design: Cupertino was originally planned to be a mixed-income community, with an abundant amount of medium-density projects. This is backed by the historic records for the City. Over time, we have increasingly moved toward more of an anti-growth mindset. Much of our older housing stock is plexes and apartments on the East side of Cupertino.
Study: Increased housing density helps combat climate change
“A 2017 study of LA showed that residents living in infill areas would drive 18 fewer miles per weekday and a total of 90 fewer miles per week. That would result in an annual reduction of 1.79 million metric tons in greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of removing 378,000 cars off the road.”
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
Under CA State Law, every Housing Element Update must have an AFFH analysis—Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
Our analysis should thoughtfully approach standards of fair housing, by just not just comparing neighborhoods within Cupertino to each other, but also comparing Cupertino to surrounding cities.
Around 3% of Cupertino identifies as Latino, compared to roughly ⅓ of San Jose, which is just next door. Santa Clara has a similar percentage of Latino residents as well. Our lack of diverse housing options in the city, makes it difficult and sometimes impossible for many Latino and Black families to move into Cupertino. Our analysis should recognize this gap, and actively think of ways to bridge the gap.
The Berkeley Center for others and Belonging has identified Cupertino as one of the most segregated cities in California. While we welcome our unique diversity of Asian Americans, we severely lack families from more working class backgrounds. They are unable to live in Cupertino.
Cupertino has a sizable amount of older rental stock—especially on the East side of Cupertino. Our AFFH analysis should include these homes as well.
Why Bay Area neighborhoods are still racially segregated
“As the proportion of single-family zoning increases in a city, so does its white population, while Black and Latinx populations decrease.”I think an important part of an equitable recovery is allowing more housing. Both affordable housing and missing middle housing will ensure people who work in our city can live in our city. People should be able to enjoy the opportunities found here, without having soul-crushing commutes.
Maximizing Affordable Housing+Ensuring Things get Built
The Association of Bay Area Government has tasked Cupertino with building its fair share of housing at all income levels; a total of 4,588 units—more than four times the amount we were assigned last time. Of those, about 1,200 will have to be for Very Low Income homes, about 700 low-income, and 750 moderate income—for a total of 2650 below market rate homes—the equivalent of multiple Vallco SB-35 projects. The only way these goals will be possible to meet is by changing the rules through the Housing Element update.
91% of Cupertino residential land is zoned for Single Family-ONLY zoning. This means multifamily housing (the only option for scalable affordable housing) is ILLEGAL in 91% of residential land. We cannot meet our targets unless we loosen restrictions on what types of diverse housing can be built. SB9 alone is insufficient
Advocating for specific groups
Young People: I think it’s important to build housing in every neighborhood so that people don’t get pushed out by high prices. People who grew up here should be able to stay and find jobs here, and their kids should be able to grow up here too.
Seniors: 584 TOTAL units (Chateau Cupertino, Sunnyview, Forum, Veranda), Stock is extremely limited, even though Cupertino is an aging city.
Households with one or more persons 60+: 6,585
Households with 2 or more persons 60+ 4,689
1 person households 1,896
Households with owner/renter 75 + 2,221
Households with owner/renter 60 – 74 3,125
Students: An independent study done by Foothill-De Anza found that over half of the De Anza student body was housing insecure! Currently, De Anza is mostly made up of working class students commuting long distances to get to a city that they can’t afford to live in. De Anza students deserve to go to school where they work. An ambitious housing element will adequately address De Anza students and faculty as a community greatly in need.
