On Monday, the San Mateo City Council voted to impose a moratorium on new housing development that does not comply with the voter-approved Measure P policy, which imposes 55-foot height caps on most of San Mateo, and requires at least 10 percent of new construction to be set aside for affordable housing. The words “housing moratorium” set off a minor firestorm, and confusion over what the bill was trying to do: respect the wishes of voters and a new state law, Assembly Bill 1505.
It would be one thing if the state law was threatening a program, Measure P, that was excellent at producing affordable housing. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Since 1991, Measure P’s inclusionary ordinances have produced a total of 78 low-income condos and 164 rental units, according to San Mateo’s 2015 Housing Element Report. That’s fewer than 10 units per year.
Put in perspective, San Mateo has 18,000 renting households, according to the same document. There are 1,700 extremely-low-income (30 percent of the median income) families in San Mateo paying market rate rents. At Measure P’s current rate, we could put all of those extremely-low-income families in Measure P provided units by 2188. The acceptance rate for Stanford University is 4.8 percent. You are five times more likely to get into Stanford than to be a San Mateo renter in a Measure P rental unit.
What about the 95 percent of San Mateo renters in market-rate units? They pay the eighth-highest median rent of any city in the entire nation, according to the American Community Survey. A two-bedroom apartment averaged $900 in 1991, and averages $3,400 today. An entry-level teacher in the San Mateo-Foster City Elementary School District would pay 50 percent of their salary to rent the cheapest apartment available for rent in the city. Measure P supporters love talking about how it provides affordable housing, but 10 units per year in a city with 18,000 renting families is a rounding error.
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If the San Mateo City Council wanted to address housing affordability, instead of offering mere platitudes, it could take three approaches. The first is to oppose the Measure P ballot measure, which removes its ability to do their jobs, and to approve more below-market-rate units that taller structures make possible. Second, the council could encourage the development of more units under Measure P. The council could authorize faster (by-right) approvals for projects containing a significant number of affordable units, or which provide in-lieu affordable housing fees. Parking is also incredibly expensive to build, and the San Mateo building code requires a lot of it. A 100 percent low-income housing development at 3775 Delaware St. could have had as few as 34 parking spaces under state law, but has 85 underground units. The $3 million to $5 million spent building housing for cars could have gone toward housing for people instead.
The second approach is to reduce competition for market-rate units by building more housing, which would slow the explosive growth of rents. Over half of San Mateo’s land mass is zoned for single-family homes. The city could permit more duplexes, triplexes and four-plexes to be built in those areas, especially close to El Camino Real and San Mateo’s three Caltrain stations. The city could also waive sewer hookup fees for accessory dwelling units. All of these would add more affordable units and help San Mateo’s teachers and high school/college graduates afford to stay in town.
The council promised Monday night to respect the wishes of voters. I hope it would try harder to live up to Measure P’s professed affordable housing goals — to actually make housing affordable for low-income San Mateans, and to recognize when Measure P and their own policies get in the way of doing that. Short of doing that, it will be important for people who worry about Measure P’s poor impact on our community to show up at City Council meetings and the ballot box.
Kevin Burke is a lifelong Bay Area resident, a small business owner and a renter. He’s hoping to stick around the Bay Area his whole life, and wants his kids to be able to as well. He can be reached at kevin@burke.services.
Housing in this area is expensive for everyone who lives here. Why force one group of people to subsidize another groups housing. This is about as in-American as you can get. Pay for your own housing and end requirements for affordable housing. As Ronald Reagan famously said, the biggest fear I have is when public officials come to your door and say. "We are from the government and we are here to help".
I suppose you'd be in favor of ending Prop 13 then? Many long-time San Mateo homeowners pay less than $3,000 a year in property taxes on homes worth $1.5 million or more, and young people and newcomers have to subsidize them.
what exactly are you subsidizes again Kevin? keep in mind these people you are talking about have educated their kids decades ago. Don't buy if you don't like the deal you are getting here.
First of all Kevin- I appreciate your article as you have more responses from readers than nearly all articles. That is a good thing. However let's get rid of prop 13 and property taxes all together. That will benefit everyone.
A Reaganite solution to deregulate the building of new housing is exactly what we need, Mr. Conway. For decades local Peninsula governments have constrained housing supply by heavily restricting building. If we let the free market decide, we will have affordable housing. As Reagan said: Government is the problem. Thanks for reminding us.
