Housing For All
Future Workforce is the Greatest Economic Challenge of Our Time
Innovation Tri-Valley Leadership Group is advocating for immediate action so that affordability doesn’t halt the Tri-Valley’s long-term economic growth.
Our region’s lack of available housing and the deficiency in housing options to accommodate each stage of life, along with a jobs/housing imbalance, are driving up housing costs and negatively affecting our quality of life
While there is no single policy that will solve housing affordability, added supply of a diversity of housing products is an urgent need. ITV’s Tri-Valley 2040 VISION PLAN calls our region to embrace a HOUSING FOR ALL approach by finding innovative housing opportunities to keep our population thriving and our quality of life standards high.
We Can Be the Voice of Yes
Viable sites for housing have now been identified in all 5 of our Tri-Valley communities through the current Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) process. Because we now have sites in the Tri-Valley where additional housing can be built without significant barriers, we can be vocal and supportive, especially of those plans that consider affordability and diversity.
Support Local Leadership
We can all stand in support of local elected officials in their work to thoughtfully add housing in the Tri-Valley, Those communities that work to meet their assigned RHNA allocations will retain more of their local planning control in the long-term, making this worthy work today.
Champion Sustainable Development
Well-designed infill housing and the revitalization of vacant buildings can reduce our impact on the climate, encourage less driving, keep our community welcoming and thriving economically. “Pioneering affordable, smart, green, walkable communities near transit and in our downtowns” is a top priority in the Tri-Valley community’s 2040 Vision Plan. Accommodating future affordable housing in high-opportunity transit-rich areas, publicly-owned sites, and/or underutilized commercial sites are other keys to a sustainable future.
Advocate for Plans that include ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units)
The world is rethinking multigenerational housing as the need for housing increases. While law apartments used to be humble spaces stacked above the garage, attractive ADUs can be carved out of extra space in the house, added to backyards, and built into new housing stock with highly desirable architectural designs.
We Can Actively Support Subtle Shifts in Tri-Valley Housing Policies
The State of California has set a high bar for the amount of housing each City must produce, and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) assigns Regional Housing Ne Allocation (RHNA) numbers to Bay Area cities and counties every eight years. Each jurisdiction must update its housing element to accommodate the new allocations.
OUR PODCAST
Housing For All
Innovation Tri-Valley’s Housing for All podcast discusses the housing issues facing businesses and residents of the Tri-Valley California cities of Danville, Dublin, Livermore, Pleasanton, and San Ramon.
Our host, Tim Sbranti, welcomes leaders from local businesses, organizations, and governments to discuss the challenges of affordable housing in the Tri-Valley, how it impacts the region’s economic development, and what’s being done to provide viable housing options and solutions needed to support continued growth in the area.
Special thanks to our partner, Hoge Fenton Attorneys, for making this podcast possible.
Listen on the platform of your choice, or use the embedded player below…
EPISODE 1: JEFF SCHROEDER, PONDEROSA HOMES
In this episode, our host Tim Sbranti, talks with Jeff Schroeder, Senior Vice President of Ponderosa Homes, about the history of California housing and the challenges and opportunities facing housing developers and residents in the Tri-Valley area.
Jeff and Tim examine the economic, municipal planning, and environmental factors impacting the development of housing in the Tri-Valley and Northern California and suggest what should be done to ensure the Tri-Valley’s continued economic and social vitality.
GUEST BIO:
Jeff Schroeder, Senior Vice President, Ponderosa Homes
As senior vice president of land acquisition and planning, Jeff Schroeder has overseen all of Ponderosa’s land acquisition, entitlement, and development activities since 1999. Schroeder started his home-building career at Dividend Homes and has held land acquisition and planning positions at A-M Homes, Greystone Homes, and Ryland Homes. He is a licensed real estate broker and holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and urban affairs from Virginia Tech and a master’s degree in city and regional planning from UC Berkeley.
Tim Sibranti
In today’s episode, we’re here with Jeff Schroeder with the California Building Industries Association, the chair of the Board of Directors, and a Senior Vice President for the last 24 years at Ponderosa Homes. Jeff, welcome.
Jeff Schroeder
Thank you, Tim. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Tim Sibranti
So I tell us, you’ve been in the industry for 24 years at Ponderosa, 34 years in total. Is that what I understand? So what makes you do it? That’s a long time and it’s a tough industry at times. You’ve seen it all. What, what makes you stick with it?
Jeff Schroeder
I got a master’s degree in city regional planning from Berkeley in 1989, and we had a real estate program there that was specifically designed for people who wanted to go into the industry.
I went to work for a home builder right out of college. But that planner background, you know – the creativity, the design issues, the whole world of how you plan and develop communities and neighborhoods and all the design issues and architecture, landscape architecture, all that stuff was part of that program.
And my career just built up. My father was a civil engineer, my grandfather was a structural engineer. So I always had some sort of development background in me, but I didn’t want to do the engineering thing.
Tim Sibranti
Right – a lot of math involved there.
Jeff Schroeder
I just I went to right to work for a home builder and worked on some unique projects at that time. And over the years you know, it just worked. I’ve worked for about four to five different builders, including publicly traded and private home builders. And really got into wanting to stay. You know, I didn’t want to get too far out there. I had opportunities to move into a division president situation or whatever, but it took me away from the real passion, which is the actual product, the design, all the planning issues. And the process of getting a project through all that and into construction.
Tim Sibranti
So you went from not wanting to just be a planner…you really wanted to be a builder and actually make things happen.
Jeff Schroeder
All those things they teach you in grad school help you to get a flavor for it, but you got to go do it.
Tim Sibranti
Right. You, you never learn what you need to know in grad school.
Jeff Schroeder
No, you’ve got to get right in there.
Tim Sibranti
So you’ve seen a lot over the years. Talk about the evolution of the industry, some of the different trends, kind of taking the broad view. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment, but talk about some differences between building when you started your career at Ponderosa and now. How have things changed? Are there are more opportunities now or are there ways things have gotten easier? Are there ways that things have gotten tougher?
Jeff Schroeder
Certainly, it’s never been harder to build a house than it is today in a housing crisis.
And this Bay Area, Northern California, is sort of the starting point of real growth control or concerns about too much development. And we don’t want LA sprawl or anti-sprawl. That’s been part of it since I’ve been involved. But you know, it’s gotten harder along the way from a local land use standpoint, and there is Sacramento legislation that’s made it difficult at times along the way.
And then one of the most difficult things that people don’t realize in this housing crisis, with all that’s being done to solve the housing crisis, the regulations are getting tougher. Someone forgot to tell the regulators that we’re in a housing crisis because they don’t stop regulating.
Once they start regulating, unless you eliminate that, they keep regulating. Forever, right? And so that’s gotten a lot more difficult. In the Bay Area, one of the things that we’ve come up with because we didn’t want to have LA sprawl, (we will never sprawl like LA) but now most counties have urban growth boundaries.
We didn’t have those 35 years ago and we could look at opportunities to do new development in areas that now we can’t because we’re limited by urban growth boundaries. So that has made it harder – the ability to find land and entitle it. It doesn’t get any easier. Over the years it’s just gotten tougher.
And NIMBYs, the people who don’t want things in their backyard, that hasn’t gone away. It’s probably gotten worse as we’ve tried to force more development into existing communities we have more opposition.
Tim Sibranti
I really do want to drill down on the cost and the process, because I think a lot of people think about builders making record profits and that is kind of the myth out there. All these big time developers, you know, they come in and they see the home price. They see, oh, $1.5 million, the developer’s making a killing. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.
Jeff Schroeder
It’s interesting that when you go into a project, it’s a free market. It’s regulated, but still a free market. So when a property becomes available I’m not the only guy looking at it. I’m competing with other builders. And so, we’re all bidding it up, if you will, depending on the market situation.
If it’s a good market, or as you know it takes a couple of years, so if you think in two years it’s going to be a good market, there is a lot of competition for available land. So people are writing deals on really thin margins, frankly. And that’s been complicated by not only the length of the process and the cost involved in getting through the process, but the cost of doing business, the cost of materials, of labor, all those things have been rising.
So we’ve actually been getting squeezed pretty tightly. Now, the flip side to that is, if I tie up a project and it takes me five years instead of two years, and the property owner is willing to work with me and extend the contract and stay in the deal because we’ve already done most of the work, the benefit to that is prices have gone up faster than costs. So in some instances we do make more margin than we thought we were going to make when we tied the project up. Because the delay works in our favor and it’s not like we’re providing more land.
We’re making it harder to find land. Land is more expensive. Home prices have gone up dramatically because we don’t have enough supply. It’s a straight supply and demand situation and that drives up the value of what I bought five years ago, or tied up 10 years ago in some cases.
Tim Sibranti
And sometimes the delay can work against you. It works both ways.
Jeff Schroeder
Oh, yes. It can work against you if the property owner doesn’t want to go along for the ride. And you’re not ready to close escrow because there’s too much risk left on the table. You end up walking from tremendous investments. And they can then sit on it and wait till the next guy comes along when the market gets a little better or whatever. That often happens.
Tim Sibranti
Well, and obviously at a basic level, when home builders are identifying where they might want to build. It’s like where is the greatest profitability? But maybe being a little bit more specific what are the factors that you think that you’re looking at that to, to make a determination. Hey, we want to build right here in the Tri-Valley. This is where we want to build. What are the factors that kind of lead to what, what you would determine to be the profitability?
Jeff Schroeder
For us as a smaller private company, I mean, we’ve been around for a long time, but we’re not huge compared to some of the public builders that we deal with. And we’re pretty specific about our geography. I mean, my old boss, Dick Baker, rest his soul, who hired me at Ponderosa, he didn’t want to build anywhere where we couldn’t drive within an hour. He was like, I don’t want to have to drive two or three hours to go look at a project that we’re building somewhere.
So we were always kind of limiting ourselves to really San Mateo, Santa Clara, Contra Costa Alameda of, of ventured up to you Sonoma and, and Marin Counties, but haven’t really done anything there. We’ve gone into the Valley in San Joaquin County, and interestingly enough, we did do one big venture there.
In the early two thousands, we were looking for ways to grow and we were looking at Tracy and in places like that. And an old business partner of my majority shareholder, Kyle Morgan Jr., brought us a project in La Quinta, in the Coachella Valley. And we were like, hmm…it’s more than an hour to get there.
I know but we like that. That looks kind of interesting. So we spent a bunch of time looking around and trying to sort things out down there. And the market was pretty good at that time. So we went ahead and bought this project and built it. And the market took off during that process and we’re like, oh, this was a good move.
So we started to set up a little operation here. We set up a little mini division and we ended up with three projects. And then the market turned in 2006. And so enough said about that, right? That turned out to be not the greatest decision we made, and I’m still building out a project that we purchased in 2003. We sold off portions of it during the recession and we’re building out the last portion of it.
Tim Sibranti
Now that’s really interesting. I think a lot of people aren’t aware of that. I mean, that’s a 20 year horizon and while not typical, is not untypical. And in fact, in some instances, as you hear stories of processes even longer from beginning to end.
Jeff Schroeder
Right. And that was really because of the market, right. The crash in 2006 killed that market. I mean it just eliminated it. But we had an asset that we kept that was part of a larger project and it made sense to not ‘fire sale’ it if you will. So we’re just in the Bay Area core mostly now.
Tim Sibranti
Let’s talk about the Tri-Valley. What do you see in the next three to five years in terms of the market here locally and opportunities for new home construction. What do you see here happening in our Tri-Valley area?
Jeff Schroeder
There’s really not a lot of supply available in the Tri-Valley. For the most part everything that could be built is in process or in contract with someone. I mean, there are a couple of projects in Livermore, like the Pell property you may be familiar with. There are some of the things in North Livermore and we’ll see how they go. Some of those are really too dense to bring to market right now. But some of them are townhouses and are a great sweet spot. You know in Pleasanton, there’s hardly anything left there. I mean, almost all these cities are struggling with their housing element requirements and how they’re going to meet those.
They need to provide units within their urban growth boundary, which is difficult when you don’t have a lot of sites left. And the density right now is not feasible. The anything over 35 to the acre are mostly too expensive. That stuff is really expensive to build.
