Farmworker Housing — A 555 Kelly Avenue Project Three Years in the Making
active• halfmoonbay
The 555 Kelly Avenue senior farmworker housing project is simultaneously Half Moon Bay's most important affordable housing action and its most politically painful civic saga. Born from the shock of the January 2023 mass shooting that killed seven Chinese migrant farmworkers and exposed their squalid living conditions, the project has taken three years to clear its first major hurdles. The City Council voted 4-1 to approve a 99-year ground lease with Mercy Housing for the 40-unit project — with all units restricted to households earning 30% or 50% of area median income, rents around $350 per month thanks to a county subsidy, and tenant preference tiers prioritizing Half Moon Bay senior farmworkers first — a framework that finally responds to the community failure the shooting exposed. But the project is not yet built: Mercy Housing must secure remaining tax credits and county funds by a hard December 2028 financing deadline, and an unresolved earthquake insurance standoff — with Mercy declining catastrophic-loss liability beyond insurance proceeds — leaves the city exposed on its own land.
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Related cause: Housing Affordability
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