Please help us get better planning and not just destruction!! Help Save Ruby Meadow! It is 6 acres of the last undeveloped riparian habitat before the San Lorenzo Creek is channeled in concrete the rest of the way from Foothill Boulevard to the SF Bay. It is former Ohlone land where the creeks meet, with indigenous human artifacts dating back over four thousand years (see CA-ALA-566). It was the source of the first piped water supply to Hayward, the Knox Water Works. Ruby street is named in 1892 for the daughter, Ruby Knox. It is a fenced green area of peaceful wildlife, alongside the San Lorenzo Creek, in the midst of denser and denser urban development. Ruby Meadow is twenty former 238 freeway lots being combined into three lots by Eden Housing Inc. and Its Affiliates in order to build parking lots and a four-story apartment building.

On February 16th, 2020, local community discovered that on February 4th, 2020, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors had voted to allocate over 8.8 million dollars of Measure A1 money toward paving Ruby Meadow via Eden Housing Inc.’s Ruby Apartment project (agenda item 22). Community was surprised because we had been told by Alameda County that the project was “on hold” and were thereby excluded from the funding process, which should have included community input.

We have plenty of vacant buildings and lots in the area which are better locations for housing. Our neighborhood has been blighted by fifty years of Hayward’s Caltrans 238 freeway bypass, and is now left with no overall development plan for the 30+ acres here in the Grove Way area. Piecemeal and poor planning is threatening our most valuable sensitive area!

Half of the twenty lots being combined are in the protected Castro Valley Biological Resources Overlay Zone and half are listed in the Alameda County Housing Element. Turning twenty lots into three lots, without allowing public input, muddles these designations and destroys sensitive habitat.

The doomed, and ultimately cancelled, Caltrans 238 freeway project took possession of about 400 lots from 1967-1972. While the 238 freeway plans were in the works, the homes were rented out to the public. Many tenants were single parents and working poor, like my mother (a teacher and librarian). She became a Caltrans tenant in 1976. Tenants lived and died, and families waited generations, in the hopes of one day being allowed to buy their homes. Freeway tenancy was tenuous. I grew up hearing my mom worry about the freeway, never knowing day-to-day if we would lose our home, or maybe be able to buy it. Home ownership was a dream, so hundreds or thousands of tenants lived for decades with few complaints in homes that were subpar, because Caltrans rentals are exempt from county habitability standards.

In 2009, tenants settled a class action lawsuit against Hayward and Caltrans that gave them a way to buy their homes. It also gave Hayward the administrative job of selling the rest of the 238 properties. In 2010, Caltrans officially cancelled the 238 freeway and created the LATIP fund, that built the Hayward loop and a couple Castro Valley freeway ramps.

Some tenants were able to purchase their homes and the rest of the land has been sold by Caltrans. Residents are not told what is happening to the land and we want transparency to the development process. Whether tenant or resident, the neighbors here have historically been excluded from the planning of the former 238 freeway land in our midst. We have discovered that in 2011, Caltrans gave noone else a chance to buy Ruby Meadow before offering the twenty lots to Eden Housing, Inc. and its Affiliates. Alameda County Housing and Eden Housing, Inc. did backdoor dealings to obtain the wildlife habitat, in order to cover the meadow with parking lots and a four-story building. There must be a better plan.

If the disastrous 238 freeway had been built, Ruby Meadow would have been a protected natural area, used to mitigate environmental damage by the development. The freeway's Environmental Impact Report (EIR) claims that having Hayward’s 238 freeway bypass running suspended above Ruby Meadow won't disturb birds or other animals living below! In a sense, Caltrans preserved Ruby Meadow as a wildlife sanctuary by neglecting it for fifty years, as it similarly neglected its midcentury tenant houses.

The Ruby Meadow zoning, lot line changes, environmental review, purchase, and funding of the development have all been administrative decisions, out of the public eye. When local residents became aware of what was happening and brought it to the attention of the Castro Valley Municipal Advisory Council, the item was put on the agenda and many citizens provided input. Then the process, that we were told we were part of, dropped out of public view once again. While County informed the public that there were no more meetings scheduled because the developer was not proceeding forward with the project, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted on 2/4/2020 to choose the Ruby Apartment project to receive over 8.8 million dollars of voter-approved public money!!

A good neighborhood plan for resilient, sustainable development in a quickly changing environment would protect the natural resources. It would build housing first in lots located near transportation, not by destroying remaining open space. A good plan would create safe multi-use trails that connect residents to recreation and work.

Over the last fifty years the proposed 238 freeway damaged neighborhoods and took away community resources. We lost jobs and ways to gather with neighbors. Oak Street lost the hugely popular AC Flea Market—drive to Oak Street today to see tenants living in third world conditions on former Caltrans 238 land. We lost frogs in the creeks, places to hike or off-road, the antique store, the beauty shop, the Pink Elephant, the church, a voting place, stores, neighbors, and it's not okay to destroy destroy and put back no community resources.

Neighbors, community organizations, environmental groups, experts, and county commissioners have come together to ask Alameda County to Save Ruby Meadow! It is not just a 2-d place on a map, it is open space habitat. Area residents have only 1/10 of the park space recommended by the CA State Quimby Act. Alameda County needs to improve the park deficit by working with our parks districts, HARD and EBRPD, to come up with an actual development plan for our area, instead of destroying natural resources, building market rate townhouses, and ignoring the people who live in the Grove Way area of Castro Valley, Cherryland, and Hayward. We the people ask the Alameda County Board of Supervisors for an overall neighborhood plan and transparency to the process! Save Ruby Meadow and build housing where we need it! BRIMBY = build responsibly in my backyard!!

**FYI we are not soliciting donations at this time, but change.org will automatically ask you to help promote this petition on their platform. You are not obliged to donate to change.org, but thanks for helping get the word out more if you feel inclined to help in that way.