Tim Sibranti
So that’s the issue. You hear some say the higher densities and obviously you do want to get some higher density but the cost is prohibitively high. Is it the cost of construction primarily?
Jeff Schroeder
Yes. Absolutely.
Tim Sibranti
And what about market demand? Where’s the greatest market demand globally?
Jeff Schroeder
The demand is in single family detached. That’s where the demand is. That’s where the price is and that’s where the values are tremendous, as you know, I mean, a thousand dollars a square foot for homes in Pleasanton. And smaller, older homes all around the valley.
That’s what this community has always been. It started out as a bedroom community from San Francisco and Oakland and then it developed with Bishop Ranch and Hacienda. And Livermore now has its own national lab so there is just so much going on here.
It’s really exciting, but like I tell people, we’re in a housing crisis. Let’s go build everything we can build right now. Well, there are a couple thousand units, maybe 2,500 units, that people would want to buy right now and that you could deliver. In two years it’s not very much.
Tim Sibranti
And that is a particular challenge for the business community because the business community is trying to attract and retain employees. That’s one of the things, ITV as a business led organization, we hear from our members about this being a particular challenge as it relates to their long-term economic growth and vitality.
Jeff Schroeder
Absolutely. It’s critical that we provide housing as close as we can to jobs and the kind of housing that people want, and people are willing to go to a certain degree on density. Town homes are a great, and that’s where we can deliver and be reasonably affordable at under a million dollars. That product is hard to find, but you could do that in certain markets in the Tri-Valley.
But when you get into the detached product, I mean the cost of the land and all the process and everything, it just drives up the values. With the interest rate environment we’re in now a lot of people have sub 4% mortgages so they’re not moving. And they’re not selling their house unless they have to so the resale environment is really difficult.
And that’s one of the reasons that’s helped the home builders. At the end of last year, we were all like…hmm. But once the market came back and people realized I can make that work at 6% and I need a house and I can’t find one, I’m going to buy a new one. So the new home market picked up from the dregs last year, frankly.
Tim Sibranti
One community that you’re probably familiar with that’s just outside the Tri-Valley is Walnut Creek. I think you talked about the mixture there.
Historically, Walnut Creek was mostly single family detached homes, but they really and you see this in the Tri-Valley too, but Walnut Creek even more so, where they really, you see a mixture of densities in close proximity.
Jeff Schroeder
You know that Walnut Creek’s got a certain there, there. Obviously there’s two freeways that combine, that collide there. There’s Bart and there’s a traditional downtown that provides the kind of amenities that urban buyers want and also is a market that with suburban safety feel. And there’s that, it’s got that feel to it. And, and you know, frankly, back to your previous question, probably about 20% of home buyers are looking for an attached product.
[00:13:54] But that can be recreated, but it really takes a thoughtful planning process. You know, if you look at I think one of the greatest opportunities that still hasn’t been fully baked is downtown Dublin right by the Bart station. All that area where the large retailers are, and they have a plan.Tim Sibranti
[00:14:13] Yeah. Right by the West, Pleasanton Bart Station. I mean that, creating a downtown there, that’s, that’s a great location.Jeff Schroeder
[00:14:26] It’s all right there. And the Pleasanton Mall, if they do that right, you know it’s gotta have the right mix of uses. And the market will decide to a certain degree because if you lay out a plan and no one comes along to buy it… it’s okay, what do we do now? [00:14:41] It’ll take time and an investment, but that’s a super opportunity to create something like Walnut Creek. It’s the same thing. You’ve got two freeways, you’ve got Bart, it’s all right there.Tim Sibranti
No doubt about that. Well, and you mentioned the downtown Dublin area and you also mentioned Stoneridge Mall. Those are two great examples of commercial areas that potentially do have the opportunity to convert either, you know, partial mixed use, you know, where you have some residential land.
[00:15:00] Let’s maybe talk a little bit about what a builder needs to do to make something like that pencil out?Jeff Schroeder
[00:15:07] You know, we don’t, we don’t build that type of product. It’s really difficult to do. I mean the idea that we’re going to put everybody density, well, first, most people don’t want to be there as they’re now moving further out. [00:15:18] Right. Look at Tracy, look at how that area’s grown and how the prices that have gone up. It’s the cost to build that product is pretty high. I mean, that’ll change obviously, potentially, you know as costs cycle we’ll hopefully get some reduction in those costs. I think the demand is there. [00:15:37] But you know creating a there, there. I mean creating an environment that has a mix of uses that people can move in and say, wow, this is so cool because there’s a restaurant there. And I can go to the gym over there and I can walk to Bart. There’s a solution there. I’m not an expert at it. There are plenty of people that do that for a living, but you kind of know what you want.Tim Sibranti
[00:15:59] Well, and one of the things our Vision 2040 Plan talked about placemaking and the idea about vibrant places. We heard about this particularly when we had our young professionals panels doing the vision 2040 planning. [00:16:10] That’s where they wanted to be. They wanted to be in places like what you’re describing, where you have walkable proximity to the various amenities, and the lifestyle.Tim Sibranti
So I guess, you know, we talk about cost and we hear about costs a lot.
[00:16:27] Maybe just kind of walk us through it from beginning. So whether, whether you want to use a local example or maybe you don’t want to mention the jurisdiction or it could be another example. But maybe just walk us through what it takes to actually build a project from beginning to end, the various costs, carrying costs, and all the different things associated from the moment you buy a site.You’ve competed for that site, you’ve purchased the land, now you’ve got an option on it. Maybe walk us through the kind various steps at a high level, but just so people can get understand what a builder faces. People ask why does housing cost so much?
[00:17:10] Obviously the market, is the simple example. But I think understanding the cost points that leads to, and some of the obstacles, like you said, it’s never been harder to build. So. Walk us through a real life scenario of some of those obstacles along the way. Costs, obstacles that are faced to get from the day you purchase the land to two years later, five years later, 20 years later actually up to getting a unit on the market.Jeff Schroeder
Right, that’s the fun. It’s like such a multi-dimensional process, you get to wear so many hats. The way it works typically, as many of us are small builders, but some builders have people that all they do is search for land, right?
[00:17:51] But most builders that are not quite that big, you know so we have multiple hats. Typically my experience over the years has been there are properties that I’m aware of and I know the owners and I know people. So I kind of stay aware of what’s happening with those properties. But a lot of properties are brought to me by brokers because that’s what they do. [00:18:06] They’re like dogs with their nose to the ground. They’re out like hunting around. That’s right. Looking for opportunities and so they’ll bring deals and they’ll shop them out to the group of builders they deal with. So, you know, for me, I’ll get it a package and say oh this looks interesting. [00:18:20] I’m interested in this because it kind of fits the product we like to build, which is pretty much mostly single family detached. And it’s in a market like the Tri-Valley or in Concord. You know, that whole it’s within that hour drive thing. [00:18:34] Yeah. It’s Tracy or near by. So then you know, it’s pretty easy to kind of quickly do market research on that. I just basically look at comps, I look at what other builders are selling, if there are any in that particular market, and then I’ll look at resale comps to kind of get a sense of where the market is. [00:18:50] And I usually am able to know if the broker provided you the information or not – what’s the general plan? What’s the zoning? Unfortunately, if you don’t have a general plan, then you have to get a General Plan Amendment. [00:19:06] Those are very difficult – so that’s one strike. It depends on the project if it’s worth chasing. Most cities, even though they have a general plan for residential, they don’t often have the property zoned properly. So you have to think about a rezoning process. [00:19:20] Occasionally there are projects that come along, they’ve got general plan zoning. Pretty rare that I just go get a tentative map, right? But by the analysis what is the market? What can I sell this product for? What’s the entitlement environment look like from a land use standpoint, legally? [00:19:35] And then just on the face of it, before I hire anybody, to do any work I see if there are any extraneous costs that I can tell by looking at the site, driving it, you know, checking it out. What, are there any problems here that just stand out? Has it got a lot of grading? Is it got some real edge condition issues? [00:19:52] Infield development is super hard because usually you’re surrounded on four sides, right? And you’ve got to make your project fit into that. Right. How do match these edges, you know?Tim Sibranti
So let’s assume that you need to do a general plan amendment right. Right. So in terms of the cost, what does something like that, and again, I know there’s no one size fits all general plan amendment, but maybe you could talk about what that typically entails, just kind of high level.
[00:20:18] When you do a general plan amendment, what does that typically entail? And then how long does something like that take? What does that look like from a process and cost standpoint?Jeff Schroeder
[00:20:28] Right. Well, process will start a little bit on process and then talk about cost. Every community is different. Just take our average Tri-Valley community, and say yes it needs a general plan amendment. So the first thing is once I’ve decided, okay, it needs a GPA (General Plan Amendment) or maybe water. [00:20:50] But once I’ve taken a look at this, I’ll use that back of the envelope kind of calculation on value to put it together. If I’m going to put together an offer on this and if I can get into contract, we typically have a feasibility period. And if it’s a general plan amendment or other issues like that, the minimum I ask for is a 90 day feasibility period. [00:21:13] On a typical project, if it’s got issues like a general plan amendment and other things, I’ll ask for more time in my feasibility because I want to know okay, what can we actually build here? I’ll talk to people – I’ll go talk to the city Planning Director, maybe talk to a couple of Council Members I know. [00:21:30] Because you know, we’d like to do this. What do you think? And I try to get a sense of what they think might work there. And then I’ll use that information and my own gut on cost and value. Once I’m in contract I’ve already done that analysis, but I’ll use all that to say okay, is this going to work? Is this feasible?And then at the same time, I’ve hired consultants. I’ve hired a civil engineer, a soils engineer, depending on the project, maybe a biologist. And various consultants and an architect to start putting a plan together and try to come up with a cost to do this project.
Tim Sibranti
And, and that’s all as part of the general plan amendment, you’re hiring a lot of different consultants as well as part of this?
Jeff Schroeder
[00:22:15] Not in the feasibility process. I may have a 250 to $500,000 deposit that’s refundable until I get through my feasibility period. But during that feasibility period, I may spend a couple hundred thousand dollars with these various consultants to try to determine what the actual financial feasibility of the project is, regardless of whether we could get it entitled, right? [00:22:37] And so at the end of that feasibility period, I’ll have understood the financial situation as best as I can at that point. And that may include physical testing. You know, geotechnical engineers go out and drill holes and see what the situation is and what not. And then I’ve spent some time talking to people. In a general plan amendment type situation and with enough time in my feasibility period, depending on the project, I’ll probably have had a neighborhood meeting. At least one to say hey, we’re working on this.Tim Sibranti
How do those go?
Jeff Schroeder
[00:23:08] You know, that can depend on another development proposal for that site. Or it maybe we’re glad to see somebody kind of clean that up. Or we knew this was going to happen.One of my philosophies is that a lot of builders will go in knowing they can make the project work with 50 lots, but they’re going to propose a 75 lot project and, you know, take the hits to get down to 50. I don’t like to play that way because I don’t want to upset people. To begin with, I don’t want to be unrealistic about it.
[00:23:41] I’m gonna come in with something that’s pretty close to what I think I can get. Maybe a little extra because I know you always give up something. But it’s going to be close because it’s going to be me doing it. And I’m going to be be dealing with these people for a long time.I don’t want to upset them. I want to say hey, I got an idea here that I think fits in your neighborhood. You know, what do you think? And try to say this is what we could do.
Tim Sibranti
But you have to engage the community. That’s so important.
Jeff Schroeder
Yeah – and early on, depending on as I said if it’s a riskier project with a general plan amendment.
[00:24:12] Yeah. If it’s not, you know, I’ll wait till I get through my process and I’ll actually get a, a pre-app into the city before I start meeting with the neighbors. You know, if it’s not a real complicated entitlement project.Tim Sibranti
[00:24:22] Well, and there’s some communities in other states where housing is administerial, if the zoning is already in place. [00:24:30] Essentially, if you meet some of the design standards that you know through the city, I mean, you basically can build, right?Jeff Schroeder
[00:24:36] Yeah, you can. I’ve got a project in Livermore I’m building right now that was already zoned. It’s two to the acre. You know, it’s a nice lot. There are large lots for nice single family homes. [00:24:47] But once I was through my feasibility process and talking to the city and maybe doing some pre-application work, I went out and met with the neighbors. Because I know they’re going to come out. Even if it’s zoned, they’re going to come out and if I haven’t talked to them they’re going to say, what the heck – you never said anything to me about this. [00:25:01] You’re in my backyard. And the Council’s going to like, did you not do your homework? So you have to have those conversations. Because they’re going to be your neighbors. And you’re gonna be dealing with them. SO you want to start off on the right foot. [00:25:13] And so I’ve made changes and adjustments on a project that’s a buy right project. But you know, I’m willing to get something done and fit in and not create a big kerfuffle. So yeah, I’ll make changes and architecture in houses. Maybe some different art, you know to orientations.Or if you are you a single story, I’ll build a single story behind you. I’ll look at the houses that are there.
