Electing Leaders that Understand Climate Issues, Housing, Transit, & Public Health

It's critically important to elect people that understand the relationship between housing, work, transportation, energy-use, and public health and government's role in each. Electing someone whose only qualification is a claim that they "can bring people together" but has no actual knowledge of anything, would be extremely unwise. It would also be unwise to elect people that have an agenda funded by developers, construction interests, and Astroturf groups lobbying on their behalf.

On Saturday October 10th I participated in a candidate forum put on by Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action. Four candidates participated. It was sad to listen to two candidates, J.R. Fruen and Hung Wei, who had no understanding of reality when it came to sustainability or the environment.

Basically, these two candidates' answers to every issue were “high-density housing with everyone riding a VTA bus everywhere.” These answers demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the reality of housing, transportation, work, and how they relate to sustainability, especially in the post-Covid world. In fact, their answers demonstrated just how closely they are tied to developers, construction interests, anti-affordable housing groups, and those entities that want to bypass the California Environmental Quality Act to increase their wealth at the expense of the environment.

We need City Council members that are not so controlled by developers, real estate investors, and construction interests, that they are compelled to promote public policies that are harmful to both the City and to the environment. If you look at who has funded the big-money campaigns of J.R. Fruen and Hung Wei, it's easy to understand why they continue to promote the desires of developers over the desires of residents.

Cupertino’s Stellar Reputation in Sustainability

On October 8^th 2020, Cupertino received a Vanguard Platinum Award for Sustainability from the California League of Cities’ Institute for Local Government:

We were the only City in California to receive this award in 2020, and one of only four cities to ever reach platinum level. I think that the League of Cities may need to go elsewhere in the Periodic Table and create some more levels so we have something higher to aspire to, Perhaps a Lithium level in recognition of Lithium-Ion batteries’ contribution to Greenhouse Gas Reduction.

Of course I can’t take the credit for this, it was the combined efforts of the community and the City who take climate change seriously.

How We Achieved Platinum Level

Mainly Electric Cars and Solar Panels

The two biggest things we did to achieve this level is a) buying plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles (both residents and the City), and b) installing solar panels on our homes. Neither of these actions have an immediate financial benefit, or in some cases even a long-term financial benefit, but our residents are willing to take a long-term, systems view, and invest in these technologies for more than just financial gain.

     

There is Still a Lot We Can Do

REACH Code

We adopted one of the most aggressive REACH codes in the region, to reduce the use of fossil fuels in new construction. Our REACH Code should continue to contribute to increased savings, though since it only applies to new construction it will have limited effect.

Plastics

On our City’s Work Plan we have an item to look at reducing the use of single use plastics. We will have to collaborate with local businesses to make this work. There is certain to be pushback from restaurants and grocery stores but other cities have found workable solutions and we can too.

Gasoline Powered Lawn Equipment, Especially Leaf Blowers

We also are considering banning gasoline powered leaf blowers in residential areas due mainly to complaints about noise. At this point, there are lithium-ion powered leaf blowers, as well as corded leaf blowers, that are acceptable substitutes.

Longer term, we can phase in requirements on other gasoline powered lawn equipment. Of course getting residents to remove lawns and replace the lawn with drought tolerant native plants would be even better..

Updating Our Climate Action Plan

It’s time to do a review and update of our Climate Action Plan given some new realities since it was first written. These new realities include the rapid adoption of electric vehicles (both cars and bicycle), the effects of Covid-19 on commute patterns, changes in the use of commercial office space, changes in housing choices, the continued reduction of mass transit in Cupertino by VTA, and public health.

The Changes Brought by Covid-19 Are Not Temporary

The changes brought on by Covid-19 are not going to be temporary, they are going to result in long-term changes to the way we live, work, play, shop, and travel. When someone says, “I can’t wait until Covid-19 is over and we can all go back to exactly the way things were before,” they are not understanding that there is going to be a new normal and things are not going to return to the way things were.

What Are the Key Changes that were Expedited by Covid-19?

•  Remote-Working. While pre-Covid many companies allowed employees to work from home on occasion, they often worried that someone not coming into the office was not actually working. Covid-19 forced companies to “manage by results” rather than manage by checking to see if employees were in their offices or cubicles. Companies were surprised at how efficient and cost-effective remote-working is for both the employee and the company and are going to continue to allow it after the pandemic is over.