Couldn't agree more, Mr. Burke. I lived here during the first iteration (Measure H), the idea that Measure P has protected anyone but homeowners is absurd. It's about time we do away with it. The world is changing, and we must change with it.
I find it curious the 'magical' Yimby conviction that building market-rate housing will generate ample housing for people who can’t get into the market....There’s this love of growth, as if economic growth were now the Holy Grail in the Bay Area, where political policies have sought to attract tech firms and their workers – without accounting for where they will live....
Market-rate housing not only doesn’t solve the problem.....look around, affordable housing on balance has gotten worse, not better, as the real estate market has boomed in the Bay Area.....
Manhattan is 400% denser than San Francisco but it’s still not a cheap place to live.....
So if the ‘market rate’ for newly developed units is substantially higher than the median cost of existing units (just look at the prices in Bay Meadows), then building more market-rate units will make existing median rents go up, not down....and that will be the inevitable result of this Concar Passage development...
Vincent, you are right that someone renting an apartment built in 2018 is going to be paying more than the average. However, apartments get cheaper as they get older. An apartment built in 1992 is much more likely to be in the price range of a low-income San Mateo resident today. Without Measure M/Measure P, we could have built more apartments in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 that would be affordable today. (I myself live in an apartment built in the 70's; likely it would have cost much more when it was new than it does today.)
> affordable housing on balance has gotten worse, not better, as the real estate market has boomed in the Bay Area.....
We have built some housing recently. But we have added way, way more office space and jobs, throughout the Bay Area. All of those new job workers need to live somewhere, and have been bidding up the price of apartments and houses, making housing unaffordable. Building more housing will help reduce competition and lower prices.
Kevin you may have missed the point....So if the ‘market rate’ for newly developed units is substantially higher than the median cost of existing units (just look at the prices in Bay Meadows), then building more market-rate units (which Concar Passage is proposing to do) will make EXISTING median rents go up, not down...that includes the rents for the stock of older apartments, and as such, I don't understand how you can say that..."An apartment built in 1992 is much more likely to be in the price range of a low-income San Mateo resident today"...that's clearly incorrect...
If you read this Belmont resident's opinion, make sure to get all the facts at https://www.smdailyjournal.com/opinion/guest_perspectives/the-balanced-benefits-of-measure-p/article_f8fd7fd6-2341-11e8-8bf7-6f035d854847.html. Find out why more building doesn't equate to more affordable housing in one paragraph. Do away with Measure P and we look like Redwood City.
Is "not looking like Redwood City" really worth the cost? The 8th highest rents of any city in the country, kids who grow up here and can't afford to live here, increased homelessness, teachers and city officials having to drive in from Pleasanton to make the math work?
Lisa, I have worked in downtown Redwood City for a few years now and the transformation here has been incredible. The area used to be full of closed shops, empty parking lots, drug dealers, homeless, and sketchy streets at night. Now there are plentiful restaurants, a vibrant nightlife, and people living here. How is that a bad thing?
Great question. I'd be interested to hear what the problem is with Redwood City. I moved here 16 years ago, and the transformation has been tremendous. I'm a huge fan of what's happened in Redwood City, but I may honestly not be aware of the negatives, so more than happy to hear rational explanations on that.
There are 323 million people in the United States not sure how they are all supposed to fit here? Currently 3 million people in the region according to Joint Ventures Silicon Valley for 1.6 million jobs. 17% of the people between 18 and 64 live here but do not work and 15% are presumably retired, so roughly 1/4 of the adult population does not have a job. Not ingesting anyone should leave just found it to be interesting. After all we are not just about numbers, we have feelings too.
I find it curious that there is always far more opposition to building housing than office buildings, even though office buildings cause a lot more traffic per square foot. A typical 1200 square foot office has a lot more employees than a 1200 square foot house/apartment has residents. Most of the traffic we experience on the Peninsula is caused by people driving long distances to work because there is inadequate housing in our area. If you don't want more housing than first oppose building office space.
Cities prefer more office, because they get more revenue from commercial than housing - it's denser, plus you can get sales taxes, occupancy taxes (from things like hotels) and special business district taxes.
