A flaming coincidence

As a big fan of the many affordable housing projects being built throughout San Mateo County, I’d been monitoring the Middlefield Junction project since before its groundbreaking. Thus, I was devastated when I learned about the fire. Construction has resumed, confirming that 179 new households will still be welcomed into North Fair Oaks someday. But I am saddened to think about what the perhaps yearlong delay in opening means for those 179 households, whoever they turn out to be.

As if by coincidence, just about a week ago, another fire broke out at a site of a proposed new affordable housing project at 112 Vera Ave. in Redwood City. Oddly, the project proposed for this site has been designed to serve almost exactly the same number of households as Middlefield Junction: 178 for-rent apartments in one seven-story building. The units would be smaller, however. Twenty-five of them would be studios, with the remaining being one-bedroom units (Middlefield Junction’s will range in size from one to three bedrooms).

Although the 112 Vera project was first proposed in March of last year, I’ve been visiting the site since late in 2017. Back then, it contained five small duplexes (for a total of 10 units), but the units apparently were no longer being rented and were instead seemingly occupied by squatters. Eventually the temporary residents were evicted, and the property owner decided to rehabilitate the units. Demolition got underway in August of 2019, and by the end of the year, all that remained were the bare foundations.

The rebuilding process began slowly, and from then on, the work proceeded in fits and starts. By the end of 2022 the units had yet to have their stucco applied, although they had been framed, the exterior walls had been covered with tar paper and stucco mesh, the doors and windows had been installed, and the roofs had been shingled. But all work stopped, and no work appears to have been done on-site since. I’ve continued to pay the site regular visits, watching for signs of squatters. The site was seemingly abandoned, and these 10 units seemed to be just the kind of places someone looking for a semipermanent shelter would find ideal.

As it turns out, that may have been just what happened. The fire investigators are surely just getting started with this fire, but I’m guessing they won’t need nearly so much time to solve this particular puzzle. On Tuesday, I walked by and, from Vera Avenue, you can barely see any evidence of the fire that occurred in a unit at the far end of the U-shaped complex. However, from the alley that runs just behind the project site (connecting Adams Street to El Camino Real), the damage is easy to see. Also easy to see is the large hole that someone cut in the chain-link construction fencing surrounding the property, providing easy access to that unit (which may have been chosen by its presumed occupant for the very reason that it is hard to see from Vera Avenue).

It’s a real coincidence that both sites — Middlefield Junction and 112 Vera Ave. — are sites for large affordable housing projects, and both saw partially-constructed buildings damaged by fire. But that is where the similarities pretty much end. The fire at Middlefield Junction destroyed the majority of the under-construction housing units, whereas the one at 112 Vera Ave. appears to have ruined just one or two of the 10 partially completed homes that were likely to be replaced anyway. At Middlefield Junction, the fire occurred at 10:14 a.m. on a Monday, when workers were actively on-site. At 112 Vera Ave., the fire broke out at around 2 a.m. on a Saturday and, to my eye, seems to have been caused by unauthorized individuals — be they squatters, kids or whatever.

Fires are never good, especially in California. Fires on affordable housing building sites that delay the creation of badly needed affordable housing are especially bad. As for two in less than 12 months? Well, that’s a coincidence we really don’t need.

Greg Wilson is the creator of Walking Redwood City, a blog inspired by his walks throughout Redwood City and adjacent communities. He can be reached at greg@walkingRedwoodCity.com. Follow Greg on Twitter @walkingRWC.