If you live or work — or want to live or work — in San Mateo County, you’re invited to join a unique discussion about long term housing solutions. The dialog provides an opportunity to increase understanding, exchange perspectives, and express your views on housing choices in San Mateo County. A unique citizen-driven effort to engage the people of San Mateo County in decision making about housing issues has been taking place this year and it’s called Threshold 2008. Threshold 2008 believes that by including more people in the discussion housing, San Mateo County’s leaders will be in a better position to understand what decisions the informed public will support to sustain our communities. Threshold 20008 does not advocate for any specific policy agenda or development project. They provide an inclusive forum to build the public voice on housing choices.

Earlier this year Threshold2008 conducted a weekend of public discussions and then followed up with many online opportunities where San Mateo County citizens had the chance to talk about their vision for our County.  What may be the final opportunity for you to have your say will take place this coming Saturday morning on November 15th at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, 1700 South El Camino Real.  There’s free parking and refreshments and you can join in the discussion between 10 AM and 12:30 PM.  There is a catch though, you have to preregister to attend.  It’s easy to do.  Register at here or call 650-655-5851.

If you’re interested in learning what went on at the Countywide Assembly read about it here.  Join in and be part of the public voice.  We have some serious choices to make for San Mateo County. Every single city in the County is involved with this process.  Don’t stand on the sidelines.  Get involved!!  You can afford to devote 2 and a half hours to help make a difference.

Threshold2008

I wrote about Threshold 2008 earlier this year here, here, here, here and here.  Threshold 2008 has been a unique opportunity for the public to have a voice in San Mateo County’s housing initiatives.  This is a very serious discussion that truly effects every last one of us living or working here and now and you, the public, have an opportunity to come together either tonight or tomorrow night and add your voice to the discussion through a Community Conversation.  But you need to hurry to take advantage of this opportunity to add your voices.

Why, you ask should I care?  Let me count the ways!

• Our County has only so much land available for housing and we have almost maxed it out.
• Should we build up with high rise condo towers?
• Should we have fewer parks in order to build housing?
• How about building along the coast and the special issues there, like water rights?
• What about the current battle in Redwood City about developing on the Bay?
• Traffic conjestion and flow are big battles throughout the County and are there any answers here?

What makes Threshold 2008 so unique is that you and I, the citizens of San Mateo County, are being given a voice to the discussion that the County Board of Supervisors and local city councils have about housing.  So here is your chance to make a little difference in the lives of all of us!  Take a little time and add your voice and ideas. They may be the key to our future.

So here’s the deal, you need to get yourself to the Peninsula Conference Center at 1700 South El Camino Real, Suite 100 in San Mateo.  This is 1 block north of Highway 92.  The discussions begin tonight at 6:30PM and will run until 9PM.  Tomorrow evenings discussions begin at 6PM and run until 8:30PM.  Parking is free and refreshments will be provided but you need to RSVP.  That’s easy just go here and sign up for tonight or here for tomorrow night.  If you can’t do that, you can call to register at 650-655-5851. You need only attend one of the evenings to add your voice.

This 2 1/2 hour conversation will be led by a facilitator with open ended questions tossed out and the discussion goes from there.  There are no right or wrong answers here.  The idea is to get as many diverse voices as possible.  This is your chance to have your voice heard by our elected officials in every town and city in San Mateo County.

By the way, you don’t have to live in San Mateo County to participate.  If you work here, own a business here, or want to, you too can participate.

Threshold2008

In March of this year, over 200 San Mateo County residents met at Canada College to talk about the high cost of housing in our county.  They were selected by random telephone calls.  This month is your chance to sound off and voice your thoughts, concerns and comments about this issue if you live in San Mateo County.  And,  someone will be listening!

Elected officials throughout San Mateo County will be listening to your comments and and you can make them without leaving the comforts of your home, right in front of your computer.  All youll have to do is log on to a special web site and sound  off.

The Threshold 2008 Online Dialogue is open to anyone who lives or works in San Mateo County, or wants to live here, and your opinions are really wanted.  What do you think about the high cost of housing in our county?  Hows your quality of life?  Are you house poor?  Do you live in a too small house with your family squeezed together?  Do you wish you could buy a condo or a house rather than rent?  Would you like to live here but cant afford the high prices for housing?  Sound off!  Someone is listening and very aware of your concerns and complaints.

Register now at www.threshold2008.org and be heard.  Really!  Be heard from May 5 through 16th.

San Mateo County has a shortage of affordable housing for our citizens.  People vital to the heartbeat of our county, the firemen, police, nurses, teachers, and like, are forced to commute long distances from affordable housing to their jobs here in our county.  We know that by 2025, the county will add 71,000 new households and 133,300 new jobs.  The current new housing planned will not serve these needs.

