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When Palo Alto’s elected officials learned last fall that they may soon be required to plan for more than 10,000 new housing units in the next decade, they quickly denounced the regional mandate as unrealistic, unattainable and deeply flawed.
Last month, however, the Association of Bay Area Governments has revised its numbers in a way that may have significant ramifications for the city and its housing plans. In a bid to better align with Plan Bay Area 2050, a broad document filled with strategies for Bay Area growth, ABAG revised the allocation figures in December.
For most cities, the revisions have resulted in only slight changes. Palo Alto is among the notable exceptions. Its total housing allocation has been reduced by 39% and now stands at 6,086 new units in the eight-year cycle between 2023 and 2031.
But while the numbers have changed, the City Council’s concerns have not. On Monday night, during a broad discussion of Plan Bay Area 2050 and Regional Housing Needs Allocations, numerous council members continued to criticize the state’s housing-allocation process and to offer reasons for why the numbers are not attainable.
Council member Lydia Kou, a frequent critic of regional housing mandates, called the recent decision to cut the allocations of Palo Alto and Cupertino “divisive” and suggested that the council should continue to oppose the RHNA process, a planning tool that she said has been “weaponized by state legislation.”
“When this planning tool has penalties and also removal of local jurisdictions’ land use and zoning, it’s actually something we should fight back against and it is also setting us up to fail,” Kou said.
Failure, however, would carry consequences. Recent state laws, most notably Senate Bill 35, create a streamlining approval process for residential developments in cities that have failed to meet their RHNA goals, effectively restricting the ability of these cities to reject development applications.
Mayor Tom DuBois said Monday that even with the recent reduction in the allocation, the new numbers represent a “pretty significant percentage of our housing.” The new allocation, he noted, would still be about three times greater than Palo Alto’s housing allocation in the current RHNA cycle, which is 1,988 units.
“With the new laws, there are now teeth to not hitting these numbers,” DuBois said.
Palo Alto’s city planners believe the downward revision in the city’s allocation can be attributed in large part to three new strategies in Plan Bay Area 2050. One strategy, which calls for building “adequate affordable housing to ensure homes for all,” forecasted more housing for San Francisco and the east bay, according to a report from the Department of Planning and Development Services. Another, which seeks to offer incentives to employers to “shift jobs to housing-rich areas well served by transit,” moved some of the jobs that were originally forecasted for the south bay to other regions and assigned to those areas additional housing units. And the strategy calling for accelerating “reuse of public and community-owned land for mixed-income housing and essential service” apparently promoted more distribution of housing opportunities, the report states.
Other neighboring cities have seen only slight changes. Menlo Park would see its household growth move from 24% under the old methodology to 23% under the new one, with its allocation reduced from 3,074 new units to 2,946. Mountain View will remain at 33% growth, with its projected allocation moving from 11,380 new households over the eight-year period to 11,238.
In Palo Alto, the number of units drops from 10,058 under the prior proposal to 6,086 under the new one. Instead of being required to plan for 2,573 units in the “very-low” income category (for those earning less than 50% of area median income) and 1,482 in the “low” income category (those earning between 50% and 80% of AMI) over the next eight years, the city would now see allocations of 1,556 and 896 in the two categories, respectively.
At the same time, the revised methodology shifts more growth to San Francisco and to the east bay. Whereas San Francisco was initially required to accommodate a 19% growth in housing units, the number was raised to 22% in the new draft (this results in 10,760 additional units). The east bay cities of Pleasanton, Emeryville, Lafayette and Orinda have each seen their allocations increased by between 3% and 5%.
Palo Alto’s council members had little to say on Monday about the city’s share of the regional allocation, but plenty about the broader process of mandating significant growth. Kou and council member Eric Filseth both maintained that the main problem is the overall housing target that the Bay Area has been told to plan for by the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
The state agency had determined last year that the nine counties that make up the Bay Area need to plan for 441,176 new units in the next eight-year cycle of the allocation process. Filseth emphasized the need to scrutinize the regional projections, given the consequences for cities that fail to meet their allocations and suggested that the city include in its correspondence to ABAG criticism of the HCD number, which both he and Kou argued demands further scrutiny.
“It used to be that RHNA targets were broad and aspirational and under current direction in Sacramento they become explicit quantitative mandates,” Filseth said. “The standard for accuracy in projections and rigor is much, much higher for quantitative mandates than if they are aspirational zoning things.”
Palo Alto is one of dozens of cities that have submitted letters to ABAG expressing concerns or offering suggestions about the allocation methodology. Some, including Cupertino, echoed Palo Alto’s concerns about the HCD’s allocation to the Bay Area. Others, including Atherton, argued that their jurisdiction could not absorb the proposed allocations without seeing a significant change in its community character.
Rick DeGolia, Atherton’s mayor in 2020, challenged the RHNA methodology for placing too much housing near jobs. Neighboring jurisdictions, his letter stated, “regularly approve large scale commercial developments that result in job growth, demands on local resources, and a demand for new housing in those communities.”
“Those communities in turn, also benefit from the resulting tax bases and should be required to provide their fair share of housing and resource amenities to meet a healthy job-to-housing ratio,” DeGolia’s letter states. “As the Town does not anticipate growth, let alone job growth within the Town limits, this methodology is not applicable to the Town of Atherton.”