People also oppose new housing because you have to also build schools, it might mean people of different socioeconomic/racial backgrounds living near you, you have to add more firefighters, etc...
If 2x as much office as housing gets proposed, and existing residents end up cutting the housing portion in half, sooner or later you see how San Mateo County can add 75,000 jobs and only 4,000 housing units in seven years.
Kevin...you seem to make assumptions about what I do and don't know about development. How long have you been in development? ...I hesitate to guess but you may have a background in tech not real estate development...Again, just a guess...nothing inappropriate intended..
Vincent: City officials in many Bay Area cities have long shown a preference for retail and commercial over residential construction. That's why we have such a severe imbalance. How is that a "straw man" argument?
Tom..many citizens fought both Bay Meadows and the TOD corridor which led to the start of hundreds of thousands of sq. ft of office development in San Mateo...BUT you keep saying that somehow it's the citizens of San Mateo's fault for commercial over development...WHEN, in fact, many people tried to stop office development but were steamrolled by the politicians, labor unions and business interests in this City.... (this from March 2006)..."Opposing views were really shut out of the process. The decision to develop Bay Meadows was made a long time ago," Bischoff charged. Schinkel, of Friends of Bay Meadows, agreed, calling the CAC "handpicked" and not representative. Opponents are unconvinced the project will improve congestion. They contend the new connections will only put more cars on existing thoroughfares. Schinkel said that although the train would serve the project, the train is the only good public transit choice, meaning that new residents and office workers mostly will drive." ...So to say,as you have in the past, that it is the CITIZENS of San Mateo who are complicit some how in allowing office development is factually incorrect...that's the point I'm making.....now you are saying the politicians like commercial....of course the politicians 'have a preference' and have shown it through their actions here in San Mateo since Bay Meadows and the TOD...but don't blame the citizens for the imbalance....it was rammed thru (no matter what the powers that be say) against the wishes of many, many San Mateo citizens...
A better solution would be to unlock some of the vast Open Space to development. This would allow for housing to catch up with demand and market forces would lower costs as a result. Do they still teach basic economics in school anymore?
Kevin...listen to what Glenn has to say....due to the strong environmental movements in the Bay Area starting in the 70's, nearly 80% of the Bay Area is locked up in either open space or some form of restricted use...So remember to factor that 'elephant in the room' actuality into the equation when you criticize the lack of housing here...
Kevin, If building up will preserve protected land then so be it. It's unfortunately these apartment projects are predominantly awarded to out of town contractors who like to bring their own crews and with City blessing, will never pay prevailing wage. Are we concerned about local residents employment or is local resident housing the only issue? https://goo.gl/images/2o2pvW
Japan is a lot more dense than California, yet you can rent a room in downtown Tokyo for $1000 a month.
The difference is that they allow dense construction everywhere, and California largely doesn't. "Neighborhoods in which single-family homes make up 90 percent of the housing stock account for a little over half the land mass [in the Bay Area]," from the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/business/economy/single-family-home.html?_r=0
Well, micromanaging.... elicits unforeseen consequences. Never allow the fat cat to come in and build rentals. They will for perpetuity steel money from the little person and fly around on their private jets. Now doing away with Dodd/Frank the banks can again be able to lend to the right people! Build things where people have a stake in them and things will iron themselves out.
This is very misleading, the height limits weren't actually made to affect the affordable housing, they were made to prevent abusive developers and skyscrapers from office buildings. Other cities in the county that don't have height limits, still have affordable housing crisis and most developers only include a small fraction for affordable units. Quality of life is more important to our city instead of building too much high density housing that just gives too much advantage for the developers and little benefit to affordable housing. This is a reasonable measure to protect housing from greedy developers.
The 1700 extremely low income families paying market rate rents, the teachers commuting 90 minutes each way from Pleasanton, and the kids who went to high school here and can't afford to keep living here beg to differ about the quality of life in San Mateo.
They're not from SM county, they're from Pleasanton, which they should find work in their local school. We have no more room to keep gentrifying our neighborhood. We would keep cost down, if we stop bringing those offices from big tech companies, they're displacing the teachers, when Bay Meadows keeps building high density housing projects that aren't really affordable. The prices will go down, when the market demand goes down. Traffic is already bad.
