90-unit affordable housing development opens in Sunnyvale

Sunnyvale is now home to 90 units of new affordable housing.

Local government and community housing leaders gathered on Tuesday for the grand opening of Meridian, which consists of seven townhomes facing Charles Street and a four-story multifamily building facing Mathilda Avenue, located near W. El Camino Real. A quarter of the units are set aside for households with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

“It’s just fantastic to have new housing, especially affordable housing, opening up in the city,” Mayor Larry Klein said.

Applications for Meridian opened to the public in December 2023 and are now closed. The development officially opened in January, and families began to move in in February. The on-site amenities include a community room with a kitchen, learning center, teen lounge, courtyard, bicycle tuning room, underground parking with storage lockers and a shared laundry room.

In Santa Clara County, the low-income threshold for a family of four is $137,100. In Sunnyvale, the median household income is roughly $174,506, and half of residents are renters.

More than 800 families applied to live at Meridian, and property management is actively reviewing and working through the applications to fill all the spots, according to Related Management Company, which serves as the property manager.

“Seeing more than 800 applications for 90 affordable housing units shows the immense need for affordable housing in the region,” Klein said. “We’re trying to do our part to create more of that.”

Housing Choices Coalition provides on-site services for residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities while Affordable Housing Access’s affiliate Project Access provides on-site social services for all residents, according to a press release.

The completed development comes as Sunnyvale plans to add 11,966 homes by 2031, as part of their housing element, a state-mandated blueprint for how the city will add a specific number of homes at a range of price points. Roughly half of the homes need to be reserved for low-income housing. The nine-county Bay Area is expected to build more than 441,000 new homes by then to meet housing demands, a roughly 15% increase in the region’s total housing stock.

Meridian is a public-private partnership with the city and the County of Santa Clara Office of Supportive Housing. The new units sit on a 1.44 acre city-owned property and was approved for redevelopment by Sunnyvale’s planning commission in April 2020.

Planning for the new units began in 2016, when the city set aside funds to redevelop the site in accordance with their Downtown Specific Plan, a city blueprint to make the areas between El Camino Real and the Caltrain tracks and Charles Street to Sunnyvale Avenue more vibrant.

The development’s funding partners also includes Santa Clara County, the Santa Clara Housing Authority, San Andreas Regional Center, California Department of Developmental Services, Wells Fargo, Citibank, Housing Trust Silicon Valley and Google.

“Every new development that opens its doors means we are getting more community members into a unit, and for some, this is the first home they have had in a long time,” Consuelo Hernandez, director of the county’s Office of Supportive Housing, said in a statement. “We’re continuing to partner with other housing leaders to make sure the work doesn’t stop here.”