County grants $3.2 million to Half Moon Bay 

Under the memorandum of understanding between the county and city, the county would pay off a $3.2 million loan the city owes to the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank by leasing the Half Moon Bay Library and leasing it back to the city. Half Moon Bay would pay back the county’s one-time payment over a period of 10 years with a fixed interest rate of 3.13%. 

“I just want to thank staff for their continued work on this project. It’s incredibly important,” Mueller said during Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. 

The deal is meant to free up the land which hasn’t been developable due to the loan so the parties can build more affordable housing for farmworkers, many of whom earn about $20,000 annually or less than 20% of the county’s area median income, according to the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development. 

More specifically, the county and city want to provide permanent housing to 18 families who were displaced from their homes early this year after a co-worker, Chunli Zhao, the alleged mass shooter at two mushroom farms on the coast. Zhao is accused of the workplace-motivated shootings and is currently in custody on no bail status. Zhao’s preliminary hearing is scheduled for Dec. 4. 

The shooting brought strong focus to the deplorable conditions in which many farmworkers were living and propelled local initiatives to expand and improve farmworker housing on the coast. 

“There is a critical lack of affordable housing for low-income residents throughout San Mateo County, including the Coastside,” read the staff report. “The County is dedicated to ensuring safe affordable housing options for all San Mateo County residents, especially our most vulnerable low-income families.” 

The state awarded the county and Half Moon Bay with a $5 million grant to pursue the project through the Joe Serna Jr. Farmworker Housing Grant Program, a funding opportunity from the California Department of Housing and Community Development named after the late mayor of Sacramento who grew up as a farmworker.

The city had previously received a $1 million grant from the county through Measure K, a half-cent sales tax, to help support the project planning process. 

In other business, the board also voted to allocate $100,000 to One Life Counseling Center, $26,000 to All Five and $20,000 to the Redwood City Education Foundation, using Measure K dollars, to assist each group with expanding mental health services. 

One Life Counseling Center will use its grant to support youth programming in Redwood City, North Fair Oaks and Belle Haven while All Five’s grant will support its initiative to provide families and children in Belle Haven and East Palo Alto with mental health programming in a high-quality early childhood learning environment. And the grant to the Redwood City Education Foundation will support school-based, no-cost bilingual mental health care services. 

sierra@smdailyjournal.com 

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