Ruby Meadow Conversion to Housing Begins
Bulldozers roared, and trees fell at Ruby Meadow by Crescent Avenue and Ruby Street in Castro Valley last Tuesday, September 28, marking the start of Eden Housing’s affordable housing development there.
Demonstrators from the Save Ruby Meadows group held up signs urging the trees and animals to be saved (some deer scattered during the event). Alan Fishman and Anita Wah read the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, for the trees and animals about to perish.
During the day, the deer distanced themselves from human construction workers and equipment, but by night, they came to the fence where other humans were holding an evening vigil.
The partially wooded site, just off A Street, had stayed empty for decades when Caltrans abandoned plans to build Interstate 238 through downtown Hayward. Several houses on the site were demolished about a decade ago.
Eden Housing saw it as a prime place to build apartments housing low- and very low-income area residents, which it called the Ruby Street Apartments. The nonprofit said it was near both employment possibilities and transit.
According to the Eden Housing website, the 72 apartments are a mix of studio, 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom units that will be affordable to households earning 20 to 60 percent of the area median income.
The project had been approved by several government agencies as far back as three years ago, but the county Board of Supervisors approved the final funding more recently.
It had been, and is, opposed by several community groups who argued that it best left to nature, as the larger, older trees sat alongside one of the few stretches of San Leandro Creek that the public can still visit.
“They have all this [Interstate] 238 land to choose from. Why did they pick the one riparian site to build on?” asked Bruce King of Friends of San Leandro Creek.
Save Ruby Meadow had presented the Board of Supervisors with a list of two dozen alternative housing sites, many left over from the abandoned I-238 project.
“There are many nearby blighted or vacant sites where development would be a welcome improvement, but instead, the damage continues,” said Dr. Ann Maris of the Grove Way Neighborhood Association, part of the Save Ruby Meadow coalition.
“Residents are surrounded by increasing traffic and particulate pollution, evidenced by some of the lowest human life expectancies in the County. Residents need those trees and earth for public health,” she continued.
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors accepted the list of alternative sites, but Save Ruby Meadow says there is no indication they considered a different site. The board then approved building the housing on Ruby Street.