Are you concerned?  Sign up to participate in an online dialogue called ˜Public Voices for Housing Choices.  You can also sign up at www.public-voices.org. This is the second phase of the countywide assembly and Threshold 2008 is building on the success and energy of the debate. You will get to post your comments online about this critical issue for the continued benefit of our county and its citizens.  You will be able to ask questions of our county officials and of housing professionals. You will hopefully help to change this for all of us.

What are you waiting for?  Sign up right now! Anyone can follow the discussion online but  to particpate, youll have to register.

The participants were pretty similar to those of us living in this county. I saw the participants ranging from college age to retirement.  Ethnicity, race, gender were similar to those who were non-participants. All were asked a series of questions on the phone and it was discovered that there was very little difference in the answers by the two groups.  Only two questions had a statistical difference, which is amazing.

The men and women giving up their weekend several weeks ago became significantly more informed about San Mateo County’s housing issues.  Almost no one knew the median price of a single family house in the county before coming, but after the two days 19% knew it.  Before the weekend 26% could tell you the approximate percentage of households who afford a median priced house in the county, but by the end of the weekend 58% knew.

Where housing should be located in the county has always been a big issue.  Before the weekend 61% of those attending felt new housing should be located in areas already developed and the number rose to 72%, which surprised me.  People began to see why it’s so important to build housing in our county for those working here, as it will minimize the number of commuters driving through.

This group, 65% of them, sees the need for a regional authority to help plan for our housing needs.  74% now believe that developers should be required to provide more Below Market Rate housing when they build a project.  They also connected the dots in understanding how a housing shortage effects the economic vitality of our entire region through the loss of jobs due to businesses moving to more affordable locations and how this impacts our education systems, fire, police, and health care.

If  you’re interested in participating in the online portion of this Deliberative Pole, you can do so by going to Threshold2008 and signing up.  This is just the beginning of what this project hopes to do.  Keep watching here for more.

Threshold2008

Today, San Mateo County achieved something that has never been done anywhere in the US, thanks to Threshold2008’s Assembly of residents talking about San Mateo County’s housing needs.  Threshold2008 brought together the dialogue and range of voices that only the general public can bring to the government and housing officials in the 20 cities representing our County. Through the generous donations of the Open Square Foundation, The David & Lucielle Packard Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, plus Bailard Inc., Common sense California, County of San Mateo, Hurlburt-Johnson Fund, Mills-Peninsula Health Services, Palo Alto Medical Foundation, San Mateo County Community College Foundation and The Whitman Institute,  400 people representing a microcosm of the residents of the County met, learned about, and discussed housing issues facing the County, now and in the future.

Taking place at Canada College in Redwood City, I had the opportunity to listen to the majority of break out sessions taking place during the two days.  People took the task seriously, and approached it with different eyes, making this an interesting opportunity for true citizen involvement.  What’s so exciting about this process is that these people are only the beginning of the dialogue.  Beginning on April 1st. you can also participate online through Threshold2008’s website.  I promise that I’ll let you know when the time comes how you can participate, too.

We learned that each of the 20 cities making up San Mateo County had its own policy but last year decided to work together, something unique in California.  We learned that zoning can be changed to make change and that Redwood City has done this in their downtown redevelopment leaving blocks of land unzoned to allow for best-use decisions by developers and the City.

Today, the citizen participants asked probing questions of the panels during discussions.  The morning panel tackling the topic of Who Should Make Housing Decisions consisted of:

* Assemblyman Gene Mullin of the 19th District, CA State Assembly
* Supervisor Rich Gordon from the 3rd District, San Mateo County Board of Supervisors
* Mayor Carole Groom, City of San Mateo
* Duane Bay, Executive Director of San Mateo County Department of Housing
* Linda Mandolini, Executive Director, Eden Housing

Questions about why we have so many studies were asked repeatedly and all agreed we do have too many of them, but sometimes regional government requires them.  ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) conducts a job and household study every two years and is in a position to project pretty accurately, what our growth will likely be over the next couple of decades. Supervisor Rich Gordon felt that studies also can build opposition to projects.

The Assembly asked how all of the local agencies can work together.  The cities of San Mateo County joining forces to swap housing needs from city to city to meet affordable housing shortages, is something unique to our County.  We have begun to adjust our thinking across boundaries allowing for cities with vacant land that ’s not suitable for Affordable Housing to swap it with cities in need of the housing. An example of Woodside swapping land adjacent to Canada College with Redwood City so Affordable Housing can be built for Canada employees and teachers in a similar program to what was done in San Mateo at CSM.