Tim Sibranti
[00:25:37] I’m glad you’re talking about this as an example, because I think, again, there’s kind of a misperception and obviously there are some bad actors, but by and large most builders, they’re going to want to engage the neighborhood. [00:25:47] They’re gonna want to try to do things that are compatible, number one, because it’s the right thing to do. But number two, it’s going to help their bottom line to have a product that sells and to be able to create a community that makes sense, you know – of quality. In your experience most builders out there willing to work with residents and willing to make some of those modifications.Jeff Schroeder
[00:26:07] I. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, if it’s a really sensitive project, you’re going to want to know that before you release your hard money deposit. Because you could determine that I’m not going to get anywhere near this kind of density and I’m going to have a lot of trouble. So I’m going to go back to property owner, say I need more time and I’m going to pay you less. And you know, and he could say, okay, see ya. On to the next guy. [00:26:28] I’ve been on projects where, you know, the third guy in is the guy that gets it done. The first guy goes in and pisses everybody off. The second guy tries to fix it and make it better. Then the third guy comes in and says, oh, here’s what we can really do here.Tim Sibranti
[00:26:40] Right. So by the time the third one is in, some of those other challenges have already been dealt with by the second one.Jeff Schroeder
[00:26:48] That’s a good point. You’ve kind of seen all the problems and tried to fix it, right?Tim Sibranti
There’s no doubt about that.
So you said near the outset – it’s never been harder. So what do you think are some of the solutions when you say it’s never been harder and we have a housing crisis?
[00:27:06] That’s pretty much well documented, right? But yet at the same time it’s never been harder to build. And that’s pretty documented. And, you know, so I guess we’re trying to be solution oriented. What do you think? How do we change and turn the tables and what are some of the specific fixes at both the state level and maybe at the local level that would make it not so difficult to build and be able to address the challenge and, and provide this much needed asset for our communities?Jeff Schroeder
[00:27:33] Well, I think, you know one of the first things that everybody talks about is our favorite act – CEQA – right? So I’ll hit that right off the bat because the California Environmental Quality Act is legendary for being used and abused for reasons other than environmental quality, right? [00:27:51] I think one of the things that we need to do, and this is something the industry’s been talking about for a long time – if the project’s in the city with a general plan, and particularly if it’s got zoning, all the CEQA should have been done. Then I don’t need to do any more CEQA for this, right? [00:28:09] I’m going to build the project, you know, per the zoning standards and the tentative map and all the conditions that come with it. If it’s been determined a traffic signal needs to go there when this project gets built – okay. We have fees to pay, but I’m not going through an EIR (environmental review process) and open myself up to years of potential delays in litigation. [00:28:27] That’s just a sure way to prevent housing supply. So that one. Another one is, and in the Bay area, we have a lot of these…we’ve got this situation where we’re allocating all these homes to communities based on the RHNA (regional housing needs assessment) process. [00:28:47] And then we’re expecting them to build them. Most of these communities, and cities and counties, have urban growth boundaries. So we’re saying, we’re going to build all this and you’re going to have to fit it inside your urban growth boundary. How does that make any sense? I mean when we put that urban growth boundary in place, we started the problem because we said, okay, this is all the land that’s available. [00:29:11] Well, it automatically went way up in value when you drew that line. And, and people seem to think those lines are never to be moved. Well, I don’t think that’s the intent of that process. They’re actually supposed to move as things change because things change over time. You don’t know what it’s going to be like in 20 years. [00:29:26] So, but a lot of people are resistant and a lot of them are voter approved, so they have to be moved by the voters, which you know that’s California. But we’ve created that problem because we’re saying you’re going to stick all this in your city and you’ve created the enemy from the start. [00:29:44] It’s wait a minute, that’s not my community. I’m not 30 to 40 to the acre density in my neighborhood. That’s not us – you’re changing our community. So where else can we put this? You know, we’ve got tons of developable land all around us here. That is off limits for various reasons. [00:30:02] Maybe we need a solution to look at that as part of providing the supply, because most people don’t want to live in density. They want a single family home. And we’ve seen the trend away from urban centers that started before the pandemic and was accelerated by the pandemic. So we’ve seen people move further and further out, including out of state. [00:30:25] So the reasons for having density and transit and the whole SB375 and whatnot, and VMT (vehicle miles traveled) is up. So you didn’t accomplish what you’re trying to do with that. Because people are just me moving further out. Moving further away. [00:30:44] And if you’re concerned about the environment and you think all these things are helpful to the environmental issues like greenhouse gases or whatnot. When they move out of state, anything you thought you were doing for that is gone because they’re doing it somewhere else where they don’t care about those issues.Tim Sibranti
[00:30:59] And in some cases, if they’re moving out of state, they’re still flying in for quarterly meetings or whatever they have to do, maybe once a month. So you talk about air travel and some of the other greenhouse gas here, it’s gone the opposite direction.Jeff Schroeder
[00:31:11] There are probably a lot of people think it’s great that the population’s flatlined and it’s not getting more because we shouldn’t have all this development in California. [00:31:17] That’s fine. Only about 7-8% of the state’s land is developed with urban use. So we have got a lot of land out there. Some will never be developed, but there’s certainly a lot of land out there could be developed to help our housing crisis.Tim Sibranti
But wouldn’t you say there’s a market for both? There’s a market for infill and transit oriented, and then also the market need for the single family as well.
Jeff Schroeder
[00:31:41] Absolutely. But the majority of buyers want a single, even if it’s on a tiny lot. You know a townhouse is an option along the way. My first home was a townhome.Jeff Schroeder
[00:31:51] Most people’s are – mine too. [00:31:53] My first kid, my first kid was born in a town home. Yeah. The next house was detached.Tim Sibranti
[00:31:58] So there are opportunities there. And anything else you can think of that would just make it easier as it to address these issues? [00:32:08] You said at the outset, it’s never been more challenging to build. If you had a magic wand at the local level, or state level, and as a bit of advice in closing for a group like ITV (Innovation tri-Valley Leadership Group) or other businesses, what would be the things that you think that people that care about this issue should they be advocating for? [00:32:28] What are some of the things that can be done?Jeff Schroeder
Well, I think we should be advocating for practical solutions to this housing situation that doesn’t involve upsetting people and trying to change their neighborhood dramatically. And that doesn’t involve forcing people to live further and further away from their jobs and looks at options, you know, closer in where we could develop property in a master plan environment that addresses all of the issues you might be concerned about.
[00:32:56] And it could be close to transit, right? There are a lot of places around here that are close. We should look at working with the county and the state to figure out how to develop those areas with housing, because I don’t see how we’re going to solve it any other way. We’re not going to solve it by packing more people into density if they don’t want to live there. And if it costs too much to make it work. There are some that will work. And we totally support that. The building industry is behind “Housing for All” that is our motto.Tim Sibranti
[00:33:24] And this is the Housing for All podcast. That’s exactly what we’re working on.Jeff Schroeder
[00:33:28] That’s what we want to do. Ae want to make it easier, but I think one of the toughest parts that we deal with is the regulatory side. And, and like I said, they didn’t get the message. So just a good example would be the energy code, right? They keep tweaking it and tweaking it and making it tighter and tighter. [00:33:45] And we’re pretty much about as tight as you can get, right? So we’re only building a hundred thousand houses a year. Statewide – about a hundred thousand houses a year.Tim Sibranti
Nowhere close to what we need.
Jeff Schroeder
[00:33:57] Nowhere. I mean we peaked in 1963 with 310,000 or something like that. And then in the eighties and nineties we got maybe a couple hundred thousand, a couple of years. But after the recession it dipped down to about 60,000. Then it’s kind of inched its way back up. I think we got 120,000 last year. I don’t think we’re going to get that much this year. [00:34:18] But it’s the regulatory environment. So when I’m building, when we’re building a hundred thousand houses, and we’re getting a little bit of energy savings out of each one of those, but we’ve got take into consideration those from before 1990 – I don’t know maybe 12, 13, 14 million homes. Some of us like to call them sieves, right?I moved into a house in, in Santa Clara that was built in 1954, right? This is in 1994. It was a rental property. Nice house, nice street. But you know, gosh, it was hot in the summer and I popped into the attic and looked. Not a stitch of insulation. Not one – and it was hot in the Summer. [00:34:58] Summer. Yeah – and there are a lot of homes like that out there. [00:35:01] And that also goes for water use and energy and for other issues. What if we had a process. A lot of people make a lot of money when they sell their houses. So OK, you know what, now you have to go and have a little audit done and maybe you have to pay a small amount to have some insulation put in or a new water heater or something. That’s where we can really deal with water, energy and things like that. That’s one way to do it.
Tim Sibranti
[00:35:30] And a lot of people get more in new home just in the water efficiency, the energy efficiency, it’s not even comparable.Jeff Schroeder
The structural efficiencies and the building technologies have improved dramatically in my time. I mean, the kind of materials that we have and all the systems. We’re so tight on water and energy and can’t do much more there. There’s not much more we can accomplish.
Tim Sibranti
[00:35:56] So if you had any closing message for the business community as it relates to some of these issues, what would that message be?Jeff Schroeder
[00:36:05] You know at the CBIA, we have a long view on some of these issues. Obviously it takes a long time to do these things, but we can’t do it on our own. And so I think we as a business community, and just people who care about these things need to figure out how to work together in a coalition and, and, and make our voices known that we care about these issues. [00:36:28] We don’t want California to lose population. We want to provide opportunities for our kids and our coworkers to live near us and have neighborhoods that are well planned and are very efficient from an energy and resources standpoint. And we need to convince our legislators and convince our voters that these things are important enough to make some serious changes to address the housing supply situation in California.Tim Sibranti
Yes, because if we don’t, and the costs are going to continue to go up and people are going to continue to leave…,as people leave… businesses flee too.
Jeff Schroeder
[00:37:02] And you know, the real concern I have is if you look at the tax base situation, and we know that there’s a significant number of wealthy individuals who have left the state over the last two years. The numbers from the Department of Finance are right there. As you know, we have a lot of obligations as a public – just pick public employee pensions.There’s a tremendous burden that is on us, and if people start leaving who is going to fund that? You know how we’re going to fund that? We’re going to have to raise taxes to fund that. And that’s just one example. And the infrastructure that we need, all the things that we need that make California great and can improve it, if we’re losing population, it’s going be difficult to pay for that.
[00:37:42] Well, it’s interesting. You bring infrastructure too because home construction actually does get more infrastructure built. You know, but we build neighborhoods. The government doesn’t build this stuff. We build it.Tim Sibranti
[00:37:54] So some of those infrastructure improvements, some of those parks and other amenities, that people want like new schools, that all comes with the new development.We’ve seen that in the Tri-Valley in various communities, whether it’s Dougherty Valley or whether it’s Dublin, some of the incredible public amenities as well as some of the infrastructure that’s all come with the new home construction. It’s all privately funded. That’s great.
Jeff we really appreciate your time. We really appreciate your work on this important issue. You’ve had a great career – just think about all the families that you’ve been able to put in homes and who’ve made their life here in the Tri-Valley.
[00:38:28] We thank you for the work that you have been doing and will continue to do and consider ITV a partner in that work in creating housing for all here in the Tri-Valley.Jeff Schroeder
Thank you, Tim. Thanks very much. Great to be on the show.
EPISODE 2: BRITTNI KIICK, LIVERMORE CITY COUNCIL MEMBER
Welcome to Innovation Tri-Valley’s Housing for All podcast’s second episode.
