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Homes in Union City are still selling, say local real estate agents, but families are less inclined to buy.<\/p>\n
Yalonda M. James\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Like many Union City residents, Heather Perez chose the unassuming East Bay suburb for its relative affordability and the convenience of its location. But in the 12 years she lived here, she hardly experienced either.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unsatisfied with Union City\u2019s public schools, Perez enrolled her two youngest children at a private school on the Peninsula, near where one took intensive ballet lessons and her husband, Steve, worked as a software engineer. After Steve went fully remote during the pandemic, Heather began asking herself: Why are we stretching our budget just to spend our days traversing the Dumbarton Bridge?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt like hamsters on a wheel,\u201d she said. \u201cWe just kept spinning and spinning, and it was really hard to save.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Now, as Perez prepares to move her family into a sprawling home overlooking an artificial pond in the Sacramento suburb of Granite Bay, she is excited for more time with family\u00a0\u2014 and less in traffic. Still, she wonders what the future holds for Union City, which has become a bellwether for the Bay Area\u2019s pandemic-spurred population loss<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n From 2020 to 2025, this Alameda County commuter hub saw its number of residents fall by 6.9%, from around 70,000 to just over 65,000. According to a Chronicle analysis of census data, that\u2019s the steepest decline of any California city with more than 50,000 people.\u00a0<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Perez and her family are at the crux of the problem. Though Union City has a low vacancy rate of just 3%, and houses\u00a0here tend to sell at least twice as fast<\/a> as the typical U.S. home, the city appears to be losing more young families.\u00a0<\/p>\n Union City residents Heather Perez and her children, Emma and Hunter, ride to check out their potential new home in Granite Bay (Placer County).<\/p>\n Santiago Mejia\/S.F. Chronicle Oksana Vasilyeva teaches Emma Perez as her parents, Heather and Stephen Perez watch in\u00a0Roseville (Placer County). The family is moving away from Union City after 12 years, during which they would often commute for ballet class.<\/p>\n Santiago Mejia\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n That, combined with Union City\u2019s rising number of empty-nested baby boomers, has left it with its lowest average household size since the early 1990s. If Union City officials can\u2019t make this quiet bedroom community more enticing to house-hunting parents, they could eventually face far-reaching repercussions: School closures. Budget deficits. Cuts to city services.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s surprising because Union City is right in the middle of the Bay Area,\u201d said Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, a nonprofit think tank. \u201cBut once you take a closer look at it, it starts to make sense.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Known as \u201cLittle Manila\u201d for its large Filipino population, Union City has historically been a working-class haven for Asian and Latino immigrants. Families long flocked here because it was close to \u2014 and more affordable than \u2014 many job centers.<\/p>\n But with remote and hybrid work schedules making commute times less important, many young families have decamped for the Tri-Valley, the Sacramento area or the Central Valley. Parents like Perez are having a harder time justifying seven-figure prices for older one- or two-story houses in a community with little name recognition, no buzzy restaurants or nightlife scene, and few top-tier schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n Local real estate agents such as Navi Dhillon, who has helped residents buy and sell homes in her hometown for 16 years, still have no problem piling up commissions. With Union City\u2019s median home price now around $1.3 million<\/a>, modest ranch-style and tract houses often sell for over asking within a week or two of being listed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Real estate agent Navi Dhillon hosts an open house along Queensboro Way in Union City. Her clients used to be more families, but now are typically professionals without children.<\/p>\n Santiago Mejia\/S.F. Chronicle Real estate agent\u00a0Navi Dhillon, a Union City native, has struggled to sell homes in the city to families recently.<\/p>\n Santiago Mejia\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n The only big difference from 15 years ago, other than the prices, is who\u2019s buying them. Instead of the working-class and immigrant families who were once Dhillon\u2019s target demographic, she now has the most success with wealthy tech workers without kids. They\u2019re the ones who still prioritize a short drive to Meta, Google or Apple.<\/p>\n According to census data, about 17% of Union City residents are under age 18, down 2 percentage points from the start of the pandemic in 2020 and a 7 percentage point decline since 2010.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMore than ever before, people want it all: the trendy downtown, the best schools, the Michelin-starred restaurants,\u201d Dhillon said. \u201cFor a lot of these younger families, simply being close to work isn\u2019t good enough anymore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Union City schools are a particular concern. Though test scores have improved in its school district, New Haven Unified, which includes parts of south Hayward, its state results on the California School Dashboard remain average for math and below average for English.