Remote-working reduces a company’s need for expensive office space and all the amenities they are expected to provide. For companies that provide transportation to their workers, remote-working lowers the number of buses that they need to provide. For workers that commute, often long distances and for long periods of time, remote-working can save hours of commute time.  Of course not all workers can work remotely, but a sufficient number are able to do this and this is resulting in large greehouse gas reductions.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is moving forward with a plan to keep many of the region’s workers at home with a proposed mandate that large Bay Area employers keep 60% of their workers home each workday as part of a 2050 planning strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and traffic congestion. This proposal has sparked outrage from the mayors of San Francisco and San Jose. The issue is that their political supporters, YIMBYs, developers, and anti-affordable housing groups, see this proposal as increasing the exodus of workers from their cities to less expensive areas with greater housing affordability for single-family homes. There will be less of a need for high-cost market-rate housing and less of a need for expensive commercial office space. Rental rates for both apartments and commercial office space were falling even before Covid-19 as large amounts of new office space and new apartment buildings were completed and left empty. Now, developers have put their projects on hold because the market no longer can support the large amount of new construction.

•  Transportation. While the use of mass transit, and other public transit, had already been declining even pre-Covid, the new realities of remote-working, as well as the danger of spreading the virus in crowded buses, subways, and streetcars, caused a drastic decline in ridership. Even when a vaccine is available, it’s likely to be more like a flu shot, only partially effective at reducing the likelihood of infection.

•  Housing. With remote-working, many workers no longer have to live in expensive, small apartments in urban areas. They can live in less dense, less expensive areas, buy homes, and only go into the office once or twice a week. This is already happening and has caused big drops in rents, and high vacancy rates in urban areas.

Another reason for the exodus to less crowded areas is because Covid-19 spreads more rapidly in high-density areas. While it’s possible to construct high-density housing in ways to reduce transmission rates, retrofitting existing buildings is often expensive, or not possible at all, especially when it comes to the HVAC systems and air circulation, elevators, and common areas. In an article entitled Can the coronavirus spread through a building’s HVAC or plumbing systems? Joseph Allen, assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and director of its Healthy Buildings program, has been warning since early February that airborne transmission is happening. “And since that time, every new piece of evidence has supported that,” Allen said.

The bottom line is that we are going to see a continued exodus to areas where workers can afford more space and live in safer housing.

•  Shopping. We have seen the transition to online shopping that was occurring even prior to Covid-19, but a big change that we had not seen before is the willingness of people to shop for groceries online. If you recall the implosion of WebVan in 2001, the big thing that the company missed was that people like to go shopping for food. But with Covid, and the outbreaks we’ve seen at stores like Costco and Trader Joe’s, there is more of a willingness to have groceries delivered, or to do curbside pick-up.

•  Travel. Being in an aluminum tube, for many hours, with a couple of hundred strangers, and recirculated air, was always a recipe for at least coming down with the cold or flu. It will take many years for people to become comfortable with non-essential air travel again. For trips of 600 miles or less, more people will choose to drive.

The New Normal is Not All Bad!

•  Work.  Remote working, even if it’s only 30-60% of the time, will greatly reduce traffic congestion and will lower greenhouse gas emissions.

•  Transportation. Governor Newsom’s effort to phase out gasoline powered vehicles is almost redundant since as electric vehicles fall in price they will be the default choice for most drivers, at least for commuting.

Electric bicycles have been coming way down in cost and these enable longer commutes by bicycle than many workers were willing to do on a regular bicycle.

We can take the vast majority of our trips without directly burning any fossil fuels.

•  VTA is Not Going to Save Us. What is extremely naive, is the idea that if we build high-density housing that suddenly everyone will want to ride a VTA bus to work, to the store, or to visit friends and relatives (or that such a bus will actually exist). One joke, that is not so far off the mark, is “98% of Santa Clara County residents believe that their neighbor should ride a VTA bus to work.” A recent VTA proposal is to take ALL of the Measure B money, for the next ten years, and spend it only on BART to San Jose, to the detriment of all other transportation projects.