In our second episode, host Tim Sbranti, talks with Livermore City Council Member Brittni Kiick* about her history in the Bay Area, the challenges of raising a family, living and working in the area she has experienced first-hand, and how these experiences have influenced and translated into her actions and initiatives to help the Tri-Valley community, and the city of Livermore, tackle the issue of affordable housing.
* Please note, this episode was recorded when Brittni was serving as Vice Mayor of Livermore.
GUEST BIO:
Brittni Kiick, Livermore City Council Member
Brittni Kiick was elected to Livermore’s City Council in 2020, representing District 3. Before joining the Council, she worked in community service and non-profit organizations, managing collaboration between diverse groups of people. Bringing together diverse communities, finding a common goal, and helping chart a path forward are skills she has practiced in all her community organizing efforts and hopes to put to good use on the Council.
Brittni and her partner, Will, have two children, Cora, age 6, and Max, age 3. In 2015, shortly after Cora was born, Brittni and her young family moved to Livermore, drawn to its beautiful open spaces and vibrant downtown. They’ve been happy to call Livermore their chosen home ever since. In 2016 Brittni started her own photography business in Livermore, which now focuses on brand management for small businesses and nonprofits. In 2017, while 9 months pregnant with her son Max, she was the lead organizer for the Livermore March for Science. Concerned she would go into labor before the event, she mentored a young leader who could step in to take charge of the event. Brittni ended up giving birth just 11 hours before the march and missed it, but it still went off without a hitch under her mentee’s leadership. In 2019, she helped to create the first-ever LGBTQ+ celebration in Livermore. What started as an idea for a small picnic expanded to a 2500+ person event and the formation of the first-ever LGBTQ-focused non-profit in the Tri-Valley.
Prior to moving to Livermore, Brittni served 3 years in AmeriCorps. In 2011, as the AmeriCorps VIP Fellow for the Cal Poly LGBTQ Pride Center, she led educational programs and a peer counseling team and created a volunteer program focused on developing opportunities for mentorship and community growth. From 2012 to 2014, Brittni served as an AmeriCorps Teaching Fellow for Citizen Schools in East Palo Alto. In addition to leading a classroom of 6th through 8th-grade students, her primary role was to act as a liaison between local business professionals and the non-profit. She recruited and trained tech employees, artists, and lawyers to become “Citizen Teachers” who would then mentor middle school students in after-school elective courses. Brittni grew up in Rohnert Park, CA, and earned a B.S. in Psychology from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. When not in Council meetings you can usually find Brittni at one of Livermore’s fantastic parks or libraries with her little ones.
Tim Sbranti
[00:00] This is the housing for all podcast, and I’m your host, Tim Sbranti, Innovation Tri Valley Leadership Group’s, Director of Strategic Initiatives. In this podcast series, we explore a housing for all approach with the Tri Valley stakeholders who are driving solutions. We are supported by Hoge Fenton, a multi service law firm committed to delivering top tier legal services to businesses and private clients. My guest today on the housing for all podcast is Livermore Vice Mayor Brittni Kiick. Brittni Kick is also a small business owner and works for Provisio Partners, which does a lot of work in human services with both cities and counties. Vice mayor Kick, welcome. Thank you for joining us.Brittni Kiick
[00:44] Thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled that this podcast exists. We need more people talking about housing.Tim Sbranti
[00:50] No doubt about that. And you’ve been such a great champion and advocate for it, which is why we wanted to talk to you and get the perspective of an elected official and a young professional and young family. And I think so many of the residents of the Tri Valley that are struggling with housing in particular are those that you see each and every day.Brittni Kiick
[01:11] Absolutely.Tim Sbranti
[01:11] Yeah. But I want to maybe just take a step back. So a lot of people have a long history in the Tri Valley. Maybe they grew up here, know, been here for decades. But you moved here fairly recently by Tri Valley standards.Brittni Kiick
[01:24] By Tri Valley standards, I am absolutely a newbie. We moved here when my daughter was eleven months old. So we are hitting exactly eight years right now because she’s almost nine. So I grew up in Sonoma County, in Rohnert Park, and there was hills surrounding me and vineyards and suburbia, but weren’t that far from San Francisco. We could go for a day trip and all of that kind of stuff. So it’s kind of nice that I’m getting to raise my kids in a similar environment out here in Livermore.Tim Sbranti
[01:56] Here’s the real question. Where’s the wine better? Your roots of Sonoma County or here in Livermore Valley.Brittni Kiick
[02:00] All right. You’re going to try to start a fight here. I will say that it was only in the last maybe year or so that I started to drink wine because I didn’t like it before.Tim Sbranti
[02:12] Okay.Brittni Kiick
[02:14] I think it was because my grandparents were very into wine. My grandpa was a winemaker for Williams and Selyem in Sonoma County in his early days. And so I was like, that’s gross. That’s what old people.Tim Sbranti
[02:26] Right, right.Brittni Kiick
[02:26] But I think I’m getting old now, so maybe that’s. No, don’t let Jeremy Troop hear this. He’s going to be so embarrassed that I.Tim Sibranti[02:34] Right. Especially. Yeah. From the wine industry. But maybe you could talk a little about what attracted you to the Tri Valley because you didn’t grow up here.
[02:45] Maybe you kind of had some loose understanding of the area,. I will tell you what drew you out here.Brittni Kiick
[02:54] So I think during my campaign, I gave an idealistic answer of. It reminded me of where I grew up. But I’m going to give you the honest answer now, and it’s 100% housing related. We had a baby a little bit earlier than maybe we had planned, and so were suddenly in a situation where were living with multiple roommates. I was not going to bring a baby home to a house with multiple roommates. So we started applying to live pretty much anywhere and everywhere. I was working in East Palo Alto at the time as a middle school, after school program teacher. My husband works in Fremont at lamb research. He still works there. He was working there at the time. We applied to apartments pretty much everywhere, anywhere that was in reasonable driving distance from his job.Brittni Kiick
[03:40] And were denied all the time because we did not make three times the rent. We made two times the rent. And if you don’t make three times the rent, you don’t get an apartment.Tim Sbranti
[03:49] Wow.Brittni Kiick
[03:50] So my mom said, just come home. It’s not that big of a drive, right? It’s only an hour and a half. And my husband was like, I guess we’re moving to your mom’s. So we lived with my mom for 15 months through pregnancy and eleven months of my daughter’s life. And that commute was a killer for my husband.Tim Sbranti
[04:09] I can’t even imagine that. So from Sonoma, basically all the way to Fremont.Brittni Kiick
[04:15] Yeah. So he was spending sometimes up to 6 hours in the car, depending on what the traffic was like, road closures, accidents. And weren’t getting to spend any time together. I mean, we saw each other on weekends only. And as a new wife with a new family, that’s not really what we wanted. So it took some time for us to figure out, well, where can we go? So we put a pin on the map of where he worked, right. And we did a radius of here are the places we could live. Livermore had apartments that did not require three times the rent. As long as you had good credit. We had great credit. We just didn’t make a lot of money. [04:54] So it’s not that weren’t going to pay our bills, it’s that some algorithm decided that weren’t worthy of an apartment. And without generational wealth or a co signer, weren’t able to do that. So were lucky to find a place in Livermore. When I first told my parents, I think we’re going to end up moving to Livermore, we found this place. My dad was like, is there anything there? Because he hadn’t been here in decades, right? So he was like, all right. So he came out and he was like, wow, a lot has changed. I don’t think you understand how much this area has changed in the past couple of decades, because when we came, we had no concepts, we had no prior expectations or, I guess, biases against this area. And so were like, what are you talking about? [05:44]This place is beautiful. And so I didn’t know that downtown didn’t used to be downtown, and I didn’t know that it was how much smaller it had been before. I think I am lucky to have found a place like where I grew up, but the reality is we moved here because we could afford to and we found a place that would take us.Tim Sbranti
[06:05] Yeah, well. And talk a little bit about just the search prior, the failed search, when you’re looking, how demoralizing is that? Because so many people face that you’re young professionals, you’re both gainfully employed.Brittni Kiick
[06:22] Absolutely.Tim Sbranti
[06:23] And like you said, triple to make triple the rent.Brittni Kiick
[06:28] Yeah. I mean, yeah, were a one income family, but my husband was making just under six figures at the time. That’s ridiculous that we couldn’t have an apartment of our own. We weren’t asking for anything, Matt. We were applying to studios, anything. What can we get that we can have as a place of our own? And it’s tough to find a space to live. And I thought I would never leave that apartment, to be honest. And then the pandemic hit and I was like, I cannot live in this tiny space with these two growing kids any longer. And so when the opportunity came for us to move, were like, I think we can definitely afford something bigger now. [07:08] And I was elected at that point, and silly me, I made some assumptions that how hard would it be to find a house within my district? So we had put in our 30 days notice at the apartment and there were two houses for rent in my district. So I was like, I really hope one of these people let us live here.Tim Sbranti
[07:31] Yeah.Brittni Kiick
[07:32] And there were other apartments that were the same size, but the whole point was to have a little bit more space for us.Tim Sbranti
[07:38] Right.Brittni Kiick
[07:38] And so anything that was bigger and under what I thought was a very high budget of 3500 which clearly is actually not a high budget for rentals. We had two options, and so I was very happy that we found the place that we did, and we are there. And I just keep my fingers crossed that the woman who owns our home will let us stay there as long as we possibly can. I got laughed at by our property management lady when I asked for a ten year lease.Tim Sbranti
[08:05] Yeah.Brittni Kiick
[08:06] She was like, no, we don’t do ten year leases. And I was like, please, can you just ask her? So we got a two. I’ll ask again. Maybe we’ll get there someday. But I think it was a difficult reality for us to understand that homeownership isn’t going to be one of those milestones. That is like, you’re a grown up now. You’re a homeowner. It’s like, we might never own a home while our kids are young, and that’s okay. I think we have chosen the opportunity to rent in a place that we love and provide a quality of life to our kids rather than staying in that little apartment and maybe saving a little bit more. But were on top of each other.Tim Sbranti
[08:45] Yeah. And especially during the pandemic. That was really hard. I can’t only imagine you have the added very similar story, because even myself, when I first started as a council member, I actually just decided not to run for reelection because I wasn’t sure about housing and the costs. And I ended up moving in with my wife’s grandfather for a year in oakland until we could afford to come back.Brittni Kiick
[09:08] And these are the stories people don’t talk about. The fact that it doesn’t make you a failure to have to lean on your community in times of need and move in. I wasn’t telling people that I moved back in with my parents. I was so ashamed. And I’m a grown up. I went to college. I did what they said. I got good grades. I went to college, I got a job. Why is it that I’m living with mom? That’s the stereotype of someone who didn’t do all the right things, quote unquote.Tim Sbranti
[09:36] Right.Brittni Kiick
[09:37] And so I think that we need to have a more honest conversation about the fact that no matter where you are in life, you are likely to have some sort of unstably housed moment where you might need support, whether it be from a family member or from a government.Tim Sbranti
[09:54] Yeah. And you and I were both blessed that we had family to lean on. But I’m sure you’ve come across in your experience now, both as an elected official and even just living in the different apartment complexes that you have, people that don’t have that level of family support or that opportunity and talk about maybe how precarious some of their situations might be.Brittni Kiick
[10:15] Yeah. So, I mean, we have this conversation around what it means to be unhoused and what you must have done to get yourself to that place. The reality is, if I did not have my parents to back up on, I could have easily been unhoused or what is considered unstably housed. So if you live in a place, technically you have a roof over your head, but there are more than two people in each room of the house. Room including living room. And that’s considered unstably housed. Right. Because you’re paying rent in a place with a whole bunch of people. And actually, where I lived in East Palo Alto, they had a ordinance at the time where it was to prevent too many people from living in one house. [11:04] And I was teaching at this middle school, and there was a child, and she would come in and she was really tired, and it was only like once a month. And I was like, she was kind of too young for the menstruation thing to be the issue. Why she’s so tired. Right. So I’m like, what’s going on? And I realized that they were living in a garage, but secretly. So once a month when the landlord came and did like a check, they had to move all of their stuff out and pretend that they didn’t live there. And that is unstably housed. Yes, she had a roof over her head, but once a month she had to pretend that she wasn’t, and she had to pretend that she was just a friend over when the landlord came around. [11:45] And that is a kind of stress and shame that no child should have to deal with.Tim Sbranti
[11:50] Yeah, no doubt about that. So you moved here, you started getting involved right away. And I think part of what you can’t get involved, you look at that prior when your husband’s basically 6 hours commuting one Way or the other. I think that’s one of the things that a lot of people don’t realize, kind of the social impacts. So that opportunity, because like you said, you barely got to see him, you really got to spend time together as a Family. So obviously he couldn’t get involved with activities because he’s on the Road all the time. But it also prohibited your ability to get involved if you’re having that type of a Situation. But being here local allowed him to get involved in a Community and allowed you to get involved with the Community.Brittni Kiick
