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From: Misha Silin To: GRP -City Council Subject: Comment on Agenda Item 8A Date: Sunday, October 11, 2020 9:06:23 PM Dear City Council First, thank you very much for your service during the pandemic. This is Misha Silin, a 4 year resident of Edgewood Park. I come to you as someone who is very concerned about the rising costs of housing in the area. For example, my parents want to move back to the bay area from Houston and they are having to look very far from here for where to live. They cannot afford to retire and live close to their grandchildren because of housing costs. I am writing to comment on the Gatekeeper staff report/proposal for tomorrow's meeting. I am happy to see that a lot of the office projects have been trimmed down but I still think it's not enough. I urge you to reject the office proposals or ask the developers to come back with a proposal more balanced towards housing. I approach this from a jobs/housing ratio perspective. My calculation for what staff is recommending for approval: • 747 housing units total, • 410k sq ft office total o Using 250 sqft per worker (which even based on the developers comments during the gatekeeper hearings seems generous), the office comes out to 1,614 new jobs. So 1,614 new jobs vs. 747 housing units. Thus, approving staff s proposal tomorrow meaning we will be creating roughly 2x as many jobs as we are housing units. This will cause displacement due to people moving into the area for those jobs, looking for housing, and squeezing rents further up. Since we are so behind on housing production, I would like to see a reverse ratio, or at least a 1:1 (since we know each housing unit may house more than 1 worker). Furthermore, looking at what is already in progress - the Harbor View and 1401 Broadway projects - those also skew way more towards office than housing. And the Sequoia Station proposal appears to be doing the same. So it's not like we have an excess of housing to draw from here. I urge you to not be misled by the housing being proposed in the Wells Fargo and RCSD sites. For example: RCSD site has 170k sqft of office, which at minimum is hundreds of jobs, while only 68 teacher housing units. While creating housing for teachers, this project will also create less affordable housing overall in the area, thus displacing even more people than