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those scores lag far behind adjacent Fremont, whose district has the highest possible rating in those subjects. This is just one of many unfavorable comparisons to Fremont that have created what some Union City residents call a \u201clittle brother complex\u201d with their much bigger neighbor to the south. Victoria\u00a0Torrez, who has lived in Union City for more than 30 years, lamented that it \u201cdoes feel like we\u2019re always in Fremont\u2019s shadow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Homes sit in the hills in Union City, which is centrally located but losing families to other suburbs.<\/p>\n Yalonda M. James\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n Over the past four years, WalletHub, a popular personal finance website, has named Fremont as America\u2019s\u00a0\u201cbest place to raise a family\u201d<\/a> or \u201chappiest city\u201d<\/a> a combined six times. In addition to touting blue ribbon schools, it has one of the lowest crime rates in the East Bay, a median household income of $176,000 and one of the highest rates of family households in all of California.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI actually know a lot of families who stayed in Union City until their kids finished elementary school here, then moved to Fremont in time for middle school,\u201d said Rutvik Hora, whose daughter is about to start middle school in Union City.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The crossover works both ways. Some of Dhillon\u2019s clients are empty-nesters who, after watching their children graduate from Fremont high schools, are now ready to move into a more spacious home within their price range\u00a0\u2014 in Union City.<\/p>\n Its lone public high school, James Logan, has seen its student body fall by nearly 30% since the late 1990s, from about 4,300 to roughly 3,000. \u201cThe numbers would be worse if we didn\u2019t have a decent amount of kids who transfer in from other districts for certain programs we offer,\u201d said John Thompson, New Haven Unified\u2019s superintendent. \u201cThat\u2019s kind of saving us in some ways.\u201d<\/p>\n Like many other Bay Area suburbs, Union City more than tripled in population during the 1970s and \u201980s. In the process, developers almost completely built out the 19-square-mile enclave. The few remaining parcels are zoned largely for townhomes, apartments and condos\u00a0\u2014 housing types that tend to be more popular with single professionals than young families.<\/p>\n With limited places left to go, Union City is pursuing redevelopment, transforming 470 acres of industrial land around its BART station into a mixed-use district with roughly 4,000 new homes and a projected 18,200 new jobs. The hope is that the $500 million project, dubbed the Station District<\/a>, will help offset the city\u2019s shrinking household size.\u00a0<\/p>\n With remote and hybrid work schedules making commute times less important, many young families have left Union City for the\u00a0Tri-Valley, the Sacramento area or the Central Valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yalonda M. James\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n The project has been in the works for about 20 years. But the area remains a long way from becoming the bustling commercial corridor Union City officials envision, and it\u2019s still probably a decade or two from completion. There\u2019s also the matter of BART\u2019s\u00a0ongoing annual deficit of up to $400 million<\/a>. Banking on its future could be risky.<\/p>\n City Manager Joan Malloy isn\u2019t fretting. The way she sees it, Union City is enduring a transition period. Plenty of other communities have dealt with similar population declines after decades of nonstop growth exhausted the local housing supply.\u00a0\u201cWe are a city that has limited land,\u201d Malloy said. \u201cYou\u2019re seeing places like the Tri-Valley<\/a> continue to grow because they have more land within their city limits.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But Union City isn\u2019t an outlier. The Bay Area as a whole is aging<\/a>, which played a key role in it losing about 1.4% of its population from 2020 to 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cUnion City is suffering a perfect storm that\u2019s regional in nature,\u201d said Ben Metcalf, managing director at UC Berkeley\u2019s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, a nonprofit think tank. \u201cThey\u2019ll need to do more to attract young families, who are essential to any community.\u201d<\/p>\n Bella Hernandez, a cashier at Don Julio\u2019s Taqueria & Catering, pushes a sign to the front of the Mexican restaurant in Union City. Some residents say Union City needs more restaurants and nightlife options.<\/p>\n Yalonda M. James\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n While locals wait for the Station District\u2019s amenities to arrive, some complain of few restaurants and nonexistent nightlife. \u201cThe biggest attraction, in terms of things to do, honestly might be the In-N-Out Burger,\u201d said Jason Pham, a real estate agent at the firm Intero who has lived here for 25 years.<\/p>\n Unlike Bay Area suburbs such as Pleasanton, Livermore and Redwood City that grew around a historic downtown core, Union City was incorporated in 1959 when the farming settlement of Alvarado merged with an old railroad community called Decoto. Union City is now a mishmash of tract and ranch-style neighborhoods built in the 1960s and \u201970s, strip malls, big-box stores and distribution centers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n If Union City residents tire of catching a movie and a chain-restaurant dinner at the Union Landing Shopping Center, they often drive to Fremont, Palo Alto, San Jose or even the Tri-Valley for a fun night out. This is how Suki Bath came to appreciate Livermore, where residents trade longer work commutes for a lively downtown<\/a> and high-performing schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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