A question was asked about the state requirement for affordable housing through Measure 1C, passed last year.  Assemblyman Mullin, with the perspective of both a former City Council member in South San Francisco, and now at the State level as an Assemblyman, resented the State telling the cities and counties what to do about housing, but on the State level, he now sees the value due to the shortage of housing.

We learned that there is no dedicated funding from the state for housing except through bonds.  It’s very expensive to build in San Mateo County.  The only way we will see more housing stock is to have a large migration out of the county and out of the state and we don’t want that.  Housing needs public support to get built.  San Mateo has streamlined their application process and is the only city in the county to have done so, but even then there are slip ups in notifying neighbors of possible projects.

In summation, Supervisor Gordon said that whatever decision on where to built is made, we always see opposition.  There’s no constituency for change in the County.  The only people showing up at hearings are the opposition.  In order to make change, the decision makers must hear from the general public during the process.  He urged everyone to become proactive and find out what’s going on.

What I heard over and over was people saying the felt they were out of the loop on what was happening in their communities because they did not read newspapers, or receive notices in the mail.  They wanted the information pushed to them, rather than being willing to take responsibility on getting information on their own.  I am not certain if there is an easy way to over come this complacency by people.  Hopefully, this two day Assembly will show the participants how important it is to seek out the information.  It is too much to expect a city to try and find the citizens who aren’t tapped into normal channels of community information.  People must learn to take responsibility into their own hands.

The afternoon session covered the topic of Policy Solutions and Funding Choices with a panel featuring:

* Duane Bay, the Executive Director of San Mateo County Department of Housing
* Debbi Jones-Thomas, the Housing Coordinator from the City of Redwood City, who has 29 years of housing and redevelopment experience
* Chris Mohr, Executive Director of Housing Endowment and Regional Trust (HEART)
* Robert Sherrard, Senior Vice President with City National Bank, and Planning Commissioner from East Palo Alto
* Chris Wuthman, Principal with Renew Properties, a developer of high density in-fill housing
* Pete Peterson, the Executive Director of Common Sense California

There were questions about the effect on the county of the aging Baby Boomers and how it will effect public policy? Questions about what contributes to Affordable Housing?  How zoning effects housing prices?  If streamlining the permit process might allow for more building at cheaper costs? Would private equity funding with tax credits help bring more dollars or public versus private funding availability or employer funding help?

Chris Mohr said there is a Federal Housing Trust Fund bill in Congress right now that, if it gets out of committee, might offer some help to our communities.  The streamlining of the zoning process again was brought up and San Mateo and Redwood City were set as examples of how to do it right.

People wanted to know about re-purposing buildings for housing.  Bob Sherrard said it was tried in San Jose but can be very expensive and just  because there are empty offices today doesn’t mean they will be empty in a couple of years.  It takes several years to make office space suitable for housing and many cities aren’t keen on the loss of the tax base.

As the day’s session began to conclude Peter Peterson congratulated the Assembly and encouraged them to stay involved in the process.  They are now in the top 5% of San Mateo County citizens with their knowledge of housing issues and in the top 1% of citizen’s engaged in the process.  But they need to continue this proces with participation in their own cities.  They are the spark that can now start the fire that makes policy changes in San Mateo County.

It appears that they just might do it.  The Internet portion of the process is next month and most of these people said they are going to participate in it and Threshold2008 needs at least 1000 participants for the next phase.  Following the online participation will come small neighborhood assemblies where, if you too are interested in learning how you can help, you’ll be able to invite your friends and family to move the process forward.

This is grass roots policy at its finest!  Dr. James Fishkin, the Director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, was visible throughout the weekend.  This was the largest group he has seen utilizing this process and he was delighted.  There were originally 900 people contacted by phone and given a 20 minute interview.  At the conclusion of that interview 400 were asked to participate.  I’ll have more data on the participants and more about their opinions later in the week.

The participants are divided into 26 groups each lead by a facilitator, and each is tackling the question of what are we going to do to have affordable housing near our workplace, reduce commute times and gasoline expenditures, and improve quality of life.  The 400 participants were asked about their opinions on various housing issues prior to their selection.  Some had very strong views on one side or the other, not necessarily right or wrong.  At the conclusion of the Assembly, tomorrow afternoon, the same questions will again be posed and it will be interesting to see how people’s opinions have shifted after two days of discussion and dialogue with our decision makers.  There will be a report about this event available for anyone to read and download in a couple of months.

Experts predict that by 2025, San Mateo County will add 71,000 new households and 133,300 new jobs.  This means the County will need to provide 73,000 new housing units to accomodate everyone.  At the rate that we are currently building new housing, we expect to see a shortfall of 49,000 housing units.

