VTA workers offered affordable housing built by transit agency

For VTA workers, living in Santa Clara County might become a reality in the future due to a unique piece of state legislation. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed into law a bill co-authored by Silicon Valley Assemblymembers Ash Kalra and Patrick Ahrens that gives VTA employees preference to buy or rent an affordable home built on the public transit agency’s land.

Jessie O’Malley Solis, VTA director of multimodal planning and real estate, said of the 10,000 units VTA is building, 4,000 will be affordable housing. She said in VTA’s employee survey, 94% of respondents expressed interest in employee housing.

“We’re about to take a draft policy that will go to the VTA board in December, to union leadership to take a look at it,” she told San José Spotlight. “This is the biggest love letter to VTA employees, and I hope they feel it.”

The median home price in Santa Clara County is about $1.6 million and median rent is about $3,800 a month, according to Zillow.

Kalra said VTA came to him with the concept, and he was immediately on board because thinking outside the box is critical when looking for solutions.  

“It’s counterintuitive to have folks that operate our transit agency have to commute for one or two hours,” he told San José Spotlight. “But the reality of our housing crisis gives them little choice sometimes.”

Kalra said he would like to see an audit of all VTA properties to see where they’re located and ensure they’re being well used.

Santa Clara County’s high cost of housing has pushed many of VTA’s approximately 2,300 workers out of the area. Creating housing for the transit agency’s employees near where they work will cut long commute times and avoid driver fatigue.

“We need employers to care more about where employees live,” Ahrens told San José Spotlight. “Whether you’re a transit worker, an educator, a nurse or a firefighter, if you are living hours away from where you work, it makes it very difficult. It puts a strain on your life.”

Affordable housing near their jobs allows VTA employees to spend more quality time with their families, VTA General Manager and CEO Carolyn Gonot said.

“It plays into whether they want to even continue to work for us,” she told San José Spotlight. “We’ve got a great set of employees, and we don’t want to lose them.”

Gonot said VTA was inspired by school districts to create workforce housing.

“We needed to get specific legislation as a special district to be able to do this,” Gonot said, “and we’re one of the first in the country to be able to do this for transit workers. It was just seeing that opportunity.”

Although VTA policy requires 25% of its housing to be affordable, its goal is an average of 40% overall, O’Malley Solis said. The Tamien Station apartment complex is 100% affordable housing for low-income families.

Ron Acosta, a VTA transit division supervisor and AFSCME union representative, had to move to Stanislaus County to afford a home.

“You do anywhere from eight to 10 hours a day of driving, and then you got to go drive 86 miles. It’s a killer,” he told San José Spotlight. “You go home, you take a shower, you go to sleep. You’re lucky if you get to see your kids, much less participate in their sports or activities.”

One in four VTA employees commute more than an hour each way, and almost 10% travel more than two hours each way to afford housing, a spokesperson in Kalra’s office said.

“This is not sustainable for them, for their families or for the long-term health of our workforce,” Gonot said. “(The legislation) has a powerful purpose to support the workforce that supports the community every single day.”

Contact Lorraine Gabbert at [email protected].