Greenbelt Alliance has advocated for a Caltrain policy to encourage the development of affordable homes along the Caltrain corridor. On Thursday, Caltrain will consider the Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) policy that could require 30% of homes built on Caltrain land to be affordable. Greenbelt welcomes this advancement, and asks the board to consider the policy within the context of the dire state of our environment. As we face a global climate emergency, it is necessary that our region grows in the right places to reduce our emissions and build for resilience. Building more affordable homes with easy access to transit is a logical step to help the Bay Area achieve its climate goals.
Building within our cities, near transit prevents sprawl — maintaining our cities’ natural infrastructure that keep our communities safe from the effects of fires, floods and drought. We ask Caltrain to apply the affordable housing policy to all housing projects on its sites, honoring the public funds used to purchase those properties. This would increase access to its transit services by residents across the income spectrum, supporting Caltrain’s efforts to diversify ridership. Studies show affordable housing residents are more likely to ride public transit. So in addition to the greenhouse gas reduction benefits that this type of development contains, it is also a smart business decision — designing for Caltrain’s customer base, with the density to accommodate more residents and make efficient use of land that can be developed. We thank the Board of Directors for starting the TOD policy discussion, and urge them to include more robust policies that will improve two of our region’s most pressing priorities: housing insecurity and the climate crisis.
Kiyomi Honda Yamamoto
San Jose
The letter writer is the South Bay advocacy manager for the Greenbelt Alliance.
There are life cycles from birth to grave and the preference for R1’s is not typically during the first half
Today’s young can hardly afford R1’s, except for a few lucky ones. Most must live in rentals, as we have gone back to become a renters society
You touch on my Root Cause #3, which is that public transit isn’t good enough. So those affordable bedrooms are not serviced well via public transit. So they drive from their bedroom community’s over on the East side of the Bay to their jobs, over here on the West side of the bay
A dream of mine is to convert the Caltrain ROW into a pedestrian/bicycle green belt from SF to SJ. Have the commuter/freight/HSR underneath in tunnels. The existing stations would service the trains down there, have multi-story parking structures underneath the parking lots, which can become parks or apartment buildings
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posted this on another opinion thread:
https://www.smdailyjournal.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/the-housing-crisis/article_769892c8-4dfc-11ea-a542-079d8e3974bf.html
There are life cycles from birth to grave and the preference for R1’s is not typically during the first half
Today’s young can hardly afford R1’s, except for a few lucky ones. Most must live in rentals, as we have gone back to become a renters society
You touch on my Root Cause #3, which is that public transit isn’t good enough. So those affordable bedrooms are not serviced well via public transit. So they drive from their bedroom community’s over on the East side of the Bay to their jobs, over here on the West side of the bay
A dream of mine is to convert the Caltrain ROW into a pedestrian/bicycle green belt from SF to SJ. Have the commuter/freight/HSR underneath in tunnels. The existing stations would service the trains down there, have multi-story parking structures underneath the parking lots, which can become parks or apartment buildings
All TOD and designated high density bedrooms
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Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.