[12:39] So it allowed my husband more time to himself. He’s an introvert. We are complete opposite. So it allowed him to have time that wasn’t behind a wheel, which is so important, to relax.Tim Sbranti
[12:49] So important, right?Brittni Kiick
[12:50] And it allowed me the opportunity to do things in the evenings every once in a while, because now we have our own space. But then we lost the family help, right? Because there’s no family around. They’re an hour and a half away now. So I was feeling, as a stay at home parent, I didn’t know anybody here. So I started doing the mom groups at the park, and I didn’t want to talk about diaper changes. I didn’t want to talk about sleep schedules. I didn’t want to talk about kids spit up. I wanted to talk about things that mattered, like social justice and politics and how to get involved. And I just wasn’t getting that from these just park play dates. [13:34] And so I was like, well, I just need to do the things that I would have done if I wasn’t a mom, right? Being a mom doesn’t have to be my only definer. So I was like, how did I make friends before? And every place that I’ve ever been, I have always built community around serving community. So I was in ASB for the first time in second grade. Nice. And all the way through. And so I was like, how can I do that locally here? So I started to use my photography business to kind of build community around local photographers. And so we started to do meetups and talk about business and what it was like to try and juggle business and parenthood and build community that way. And that was lovely. [14:21] Then in 2016, I really wanted to go to the march for science in Oakland. But the march was on April 22, which was Earth day. Earth Day. My son was due on April 24. I was pregnant at the time. I just kept having thoughts of me giving birth on BART. And I can’t take my toddler to Oakland this pregnant and give birth on BART. And then I was like, you know what? Why can’t we do that here? We have two labs. I can see them from my window. Why are we not having a march in Livermore? And so I just started reaching out on Facebook and saying, would anybody want to do, like, I know it’s not going to be the same as going to San Francisco or Oakland or Washington, DC, but what if we did something locally? Would anybody be interested? [15:09] And yes, people were interested. And no, they weren’t moms with toddlers. But I realized that I don’t care. I’m building a community here. So I started to meet up with people to try and organize a march. And I’ve organized lots of things, but always within some sort of structure. So I had in ASB or in some sort of club at college, right, where there was a real grown up right in charge. And so this was a moment. I put out a flyer. I said, I’m going to be in the back room of Panera. Anybody that wants to do a march for science, meet me in the back room of Panera. And I show up and I was like, so I have this big idea. As you can see, I’m super pregnant. Is anybody interested in leading it? [15:46] I know it was my idea, but you’re all grown-ups. People from the lab, abs showed up, people from the college showed up. And they were like, you can lead it. You’re capable. And I was like, what, me? I guess I am a grown-up. Okay? So I started to work on that, and I did not make the march because I gave birth 12 hours before. That’s amazing. Yeah. But I am proud of that. Apparently, Eric Swalwell will make it out that day, and I didn’t get to meet him because I wasn’t there. He did. But that was my first step into organizing in the area.Tim Sbranti
[16:22] And it was an amazing march. I was there with him that day. And not just, I think, over 1000 people, I mean, there was a lot of people there and it was great to see. And all of that happened because of a unit of housing. Just think about that. That’s the cumulative community impact because you had the opportunity, because without that. But that’s what brought you here. And then you had a community get involved in that issue. And then Livermore pride as know was another issue you got involved with. So talk a little bit about.Brittni Kiick
[16:56] So I was walking down the street. So I’m a bisexual woman, but I’m married to a man, so nobody knows unless I say something, right? So I was like, maybe nobody will know in this community. I don’t really know any other gay. Are there other gay people here? If I thought about it for a second, of course there are, right? But I didn’t see that community here like I had in college. And so were walking downtown one day and my mom was with me and we both have like a rainbow. Do you see one? And we look, and my mom’s like, look, there’s a flyer. It has a rainbow on it. Do you think there’s going to be a pride thing in town? And so we look and it’s a little flyer. [17:31] Like on a word document says, do you want to organize a pride in Livermore? I was like, yes, I do. But it was during the afternoon. My husband wasn’t going to be home from work yet. And I’m like, what am I going to do? My kids are so little. I can’t bring them to this organizing meeting because all my stuff had been at night before. I wasn’t bringing my kids along. I was waiting for him to get home at a reasonable hour and then for me to go. But I bribed them with ice cream, and I went into the coffee shop that they were meeting with ice cream and met a bunch of people who also were like, I don’t know. We just kind of don’t want to have to go to San Francisco. We want to be able to hang out here. [18:06] And that’s how I met Amy and Tracy, who are the co founders of Pride, who have become a huge, important part of my life. And that was a great event. We thought there was going to be maybe, I don’t know, 300 people there. But the first event had over 3000.Tim Sbranti
[18:19] Wow.Brittni Kiick
[18:19] And were like, oh, okay. I think this community wants and needs this. And that was really special. And through pride, there was an incident of some homophobia at a farmers market, and were pretty upset about it. And that was after pride had already happened. And I called Trish, who was a council member at the time, and I was like, hey, this happened. And I just feel like someone elected should say something about, like, this isn’t who we are. This isn’t our we. We need to do something. And that’s how we started having conversations and how I met her. And through that is how I learned that the things that I care about, like the LGBTQ community and people of different economic statuses being able to live where they would like. [19:14] She taught me through our conversations that just started based on an initial phone call was, cities do a lot of that work. And at the time, I was home with my kids, and it was the middle of the pandemic, and I was feeling lost, and I asked for help. I was like, you’re a real grown up. Can you help me? She stayed home with her kids, too. And so I was like, how did you move on from just being mom to having. She has a phd, and she’s written a book, and now she’s on council. And so I looked at her as someone who has moved beyond that, and we had this wonderful conversation where she said, you could run for council right now. And I said, no, I would like to run your campaign. Aren’t you running again? [20:05] And she was planning to run at the time. And I was like, who ran your campaign before? And she was like, oh, she’s amazing. So she helped with this march for science. So the woman that was the organizer was super pregnant, and she needed to have someone to be her backup in case she gave birth. So she learned everything she knew about organizing and campaigning from this girl. And I was like, trish, that was me. I was the pregnant lady.Tim Sbranti
[20:31] Oh, my goodness.Brittni Kiick
[20:31] And so it was that moment where she was like, you’re running. You live in district. Know she would be running from a safe seat. It would leave an opening if she won. And she was. Know I had made the decision to either take that chance of running from a safe seat or find somebody new. And that kind of leadership and mentorship has been so special in teaching me how valuable it is to not only ask for help, but offer help and tell your story about how you got where you are. Because I think we all have a lot more in common than we realize. We just maybe aren’t talking about it.Tim Sbranti
[21:06] Yeah. And again, I think this is housing creates opportunities for people to get involved in the community in this way. And people with the long commutes, they just don’t have that same level of investment or opportunity to make those changes in the community. So you decide to run for office, talk about what your housing platform was at the time and how you talked about housing issues, because some are not always as receptive of affordable housing. Or you talk about affordable housing and they. Sorry. Shocker. Yeah, spoiler alert. But how did you talk about that in your campaign? You’re relatively newer to the community, even though you have obviously got in there with a few big things right out of the gate. But, I mean, how did you talk about these issues?Brittni Kiick
[21:56] So I was very surprised that throughout my whole campaign, me being a renter was one of the biggest issues of contention for many voters. I thought it would be plenty of other things. I was like, maybe there’ll be some homophobia, but it’s like, no, it was that I was a renter. And so even, quote unquote, progressive older women that I was given contact information to talk to. I think I cried hardest during my campaign when someone told me that I was not invested enough in my community if I was not a homeowner, because if I really cared, I would invest economically in the town.Tim Sbranti
[22:39] Wow.Brittni Kiick
[22:39] And I was like, I can’t. It’s physically impossible for me to I am invested. How am I not considered to be someone that cares and is invested about this community? And I had given her my history and my background, and she said, when you can afford to be financially invested, then maybe we can talk. And that was the biggest shocker. And so it was then that I realized that there is this misconception about renters being short term. They’re just here for an internship or they’re just here while they’re in college. But there are people that have rented here for 25 years and that are deeply ingrained in this community. And so I wanted to talk about that. I wanted to talk about housing as being central to everything we do. [23:28] It wasn’t until I started to do my research for the campaign that I realized how housing really is the central point that connects all the things I care about. And so we talk about housing first model a lot. When we talk about substance abuse disorders and treating substance abuse, we’ll say we’ll do housing first and then we’ll treat whatever. I believe that model should be applied to everything. Housing first, then climate equity. Housing first, then racial justice. Like all of these things are so deeply connected to housing that until we fix this massive problem, so many others are just band aids. Because the majority of people, their housing cost, be it a mortgage or a rental, is where most of their money goes. [24:18] And so if you are working two or three jobs to make the rent, you don’t have time to support your community, you don’t have time to get involved. And so I get really frustrated. And this is a point of contention with some other local electeds who get frustrated with people not showing up enough at meetings and not speaking out. And I have to remind them that they’re probably at work.Tim Sbranti
[24:38] Yeah, right.Brittni Kiick
[24:41] Not everybody has a nine to five. Not everybody has a flexible schedule. Not everybody has childcare. And so one of the things I am always encouraging people to do is show up however you can, to talk about your opinions on housing. It doesn’t mean you have to sit in one of our five plus hour meetings, send us an email, call, write post on instagram. Whatever it is that you can do to show your support is really valuable.Tim Sbranti
[25:09] That’s a really fascinating perspective, that housing is the center of so many of these other issues. The climate one is the most obvious because your husband was in a three hour commute. Just think about the difference from a climate. I mean, think globally, act locally. There’s nothing more local than cutting that commute down significantly. So there’s obviously climate issues that tied to housing directly. But when you talk about social justice, so many other issues, I think that’s fascinating. And I think it’s also when you talk about advocacy, you’re right. They’re probably at work or coming back.Brittni Kiick
[25:40] From, coming back from work or commuting. I think there are so many things that are so deeply tied to housing that sometimes they go to battle against each other, not realizing that if we worked together to solve this problem, it would solve all of the issues. So we see this with people that advocate for open space, and they’re like, we care about the environment, so we can’t have housing. Well, I understand that there’s an idea that developers are just going to take all of this land and make it into housing and they’re not going to care about the wildlife and whatever. But if we worked together to find the best places for housing, so we worked together on making general plans and designing our cities to be good for people and the planet rather than fighting against each other all the time. [26:35] What if we talked together and found a solution where we need to house people? But let’s maybe rezone this land over here that’s an empty parking lot, and put some housing there, and then this land over here, we’ll save that instead for wildlife. Right. And so it doesn’t need to be a battle.Tim Sbranti
[26:55] Right. So much of that comes down to dialogue. And you mentioned, that’s a heartbreaking story about the person you met with that talked about as a renter. But do you think your conversations being open about that, do you think that has a positive impact ultimately where people see your perspective because you’re able to speak your truth and people can understand your experiences. And maybe that does help at least some folks gain an understanding of some of these issues, too.Brittni Kiick
[27:27] I hope so. And again, these are things that I think people meant as compliments, but maybe didn’t come across as such after I ran. But you’re so young and you’re so eloquent. Okay, thank you. You just got here, but you seem to care. And so it’s these ideas about how long you’ve been here, how long your family has been here has nothing to do with your ability to care about the communities that you live in. And so I think we need to stop asking, like, how long have you lived here as a precursor to should you be involved? [28:06] My favorite thing is when I meet someone that just moved is like, oh, my gosh, I’m so excited for you to meet x person and x person to get involved in the community because I think the best way to feel at home, and this kind of is just maybe just be me, is to know who your community is and know that you have a community to rely on. I think social issues of isolation and anxiety and depression are also related to housing, not just in the stress of housing cost, but the lack of the ability to create a community because you are spending your whole time commuting. So you have friends at work maybe, right? But then you live how many hours away from them? So you made friends there, but then you have to commute on the weekend. [28:54] And so I actually know prominent business owners in Livermore who are no longer living in Livermore after the housing costs have just increased significantly over the past ten years. But their whole community is here, their families and their friends. And so they not only commute on the weekdays to work, they commute on the weekends to live their life. And I think that is doing a disservice to them and to our community as a whole because there are opportunities that we are missing to spend time with these great people because housing costs have driven them out.Tim Sbranti
