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Four blocks away from downtown Redwood City, The Millton, a 120-unit affordable housing development, had its grand opening on Thursday morning. The project was over a decade in the making.
The Millton is a housing development of The Sobrato Organization, a Silicon Valley-based organization with real estate, capital, and philanthropic arms. The organization has worked as a significant developer in the area for around 70 years. It has constructed buildings for tech giants including Nvidia, Netflix, Apple, Facebook and Amazon and has developed around 7,000 residential units across communities in the Bay Area.
More recently, the organization has set its sights on affordable housing.
The below-market-rate units at The Millton, located at 900 Chestnut St., will provide housing for families making 30% to 80% of the area median income. In Redwood City, that’s a salary range of $52,900 to $141,000 for a family of three. The development will offer 17 studios, 67 one-bedrooms, 24 two-bedrooms, and 12 three-bedrooms. On the same property parcel, 400 market-rate units will open soon right next door at The Colton.
The housing units will contribute to Redwood City’s state-mandated target of building 4,588 new housing units during the eight-year housing cycle from 2023 to 2031. According to a staff report published this year, the city had issued building permits for a total of 1,321 units as of the end of 2025, representing 29% of the city’s housing obligation for this cycle. This puts it about 400 units behind the needed pace to stay on track.
“This is more than just opening a building,” said Tony Mestres, CEO of The Sobrato Organization, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “This is opening a door to stability, dignity and opportunity for the families of our community that we fundamentally believe deserve to live and survive, but more importantly, thrive in the community that they are part of.”
During the ceremony, Sobrato’s chief real estate officer, Chase Lyman, recalled how Sobrato organized a community meeting where residents could write feedback about the project on post-it notes pasted on poster boards. Lyman said some of the suggestions were really good and were incorporated into the project.
“We got all the post-its down. There were hundreds of them,” Lyman said. “(And) we moved some things around. We increased the affordable housing. One of the really cool aspects of this project is the childcare center, and that literally came from the community feedback in that meeting.”
The Millton will have a 10,000-square-foot childcare center that can house up to 100 kids. Other amenities include a 24-hour gym, computer lab, a community room with billiards and TVs and an outdoor courtyard with gas grills.
Housing has been a key priority of the Redwood City Council, said Mayor Elmer Saballos during the ceremony. Saballos said he’s seen many families leave Redwood City because they couldn’t afford to stay. Many of the applicants to The Millton are Redwood City residents.
“The choices we make about housing say a lot about who we are as a community and whether families can put down roots,” he said. “Children can stay to grow up with stability, and people who make this city work can afford to stay and call it home. So that is why today matters.”
Demand has been high at the Millton, which has drawn about 1,200 applicants for its 120 units, including teachers, city workers, medical assistants, veterans and retirees, said Adam Briones, director of Sobrato’s Housing Security Initiative. Roughly 20 of the units have been filled, and Sobrato is still accepting applicants, Briones said. He expects the building to be fully occupied by this summer.
While Sobrato has worked in real estate in Silicon Valley for decades, the organization recently began to focus on affordable housing. In 2015, the organization purchased the 11-acre parcel of land where the Millton is now located. The area was formerly a ground-level shopping center with a CVS, Subway and other businesses. Sobrato worked with community members and officials from Redwood City and San Mateo County to shape the project and bring it to the finish line. The Millton is Sobrato’s first ground-up construction of an affordable housing complex.
In 2023, the organization launched its Housing Security Initiative to help address the shortage of housing for people who earn less than 120% of the area median income.
“I think the role of philanthropy is to identify those areas that we can do, that government can’t do (and) that nonprofit organizations can’t do on their own,” Briones said. “For the Sobrato organization that’s combining our real estate work with our capital work with our philanthropic work, and seeing if we can make a positive contribution to affordability in the areas that we really care a lot about.”
A few years ago, the organization began acquiring naturally occurring affordable housing properties – buildings that are unsubsidized or relatively affordable for low- and middle-income families.
Briones said Sobrato buys those properties, rehabilitates them, and puts a regulatory agreement on them to ensure their affordability. At least four of these types of projects are in Sobrato’s pipeline, Mestres said.
Financing issues are often a key obstacle to building housing. To address this part of the problem, Sobrato has also helped launch the Bay Area Housing Innovation Fund, a $100 million regional affordable housing fund, with Apple and the Housing Accelerator Fund. The fund provides flexible, low-cost financing so that high-quality, affordable housing developers can move quickly on projects.
“Redwood City is working hard to do its part, and we know that there’s still more work ahead. But today is about celebration,” said Saballos. “Today is proof that when values align and partners come together, we can create the kind of housing that keeps families rooted.”