+1 to mfink's comment - I've worked in downtown Redwood City for almost 7 years. Yes there is more traffic, but I'm not such a special snowflake that I can't handle a little inconvenience. The changes to downtown RWC are worth it.
Kevin Burke said: People also oppose new housing because you have to also build schools, it might mean people of different socioeconomic/racial backgrounds living near you, you have to add more firefighters, etc...
Kevin, you hit the nail right on the head : https://www.smdailyjournal.com/opinion/beresford-hillsdale-neighborhood-association/article_b99b3b81-a43a-5152-a8e4-6a646ce1cede.html
or maybe they don't want their taxes increased and congestion to go through the stratosphere. I know lefties like to go with the racist angle on everything but you might want to think before your write. It shows a lack of depth.
If you're a long time homeowner and you want to keep your low property taxes, the best thing to do is support as much new construction (with a 2018 property tax basis) as possible.
LOL, Christopher Conway claims "lefties" like to make everything about race in response to link about how someone from the Tea Party LITERALLY made made the housing growth debate about race: "In justifying her “no growth” position for San Mateo, Ms. Steele stated, “What is the end result of all this ‘smart growth’ and ‘stack and pack’ housing? You end up with different people living here. People different than you and me. People with different cultures and beliefs.”
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(40) comments
Housing in this area is expensive for everyone who lives here. Why force one group of people to subsidize another groups housing. This is about as in-American as you can get. Pay for your own housing and end requirements for affordable housing. As Ronald Reagan famously said, the biggest fear I have is when public officials come to your door and say. "We are from the government and we are here to help".
I suppose you'd be in favor of ending Prop 13 then? Many long-time San Mateo homeowners pay less than $3,000 a year in property taxes on homes worth $1.5 million or more, and young people and newcomers have to subsidize them.
what exactly are you subsidizes again Kevin? keep in mind these people you are talking about have educated their kids decades ago. Don't buy if you don't like the deal you are getting here.
Christopher Conway, property taxes can pay for plenty of other things besides schools... police, firefighters, infrastructure improvement
First of all Kevin- I appreciate your article as you have more responses from readers than nearly all articles. That is a good thing. However let's get rid of prop 13 and property taxes all together. That will benefit everyone.
A Reaganite solution to deregulate the building of new housing is exactly what we need, Mr. Conway. For decades local Peninsula governments have constrained housing supply by heavily restricting building. If we let the free market decide, we will have affordable housing. As Reagan said: Government is the problem. Thanks for reminding us.
Yes let's get the government out of the way: repeal Prop 13, remove all zoning codes, and get rid of planning commissions
Couldn't agree more, Mr. Burke. I lived here during the first iteration (Measure H), the idea that Measure P has protected anyone but homeowners is absurd. It's about time we do away with it. The world is changing, and we must change with it.
I find it curious the 'magical' Yimby conviction that building market-rate housing will generate ample housing for people who can’t get into the market....There’s this love of growth, as if economic growth were now the Holy Grail in the Bay Area, where political policies have sought to attract tech firms and their workers – without accounting for where they will live....
Market-rate housing not only doesn’t solve the problem.....look around, affordable housing on balance has gotten worse, not better, as the real estate market has boomed in the Bay Area.....
Manhattan is 400% denser than San Francisco but it’s still not a cheap place to live.....
So if the ‘market rate’ for newly developed units is substantially higher than the median cost of existing units (just look at the prices in Bay Meadows), then building more market-rate units will make existing median rents go up, not down....and that will be the inevitable result of this Concar Passage development...
Vincent, you are right that someone renting an apartment built in 2018 is going to be paying more than the average. However, apartments get cheaper as they get older. An apartment built in 1992 is much more likely to be in the price range of a low-income San Mateo resident today. Without Measure M/Measure P, we could have built more apartments in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 that would be affordable today. (I myself live in an apartment built in the 70's; likely it would have cost much more when it was new than it does today.)
> affordable housing on balance has gotten worse, not better, as the real estate market has boomed in the Bay Area.....
We have built some housing recently. But we have added way, way more office space and jobs, throughout the Bay Area. All of those new job workers need to live somewhere, and have been bidding up the price of apartments and houses, making housing unaffordable. Building more housing will help reduce competition and lower prices.
Kevin you may have missed the point....So if the ‘market rate’ for newly developed units is substantially higher than the median cost of existing units (just look at the prices in Bay Meadows), then building more market-rate units (which Concar Passage is proposing to do) will make EXISTING median rents go up, not down...that includes the rents for the stock of older apartments, and as such, I don't understand how you can say that..."An apartment built in 1992 is much more likely to be in the price range of a low-income San Mateo resident today"...that's clearly incorrect...
If you read this Belmont resident's opinion, make sure to get all the facts at https://www.smdailyjournal.com/opinion/guest_perspectives/the-balanced-benefits-of-measure-p/article_f8fd7fd6-2341-11e8-8bf7-6f035d854847.html. Find out why more building doesn't equate to more affordable housing in one paragraph. Do away with Measure P and we look like Redwood City.
There isn't a single accurate fact in that article, Lisa. All of the facts appear to be in this one.
Is "not looking like Redwood City" really worth the cost? The 8th highest rents of any city in the country, kids who grow up here and can't afford to live here, increased homelessness, teachers and city officials having to drive in from Pleasanton to make the math work?
Lisa, I have worked in downtown Redwood City for a few years now and the transformation here has been incredible. The area used to be full of closed shops, empty parking lots, drug dealers, homeless, and sketchy streets at night. Now there are plentiful restaurants, a vibrant nightlife, and people living here. How is that a bad thing?
Great question. I'd be interested to hear what the problem is with Redwood City. I moved here 16 years ago, and the transformation has been tremendous. I'm a huge fan of what's happened in Redwood City, but I may honestly not be aware of the negatives, so more than happy to hear rational explanations on that.
There are 323 million people in the United States not sure how they are all supposed to fit here? Currently 3 million people in the region according to Joint Ventures Silicon Valley for 1.6 million jobs. 17% of the people between 18 and 64 live here but do not work and 15% are presumably retired, so roughly 1/4 of the adult population does not have a job. Not ingesting anyone should leave just found it to be interesting. After all we are not just about numbers, we have feelings too.
I find it curious that there is always far more opposition to building housing than office buildings, even though office buildings cause a lot more traffic per square foot. A typical 1200 square foot office has a lot more employees than a 1200 square foot house/apartment has residents. Most of the traffic we experience on the Peninsula is caused by people driving long distances to work because there is inadequate housing in our area. If you don't want more housing than first oppose building office space.
Tom...please stop with the straw man argument....who are these people that you are talking about that only want to approve office buildings only???
Cities prefer more office, because they get more revenue from commercial than housing - it's denser, plus you can get sales taxes, occupancy taxes (from things like hotels) and special business district taxes.
People also oppose new housing because you have to also build schools, it might mean people of different socioeconomic/racial backgrounds living near you, you have to add more firefighters, etc...
If 2x as much office as housing gets proposed, and existing residents end up cutting the housing portion in half, sooner or later you see how San Mateo County can add 75,000 jobs and only 4,000 housing units in seven years.
Kevin...you seem to make assumptions about what I do and don't know about development. How long have you been in development? ...I hesitate to guess but you may have a background in tech not real estate development...Again, just a guess...nothing inappropriate intended..
Vincent: City officials in many Bay Area cities have long shown a preference for retail and commercial over residential construction. That's why we have such a severe imbalance. How is that a "straw man" argument?
Tom..many citizens fought both Bay Meadows and the TOD corridor which led to the start of hundreds of thousands of sq. ft of office development in San Mateo...BUT you keep saying that somehow it's the citizens of San Mateo's fault for commercial over development...WHEN, in fact, many people tried to stop office development but were steamrolled by the politicians, labor unions and business interests in this City.... (this from March 2006)..."Opposing views were really shut out of the process. The decision to develop Bay Meadows was made a long time ago," Bischoff charged. Schinkel, of Friends of Bay Meadows, agreed, calling the CAC "handpicked" and not representative.
Opponents are unconvinced the project will improve congestion. They contend the new connections will only put more cars on existing thoroughfares. Schinkel said that although the train would serve the project, the train is the only good public transit choice, meaning that new residents and office workers mostly will drive." ...So to say,as you have in the past, that it is the CITIZENS of San Mateo who are complicit some how in allowing office development is factually incorrect...that's the point I'm making.....now you are saying the politicians like commercial....of course the politicians 'have a preference' and have shown it through their actions here in San Mateo since Bay Meadows and the TOD...but don't blame the citizens for the imbalance....it was rammed thru (no matter what the powers that be say) against the wishes of many, many San Mateo citizens...