[29:27] Driven them out. Yeah. So your perspective. So since being in office, you were elected in 2020, how is your knowledge on some of these issues in terms of the opportunities or constraints? Because now you’re seeing firsthand as a policymaker. So maybe things, I feel like the smartest day in office was my first day elected because I had more answers on day one. And when I turned out 1012 years later, it’s like, yeah. You realize how little you knew back then.Brittni Kiick
[29:59] You are the best elected official before you step in, just like you’re the best parent before you have kids. Right? So I had big dreams and big ideas. I think I gave Mark Roberts a heart attack when the first day I came in and I said, you know what we should do? We should do a social housing project in Livermore. And he was like, I know where you’re coming from. That sounds like a good idea. But do you realize that if we own the housing, we have to manage the housing and pay the taxes and hire the people? And our budget is only this big. And I’m like, how much could it possibly be?Tim Sbranti
[30:33] This?Brittni Kiick
[30:34] So I am much more flexible, right? I am much more open to extensive partnership. I think even in people that say that they’re pro to housing, they will say things like, I’m pro housing, but it needs to be 50% affordable. Okay, that sounds wonderful. I would love it if every apartment building had 50% of their units saved for affordable housing.Tim Sbranti
[31:04] Right.Brittni Kiick
[31:04] The reality is that developers that are creating this have a budget and it needs to pencil out. And because they’re not going to be making market rate rent on those, the money has to come from somewhere. It’s not like out of the goodness of their heart, they’re just going to give those apartments away. They need funding. They need a one c funding, which is running out, by the way. So we’re going to need to figure that out.Tim Sbranti
[31:27] That’s the county measure that you’re referring to.Brittni Kiick
[31:29] So there are all these different mechanisms that make housing work. And so when you have this big dream ideal of 50% affordable, what you’re really saying is, I want housing that’s impossible to build right now.Tim Sbranti
[31:42] Right.Brittni Kiick
[31:42] So I am much more open to. That’s a great idea. Until we have the state legislation, the funding, the developers to back up that idea, I’m going to go with what works right now, because people need homes now.Tim Sbranti
[32:01] Right.Brittni Kiick
[32:01] And it would be wonderful if we could get to a future where it made financial sense for developers to build that. But I am not in a policy making position to force a developer to do something that they can’t financially do, because then they’re just not going to build here. They’ll go somewhere else.Tim Sbranti
[32:18] 50% is zero. Still zero. But 15% to 20% of a set number is 15% to 20% more than you would have had previously.Brittni Kiick
[32:26] And Livermore has had an affordable housing ordinance for a long time in comparison to other cities in California, I believe, since the. So we have been a leader in this, but have always had this relationship with developers. It’s the flexibility. So you’ll drive around town and there’ll be these houses that are maybe five bedrooms and have huge lots and yards. And then you’ll notice every once in a while on the corner, there are duplexes, and they look like the big houses, but they’re actually much smaller. And so it’s those conversations with developers that allow us to say, okay, I know that you wanted all these houses to be these five bedrooms. It doesn’t actually make a whole lot of sense to have an affordable unit be a five bedroom house. So what if instead, on the same size lot, we made a duplex? [33:16] And so it’s that conversation with the professionals, the actual planners and the city engineers that can help us find a common good, rather than just saying, it’s not possible because these are single family homes. Well, it is possible. Let’s talk about it.Tim Sbranti
[33:33] Yeah, those are great points. A lot of times, just those conversations and some of the education as we get close to wrapping up here, if you could wave your magic wand, what do you think are some of the biggest impediments to creating the affordable housing that we need? And what would be some of the solutions was at the local level or the state level that you think could help us address this crisis?Brittni Kiick
[34:00] So two things that might seem unrelated to housing at first, but I promise they will make sense. Number one is sequa reform. Sequa is the California Environmental Quality act. And what that does is it allows the people to protect the environment if their government is doing something that they think is not good. I think people power is great. We need to have that right. But it’s an unintended consequence of sequa is that we have people using this argument that housing shouldn’t be allowed on places that actually aren’t a protected space. So we have sequa lawsuits on gravel lots. I would be very surprised to see people arguing that much over rocks generally. Right. So until we reform that system, we are seeing sequa being used as a sword to hurt housing rather than a shield to protect the environment. [35:04] And so there’s a lot of reform that’s needed there, and luckily the state is looking into that, and hopefully we’ll get to a better answer there soon. Second is that we need a more diverse pool of candidates in local government. So that probably isn’t going to happen without some reform to the pay structure. And so when I was running, there were three bobs, a john and a Trish. They were all over 65. They were all at the end of their career. They were all white. And the reality is that the $1,000 a month for someone retired with Medicare is totally feasible because they don’t need to make rent and feed their kids. So luckily, now we have some generational diversity on our council. I think we have three generations on council now instead of one. But we don’t have diversity in much else. [36:11] And so the reality is that it’s a job that takes a lot of time, and unless you have the luxury of having your own flexible schedule, so you’ll see a lot of realtors end up on council. I don’t think that’s just because they like city stuff and housing. I think it has a lot to do with the flexibility of building your own schedule. And so if were able to pay people just, I don’t know, minimum wage for the hours they put into serving their community, we might see a more diverse group of people, and that would allow a diverse group of people to understand the issues and advocate for know, Bob Warner is a former mayor and his idea to make the pay in Livermore so low, it was his idea. [37:03] And after he met me, he was like, you know, I didn’t think that was going to be a bad idea until I met you and realized that might be harming young people that might want to like, yeah, Bob, but he wouldn’t know if he didn’t meet me and I didn’t tell my story about know I can make this work because of my financial situation and having a partner that could pay most of the bills. Right. But that’s not everybody. Most people need two incomes to have a roof over their head. Yeah, I think those two things would help a lot.Tim Sbranti
[37:35] And it’s interesting because the intersectionality, which is a term you hear a lot. But I mean, we at ITV, one of, part of our Vision 2040 envisions aspirationally about needing to get more young people involved in the civic process, either as elected officials or nonprofits or a variety of different ways. But I think you touched on something pretty profound that it really is tied to the housing issue.Brittni Kiick
[37:59] If housing was free, then sure, $1,000.Tim Sbranti
[38:03] A month is fine and you can get a lot of young people involved with these things. So housing is the epicenter. Listen, vice mayor, thank you so much for your time and for your thoughtful comments and sharing your experiences and bringing that experience to bear in your work in the community and particularly on the city council in Livermore and for your tireless advocacy for all types of housing, particularly affordable housing here in the Tri-Valley.Brittni Kiick
[38:28] Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I could have sat here and talked to you for days about this.Tim Sbranti
[38:32] We’ll bring you back sometime. Thank you so much.Brittni Kiick
[38:35] Thank you.Tim Sbranti
[38:37] Thank you for listening to the housing for all podcast. Check outhttps://innovationtrivalley.org/tri-valley/housingforall to find out how you can be a voice of yes for housing in the Tri Valley. Special thanks to Hoag Fenton, a multi service law firm committed to delivering top tier legal services to businesses and private clients for their support of the Housing for all podcast series. Until next time, this is Tim Sabrani, ITV’s director of strategic initiatives, signing off.EPISODE 3: OTTO CATRINA, CATRINA REAL ESTATE & INVESTMENTS
Welcome back to Innovation Tri-Valley’s Housing for All podcast.
In this, our third episode, host Tim Sbranti, and guest, Otto Catrina, owner of Catrina Real Estate & Investments and the California Association of Realtors 2022 president, dive into the economics of California and Tri-Valley real estate, the issues facing first-time home buyers and the communities in which they wish to live, and the initiatives, programs, and opportunities being created locally and nationally to address issues of housing affordability.
GUEST BIO:
Otto Catrina, Catrina Real Estate & Investments
Otto Catrina, broker/owner of Catrina Real Estate in Castro Valley, Calif., formerly served as 2022 CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® (C.A.R.) President.
In addition to serving his clients, Catrina also is active with his local, state, and national associations of REALTORS®.
At the local level, Catrina was 2011 president of the Bay East Association of REALTORS®, where he served on various committees, including Strategic Planning, Board of Directors, Marketing, Professional Standards, and Local Government Relations.
Distinguished in the real estate industry, Catrina has been recognized by the Bay East Association of REALTORS® with numerous honors. He received the Association’s prestigious “REALTOR® of The Year” in 2007, the John A. Deadrich Distinguished Service Awards in 2009 and the Outstanding Leadership Award in 2019.
Catrina also serves as a State Director for the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®, where he has served as C.A.R.’s Federal Chairman and Chairman for C.A.R.’s Legislative Committee. He has served as Public Policy Liaison to C.A.R. Leadership, overseeing federal and state legislation.
Catrina also has served in various leadership positions at the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® (NAR) including NAR Director, member of the Issues Mobilization Committee, and REALTOR® Party Member Involvement Committee. He currently serves as chair of the Leading Edge Committee and was recently inducted into NAR’s Hall of Fame. Catrina is a graduate of NAR’s Leadership Academy and past chairman of the Leadership Academy. He also is the Federal Political Coordinator for Congressman Eric Swalwell, (CA, 15th District) and is a key contact for Assembly member Bill Quirk (CA, 0th Assembly District).
As a full-time real estate broker/REALTOR® since 2002, Catrina has earned numerous industry designations including GREEN, Certified Residential Specialist (CRS), Graduate REALTORS® Institute (GRI), Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource (SFR), Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) Specialist, Certified Negotiation Expert (CNE), Seniors Real Estate Specialist (SRES), & e-PRO.
Catrina is a graduate of the University of San Francisco with a bachelor’s degree in government. He has been married to his wife, Gigi, for 26 years and has three children and four grandchildren.
Tim Sbranti
[00:00] This is the housing for all podcast, and I’m your host, Tim Sbranti, Innovation Tri Valley Leadership Group’s Director of Strategic Initiatives. In this podcast series, we explore a housing for all approach with the Tri Valley stakeholders who are driving solutions. We are supported by Hoge Fenton, a multi service law firm committed to delivering top tier legal services to businesses and private clients. You. So on today’s episode, we’re here today with Otto Catrina, the California Association of Realtors president in 2022, who’s been a full time real estate broker since 2002 and is currently State Director with both CAR and the National Association of Realtors and is slated to be the Regional Vice President of the National Association of Realtors in 2025. So, Otto, welcome. Thank you for joining.Otto Catrina
[00:52] Hey, Tim, thanks a lot. Good seeing you today.Tim Sbranti
[00:54] Yeah. So obviously, real estate, a hot topic always in the housing market, and we hear a lot about the housing market nationwide and statewide and even in the Bay Area. But when it comes to real estate, everything’s local. And maybe know if you want to drill down a little bit on the Tri Valley and maybe you could talk about kind of what you see as the outlook currently right now in the market and then over the next three to five years as well.Otto Catrina
[01:20] Yeah, sure. Good point. So I’ve got some statistics for you. It’s an interesting market that we’re in right now. We were in that 3%, 2.5%, 3% mortgage market for quite a few years, and those days are gone, and now we’re in the 7%, plus or minus a couple there. So the challenges is the affordability. Affordability now in California, unfortunately, is 16%. So 16% of all California can afford a home. A few years ago, were in the 40%, we started seeing it diminish and started to decline, and right now the new figures are about 16%. It’s 7%. So to qualify for a loan today, you’ve got to make some substantial money. And the mortgage payments today, the $2000 $2,500 mortgage payment todays are gone.Tim Sbranti
[02:14] Yeah.Otto Catrina
[02:14] I can give you some numbers on Alameda County, and I’ll drill down and go a little bit local.Tim Sbranti
[02:19] That’d be great. Yeah.Otto Catrina
[02:20] The median price in Alameda County right now, and these numbers are up until June. I apologize. Our numbers come out from my economist on the 15th. So the July numbers are, they’ll be off just a little bit. But median price in Alameda County right now is about $1.3 million. So that encompasses all Alameda county. Median days on a market are about ten days that has been fluctuating up and down. This is an interesting one that the sales price to list price is 107%. So, wow. Prices are about 7% over asking price still. Yeah. And we are getting some reduced prices. Some sellers are getting a little bit aggressive as far as what their selling prices are. Pleasanton, 1.7 million median price.Tim Sbranti
[03:08]Oh, man. Yeah.