VTA was in very bad financial shape even before Covid-19 and had already been eliminating routes, including in Cupertino. With Covid-19 the situation has become even more dire. Ironically, since VTA has the worst farebox recovery rate in the country, the loss of riders had less of an effect on VTA than on other transit systems. A 2019 Grand Jury report found that VTA’s performance has continued to deteriorate over the past 10 years, relative to both its historical performance and the performance of its peers, across a wide variety of metrics, including farebox recovery. It would be exceedingly foolish to believe that VTA is going to solve Santa Clara Valley’s transportation issues; we are on our own.

•  The Reality of Mass Transit in Silicon Valley. Many of us have visited other countries and have been impressed with the mass transit both in large cities and in less urban areas. In these places there is a commitment by the government to provide these services, and tax rates that fund them. This is not the case in the Unitid States where our tax rates remain relatively low, and corporations have been able to escape paying their fair share of taxes. The maps below show how transit has declines in Santa Clara Valley, even as the population density has greatly increased.

We have to face the reality that we are not going to have BART or Caltrain or VTA Light Rail to Cupertino and that the majority of trips are still going to be by some sort of personal transit, and this personal transit needs to be zero-emission. We are already moving forward in this regard. Electric bicycles, electric cars, and the VIA shuttle, which will eventually be converted to use electric vehicles, are all ways to reduce GHG.

•  Housing. The vilification of the suburban lifestyle, with the need for single-occupancy-vehicle commuting by greenhouse gas emitting vehicles has given way to the realization that single family homes are actually much more sustainable than high-density housing. When you eliminate the need to commute by a gasoline powered car, or eliminate the need to commute at all, the whole sustainability equation changes completely.

A single family home or townhome can generate 100% of its average energy needs. Changing from natural-gas powered water heaters, furnaces, and clothes dryers to electric-powered, or in some cases  direct solar powered appliances is possible in single family homes with solar panels for electricity, solar or electric hot water heaters, and solar or electric clothes dryers. A single family home doesn’t create the heat islands of high-density development. In a single family home it’s also easy to provide charging stations for electric vehicles, something this is not possible in parking-deficient high-density housing.

A study by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy found that townhomes were actually the most sustainable in terms of energy usage because they had sufficient roof space for solar panels while using less energy than a detached home, though the difference was between a detached home and a townhome was only between 15-19%. The big savings, which applied to both townhomes and detached homes was in building energy efficient homes, which reduced energy usage by 77-82%. We see a lot of tear-down/rebuilds in Cupertino and we should be lobbying at the State Level for laws that don’t have tax penalties for homeowners that want to replace their older, energy-inefficient house, with a new, energy-efficient building.

With remote-working we’re seeing an exodus of tech workers to areas of the region where they can afford to buy single-family homes. Of course not all workers can work remotely, but the high-vacancy rate of rental apartments, and falling rents, caused by the exodus of tech workers, will make those apartments affordable to lower-income essential workers (though many of them also choose to live in less expensive areas where they can have more space).

The bottom line is that while suburbs used to be viewed as extremely evil because of the impact of single occupancy vehicle commutes, with the advent of electric vehicles, electric bicycles, and remote working, combined with the ability for energy self-sufficiency of townhomes and single family homes, everything has changed. We need to adapt to the new reality.

•  Shopping (and Vallco). People like to shop. In person. Despite the narrative being spread by some uninformed residents, malls are not dead. A 2019 headline in Forbes stated: Shopping Malls Aren't Dying - They're Evolving, and explained “Malls are still considered a destination, but it’s because they now offer amenities, experiences and entertainment to enhance the shopping experience. They are now not only anchored by department stores but with popular restaurants, bars, salons, cinemas, and fitness centers.”

Ironically, that was precisely where Vallco was headed before it was sold to the current owner. The AMC theaters, Bowlmor, Bay Club, Dynasty, the Ice Center, all popular places, were examples of how a mall can evolve and survive. Vallco also had a popular Sears and JC Penney that the chains retained as their only stores in Silicon Valley, and explicitly stated that they wanted to remain at Vallco.

•  Travel. Due to the reluctance of people to fly, we are going to see more road-trip type travel. While this is only a small percentage of trips, as the infrastructure of fast electric vehicle charging expands, it will be possible to take longer trips even in electric vehicles. Since airplanes are a major contributor of greenhouse gases, contributing more than 5x CO2 /passenger/mile versus cars, this change is not necessarily bad, as long as the electric vehicles are being charged with sustainably generated electricity. Electric airplanes are a very long way off because the weight/energy density of batteries is much greater than the weight/energy density of petroleum fuels.

