Sunday, November 22, 2015

Affordable housing for School District workforce, presentation


Pacifica Tribune/Jane Northrop, Staff Writer, 11/18/15. "Workforce housing explored for Pacifica."

Space Available at former school Site
School's out for former Oddstad Elementary
School, but the site may provide
affordable housing for District employees.
....  "A presentation about workforce housing provided a step-by-step model for possibly keeping employees living locally in Pacifica as housing costs have soared while housing stock diminished. Barbara Christensen, director of Community/Government Relations for the San Mateo County Community Colleges, spoke last Thursday evening of her successful efforts to establish two housing complexes for employees of local colleges – Canada Vista and College Vista. ... Surveys taken in 2002 and 2007 revealed 18 percent of employees were going to leave the college due to the high cost of housing. A group dedicated to trying to keep the employees drafted a housing program that included offering financial assistance, home buyer counseling, and a new first time home buyer program. The program works with a project manager on board first, and then a developer for design. Eventually, a partnership is formed with a realty company for the month to month financial management. ...

.... The board members for the Pacifica School District, Pacifica City Council members and a board member from the North Coast County Water District all attended the meeting. Council Member Mike O’Neill requested the presentation. 

.... 'Oddstad is zoned for more than 50 homes, but this would be 75 homes and room for a soccer field. The kids need to play soccer,' O’Neill said. PSD meets this week to determine the “best use” for the Oddstad School site, most likely by hiring a consultant for the analysis, said PSD Superintendent Wendy Tukloff, who also attended the meeting."  Read article.

Related article - Fix Pacifica article reprint, Pacifica Tribune/Jane Northrop, 12/4/12,PSD board makes all of Oddstad surplus for sale or lease; intends to keep ball fields there."  Google map, former Oddstad School, 931 Oddstad Blvd (near Frontier Park).  Pacifica School District.  

Note: photograph  from Starboard TCN, worldwide commercial Real Estate, shown on the related Fix Pacifica article reprint. 

Posted by Kathy Meeh

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

This would be great whether for teachers or affordable housing open to all who qualified. Maybe if it's homes for sale instead of apts for rent there would be less opposition from nearby residents. A few years ago the same site was merely mentioned for affordable housing--just casually mentioned by O'Neill-- and a local realtor launched her own NIMBY campaign. Great idea, wrong location blahblah. Ridiculous. Get it built, O'Neill, and you'll have done a fine thing for this town.

Anonymous said...

Quite a few Pacifica teachers making $100,000 a year and lots of cops and firemen making over $150,000.

Are we to subsidize their salaries, healthcare and housing too?

Sick and tired of pols pandering to the union vote.
No one helps the local businessman when times are tough.

http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2014/school-districts/san-mateo/pacifica-school-district/?page=1

Anonymous said...

Just another union payoff.

Why not just hand them big bags of cash straight out the back door of City Hall?

Anonymous said...

We live in Moronia. Scream about rent control then scream about affordable housing. How do you reconcile that? We are short affordable housing units. And where do you get these $100,000 dollar teachers? This is what's so wrong with this town. The same group screaming about one issue immediately starts screaming how a solution to the first issue can't possibly work, then they proceed to make up factoids to support their position. What do you call those from Moronia? Morons of course.

Anonymous said...

Union healthcare is another great expense for Pacifica.
Not a single Pacifica employee is on Obamacare six years after it was signed into law.

We'd save more than eleven percent of our entire budget if we put them on Obamacare.

Anonymous said...

At 722, 808's link shows quite a few teachers making a hundred thousand dollars a year.

What I can't figure out is why it's regular police and firemen making two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, not the Chiefs, who one would expect is paid the most, right?

Anonymous said...

The only way this works is with substantial taxpayer subsidies. Certainly you people don't think that out of the goodness of their hearts, developers are going to take a huge loss with this mad scheme. And don't you think the taxpayers (i.e., those still paying taxes because they are still employed) have had about enough of the government carving up their paychecks for yet another social program epic fail? Has anyone looked at their property tax itemization lately? Oh, I get it, what's another bond assessment amongst friends?

