Cupertino released its housing element draft, a massive document required by state law that determines the next 8 years of all things housing in the city. This first round of public feedback is due by Dec. 23, so we are asking all community members to get in feedback by the Dec. 20 council meeting.
The draft is incomplete, lacking in detail, and overall a complete failure. Why does this matter? We will not be able to meet the extreme housing needs of low-income families, unhoused people, young people, workers, teachers, De Anza students, etc. unless we can produce a solid draft. Cupertino for All has a lengthy list of recommendations for the City to achieve this outcome.
Cupertino is massively behind in its housing element process, ranking dead last in Santa Clara County to release a draft. There is no way around it–Cupertino will be subject to the builder’s remedy, meaning that developers will be able to build anything they want without local input, due to the failures of the last city council. This will last until the City has a compliant housing element with the state of California. With a brand new city council, we have a unique opportunity as advocates to make sure this happens.
But it will require the voice of people in the community, as numerous issues are clearly obvious with this draft.
For example, here you can see that Cupertino’s draft references Larkspur, California instead of Cupertino in its fair housing analysis. This is likely because its consultant team also wrote Larkspur’s draft as well and forgot to change the city when copy-pasting.
Entire sections of the document are also red-lined, indicating that the document is heavily incomplete–an unacceptable state when this will be submitted to California Housing and Community development (HCD).
The organization’s requested changes are as follows:
1. Site Inventory: Reduce reliance on pipeline projects, expand the number of planned units in the “heart of the city,” and avoid planning homes that are unlikely to be built. Nearly ⅔ of the planned inventory is pipeline projects, with roughly 80% of those projects being Vallco and the Hamptons. The Hamptons in particular is unlikely to actually be built out as 600 units, given no recent developer interest and recent renovations from Irvine Company. Meanwhile, less than 5% of the inventory is composed of the heart of the city, the main portion of Cupertino, where most development should be slated.
2. Programs and Policies: Urge staff and consultants to focus on new policies and programs modeled after other cities’ housing elements–with a framework of the 3 Ps in mind: production of homes, preservation of existing homes, and protection of renters. Cities like Emeryville and Mountain View have robust policies for all three of these planks. Cupertino’s current draft introduces few new policies, instead relying almost entirely on our existing ones, which have obviously failed to meet our housing needs. Additionally, the draft unnecessarily restricts proposed policies, such as only limiting parking requirements for SROs and studios, instead of applying a reduction in parking to all new homes.
3. Needs Analysis: The needs analysis is woefully inadequate for the unique housing context of Cupertino, with no references to the extreme unmet housing needs of our daytime residents–instead choosing to focus on those who already can afford to live here. In particular, we see tremendous housing struggles among De Anza college students, adjunct faculty, teachers, low-wage workers, non-profit workers, young adults, and seniors. For example, Cupertino severely lacks in apartments and smaller units that would be ideal for a young professional or community college student. Additionally, with regard to AFFH, our draft does not provide a realistic assessment of segregation in our region; we know that Cupertino has one of the lowest Latino/Latinx populations of surrounding cities–of just 3-4% compared to San Jose’s 30%. As such, one of our intended outcomes should be to bridge this gap and greatly increase housing opportunities for Latino, Black, and Southeast Asian communities of color.
4. Constraints Analysis: Several constraints appear to be missing, including but not limited to (1) local control and neighborhood opposition, (2) underutilized land such as dying strip malls, (3) relatively low surface area for development, (4) state law evasion/loopholes, (5) permit processing times Additionally, several other state laws are missing that are in need of compliance like AB 2097 and AB 2011.
5. Community Outreach: While Cupertino has done some community outreach with regard to the housing element, it does not seem to have actually translated into actual policies or programs. The purpose of community outreach is to hear from traditionally underserved communities, so new ideas emerge for how to meet these specific housing needs. Instead, there are dozens of pages of outreach, with no actual effect on the resulting sites, programs, or policies. Additionally, much of the feedback critical of Cupertino’s approach to the inventory appears to be missing. The City must also be honest about its failures in approaching community outreach, such as the last City Council dismantling the stakeholder engagement group, or the anti-housing bias within the housing survey.
6. Transit-Oriented Development & mixed use: Cupertino’s housing element draft does not seem to contain a vision for the built-environment, as it isolates the thousands of planned homes from a much needed coinciding growth of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, reduced car use, and vibrant, mixed-use spaces. Instead, it makes few references to transit-oriented development and even unnecessarily restricts mixed-use. We should be planning our housing future around the reduction of car reliance and the promotion of our Climate Action Plan 2.0.
7. Timeline: Cupertino is last in the entire county and will no doubt lose local control under the builder’s remedy. Council should direct its staff and consultant team to focus entirely on more-or-less redoing the housing element draft as quickly as possible. The community would like to see an actual timeline and plan of action for achieving an ambitious housing element in a short period of time.