Otto Catrina
[03:11] Days on market, seven days. List price to sales price is about 104%. Just a little bit over that. And active listings right now. This is going back in June there was 25 homes for sale that were in. And that’s the challenge. It’s just the amount of inventory that’s out there. A lot of people are locked. I think it’s 60 some odd percent, 67% of people are locked in loans that are 3% or less. So it’s kind of free money.Tim Sbranti
[03:38] Yeah.Otto Catrina
[03:38] All that equity. Why would they want to sell and.Tim Sbranti
[03:40] Especially to enter into a market where the interest rates are where they are right now. So what do you think is the impact and what advice would you give for someone that’s trying to enter the market? Because at ITV we’re focused on housing for all and we see it as a vital and something necessary for economic development in the Tri Valley, I mean, what advice would you give to those that are trying to enter the market here locally?Otto Catrina
[04:04] You know, a couple things. One is you got to work with a bona fide realtor. Number two is you got to work with a real good bona fide lender that really understand the market, understand the programs. There’s some programs, first time home buyer programs out there. When I was president for the association last year, I advocated with our team and met with Governor Newsom and legislators. We did a press conference at the Capitol and advocated to get a California Dream American housing for all. And that program came out this year, $300 million. The state would put 20% down to purchase a home for first time home buyer programs. And went through that money in less than two weeks. So that shows you how many people. [04:53] So if you had a lender and a realtor that were knowledgeable about those programs and had their people qualified, they could have swooped up and got into a home.Tim Sbranti
[05:03] So let’s talk about that a little bit more. So, I mean, for some young professionals, maybe they’re right out of college, maybe they’re in their 30s, starting a family here.Otto Catrina
[05:13] Like my kid.Tim Sbranti
[05:14] Like your kid. Right. So they’re working in the Tri Valley. They want to live in the Tri-Valley. So how do they take advantage of some of these I mean, we believe at ITV that the long term economic vitality of our region is dependent on that talent staying local. So how do they learn about these programs? I know getting a good lender and a good broker, but where’s the information? How can they learn ways that they might be able to qualify and access some of these opportunities?Otto Catrina
[05:45] Yeah, there’s various classes that are around. And again, it’s the marketability of the realtors out there. Bay East Association of Realtors. We do a phenomenal job of doing educational classes to get that information out into the community. Checking in with your local city, checking in with Pleasanton and Livermore, see what type of programs, Cal HFA programs or first time home buyer programs that they have. And the challenges, too, Tim, is know, maybe they don’t live in the Tri-Valley, maybe they work in the Tri Valley and maybe what they have to do is they have to live in Mountain House or maybe they might have to sneak out over the hill and go out to Tracy and come out know. And that’s one thing that we’ve been a big advocate is that we do definitely need more housing.Tim Sbranti
[06:32] Yeah. No, there’s no doubt about. Can you contrast the situation? I mean, you have a really unique lens because you’ve been a statewide president. You serve on the national, know, the National Association of Realtors, you know, maybe you could talk a little bit about the situation here locally compared to what you’re seeing across the state and across the country.Otto Catrina
[06:53] You know, in the inner areas, urban areas. We’re having challenges as far as new housing going. We’re working on a project, I’m working on a project right now with a large developer, DR Horton, out in Modesto for about 600 homes. And there’s a whole controversy about water. Sometimes a water’s objection is, well, where are we going to get the water if we build more housing? And we need to do a better job of capturing water and allocation. But new construction shows that it saves water usage is better on new construction as opposed to older construction and the new laws that limit landscaping and utilization of water. This project out in Modesto is going to be a great project. [07:35] It’s across the street from Amtrak stations, so people can ride their bikes through this new development of 600 homes, get on Amtrak and come here in the Valley and come to work again. We want to do is try to keep people into the Valley.Tim Sbranti
[07:49] Well, and that’s one of the reasons why ITV has been so supportive of Valley Link as well, trying to get the rail connection out.Otto Catrina
[07:55] Exactly. And the thing that we’re trying to push and educate. And a new program we’re going to be doing on a national level is doing financial literacy in high schools. So kids understand generational wealth, that it’s hard to save money and put that in a bank. But when you buy a home and you’ve got 3% to 4% to 5% appreciation and that’s being very conservative, and then all of a sudden after ten years, you’ve got $3000 or $4000 hundred dollars in equity. I got an example. I’ve got these kids, school teachers. I sold a house in Castro Valley, sold it to them in 2013 for $389,000. We just sold it for $1.25 million. I mean, that’s great money. They couldn’t have saved that kind of money. But generational wealth where hopefully they’ll be able to pass that down to their kids too.Tim Sbranti
[08:47] When it comes to that’s exciting. And the teachers, those middle income, those are the ones that don’t always qualify for. They’re the ones that get squeezed. And a lot of our professionals are exactly that. Whether they’re in the public sector or the private sector, they make too much to qualify for affordable housing, but they have a difficult time qualifying to get into the market.Otto Catrina
[09:09] Yeah. Some of the new thinking, you’ve got some environmental issues, CEQA, you know, the California Environmental Quality Act, which was back in the 70s, it was created for environmental protection. And unfortunately that has been capitalized to jeopardize new construction. And sometimes it doesn’t have anything to do with the environment. It could be a competition where a business could compete, prevent another business from coming in. So the CEQA, there’s been more and more individuals are saying, you know what? We need to take a look at that. We need to protect the environment. And I’m a big advocate of that. But at the same time, preventing housing and all it does is just continually keep on increasing costs.[10:01] And there’s a saying out there, whoever the third person that comes into the third developer is the one, because the first two have gone bankrupt on it and the cost continues to keep on escalating.
Tim Sbranti
[10:11] It’s more of a saying because it’s a sad reality. In many cases.Otto Catrina
[10:15] It is.Tim Sbranti
[10:16] No, you’re right. No, I’ve heard that. So actually, I’m glad you brought up CEQA. So let’s talk about some of these different things because CAR California Association of Realtors has long been a proponent of different CEQA reforms. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what are some of those reforms or some of the different things that CAR has been advocating for. That could be fixes that do the important work of protecting the environment, clean water, clean air, things that we all value, but at the same time not becoming such an impediment to housing construction.Otto Catrina
[10:47] Yeah. A couple of years ago, Assemblymember Catherine Baker tried to introduce legislation. It was a bipartisan legislation. So this was not a partisan but bipartisan where they wanted to do. And we got to be careful how we say reform and we want to use the word modification or update. That’s right, because that was, again, Reagan passed that back in 70’s, and it’s old. So what we need to do is we need to go ahead and update it. But there was a couple things that they wanted to do. Number one was to disclose who the litigant was, who the plaintiff was on a litigation, because anybody can go ahead and file a lawsuit and go ahead and prevent a project from being developed. [11:26] And the second thing was the duplicity that if there was an error in the environmental report, instead of redoing the whole environmental report, if it was a traffic signal error, as far as the numbers go, just fix that specific thing instead of redoing the whole thing and spending another $300,000 / $400,000 on whatever the report was. So those are some of the things that we’re taking a look at and just being a little bit more transparent on it.Tim Sbranti
[11:57] Well, actually, and I do think language matters, and I’m glad you pointed that out, it isn’t reform. 95% of CEQA can stay as it is. It’s some of these finer points, whether you call it modernization, people are doing with CEQA.Otto Catrina
[12:11] It’s what they’re doing. They’re bastardizing CEQA and to benefit themselves.Tim Sbranti
[12:15] It’s the modernization. It’s updating. I think that’s good language and some of those specific, targeted fixes that can go a long way to producing the housing that we need produced.Otto Catrina
[12:26] And there’s some special interest groups out there that are ones that are spearheading that.Tim Sbranti
[12:29] Yeah, no, there’s no doubt about that now let’s shift it. So that’s at the state level, maybe at the regional level. I don’t know to what extent the realtors engage with the RHNA process. The Regional Housing Needs Allocation, but maybe talk about RHNA and whether you think that is an effective tool as it relates to housing construction, affordable housing, and maybe what can be done.Otto Catrina
[12:50] So the regional housing numbers are done every eight years. The cities have to go ahead and submit their application, and they’re the ones that say, okay, Dublin, we’re going to go ahead and you did a great job, Tim, when you were Mayor of Dublin. I mean, you guys really hit it out of the park. But they submit the application on how many units that they’re going to go ahead and build over a certain period of time. Well, there’s been a lot of lack of transparency with different municipalities throughout the state that have not met those numbers, and they’ll use excuses. As far as building, we have an organization within our organization. It’s an offshoot where we have two attorneys on staff. [13:38] So if we see that a city, and again, we don’t go in and just look into the file litigation, but if there is a city, a municipality that is playing games with their number, our attorneys will call, schedule a meeting with their attorney or their city manager and say, what’s the story? Could we talk about this? We want to be a solution. We want to be an advocate to help create housing. And if we find out that they are playing games and they try to play games with us, we’ll file litigation. And we’ve been pretty successful on it.Tim Sbranti
[14:13] Right. So when you say play games, like, what are some of the different things that you’re seeing? Some of these, they fill an application.Otto Catrina
[14:18] Out and they say, we’re going to build 800 homes over five years. And after four years, they built one home, or they haven’t built anything at all. All they’re doing is just trying to, and Newsom has come out and they’ve come out, the attorney general saying that there’s going to be some punitive damages to some of these cities holding back funds if they don’t go ahead and meet or achieve some of their goals, that they’re the ones, the cities are the ones that are putting the numbers.Tim Sbranti
[14:43] Out, and that’s it.I mean, the one thing about RHNA is there’s no real requirement to build.[14:49] You just have to say, this is where we would look good on a piece of paper. This is where we would build if we decided to build. I guess so. Really drilling down. So we talked about the state. We talked about kind of regionally with RHNA, but let’s talk about the local level and what are some of the ways at the local level that we can remove impediments to produce more housing, or what are some of the things that you’ve seen based on your experience?
Otto Catrina
[15:14] I think more communication. One thing that we’ve done with the Bays Association Realtors is try to create relationships, and we’ve been very successful with our elected officials. I mean, we’ve met when you were mayor. We’ve met with you many times. We meet with city council members and we kind of find out, again, we are an advocate. We’re an advocate. We’re trying to help create more housing and just find out where the impediments are, where the roadblocks are, the obstacles, and see what we can do to help prevent that. The cities, I mean, impact fees, I hear impact fees to build between school bonds, park fees and everything. San Francisco, I think is $200,000 per unit. [15:58] Fremont, I mean, five years ago, if I’m not mistaken, were looking at a project like $225,000 a project before they even put a shovel in the ground. So if some local incentives may be helping out on the impact fees. We have been working with the state, with the feds when we go back and lobby with FHA and with the different regulatories back there and with members of Congress about getting some funds, maybe some conversions, you got Stoneridge Mall, you know, that’s becoming a ghost town, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve got Nordstrom’s gone now and I don’t know who else Sears is gone. But about converting those, you’ve got water already in there, you’ve got roads already in there, you got sewer already in there, but about converting those into. [16:44] So some type of incentives and helping the developers out to achieve maybe some moderate and workforce housing.Tim Sbranti
[16:51] Well, and I’m glad you talked about conversions in some of the commercial areas because the other advantage of some of those areas is a lot of times you see the opposition to housing at the local level based on immediately adjacent neighborhood groups. And a lot of the commercial areas are not that close and as immediate close proximity. So sometimes politically it becomes more palatable. Know, when you say like, you use Stoneridge as an example, but there’s plenty of other commercial sites throughout the Tri Valley that are pretty similar. They’re not immediately adjacent to residential. So sometimes you can get a little bit more political support for, know, here.Otto Catrina
[17:28] In the Tri Valley, I would say it’s pretty much your malls, you get into San Francisco where you have the high rises and we’ve talked about that, about doing conversions. Know, the offices vacancies in Los Angeles. I just met with seven of the top brokers down in Los Angeles. And downtown is just devastated down there with offices. So we have talked about doing some redevelopment, but it depends again what the structure is, how high the structure is as far as converting it. Some instances is cheaper just to go ahead and demo and to go ahead and build you can build up to about five or six stories. Anything above six stories, then it’s about five times more expensive to go ahead and build.Tim Sbranti
[18:07] Yeah. Those steel frames. Well, it’s interesting. Obviously this is a Tri Valley based podcast and we’re ITV. But I think shifting to San Francisco, you look at Mayor Breed. I think one of the approaches because obviously it’s been in the news about so much know, their commercial vacancies and businesses that are leaving there. But I think her approach about saying, look, we’re going to turn these office complexes into housing, we’re going to convert this into housing. And I think as a long term play, I mean, the short term impacts are clear, losing the galleria, so many of the different uses there. But as a long term play to really kind of double down on that saying, okay, we’re going to go all in.[18:48] And then when you get the residents and then perhaps that leads to a cycle where then businesses say they do want to come back. Obviously there’s public safety and their issues at play. But other office users, other retailers, if you get the resident unit count up, sometimes that follows the rooftops and it could potentially lead to business coming back in the long term.
