Publication Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Our Town: The housing dilemma
Our Town: The housing dilemma
(February 25, 2004) by Don Kazak
Palo Alto may be in for a rough ride in 2004. If anyone wants to see angry people in the City Council chambers on Monday nights, just sit back and wait.
Now that the Charleston/Arastradero Corridor moratorium is over, as of Jan. 29, several large projects are about to move forward again.
A difficult challenge for us journalists is how to report what seems to be a growing story of conflict when neighborhood activists clash with attempts to get more housing built.
That generally means multi-family housing being built next to neighborhoods of mostly single-family homes. Every time a large project is proposed, people in the neighborhoods heed a call to arms against it, as it were.
Ten neighborhood associations signed on against the proposal to rebuild Hyatt Rickey's Hotel with 302 multi-family housing units. In one form or another, the Hyatt proposal will pop up again, perhaps very soon. Other projects are also waiting in the wings.
And the city is in the process of tweaking its zoning ordinance to create more incentives to build housing.
But the push for more housing always generates a reactive push back, usually rising from the neighborhoods. The November vote on 800 High St., a 61-unit project smack in the middle of a commercial area south of downtown, may be a cautionary tale -- voters barely approved it despite a near-record quarter-million dollars spent promoting it in the campaign.
Neighborhood leaders are generally not against housing philosophically, but instead question how much, and where?
The 800 High St. project was seen by its opponents as setting the wrong precedent for the city, even though it barely impacted nearby neighborhoods and was close to the train/bus station, seemingly an ideal location for a large housing project.
But 800 High became a kind of test case for what kind of community Palo Alto should become -- the fight over the ballot measure was much more than a fight over a housing project.
Some residents warned the city's Planning and Transportation Commission last month to be careful about adding more housing. I called a few council members to get their reactions.
Mayor Bern Beecham, Vice Mayor Jim Burch and immediate past Mayor Dena Mossar said they don't fear neighborhood opposition to housing projects. Yes, they said, opposition is out there, but they have to do the right thing, a reference to the city's chronic, multi-decade housing shortage.
An admirable thing about Palo Altans is that they care what happens in their community. But it can get messy on Monday nights at City Council meetings.
The late Tip O'Neill, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, was famous for a simple, eloquent but mangled phrase: "All politics is local."
O'Neill, from Boston, could have learned something from Palo Alto: We take local to a new level, neighborhood by neighborhood, backyard by backyard.
On the one hand, Palo Alto is a big-hearted community, with residents supporting non-profit agencies and helping those who need it.
Yet there is a disturbing amount of what feels like closed-hearted neighborhood protectionism.
Palo Alto is indeed a special place -- but one with an asterisk, because well-meaning people keep getting their feet tangled up with each other over what should be done.
The core values of the community seem to be challenged every time a housing project is proposed. But those core values are being defined by the housing debates, and so we will become known for them .
It's a tough issue to try to add housing in what is a built-out community that has a lot of aggravation about existing traffic headaches.
I moved to Palo Alto in 1972 with no money, no job and no car. I had a box of books, a portable typewriter, a duffel bag of clothes, some friends and a large dose of hope of what could be.
It seems to me that we could be somehow more inclusive about others who could also make this community a better, richer place.
As neighborhood leaders sometimes fight to keep things as they are, one wonders who may be shut out of an opportunity to live in Palo Alto, too.
Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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