Maya Rosas is director of policy at the advocacy organization Circulate San Diego. In this episode, Maya discusses how Circulate successfully made the case for converting transit station parking lots into new housing. Last year, the momentum continued, with the San Diego city government reducing parking requirements near frequent transit stops. Maya shares her advocacy tactics and describes how Circulate uses research to cultivate relationships with decision makers and change public policy.
Maya Rosas is director of policy at the advocacy organization Circulate San Diego. In this episode, Maya discusses how Circulate successfully made the case for converting transit station parking lots into new housing. Last year, the momentum continued, with the San Diego city government reducing parking requirements near frequent transit stops. Maya shares her advocacy tactics and describes how Circulate uses research to cultivate relationships with decision makers and change public policy.
“When we’re advocating for something, we’re not doing it for the prestige of us being able to claim a win, but because we want to see that change happen...and embrace the decision-makers, whether it be MTS or City Council.” - Maya Rosas
For more information on the "Real Opportunity" report, click here.
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Music: “Comma” - Blue Dot Sessions
Hosted by Kapish Singla
Produced by TransitCenter
Please note that transcripts are generated by a combination of automated speech recognition software and human transcribers. There may be errors in the text.
Kapish [00:00:00] From Transit Center, this is High Frequency. I'm Kapish Singla.
Kapish [00:00:02] Transit ridership is down across the country and the housing crisis is partly to blame. Transit riders with low incomes are being pushed out of neighborhoods with good public transit, forcing them into the position of needing to buy a car or endure a grueling transit commute. What type of policy changes are needed to ensure more people can afford to live near quality transit? To answer this, I spoke with Maya Rosas, Director of Policy at Circulate San Diego,.
Newscaster [00:00:36] Along with affordable housing advocates, circulate has been calling on the MTS board to open up its underused transit parking areas to housing development.
Kapish [00:00:48] Through research and advocacy, Circulate has been successful at pushing both the city of San Diego and its local transit agency, the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, to adopt more housing supportive policies near transit.
Kapish [00:01:02] So Maya, San Diego has some of the highest median rent costs in the country. Can you paint a picture of how the housing crisis is being felt by residents?
Maya [00:01:12] Well, in San Diego, there's a lot of sprawl and unfortunately the housing crisis has resulted in people just moving further and further out from the city center-- which is bad for a variety of reasons. It pushes people away from their jobs into longer commutes. It also pushes them away from the cultural centers. Everyone is struggling. You know, housing has always been expensive for low-income people, to be honest. But it absolutely has started reaching into the middle class and even the upper middle class where people who are millennials or older don't see any path towards homeownership.
Kapish [00:01:48] In April 2018, Circulate released a report called Real Opportunity. In that report, Circulate calls for building affordable housing on empty, MTS lots. What are the particulars of that report?
Maya [00:02:01] So we published Real Opportunity because we did see a big opportunity for MTS to be able to do more with their land. So MTS owns about 57 acres that they have decided are potentially developable. A lot of those are parking lots. These empty lots are seen as an opportunity to bring affordable housing and transit oriented development to our trolley stations and bus stations and rapid bus stations. A UC Berkeley study showed that San Diego's transit stations are the least well utilized land in the whole state of California. So our report included three main recommendations, and that was that one: that MTS should put out RFPs, request for proposals on an annual basis, and that would be really to get them started on developing their highest priority lands. Our second recommendation was that all joint development on emptiest land should include 20 percent affordable housing on site. Our third recommendation was that instead of requiring replacement parking, we recommended that MTS not require a much larger number of parking spaces than is currently being utilized.
Kapish [00:03:21] And how did Circulate initially recognize this opportunity? And what were the next steps after that realization?
Maya [00:03:28] Well, it's definitely something you see just when you're riding the trolley is that there is just ginormous flat surface parking lots. So what we did is that we had two interns site visit every single one of the parking lots at MTS stations. And they counted the number of parking spots total and the number that were being utilized. And this was at peak hour. They visited each station parking lot twice just to verify and see if there was a range. And we took those numbers and we came up with categories of very high utilized, medium, and lower, less utilized parking lots. And we were able to see that there is a wide range between utilization. There were a number of stations that had under 30 percent utilization. And that is a very poor use of land.
