Nearly 3,000 On Waitlist for El Camino Housing

During the final weeks of construction of the affordable housing complex at 636 El Camino Real in Orange Park, MidPen Housing is filling the building’s last remaining units. Of the 109 units, 33 remain unclaimed, and close to 3,000 applicants are on the wait list.

The process of finding residents began in late January when MidPen began accepting applications. Over 2,300 applications came in over the course of a month, and hundreds more trickled in after the period closed.

Applicants who had lived at the Forest Homes mobile home park, which occupied the property previous to MidPen’s purchase of it in 2010, and applicants who lived or worked in South San Francisco were placed at the top of a lottery list.

MidPen held a lottery in March and chose 545 applicants to line up for an interview process to determine income qualification. These applicants created a 5:1 ratio of applicants to units available, in order to anticipate fall-out of applicants who were found to be ineligible.

To secure a spot at El Camino Real, applicants must have an income that is no more than 50% of the area’s median income, and also have steady income to ensure they can pay rent.

Forty-seven of the units in the complex have been set aside to be within the San Mateo County Section 8 Project-Based program, which provides rent assistance on behalf of eligible low-income families. Applicants who wished to apply for one of these units had to apply with both the San Mateo Housing Authority to be part of the Section 8 program, as well as with MidPen to reside in the new building.

“One of the messages here is that there’s a tremendous need,” a MidPen spokesperson, Beth Fraker, said of the high number of applications for residency.

MidPen’s most recent community development previous to El Camino Real, the 64-unit Peninsula Station in San Mateo, garnered approximately 2,000 applications.

San Mateo, San Francisco, and Marin Counties tie for the most expensive housing jurisdictions in the United States. According to a report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the three counties’ housing wage—or the hourly wage that a household must earn, 40 hours per week, to afford fair market rent for a two-bedroom unit—is $36.63.

Santa Clara comes in ninth in the country with a $31.21 housing wage.

The report cites a decrease in homeownership in recent years as a cause for a more competitive affordable housing market: “With more households choosing renting over homeownership, the demand for affordably priced rental housing is surging, pushing rents upward and vacancy rates down.”

According to the report, vacancy rates in rental properties in the United States dropped in the past year to their lowest since 2001.

Pricing for the El Camino Real property are as follows: One-bedroom units of 643 to 793 square feet have a rent range of $327 to $1,008; two-bedroom units of 879 to 980 square feet range from $447 to $1,210; three-bedroom units with 1,171 to 1,290 square feet range from $838 to $1,397; and three-bedroom town homes with 1,282 square feet range from $838 to $1,387.

Construction is expected to end in the first week of August. The building will open to residents in mid-August.

MidPen will host a grand opening even that will be open to the larger community, the details of which will be forthcoming.

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