What we are seeing in San Mateo County is a brain drain.  Our children can not afford to live here.  Our teachers, our policemen, firemen, nurses, small business owners and other workers are living further and further away from our County, or moving out of the state all together.  They can never come back if they’ve moved out of California because of the high cost of housing.  San Mateo County is one of the 3 most expensive counties in California.  The other two, San Francisco and Marin, are three quarters of my Fantasy Island. Major employers are reconsidering the location of their businesses in our County because of the lack of housing and high cost of doing business here.

What is so exciting to me about Threshold2008 is that the public is being asked to be participants in the discussion of what to do, and how to do it.  We’re being urged to get involved with our cities while they go through a serious process of planning for affordable housing this next year.  Whether affordable housing will be able to bring back all of the people we’ve lost to this County, no one knows, but we are trying to address this through this Assembly.

The participants broke into their small groups and discussed Four Alternative Futures for San Mateo County.

• Continue on Our Current Path:  managing housing development as it’s done today.
• Improve Commutes: don’t build any more housing in the County but support the economy by making it easier to commute here.
• Open New Land to Development: change zoning, find empty land to build on, re-purpose buildings for housing.
• Higher Density Development: build high density housing by changing zoning, adding mixed use housing options and building up.

Their instructions for today were to discuss different visions of what housing development is in San Mateo County, and what it might look like in the future.  After their first session, they returned to the Canada College Auditorium where they were able to ask key questions to a panel of experts on housing and the environment. The topic of the morning:  “Alternative Futures for San Mateo County.”

• Karyl Eldridge, with Peninsula Interfaith Action
• Peter Ingram, Interim City Manager of the City of Redwood City
• Bruce Liedstrand, Principal, Liedstrand Associates
• Paul Powers, President & CEO of the Pauls Corporation
• Lennie Roberts, Legislative Advocate, Committee for Green Foothills
• Marisa Espinosa, San Mateo County Transit District

By the conclusion of the morning session the participants understood how complex an issue was before them all.  Water rights, pollution, public transit, economic restraints on builders and developers, jobs, and changing trends in where people are migrating to and from.

In the afternoon, a repeat of the break-out sessions took place and a new panel of experts were there to ask their key questions.  The topic of the afternoon: “Your Vision of San Mateo County’s Future.”

• Duane Bay, Executive Director of the San Mateo County Department of Housing
• Gary Patton, General Counsel for the Planning and Conservation League
• Audrey Rust, Executive Director for Peninsula Open Space Trust (covering San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz Counties)
• Fran Wagstaff. Executive Director for Mid-Peninsula Housing
• Don Weden, Former Principal Planner for Santa Clara County
• Peter Ingram, Interim City Manager for the City of Redwood City

The demographics of the participants are broad.  Young and old.  All ethnicity’s.  There is also a group for Spanish speakers only, and their questions are posed in Spanish and interpreted for the panel. Many of the questions the groups posed were quite similar, showing that there may be some agreement in what to do tomorrow.

I’ll be there to listen and learn. I’ll be back to report to you about this.  What is so very exciting about Threshold2008 is that you can also participate in the dialogue online between April 28th and May 9th.  I’ll have more to report about that as we get closer to the dates.

Threshold2008

This weekend an organization called Threshold 2008 is hosting an invitation only meeting at Canada College to talk about San Mateo County’s housing crisis.  Four hundred county residents have been selected at random to participate in a Countywide Assembly on Housing Choices.  This is similar to something that was done several years ago and led to the formation of HEART, a San Mateo County funding source for families making normal wages but unable to afford to live  here.

I will be there to listen to these citizens and will write about it over the weekend.  The Saturday session will begin with a poll on what people believe about the housing issues in the county.  After that, they’ll break into sessions with discussions about issues and come to consensus about Alternative Housing Futures.  Then all groups will get together and share their responses and have open discussion.

This will repeat on Sunday with discussion around Who Should Decide housing issues and conclude with discussion on Policies and Funding Choices.  By the end of Sunday afternoon’s session, a new poll will take place.  If this poll is anything like the last one done several years ago, there will be enormous changes in
attitudes and opinions by the participants.  Listening to all of this will be the movers and shakers in San Mateo County, those who are able to make policy and impact change.

What sets this weekend apart from anything else done like this is the way it will be done.  This is an Assembly of people and Professor James Fishkin, of Stanford’s Center for Deliberative Democracy will provide tools for citizen democracy, with citizen’s coming up with solutions to major issues affecting us all.  Professor Fishkin has introduced his program around the world with great success.

This weekend will only set the stage for continued disucssion and dialog throughout San Mateo County talking about housing shortages that are critical to our core as a community.  Threshold 2008 will be continuing with online discussions in April and more local discussions, down to neighborhoods, in May.  Want to participate?  It’s easy.  Here’s the information.

I’ll be blogging about the weekend as it progesses.