Kapish [00:04:18] Can you talk about why the call for housing specifically revolves around affordable housing?
Maya [00:04:24] So we know that people who live in affordable housing, in lower income folks are more likely to use transit than people who are higher income and happen to live near transit. So it was a pretty obvious connection. We did look at other transit agencies and universally other transit agencies that we compared to in California require affordable housing. And MTS really was an outlier in that regard.
Kapish [00:04:53] And Maya, one of the end results is that the MTS board approved of some of the policy recommendations.
Maya [00:05:00] That's right. You know, within a year of us releasing this report, the chair of MTS Georgette Gomez brought forward amendments and they were adopted by the board.
Newscaster [00:05:10] The policy update was initiated by MTS Board Chair and San Diego City Councilwoman Georgette Gomez. The new policy sets a goal that 20 percent of homes developed on MTS land be affordable for low income households.
Kapish [00:05:24] Related to the MTS board approval, in March 2019, the San Diego City Council also voted to abolish parking requirements. What was Circulate's involvement in that campaign?
Maya [00:05:39] Yeah, so Circulate has been pushing for this type of change--reducing parking requirements for several years, I think, since 2017 is when we started talking about it with a previous report that we released. This was a a slower process. Staff in the city of San Diego really wanted to thoroughly make sure that that they had crossed all their t's and dotted their i's on parking reform because of how challenging parking reform can be. So what they ended up passing as proposed is the ability to develop new multifamily housing without any parking onsite, as long as you're within a half mile of a transit priority area or a TPA. And that's a station that has high frequency transit. And the only thing you need to do to qualify for that is incorporate some transportation amenities. But it includes things like new infrastructure, widening sidewalk, installing bus stations or bus shelters.
Kapish [00:06:43] And what would you say is at stake if the city of San Diego wasn't taking into account housing and transportation decisions at the same time?
Maya [00:06:53] If San Diego wants its public transit to succeed, to grow, and to meet our climate action plan goals--which specifically delineate transportation mode shifts to increase the number of people walking, biking, and taking transit to work. If San Diego wants to meet those goals, it really needs to integrate housing and transportation decisions hand-in-hand. San Diego's Climate Action Plan is legally binding and requires we reach 50 percent mode shift to walking, biking or transit by 2035. And that's broken down to 25 percent of San Diegans in these TPAs I talked about transit priority areas--taking transit to work and then the rest of the 25 percent is broken down between walking and bicycling.
Kapish [00:07:43] And finally, given the successes in San Diego, do you have advice for other advocates trying to effect change in their cities?
Maya [00:07:52] Circulate San Diego has really found success with writing reports like our Real Opportunity report and advocating using the recommendations that are delineated in those reports, especially because we can use the reports to begin conversations. We can share them, we can even solicit input from the people we're trying to advocate to. And then from there we work closely with jurisdictions, with staff, to make sure that they know that we're on the same team, that even though we may be on different sides of specific issues, that we all have the same goals--whether that be our climate action plan goals, our Vision Zero goals, our housing goals, and that the decision-makers know that we will support them when they do the right thing. We think it's really important for them to know that when when we're advocating for something, we are doing it, not for the prestige of of us being able to claim a win, but because we want to see that change happen and that we're going to celebrate it and embrace the decision makers, whether it be MTS, City Council. And it's really worked well in terms of being able to make change at the local level.
Kapish [00:09:03] Thank you Maya for your time.
Maya [00:09:05] Thanks for having me.
Kapish [00:09:09] Since my conversation with Maya, the first request for proposal has gone out for a residential tower near San Diego's East Village. Once completed, hundreds of San Diego residents will be able to benefit from living near quality transit.
Kapish [00:09:26] This conversation is part of the events program at TransitCenter, a foundation that works to improve transit in cities across the US. For more information, visit transitcenter.org