Officials defend scrapping senior housing, wellness center in Burlingame

Those plans, formally initiated in 2018, were scrapped in October by the district, which cited mounting construction costs and various financial challenges with developers as insurmountable. 

Chief among those challenges was the project’s joint entitlement, which did not allow the district to move forward with only the affordable housing component and drop other aspects, like market-rate housing board members said was too expensive for the area.

The district would learn from those challenges and was still committed to some form of affordable housing on the property, members promised residents at a special meeting Feb. 24.

“We’re going to initiate a [Request for Proposal] for a new project to include affordable housing provider development parts of the project site,” board Chair Lawrence Cappel said. “I think it’s safe to say that everyone on the board is excited about having affordable housing.” 

PCHD would be working with nearby hospital administrations to see if their needs could potentially be met at the project site as well as reopening community dialogue around land use, Cappel said. 

Housing advocates, many who had advocated for entirely affordable housing on the site since the project’s inception, pushed back on the district’s statements. 

Laura Hinz of Housing For All Burlingame pointed to PHCD’s previous project — The Trousdale, market-rate housing for seniors — as well as the district’s previous desire for market-rate housing at the new site. It was the advocacy of the community that brought the concept of affordable housing to the project to begin with, she said, and that would not falter. 

“The only thing that brought affordable housing was us. We brought the idea of affordable housing, OK? And I’m glad that you appreciate it,” Hinz said. “If you’re going to build for people to live in, there’s only one way, and that’s built for the entire community, not just those that can afford it. Because there’s all the rest of us.” 

The district maintained that its taxpayer-funded role in the community and the direction for the project must revolve around health care needs.

Board Vice Chair Frank Pagliaro said the need for an agency devoted to San Mateo County’s health and wellness was more urgent than ever before, given threats of federal funding cuts to the National Institute of Health, and urged meeting attendees to understand the nature of the PHCD. 

“This organization has always seen itself as filling holes in health care. … There’s going to be tremendous pressure and responsibility for us to fill these broad holes across that broad spectrum,” he said. “Please try to remember what we are, what we try to do.” 

But many community members pushed back against the idea that there was any separation between meeting a community’s health needs and its housing needs, noting the mental and physical toll that housing anxiety takes on many individuals in San Mateo County. 

“The mission and goal of the health care district is the optimization of health. I would challenge the health care district to identify a use that would pay a bigger health dividend,” community member Ted McKinnon said. “This is the reality of the people in San Mateo, who are struggling to make ends meet, whose health is being decimated day by day because of lack of affordable housing. Please, try harder.”