County ‘Housing Element’ Plan

Within days, Alameda County will publicly release their plan to add 2089 new homes (apartments, condos, houses) to Castro Valley over the next 8 years, as mandated by the Association of Bay Area Governments. As of now, they plan to promote construction of large housing complexes at the Rite Aid site, Trader Joes (long in in the works), next to the library (already in process) and at the site of today’s Sheriff Station by Fairmont Hospital. In addition, they plan to take a chunk (size not yet specified) of the BART parking lot and use it for housing. Most of this housing is targeted to reduced income buyers and tenants.

I support increasing low income housing if done responsibly, but Castro Valley is being mandated to build almost half of the new homes in unincorporated Alameda County. Sacrificing BART parking is not a good plan. While the lot may be underutilized now, I would expect it to bounce back to full use in the future– if not, then BART is doomed to bankruptcy anyway, as some have predicted, then the whole lot can be repurposed. Concurrently, AC Transit has eliminated the Flex Bus that made it possible to get to/from BART without a car.

As of today, the County has not yet posted this “Housing Element” plan on their website, but it is available by request from housing.element@acgov.org. Use the same email address to submit comments and concerns. There is tremendous political pressure to get this approved immediately without revision. They will present this plan to the CVMAC for approval in the coming weeks, the timeline on this is very short, a quick rubber stamp by the MAC is very likely. BART is apparently on board with the plan, they are already giving up the parking lot at North Berkeley for a seven story housing tower--submit BART queries and comments to John McParland at boardofdirectors@bart.gov

–Richard Kelly, Castro Valley