Smart, sustainable investment in the future of San Mateo

This plan creates up to 1,670 new homes where none exist today. Concentrating housing and jobs adjacent to the Hillsdale Caltrain Station reduces vehicle trips, supports public transit and is among the most effective ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Hillsdale Reimagined exceeds San Mateo’s Housing Element allocation, directly advancing the city’s plan for homes near transit. It also includes below-market-rate housing and new public amenities that benefit the entire community.

Claims of a “five-to-one” jobs-to-housing imbalance are based on flawed assumptions. The 2.1 million square feet cited is a gross number that includes parking, lobbies and other nonwork areas. Additionally, a portion of the commercial square footage is retail, not office use. In any case, we should want both our city’s homes and workplaces to be accessible to transit.

Across the country, malls are closing as shopping habits shift online. Communities that fail to adapt risk being left with vacant properties and lost public spaces. Redeveloping Hillsdale now preserves and reimagines this area as a vibrant, mixed-use neighborhood.

Exclusionary and discriminatory housing financing policies cited in the letter that were unacceptably rampant in the 1940s have been denounced by the Bohannon family. Linking that regrettable past to today’s proposal is inappropriate and unfair. 

Hillsdale Reimagined is the kind of proposal our city needs.

Rick Bonilla 

San Mateo

The letter writer is the former mayor of San Mateo.