Otto Catrina
[19:10] Yeah, I think here in the Valley you guys are situated real good. I mean, I would hate to own commercial property in downtown San Francisco. Right. And again, you know, alluding to the commercial market’s in trouble.Tim Sbranti
[19:23] Right.Otto Catrina
[19:24] Mean a good percentage of loans depending on what profile, if you’re an industrial office, multifamily, a lot of these loans are coming up and there’s a lot of loans that are going back. I heard the other day I meet with three of the top money investors that we are involved with and they’re selling discounted notes on the market for $0.78. $0.80 on the dollar. They’re buying major office complexes for $200 a square foot. The commercial market is in trouble. So if they could capitalize. But again, the challenge is that collaboration. We have to educate our elected officials. We need to work with our elected officials and show them the path on how we can do it. There needs to be more collaboration between developers, elected officials and those of us that are in the field.Tim Sbranti
[20:18] Yeah, and I’m going to come back to that. But I think you’re mean if you’re a commercial property owner, whether it’s San Francisco or the Tri Valley, there are challenges, particularly coming out of COVID and know people working from home. And so you’re certainly seeing that. But one potential solution that deals with our housing crisis is the conversion of some of those commercial properties, either partially or completely to residential use?Otto Catrina
[20:44] Yeah. No, and I think the whole Covid has really just kind of shifted our mindsets about working, about shopping. I mean, me, if I need something nowadays, I’m addicted. Amazon, I want it the next day, or I want it at 03:00 today. So that whole retail Stoneridge, I think, would be a great multi use, European style with condos up on top, something like they’ve done in Dublin, where you’ve got restaurants, a dry cleaner, Safeway, grocery stores on the bottom, and then you’ve got your multi units up on top.Tim Sbranti
[21:20] Yeah. And we’re seeing Pleasanton go in that direction, looking at different options, more density.Otto Catrina
[21:26] Underground parking, and again, depend. Underground parking does additional costs, incremental costs to the construction.Tim Sbranti
[21:33] Yeah. But certainly an opportunity anyway, that exists, whether it’s Stoneridge or other locations in the Tri Valley, to really look at that as a way. And there could be a combination of for sale affordable housing, apartments, things of that nature. When it comes to affordable housing specifically because that’s also a need. There’s the need, there’s people that want to get in the market. Home ownership is really important, but so is affordable housing. People that are really kind of lower income, that are just starting into the workforce. And CAR has obviously been a big advocate for that as well, for maybe talk about a little bit about some of the approaches that communities can do that you’ve seen across the state, because you have a very interesting vantage point here. You are local, but you’ve been around statewide, nationally.[22:21] What are some of the things you’ve seen in terms of effective affordable housing?
Otto Catrina
[22:24] Sometimes affordable housing has a negative connotation to it. Again, people need to think outside the box and get very creative. There are solutions out there.Tim Sbranti
[22:57] Yeah, no, that’s a great example. I mean, a Las Positas college. They’re building housing, looking to build housing right on the campus, something that wasn’t even really envisioned five or six years ago. Not really.Otto Catrina
[23:07] Talk about.Tim Sbranti
[23:07] We’re seeing more community colleges do that across the state.Otto Catrina
[23:09] Yeah, my son just graduated from Hastings Law school, and they just built a new dorm or apartments there. And not only for the Hastings students, but they’re making it available for other schools right so I thought that was pretty interesting that they’re expanding that.Tim Sbranti
[23:29] And another thing that we’ve seen an expansion of is ADUs accessory dwelling. Yeah, maybe talk a little bit about that and some of the successes that we’ve seen with ADU.Otto Catrina
[23:38] Yeah, we advocated on SB 9, was another legislation that was initiated where you could take a single family zoning and go ahead and put two duplexes onto a property. There was some resistance on that. But I think as people start seeing now, ADUs is becoming a big. I follow AUDs a lot. I go to different conferences. I’ve seen some models. There’s an entity at Merryl Island that does a phenomenal job on building modular units. So it’s a plug and play. It’s a union, carpenter’s union. Jay Bradshaw, good friend of mine, is involved with that. They really know, like, single women, if they’ve got kids and they got to take off to go get the kids, they work with them, but they’re building these individual units, and it’s plug and play. Drop them right in and they can build an apartment complex. [24:41] ADUs are all prefabbed. They say that they’re built better because they’re built inside. They’re built the specs, the California building codes. But ADUs are real big right now. I’ve thought about. I’ve got a swimming pool in my backyard. My grandkids used it for the first time, I don’t know how many years. And I told my wife, I said, I like to pull that out and just drop an ADU in the backyard and then maybe rent it out to somebody that. Looking for one bedroom.Tim Sbranti
[25:08] That’s it. No, we’ve seen general acceptance. It’s interesting because years ago, there was a major pushback to ADUs. And you’re talking about.Otto Catrina
[25:19] Well, there was pushback if somebody put a shed in their backyard.Tim Sbranti
[25:22] Right. No, you’re right. And obviously, you’re still going to have pockets of resistance at any point. But one of the things, the approaches they use is now with the new state legislation and local ordinances, it’s ministerial expedite permitting, lower fees, and it’s expedited.Otto Catrina
[25:42] Combined sewer, combined water. The utilities was something before where they want them bifurcated. They wanted to have them separate. But now you could go ahead and combine them.Tim Sbranti
[25:51] So, I mean, we hear so much about some of the different challenges about interest rates and other things that are challenging. This is a success.Otto Catrina
[25:58] I’d say financing was an obstacle. Now financing is becoming something part that you can do.Tim Sbranti
[26:04] Yeah. And I think you look at it in and of itself. A unit here, a unit there isn’t going to make a dent. But incrementally, the combination of a lot of these different units where the opportunities present itself can in fact have a significant impact. And even if it’s not in the aggregate on an individual family, like you mentioned, maybe you got a young son, maybe he comes back at some point in the bay, maybe that’s the unit he’s in. He has his own privacy, maybe his own entrance, but it’s a way to potentially get into the market at a lower level.Otto Catrina
[26:37] Yeah, I think as a society, we are looking for the big solution on air, we’re looking for the solution for homelessness, we’re looking for the solution for housing. We’re looking for the solution. And I think, like you said, if we can do incremental, 29 units over here, 17 units over there, we take small bites. We’ll eventually.Tim Sbranti
[26:54] And individual families. And I mentioned yourself with a son, but sometimes it’s in reverse. Some people want to downsize. They become seniors, and maybe they sell the main house and they move into the cottage in the back. So I just think it is something. The last thing I want to leave you with before we go is just speaking of the business community, what role do you think the business community can play in terms of just advocacy on this issue and involvement on these issues around housing? Because it’s so central to their economic bottom line to have a workforce that’s thriving and able to be at home. So, I mean, what advice would you give to the business community?Otto Catrina
[27:33] I think the business community needs to get more involved as, again, collaborating with their chamber of commerce, collaborating with the city council, elected officials, and find out what incentives that they can do. Maybe they can participate. Maybe what they can do is offer some grant programs. Also, it’s amazing what $10,000 will do for somebody struggling to get into a condo for closing costs so they could do some forgivable grants where somebody works for you. For so many years at our state association, we have grants that we give out to our employees that if they do purchase a home. So I think they need to get creative on what they can do to help retain their employees. And the more quality employees, the better profitability and better operation of the business.[28:18] So I think the businesses just, they need to get in and take a look at not only just medical benefits and days off, but whatever else they could do to help incur or encourage purchasing.
Tim Sbranti
[28:32] Yeah. Well, listen, this has been great. We appreciate your time and all your work. On this important issue and look forward to future collaboration between ITV and the Bay East Association and the California Association of Realtors.Otto Catrina
[28:45] Can I give you some concluding, just kind of a crystal ball on. What we’re thinking is that home sales will remain soft as the economic uncertainty and affordability challenges persist. The affordability is not going to go away. If anything, it’s going to continue to be a challenge. The lock in effect, with these two and a half, 3% loans, those people aren’t going to sell their houses. They’re hanging in there. And it’s going to continue to be tight supply. Short supply prices will moderate in the coming months, but supply shortages will continue to provide that support. So there’s this housing bust bubble you hear about. It’s not going to happen. Foreclosures are on the decline, not on the incline, and we monitor all those numbers. So there’s different factors out there. Inflation is coming down. [29:32] We’ll see what happens with inflation rates will remain elevated. And that’s the challenge. Rates right now are at 7%, but those people that are buying a million and a half, $2 million homes, median price one, three, they’re not worried about 7% loans. They’re paying 18% on credit cards. They’re paying 9% on car loans. So they’re used to that. And the stock market, the volatility. I’m a pessimistic about the stock market. I’m a real estate broker.Tim Sbranti
[30:02] Right.Otto Catrina
[30:04] But I still have my hands in that, and I’m still concerned about that.Tim Sbranti
[30:07] Well, and even with these higher rates, the 2-3-4% we’ve been spoiled for so long. But if you look at the historic, over 30 years, 40 years, the rate still is not nearly where it’s been.Otto Catrina
[30:19] At some point, I remember I got a 6.5% loan and I thought, I stole the loan.Tim Sbranti
[30:23] You got to lock it. You got to lock it. Right.Otto Catrina
[30:26] And the other big challenge for us in housing right now is fire insurance. We didn’t spend a lot of time on that, but I’d be more than happy to come back and we could talk about that. But fire insurance premiums are just going skyrocket through the roof right now.Tim Sbranti
[30:37] Yeah. And we’re seeing that in other states, too, where insurance, like in Florida, has become an issue. Fire insurance here with the wildfire, and they’re leaving.Otto Catrina
[30:44] And the challenge is you get a first time home buyer that comes in, they’re squeezing in to make that payment. And then instead of paying $100 a month for fire insurance. Now they’re paying $300 – $400 a month. That’s the difference for some people for food on the table and diapers for the kid and gas to go to work. So that’s something that we’re working with on the state level, trying to get.Tim Sbranti
[31:07] That well, that’s an important, all these are important topics. And again, ITV is proud of our partnership with the Realtors and want to continue to work together along with a broader business community to help create housing opportunities for all. Otto, thank you so much for your time.Otto Catrina
[31:22] Thanks a lot. Good seeing you. Okay.Tim Sbranti
[31:23] Seeing you, too.Otto Catrina
[31:23] All right, great. Thanks a lot.Tim Sbranti
[31:26] Thank you for listening to the housing for all podcast. Check out www.innovationtrivalley.org/tri-valley/housingforall to find out how you can be a Voice of Yes for Housing in the Tri Valley. Special thanks to Hoge Fenton, a multi service law firm committed to delivering top tier legal services to businesses and private clients for their support of the Housing for All podcast series. Until next time, this is Tim Sbranti, ITV’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, signing off.
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