Leading the conversation: Since our founding in 2001, HLC has played a pivotal role in education and coordination around housing issues across San Mateo County’s 21 jurisdictions. We work with a broad range of organizations and individuals in San Mateo County both as a convener and as a participant. We strive to build bridges to efforts that have common interests with our mission, build consensus on strategy and policy solutions, share best practices, and give credit to the critical efforts of our partners and members. We organize many events to facilitate housing awareness and education:
Our premier annual events are Housing Leadership Day, a policy conference held in the fall, and Affordable Housing Week, a series of events each spring. Both are well attended and have become key places for community conversations about housing needs, trends, and possible solutions.
We also hold targeted events around specific policy solutions and upcoming planning efforts.
Endorsing good developments: We offer public endorsement of housing developments that meet criteria for affordability, labor standards, and proximity to transit, an endorsement that is sought after by developers who recognize the value of our brand with local officials.
Engaging the community for better planning: Since 2008, we have been engaging our network around local and regional planning, and the approval of robust Housing Elements of city and county General Plans to meet the needs identified in Regional Housing Needs Allocations. To do this, we provide education, coalition-building, and action alerts about upcoming decisions. This allows us to engage the community in this important work. We also build the capacity of staff with local agencies and NGOs by providing technical assistance around complex housing issues and potential solutions.
Increase funding for affordable housing
Current Campaigns
Housing and commercial impact fees: These are powerful local policies that could raise $100 million in affordable housing funds each year. Already, we have succeeded in helping Redwood City, the City and County of San Mateo, San Carlos, San Bruno, Foster City and East Palo Alto to adopt or increase impact fees.
Funding from the state: The state’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) funding is the largest housing fund in California, but until now, San Mateo County has not been competitive for it. This should change, for reasons of both need and opportunity: the county’s lack of affordable housing puts thousands of cars on the road, with the region’s largest per-capita in-commute, and the region has already invested billions in San Mateo’s public transportation network. HLC has analyzed Housing Opportunity Sites against the site-specific requirements necessary to make a proposed development feasible and competitive for the AHSC program. We are using this research to guide our strategy which includes a series of convenings with local agencies (transit agencies and city staff) and with housing developers.
Expand access to sites
Public land for public good: Every jurisdiction should, at a minimum, comply with the Surplus Land Act, which requires that affordable housing developers be given the right of first refusal to build on publicly owned land, and that if no affordable housing developer is chosen, 15% of all housing approved on public land must be affordable. In partnership with San Mateo Union Community Alliance (SMUCA), we have created a proactive strategy to ensure publicly owned sites provide public benefit when developed. HLC and SMUCA are meeting with agency and city staff to discuss the largest and most promising sites.