Certainly, you realize that teachers like the good life, too. What makes anyone think they will want to live in this ownership version of Section 8 housing or Bay View/Hunter's Point projects? Has anyone really tested this to see if the objective actually can be achieved or whether these low end houses will just end up on the auction block and ultimately bought and rented to a very undesirable lot? Some of you will scream "NIMBY!" at those neighbors who complain, but how would you like the biggest investment in your lifetime, i.e., your home, of which many made huge sacrifices for, to be faced with a significant drop in value? Those who are in denial of this unintended consequence simply don't understand the real estate marketplace.

Finally, why do teachers have to live where they work? Are they that much better than the rest of us who commute? Do you actually think that if they live next door to their school, they will stay later to grade papers? At least they have the summers off so they can lick their commuter wounds.

Anonymous said...

Very cool link on the wages, thank you 808.

Many of our cops and firefighters making over $200,000 a year don't live here, even our City Manager doesn't live here, why should we care if our teachers live here?

If you want City of Pacifica employees to live in Pacifica,
ONLY HIRE PEOPLE WHO ALREADY LIVE IN PACIFICA!

This just smells like socialism, city workers already make more than most residents!

Anonymous said...

Teachers, firefighters, cops all do just fine during their careers. The unions make sure of that. And when they retire they also do just fine. No one has better pension benefits than these folks. And the OT, OMG, the OT for public safety workers! Linking this group to affordable housing smells like politics, unions, and PR to make affordable housing more palatable to the neighbors. Why make it exclusive? Open it up to anyone who qualifies based on income. Good luck trying to find a developer who wants to work for peanuts. How about using some of that city owned land on Francisco, Oceana, Linda Mar Blvd, etc. to prime the pump? Oh. Right. This is Pathetica.

Anonymous said...

3:03
All good points. Public employees are doing better than most private sector employees in Pacifica plus they can't be fired. We don't owe them publicly subsidized housing on top of all of the tax dollars we pay them.
Affordable housing is a good thing for any community but it should be there for the truly needy regardless of who they work for.

Anonymous said...

I am against any public employee subsidized housing programs. I will protest to the sun goes down. Many public employees, teachers make a lot of money. The teachers I know all own homes and then some. This is very unfair. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. Stop the free shit and handouts. ENOUGH!!

Anonymous said...

Many of our cops and firefighters making over $200,000 a year don't live here, even our City Manager doesn't live here, why should we care if our teachers live here?

City Manager lives in Walnut Creek area but the taxpayers pays for her Pacifica Apartment.

Anonymous said...

1158 Oh hell no. I'm not going to scream NIMBY at Park Pacifica residents who object to affordable housing in their neighborhood. Absolutely not. They're entitled to object to changes to the area they live in no matter how beneficial those changes may be for other people. They're entitled because they live there. And they can object for any reason--the real estate angle you mention, aesthetics, safety and security, peace and quiet, quality of life, whatever. By the same token other Pacificans are entitled to object to changes that impact their quality of life, their homes, their families. And, here again, possible benefit to other people does not diminish their right to object. Let's not have any hypocrisy, ok? Because given the right situation, we are all NIMBIES.

Anonymous said...

The nimbys noobees and hippies chased away the developers of the Senior Assisted Living behind Park Mall and below market housing at ST Peter's Church.

Anonymous said...

1005 Oh hell yes. There is a difference between true backyard NIMBYS and those whose backyard consists of the entire City of Pacifica. I see no hypocrisy in calling out the later. Sorry if you do.

Anonymous said...


City Manager lives in Walnut Creek area but the taxpayers pays for her Pacifica Apartment.

City Manager also makes $200,000 and she hired an assistant City Manager to do all her work!

Anonymous said...

So... they Unions aren't bending Pacificans over on just wages and benefits anymore, now they want free or subsidized housing?

You have got to be kidding me.
There's not a single employee of the City of Pacifica that isn't making double the average wage in America.

Stop protecting Union employees who don't even live here and start protecting the people who live in Pacifica!

Anonymous said...

257 No apology necessary. Just about anything can be rationalized once you close your mind to your own hypocrisy. Human.