“The Year of Housing” has trended on Twitter and LinkedIn as California’s housing crisis seems to be building with little relief. However, we like to think of 2019 as “The Year of Housing Solutions.”
We once again convened more than 180 of our Valley’s business executives, elected leaders, housing advocates, and community partners to discuss solutions to the State housing crisis. Held at the LinkedIn offices in Mountain View on January 25th, the Forum consisted of three panels focused on transit-oriented development, legislative solutions, and the CASA Compact.
The morning began with six of the region’s transit agency leaders: Corinne Winter, ACE; Michelle Bouchard, Caltrain; Nuria Fernandez, VTA; Val Menotti, BART; Farhad Mansourian, SMART; and Ed Reiskin, SF Muni. Our transit agency officials discussed the movement toward transit-oriented development and opportunities on land each agency owns.
The morning then moved to a discussion with Senator Scott Weiner, Assemblymember David Chiu, Candice Gonzalez of Sand Hill Properties, Randy Tsuda of Palo Alto Housing, and Menka Sethi of Facebook to discuss legislative solutions to the State’s housing crisis.
The final panel of the morning brought together Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission Steve Heminger and Executive Director of Silicon Valley at Home Lesyle Corsiglia. Heminger and Corsiglia discussed the CASA Compact of policies and programs slated to solve the housing crisis within the Bay Area.
The commitment of each attendee was to leave the Forum after choosing 3-5 of the presented solutions they and/or their company or organization would consider pursuing or championing throughout the year. Topping the list of proposed solutions from attendees this year was to support transit-oriented development legislation as well as specific TOD projects. The second and third proposed solutions were to end the housing deficit with the passage of Senate Bill 50 and supporting housing developments through project advocacy.
Voting Results
- Support Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Policies and Projects (59 votes)
- SB 50 (42 votes)
- Project Advocacy (34 votes)
- Governor’s $500 million match challenge for mid-income housing (25 votes)
- CASA (16 votes)
See more photos from the Housing Solutions Forum here.
– Kathleen Wortham, Housing & Health Policy Associate, Silicon Valley Leadership Group | February 7, 2019