A better solution would be to unlock some of the vast Open Space to development. This would allow for housing to catch up with demand and market forces would lower costs as a result. Do they still teach basic economics in school anymore?
The good news is there's a lot of Open Space currently, above San Mateo's parking lots and single family homes...
Kevin...listen to what Glenn has to say....due to the strong environmental movements in the Bay Area starting in the 70's, nearly 80% of the Bay Area is locked up in either open space or some form of restricted use...So remember to factor that 'elephant in the room' actuality into the equation when you criticize the lack of housing here...
Kevin, If building up will preserve protected land then so be it. It's unfortunately these apartment projects are predominantly awarded to out of town contractors who like to bring their own crews and with City blessing, will never pay prevailing wage. Are we concerned about local residents employment or is local resident housing the only issue?
https://goo.gl/images/2o2pvW
Glenn... thank you....
Japan is a lot more dense than California, yet you can rent a room in downtown Tokyo for $1000 a month.
The difference is that they allow dense construction everywhere, and California largely doesn't. "Neighborhoods in which single-family homes make up 90 percent of the housing stock account for a little over half the land mass [in the Bay Area]," from the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/business/economy/single-family-home.html?_r=0
All of these factors drive up the cost of building new apartments:
- Height limits
- Minimum parking requirements
- Prevailing wage
- An uncertain, 2+ year application and review process
- Local opposition
You can pick maybe two of those and still have projects pencil.
In California, environmental science is more popular and us NIMBYs appreciate what's left of the not so vast open space
Well, micromanaging.... elicits unforeseen consequences. Never allow the fat cat to come in and build rentals. They will for perpetuity steel money from the little person and fly around on their private jets. Now doing away with Dodd/Frank the banks can again be able to lend to the right people! Build things where people have a stake in them and things will iron themselves out.
This is very misleading, the height limits weren't actually made to affect the affordable housing, they were made to prevent abusive developers and skyscrapers from office buildings. Other cities in the county that don't have height limits, still have affordable housing crisis and most developers only include a small fraction for affordable units. Quality of life is more important to our city instead of building too much high density housing that just gives too much advantage for the developers and little benefit to affordable housing. This is a reasonable measure to protect housing from greedy developers.
The 1700 extremely low income families paying market rate rents, the teachers commuting 90 minutes each way from Pleasanton, and the kids who went to high school here and can't afford to keep living here beg to differ about the quality of life in San Mateo.
They're not from SM county, they're from Pleasanton, which they should find work in their local school. We have no more room to keep gentrifying our neighborhood. We would keep cost down, if we stop bringing those offices from big tech companies, they're displacing the teachers, when Bay Meadows keeps building high density housing projects that aren't really affordable. The prices will go down, when the market demand goes down. Traffic is already bad.
+1 to mfink's comment - I've worked in downtown Redwood City for almost 7 years. Yes there is more traffic, but I'm not such a special snowflake that I can't handle a little inconvenience. The changes to downtown RWC are worth it.
Kevin Burke said: People also oppose new housing because you have to also build schools, it might mean people of different socioeconomic/racial backgrounds living near you, you have to add more firefighters, etc...
Kevin, you hit the nail right on the head : https://www.smdailyjournal.com/opinion/beresford-hillsdale-neighborhood-association/article_b99b3b81-a43a-5152-a8e4-6a646ce1cede.html
or maybe they don't want their taxes increased and congestion to go through the stratosphere. I know lefties like to go with the racist angle on everything but you might want to think before your write. It shows a lack of depth.
If you're a long time homeowner and you want to keep your low property taxes, the best thing to do is support as much new construction (with a 2018 property tax basis) as possible.
LOL, Christopher Conway claims "lefties" like to make everything about race in response to link about how someone from the Tea Party LITERALLY made made the housing growth debate about race:
"In justifying her “no growth” position for San Mateo, Ms. Steele stated, “What is the end result of all this ‘smart growth’ and ‘stack and pack’ housing? You end up with different people living here. People different than you and me. People with different cultures and beliefs.”
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