New family housing is coming to Milpitas.
Toll Brothers, a luxury home construction company, is building 43 townhomes and 13 ADUs — also known as in-law units or backyard homes — on a a 2.3-acre site at Tarob Court, about a mile and a half away from the Great Mall. The development will consist of eight multi-family buildings roughly 39 feet tall, and include 104 parking spaces.
Six of the townhomes will be reserved for moderate-income households, or 80% of the Average Median Income (AMI), — which is at least $145,040 for a family of four in Santa Clara county. Milpitas’s median household income is $169,460 while the AMI in the county in 2023 was $181,300.
Though the City Council green-lit the development Tuesday, it raised concerns about the need for more affordable housing in the city.
Mayor Carmen Montano said even moderate income levels are still “quite a bit of money” for Milpitas families.
“Our city needs to focus on really low income, because a lot of folks cannot afford $180,000,” she said during the meeting
Toll Brothers representative Nick Costa said the best way to provide low-income and very low-income housing in the city is to build apartments and team up with affordable builders. Developers need bigger sites to construct those apartments, he said, which are hard to find nowadays.
“We’re all going to have to start looking at finding bigger sites to build on,” he said during the meeting. “That’s just challenging where we are in the city and the state.”
The Tarob Court project — which was submitted in 2023 — is compliant with SB30 — a state law prohibiting local governments from creating laws that would reduce the legal limit on new housing within their borders or delay new housing. Since Toll Brothers is setting aside more than 10% of its units to moderate income households, the project can wavier some of the city’s permit expenses.
Vice Mayor Evelyn Chua said she liked the project because the developer “incorporated the concept of ADUs,” which are becoming a popular housing project option in the Bay Area due to their affordability and versatility.
In 2023, one out of every five homes built in the state was an ADU, according to recently released state data. Only three years ago, they represented one in every 10 new units.
The project aligns with existing city plans to provide roughly 7,000 additional new housing units in the southern portion of Milpitas, which includes land near the Great Mall shopping center, by 2040. The plan also includes allocating space for new developments, including providing up to three million square feet of new commercial employment space, 300,000 square feet of new retail space and 700 new hotel rooms.
Efforts to create new housing comes as the nine-county Bay Area is expected to build more than 441,000 new homes by 2031 to meet housing demands, a 15% increase in the region’s total housing stock. The counties must also allocate 40% of those homes for people with low or very-low incomes.
In April, Milpitas approved the construction of 118 affordable apartments near Main Street, half a mile from the VTA Great Mall light rail station. More than half of the units will be reserved for low-income families.
