Top image: El Camino Real in San Mateo. Photo: mliu92 / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Most below-market-rate rules spread affordable units through a market-rate building. A proposal at 1700 S. El Camino Real in San Mateo, at Borel Avenue, takes the opposite approach. It would put all of them into a separate building: an eight-story tower that is 100% affordable housing for seniors. The design is efficient but depends on funding, and that dependency is what worries the neighborhood.
The project
According to the city’s project page, JEMCOR Development Partners, working with architect KTGY, proposes demolishing an existing office building on the 3.1-acre site and building two eight-story residential buildings. Building A would have 253 market-rate units (136 one-bedroom, 88 two-bedroom, and 29 three-bedroom) with 353 parking spaces, a pool, and two courtyards. Building B would have 188 affordable senior units with 103 parking spaces. The application was filed under SB 330, the Housing Crisis Act, which locks in development standards and fees as of the date of submission.
On Oct. 5, the City Council took up the developer’s alternative compliance proposal under the city’s below-market-rate program. The San Mateo Daily Journal reported that the city is moving forward with the plan. The city normally requires rental projects of 11 or more units to make at least 15% of them below market rate. By the Daily Journal’s account, the dedicated senior building far exceeds that threshold.
The catch: two buildings, two capital stacks
JEMCOR is exploring several funding sources, including private activity tax-exempt bonds for the affordable building, the Daily Journal reported. Those bonds are used mainly for below-market developments, so the market-rate tower needs separate financing. Neighbors told the council they worry that one building will rise without the other.
“We also want to make sure that the impact that they’re going to be suffering is not made worse by having one building built and the other one never built,” said Robert Whitehair, vice president of the Borel Neighborhood Association.
Association president Pam Rittelmeyer described a two-year search for affordable senior housing for her mother on the Peninsula that ended with her mother moving to Georgia. She supported the idea of a building dedicated to affordable units but doubted the financing would come through. “They proposed this very complicated process of bonds and grants,” she said.
Councilmember Rob Newsom asked whether the developer could add below-market units to Building A if Building B’s funding fell through. Rachel Horst, the city’s Housing and Neighborhood Services manager, said the city cannot require that. However, Building A could not be occupied if Building B fails to get a permit for lack of funding, she said, according to the Daily Journal.
What’s next
The project still needs a full environmental review and a Planning Commission hearing. If it is approved, subject to appeal, groundbreaking would come by the end of 2027, the Daily Journal reported.
The long view
Rittelmeyer’s story about her mother is a familiar one on the Peninsula. The Borel corridor, an office district along El Camino, is a natural place to test turning commercial land into housing. San Mateo’s approach trades the social goal of mixed-income buildings for the financial logic of separate capital stacks. The occupancy link between the two towers is the city’s main safeguard. The next stage of this project will be decided by the bond market, not the council chamber.
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