Letters: North Gate Road Development Segregates Low-Income Families
Subject: Urgent — 1125 North Gate Road Development Segregates Low-Income Families Before Monday’s Vote
To the Editor,
I’m writing with urgency because the Board votes Monday on the proposed 19-lot development at 1125 North Gate Road, and there’s a detail in this plan that deserves scrutiny before that vote happens: the developer’s site plan places all 3 required low-income units outside the gated perimeter that encloses the other 16 market-rate homes.
This isn’t a minor site-planning choice. It’s a physical, visible line drawn between who gets to live behind the gate and who doesn’t — and it maps directly onto income. Inclusionary housing requirements exist so that new development doesn’t simply wall off affordability as an afterthought tacked onto the edge of a project. Segregating the affordable units outside the community’s amenities and security isn’t compliance with the spirit of those requirements; it’s a workaround that satisfies a number on paper while building the same old divide on the ground.
If this community is going to grow, it should grow as one community — not as sixteen homes behind a gate and three homes left outside it. I’m asking the Board, and I’m asking your readers, to look closely at this site plan before Monday’s vote and ask why “inclusionary” housing was designed to be excluded.
Time is short. I hope your paper can help get this in front of the public before the vote.
Ryan Waters/Walnut Creek
Previous article
Next article
Does being outside the gate reduce the monthly HOA fees for those units?
First we’ve heard of this.
There’s people living inside and outside gates all over. And usually homes are more expensive inside gates. And different price points get you different amenities whether it’s property, automobiles, hotels or plane tickets. Sounds more like folks just don’t want the development and are looking for any reason they can find to stop it. Otherwise they would have been protesting all gated communities in the area long before this.
Would you feel better if the project was stopped all together and nothing was built? I suspect that is the concern, not the affordable units, but rather someone would have the audacity to build homes near yours.