Ballot Measure Puts San Mateo In Housing Quandary
- Sarah Klearman
- Dec 7, 2020
- 5 min read
Someday a city on the San Francisco Peninsula will embrace growth. It will recognize the pressures of the Bay Area’s housing crisis and fully capitalize on the economic juggernaut of the region’s tech industry. Today is not that day. And the city is definitely not San Mateo.
The narrow passage of Measure Y, a ballot item extending previously implemented height and density caps on developments in San Mateo, could hinder the city’s quest to build more housing and alleviate the severity of its housing crisis, critics say. More legalistically, the measure’s passage may make compliance with San Mateo’s housing target under the Bay Area’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation, expected to be around 5,000 units, all but impossible.
The measure, which won by 43 votes out of 45,000 cast, caps citywide building heights at 55 feet (about four stories) and residential density at 50 units per acre. It also mandates that 10% of any development be affordable housing. Measure R, an alternative measure that would have provided the City Council with more flexibility in allowing dense development around transit stations, failed despite receiving vastly more financial support.
Measure Y has a long lineage. It is an extension of Measure H, passed in 2004 as an extension of Measure P, originally passed in 1991 in response to the approval of a series of 12-story developments in San Mateo’s downtown, according to San Mateo City Attorney Shawn Mason. (Nevertheless, San Mateo’s population density is over 8,000 per square mile, considerably higher than that of most of its neighbors.)
Height and density caps existed in San Mateo prior to 1991, Mason said, but Measure P “ratcheted them down.” Proponents of the caps say they ensure controlled development in San Mateo, warding off developers and large property owners with interest in “over-developing” the city’s downtown. The same group that had originally lobbied for Measure H in 1991 and Measure P in 2004 successfully collected enough signatures to place Measure Y on the ballot in 2020, according to City Clerk Patrice Olds.
