Annual Report | 2021
Dear Residents,
The cover of last year’s Annual Report mailer featured Hayward Sustainability Specialist Nicole Grucky flashing the heart sign at our weekly COVID-19 food distribution site. It reflected the spirit of our extraordinary City of Hayward pandemic relief effort and the resilience of the Hayward community.
This year’s cover image is from our Together for Hayward Downtown Grand Re-Opening Celebration that took place July 10. On the back is a schematic of the future home of a new South Hayward youth and family center called The Stack Center.
We’ve gone through a lot over the past year, and we still have a long way to go. So, the theme of this year’s Annual Report is reemergence and recovery—with the focus being our City Council-approved strategies to sustain our reemergence and recovery.
Inside, we detail the deployment plan for $38 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars and our new Let’s House Hayward homelessness-reduction strategic plan. We highlight new housing construction—and a push to create a new housing-for-all strategy in the form of an updated City of Hayward General Plan Housing Element.
You also can read about new economic activity, new recognition of Hayward’s environmental leadership and new public safety innovations that grew out of last year’s community conversations about policing and public safety in Hayward.
If you have comments or questions or want to learn more, visit www.hayward-ca.gov/forward on the City of Hayward website, or contact me at Kelly.McAdoo@hayward-ca.gov or Public Information Officer Chuck Finnie at Chuck.Finnie@hayward-ca.gov.
The City of Hayward will receive approximately $38 million under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 economic stimulus bill passed by Congress and signed into law on March 11, 2021.
Through a deployment plan adopted on July 13, the City Council has directed ARPA expenditures across four broad categories—Public Health ($6.94 million), Economic Relief ($15.7 million), City Fiscal Recovery ($14.5 million), and Water, Sewer and Broadband Infrastructure ($1.24 million).
The priority for ARPA Economic Relief expenditures is the City’s new Let’s House Hayward homelessness reduction strategic plan and related programs and activities.
Developed over 18 months, the Let’s House Hayward plan aims to make homelessness in Hayward rare, brief and non-recurring—and seeks to accomplish this through a range of existing, expanded and new shelter, transitional housing, and loss-of-housing prevention programs and supportive services.
Total: $38.38 million
- Public Health—$6.94 million
- Economic Relief—$15.7 million
- City Fiscal Recovery—$14.5 million
- Infrastructure: Water, Sewer, Broadband—$1.24 million
Total: $9.85 million
- Hotel Annex Program—$3 million
- Winter Warming Shelter to Year-Round Resource Center—$2 million
- Homelessness Prevention Subsides or Grants—$1.5 million
- Hayward Navigation Center—$1 million
- Foreclosure Assistance—$1 million
- Relocation Assistance for Displaced Tenants—$250,000
- Hotel Vouchers for Encampment Occupants—$175,000
- Encampment Cleanups and Equipment—$925,000
- New Life for KMART Site—On May 13, the Planning Commission approved a 100-percent commercial redevelopment to complement new residential communities rising along Mission Boulevard. Opening in 2023, the project at 26231 Mission Blvd. will include a Sprouts grocery, In-N-Out Burger and Raising Cane’s Chicken—with two additional major stores and six small tenants to be announced.
- Subaru Coming to Auto Row—A topping off ceremony was held Aug. 14 as construction of a new, 57,000-square-foot Subaru dealership nears completion. The dealership at 25000 Mission Blvd. will be the first in Northern California to incorporate the carmaker’s new branding and will include a full range of maintenance services.
- Thriving Tech and Innovation Corridor—Redevelopment of the former Gillig bus factory with over 352,000 square feet of new modern industrial space is just one of many exciting projects in the City’s westside industrial crescent. Over the past year, Biotech, life sciences and food production companies joined and invested anew in Hayward bringing in more than $465 million in new investment.
- Small Business Support—Hayward was one of the first cities in the country to launch a pandemic grant program to sustain local businesses. That support will continue with $2 million in ARPA Economic Relief funds to be deployed to support local business and the Hayward workforce over the next three years.
- Shoreline Adaptation—On July 4, the San Francisco Chronicle highlighted Hayward’s leadership in developing—jointly with the East Bay Regional Park District and Hayward Area Recreation and Park District—the Bay Area’s most ambitious and forward-looking plan to protect and adapt shoreline and low-lying areas in response to rising sea levels.
- Reducing Emissions—On July 20, the City Council authorized the development of an updated Climate Action Plan to speed City progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and put Hayward on course to cutting GHG emissions from a 2005 baseline by 30 percent by 2025, by 55 percent by 2030 and to reach carbon-neutrality by 2045.
- Green Power—On July 26, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ranked the City of Hayward among its top 30 on-site generators of renewable energy among more than 1700 participating public and private entities nationwide. Also in July, the City Council voted to continue powering Hayward homes and businesses with 100 percent renewable electricity through East Bay Community Energy.
Public Safety Innovation Workshop—On May 18, the City Council directed staff to begin testing and implementing nine high-priority projects intended to address local concerns raised during community conversations on policing and public safety. One project already underway entails pairing behavioral health clinicians with district command patrol officers. Other projects include:
- 911 Dispatch Needs Assessment
- Mobile Mental Health Response Teams
- Hire a Behavioral Health Coordinator
- Expand Shelter Options and Outreach
- Expanded Use of Unarmed Community Service Officers
- Neighborhood Participatory Budgeting
- HPD Training Curriculum Review
- Community Complaint Liaison
- Growing Downtown Community—Lincoln Landing, which broke ground on Foothill Boulevard in October 2019, is bringing 476 new apartments, 80,500 square feet of retail space and starting next year thousands of new residents to downtown Hayward. In addition, hundreds of new housing units are coming online along the Mission Boulevard corridor.
- Affordable Housing—A 14-mile stretch of property obtained from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and once intended for construction of a State Route 238 bypass freeway is now on course to potentially yield more than 1400 new homes—with 400 to be rented or sold at below market rates affordable to low- and middle-income households. Learn more at www.hayward-ca.gov/238.
- Housing Element Update—Over the next several months, the City will be gathering community input on potential policy changes and new zoning designations to allow for and encourage sufficient residential growth to meet the housing needs of all of Hayward and our state-mandated share of Bay Area housing demand.
New South Hayward Youth and Family Center—On July 31, a kick-off celebration marked the start of fundraising for a new youth and family center at Tennyson and Ruus roads. The future Stack Center will be built on the site of the Eden Youth and Family and Matt Jimenez Community Centers. The properties will be combined to create a contemporary facility with a renovated childcare center, a new pediatric and dental clinic, a new mental health clinic, community meeting rooms and seven spaces for learning, technology and art.
The Stack Center also will include community amenities to bring activity to this stretch of the Tennyson Corridor, including a corner café, an outdoor amphitheater and an events plaza that can house a weekly farmers market. To learn more and support the project visit www.stackcenter.org.
Stack Center Videos:
