Affordable Housing Building Near Redwood City Will Be Rebuilt After Fire

A day after a fire ripped through an affordable housing building under construction near Redwood City, local leaders are vowing to rebuild.

“It’s just a devastating loss in terms of affordable units,” said San Mateo County Board of Supervisors President Warren Slocum, who represents the district where the Middlefield Junction complex is located. “We’re all committed to rebuilding. We’re not just going to walk away from it.”

San Mateo County needs to build more than 1,200 housing units for low- and very-low-income families by 2031 to meet the expected demand, and the damaged complex was among the largest in the county’s development pipeline.

The 179-unit project would house 177 low-income families, with two apartments reserved for managers. One building with 104 units was burned down to its concrete foundation, while a neighboring 75-unit building that includes a planned child care center was not damaged.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, which could take weeks to complete, fire officials said. Slocum said conversations about rebuilding are already underway with the developer, Mercy Housing California, though the timeline is unclear.

The company declined interview requests. In a statement, spokesperson Rosalyn G. Sternberg said Mercy is committed to seeing the project through. “As soon as it is safe for our teams, and following a thorough investigation, we will return to work at the Middlefield Junction site to assess the damage and make a plan to move forward with construction,” she said.

A statement posted on the website of the project contractor, Danville-based James E. Roberts-Obayashi Corporation, said the company is dedicated to completing the development and called the fire “the worst disaster in our company’s 92-year history.”

Slocum expects insurance to cover much of the cost of rebuilding and said the county will likely seek state and federal funds to make up the difference.

Raymond Hodges, director of San Mateo County’s Housing Department, said the project was a decade in the making. It took years to work out details, including rezoning the site with local community councils and working with the developer to secure both public and private investments.

Funding for the $155 million development includes loans from the county, state grants, and federal COVID-19 relief funds. It’s being built on a 3.2-acre plot of land the county purchased about 10 years ago for housing, officials said.

In addition to stitching together a patchwork of funding sources, Hodges said finding land for affordable housing is a huge challenge in pricey San Mateo County. The North Fair Oaks location was a good fit because of its proximity to a county health clinic and community center, he said, adding, “It’s a community that’s experienced quite a bit of displacement and price pressure.”

The apartments being built at Middlefield Junction would be reserved for people earning incomes considered extremely low, very low and low on the pricey San Francisco peninsula. Twenty of the apartments would be set aside for people experiencing homelessness and receiving care management and supportive services from San Mateo County Health.

Since 2012, San Mateo County has helped finance or support 4,752 affordable housing units across 65 projects. There are 2,874 units complete, with 1,237 in planning phases and 641, including the 179 from Middlefield Junction, under construction.

“To have this happen and set such a big portion of the pipeline back, it’s pretty devastating,” Hodges said. “There certainly will be insurance claims for this to try and recoup some money so that we can get the project restarted. But how long it will take, I think, is anybody’s guess at this point.”

KQED South Bay Digital Editor Joseph Geha contributed to this report.