The Walnut Creek City Council on Tuesday night will decide whether to endorse an affordable housing project on Ygnacio Valley Road with a letter meant to help the non-profit developer get funding.
Resources for Community Development (RCD) wants to develop a 100 percent affordable mixed-use project at 699 Ygnacio Valley Road, at the southwest corner of Ygnacio and North Civic Drive. RCD wants to build a four-story, 97-unit project on a 0.86-acre parcel that formerly held a gas station. The site has been cleaned up and cleared by the state Water Resources Control Board for mixed residential-commercial development.
The project received its planning entitlements in March 2021, and RCD is currently applying for financing. Staff recommends the council authorize Mayor Matt Francois to sign the letter.
The project would include 97 new units affordable for extremely low- and low-income households, with incomes between 20 and 60 percent of the area median income. The total project development cost is estimated to be $70 million, according to a city staff report.
The city has committed $10.5 million in affordable housing funds toward the project.
The proposed financing plan also includes funding from several other sources, including low income housing tax credits through the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, a four percent tax credit alongside funding from the State’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities and No Place Like Home programs, HOME funds through Contra Costa County, and private conventional financing.
According to the staff report, RCD will continue to apply for additional financing throughout 2022 and 2023. If successful, “RCD could apply for tax credits in early 2023 and commence construction by summer or fall of 2023. On that timeline, the project could potentially be ready for residents to move in by summer 2025.”
The item is on the council’s consent calendar, meaning it’s considered routine.
The Walnut Creek City Council meets at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the council chambers at city hall, 1666 North Main Street in Walnut Creek. The meeting can be seen remotely on the city’s YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/cityofwalnutcreek or at https://www.walnut-creek.org/government/public-meeting-agendas-and-videos.
Better ask Broadway Plaza retailers if they approve of 97 new shoplifters imported into the city from Oakland. One major retailer is losing close to a million dollars per year at just the BP store alone! WC council is very determined to turn the city into the next Bay Area hell hole it seems. It is amazing that they work so diligently to destroy the quality of life. Why not build luxury development, just asking, racist?, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, elitist? politically incorrect? Trying to figure this out…….
+1
That’s a perfect location for a major housing project with easy access to the main traffic arteries. I’m sure the nice folks in Clayton would be on board too. What could go wrong.
First off that is where I got my propane tanks filled. Second I don’t like the square unattractive apartment buildings they are putting up downtown. It wouldn’t be so bad if they gave the buildings some character but they look like boxes. Who is Resources for Community Development?
I looked up Resources for Community Development. I don’t think Ygnacio Valley Road the right place for them. Sorry bad move.
Someone in their google reviews accuses them of elder abuse.
“Rcdhousing owns my building and is constantly reducing services which to me constitutes elder abuse”
Well, that actually just sounds entitled. When you give people free things, they then expect a continued free ride. These folks with their hands continually out are entitled monsters.
Where’s the water coming from? Everyone’s rates got jacked up. There should be no more new construction around here until this drought garbage stops.
Walnut Creek? Affordable housing?
Let me guess…thats gonna be a no vote
They have to do this.they’ve already accepted the money from the feds to bribe them into doing this as they are doing to all affluent areas,trying to create”equity.The cities use some of the money allotted to them,and pocket the rest.They wouldn’t do it if there wasn’t a profit in it for them
Where’s the parking? How many stalls per unit. It is too easy for the Greenies to sprinkle the fairy dust and just say the residents will give up cars so they can ride our limited public transportation
So, is this why they want to put a Sales Tax increase on the November ballot?
Crime will skyrocket……
There’s a shortage of new market rate housing in Walnut Creek. If local officials would simply allow landowners to develop in subsidized units, ALL housing becomes more affordable.
So-called “affordable housing” is a misnomer that actually refers to SUBSIDIZED housing (or “welfare housing,” in less refined circles). Each so-called affordable unit built is a unit that is not available to young families who earn just above the eligibility ceiling. Such young, upwardly mobile families have long characterized Walnut Creek. They are vital to healthy civic life.
Jamming needy, unproductive households in a dynamic commercial district begs for inefficiency and sows resentment, both among the displaced middle class families AND the unproductive underclass dropped into a sea of aspirational affluence most will never be able to afford.
Watch the 2012 movie “DREDD” with Karl Urban to glimpse a vision of your future. It’s a version of “Judge Dredd” more true to the comics than the 1990s Stallone version. Welcome to the slave planet. Illegals won’t be the only poor here.
Affordable housing and Walnut Creek is an oxymoron…
@concerned Citizen – Why would say that “affordable housing and Walnut Creek is an oxymoron.” According to rate.com data, less than 3% of Walnut Creek housing units are currently occupied, meaning that over 98% of housing in the city is in fact affordable to the current occupants.
Don’t cha just love that 6 pounds of manure in a 3 pound sack mentality ?
$721,649 in development cost per unit if that $70 million is correct. It would be a lot cheaper to buy up units in the Keys.
Crime will go up, GPA’s will go down, the city will decay further.
They’ll do the opposite of what the citizens want. GUARANTEED
Imagine paying $3,400/month at the Arroyo Residences right next door and having to put up with all the enjoyment projects bring to the area. Because that’s basically what they are: projects.
I imagine the city supports this because they need to support it so they can have new $2 million housing somewhere else in the city.
That’s almost 113 units per acre! Almost as dense as the average politician. I would ask what could possibly go wrong, but I’ll wait till disaster strikes and then shake my head.
… so that’s where the money went that was supposed to be used to re-pave YVR phase II ….. and where is the water going to come from? oh, everybody else cutting back … hundreds of thousands of new housing units being approved with NO water plans…. The city is going to do whatever they want regardless of citizen / resident input….. Of course this adds to the traffic situation downtown but as one council member said “this is a good problem to have” 🙁 …. just avoid downtown – and it’s sadly going to get worse
Wasn’t a luxury hotel supposed to be built there?
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Good. WC needs a lot more affordable housing so people can move closer to the city for work. They should build more affordable housing in Danville, Orinda, ect cuz it closer to the city for the working folks
Affordable housing wont be rented to people that have jobs,but that’s special that people would beleive that,and they would want you to believe it.
It’s the projects,in WC.
Isnt this across the street from the WC welfare office?I worked at that gas station years ago the opposite corner is where people went to apply for welfare,so theyve been planning this for a long time,and the gas station owner did not give up this property volunterily..Eminent domain made him sell it.
+1
They’ll rubber stamp this deal. WC elected officials are focused on the equity thing. Zero consideration on much else.
What the people who think this is a great idea don’t understand, is Walnut Creek has no industry. It’s a dining and shopping destination, and job opportunities there are shrinking.
I propose building 100,000 Affordable housing units in Rehoboth, Delaware and another out on Martha’s Vineyard.
It’s about parking and traffic congestion to me. We are not flying around on jetpacks yet.
It seems this is not a private development but one funded by multiple government agencies and some others. Why does Resources for Community Development get this project. Shouldn’t it be put out to public bid? Can I walk into city hall and say I plan to build affordable housing on some lot I don’t own and get $10M and tax credits? Does RCD own the lot? Where do they come up with a price of $70M? This is not right, time for a lawsuit.
Last night I thought the people at Walnut Creek City council meeting who are against the Seven Hills Ranch project gave very good reasons why this project should not be put through. It would be a total mess for that neighborhood. A nightmare actually.
Low-income units, at a cost of over $700,000 each, only makes sense if the government is paying for them, which is to say that this is simply insane! Why not build some on the Ironhorse Trail, or on some of the thousands of Open Spaces acres the City already owns?