•  Live/Work/Play

You often hear people say that if only we build lots of high density housing with retail underneath, close to commercial office space then everyone can live, work and play in the same area and no one will have to commute very far. This is extremely naive and impractical. When you hear someone spout the “Live/Work/Play narrative, you can be sure that they have a complete lack of understanding of the realities of work, housing, transportation, and recreation.

The reality is that people don’t move every time they change jobs or every time their company changes location. And you often have households with multiple workers and they don’t all work at the same place.

It’s also important to understand that building affordable housing is not cheap. It has to be highly subsidized. The reality is that neither developers, nor the State of California, has shown any interest in building affordable housing.

The Absurdity of the new RHNA Numbers and Climate Change

RHNA relates to climate change because the type of housing that would be required in order to meet the RHNA targets would be the least energy efficient, the least self-sufficient, the least healthy, and the most costly.

The absurdity of the high number of housing units that the State is requiring regions to plan for is going to soon be understood even by the YIMBYs. It’s also important to understand that if the RHNA requirement could actually be met, which it can’t be, it would result in some of the least energy-efficient housing possible.

Entitlement ≠Construction

If you look at Cupertino’s current RHNA cycle, we entitled nearly 40% more units than required in our Housing Element, and three times the number of units in our current RHNA cycle number. But even before Covid-19, the property owners were not building. With the increasing glut of unaffordable market-rate housing, and falling rents, there is no way we will be able to get property owners to build anywhere close to the number of units that we will be required to zone for. But we will create a 2023-2031 housing element that meets the State requirement, we have no choice.

Subsidized Affordable Housing

What we actually do need is additional subsidized housing for lower income families. Unfortunately, the current BMR model, which requires developers to include 15% (rental)  or 20% (for-sale) affordable units, only works when they are willing to build their entitled and approved projects.

Given the state of the housing market, we may need to look at building more subsidized housing projects like The Veranda. While most of us would prefer to have inclusionary affordable housing, this may no longer be practical due to the glut of unaffordable market-rate housing.

We will need County, State, and Federal funding to construct this subsidized housing, the City does not have that kind of money. Each subsidized unit at the Veranda cost $800,000 to build, and these are small studio apartments (other than the manager’s unit). To build just 100 affordable housing units would cost $50-80 million. A billion dollars would only construct 1200 to 2000 affordable housing units.

There is also the possibility of purchasing existing, older apartment buildings, renovating them, and repurposing them as subsidized housing.

The Reality of Rent Versus Construction Cost

For those that mistakenly believe that the key to sustainability and housing affordability is to build high-density housing, they should take former president Bill Clinton’s one word of advice: “artithmetic.”

A developer of rental housing expects to recoup their investment in land and construction costs over 100 months, so the rent per month needs to be around 1/100th of the construction cost.

If you look at the Veranda, a 19 unit 100% affordable apartment building where 18 of the units are small studio apartments, the cost per unit was about $800,000. At market rent, to recover the construction costs in 100 months, the rent would have to be about $8000 per month. This is not a tall building so there was no need for expensive steel construction, but it was required that the builder use prevailing wage labor and make the units ADA compliant.

In the Bay Area, a high-rise apartment building costs around $600-700 per square foot to build (it’s higher than the national average because of the need to design for earthquakes). So an 800 square foot, two bedroom apartment, would cost between $480,000 and $560,000 in construction costs, not including the land. Factor in the land costs and you’re at $600,000 to $700,000 per unit. To recover your costs in 100 months, the rent would have to be between $6000 and $7000 per month, though by selling the units as $1 million condominiums you could more than break even immediately. A low-rise building is much less expensive per unit to construct, but the cost of the land is amortized over much fewer units. You can understand why property owners are not moving forward with their approved projects when you look at the reality of the finances. There is no way to obtain the necessary financing under the current housing market conditions.

Conclusion

It’s important to elect leaders that have a grasp of the realities of sustainability and the inter-relation of work, housing, and transportation. Finding solutions requires more than naive statements like “everyone will live in a high-rise apartment and take a VTA bus to work.

Mayor Steven Scharf, and Planning Commission Chair Kitty Moore, are the only two candidates that have a detailed understanding of sustainability, the environment, transportation, housing, electrification, and the inter-relationship of each.

 

Steven Scharf for Cupertino City Council 2020 FPPC ID #1388099