In Palo Alto, council members approved on Monday a letter that urged ABAG to consider additional factors before determining the final allocations. These include the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the regional growth plan.
“While the plan’s time horizon is long, the impacts of the pandemic and recession are also long; no doubt the pandemic and recovery will shape the next generation,” the draft of Palo Alto’s letter states. “Responsible planning must clearly and easily show how the pandemic is accounted for year by year, especially in terms of job growth, population growth, housing demand, and anticipated viability of various funding streams in Plan Bay Area 2050.”
The approved letter also plays up the impact of telecommuting, which “could represent a large share of jobs, and thus a reduction in the number of commuters and a shift in where jobs are located.”
“For example, the City anticipates retention of telecommuting for many employees with jobs attributed to Palo Alto employers and the possibility of associated lower demand for housing within the City and nearby,” the letter states.
Vice Mayor Pat Burt also suggested that the city includes in the letter actions it has already taken to manage its growth and address the housing shortage. This includes adopting policies that restrain office growth (such as office caps) and to encourage low- to moderate-income housing (such as the creation of the affordable-housing overlay zoning and the “planned housing” zone, which relaxes development standards for residential projects).
The goal, Burt said, is to “put forth our proactive approach to policy changes that we have taken, and those that we intend to take.”
Palo Alto’s overtures are unlikely, however, to sway state and regional planning officials. Numerous cities had requested last year that ABAG challenge HCD’s methodology. After reviewing the methodology, ABAG had concluded that the state methodology adheres to applicable legal requirements, according to a December report from ABAG staff. Last June, the ABAG board decided not to challenge the Bay Area-wide allocation number and the window of appeal of that number has since closed.
Similarly, ABAG does not use existing zoning designation as a basis for limiting RHNA allocations. Gilian Adams, ABAG’s project manager for the RHNA process, said at the Dec. 17 meeting that while various cities have expressed concern about not being able to accommodate new housing, ABAG is required to “consider potential for increase of residential development under alternative zoning ordinances and land use restrictions.”
She also noted that telecommuting is one of the strategies in the Plan Bay Area 2050 Blueprint and, as such, is embedded in the RHNA methodology.
“The potential impacts of the trend toward telecommuting in the longer term are incorporated in the RHNA through the Plan Bay Area 2050 Blueprint, which includes strategies to expand commute trip reduction programs through telecommuting and other sustainable modes of travel,” Adams said.
ABAG’s Regional Planning Committee will discuss the draft methodology for RHNA at its Jan. 14 meeting. The agency’s Executive Board will review it on Jan. 21.
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin, president of ABAG’s executive board, said at the board’s Dec. 17 meeting that given the direction from the state, cities throughout the Bay Area will have to absorb some impact of the projected growth.
“We know that due to recent changes in state legislation that this region does have to accommodate a much larger number than we had to in years past, and every community in the Bay Area is going to be impacted, there’s no question about it,” Arreguin said. “Our job at ABAG is to not just make a decision on how these units are distributed but provide support to local governments in developing their Housing Elements.”
Thank You, ABAG. Palo Alto is woefully behind in building affordable and other housing options. Rents are sinfully high, even with the pandemic. I, as a City employee, have been on the waiting list for the BMR purchase program since 2009, and I am nowhere near the top of the list. I have lived 3.5 of the past six years in my mini-van, trying to hang on to my down payment money , in seemingly futile hopes that a BMR condo will come through for me. I am nearing 60 years old. It seems likely I will be dead before I am settled.
I am really glad to see that the state government is finally doing something about California’s rampant NIMBY problem. Perhaps my kids will be able to afford to buy a house in Palo Alto some day.
Council member Lydia Kou will certainly not get my vote in the next election.
We need to see the whole county numbers. San Jose is the biggest city in the county and has continual building of new housing. You can see it in the weekend papers – places, prices. Sunnyvale is the second biggest city in the county. It includes all of the new development in Moffett Circle. We need to see all of the cities in Santa Clara County because the information presented is like loading the deck with unrepresentative numbers. Menlo Park if the home of FB so why are their numbers so low? Fb is one of the biggest companies in the bay area and employees the most people, exclusive of Google and SU. Someone has thrown us under the bus here. Housing is tied to JOBS. The JOBS are in San Jose – a major metro city. Palo Alto is not a metro city and does not have a big band width of job types. This whole situation needs to be investigated by an outside auditor – ABAG needs to be investigated.
Many Companies are now leaving the state, and the bay area for areas in the central state areas. The algorithm has to be flexible enough to recognize the increase and decrease of job opportunities. Growth is occurring in Menlo Park for Fb and other companies-there is going to be whole new Willow Village for FB. They cannot print low numbers for MP when in fact is is growing very fast in the commercial section off 101. They all have to be able to describe how they are updated their information as businesses both grow and depart. Palo Alto is not the dumping ground for every other cities’ tax base issues. If the people in PA making up numbers do not understand that then replace them with people who do understand that.
Palo Alto teachers and city employees used to live in Palo Alto. It was so nice.
Perhaps this statement should go under the post “Things I Remember About Palo Alto”.
Now the city has turned into a laundry mat for foreigners to wash their millions of dollars in our real estate. Neighbors who will wave at you, but you will never really get to know.
For the past 30 years, most of the buyers have been foreign nationals, and many homes sit empty. Wannabe Palo Altans pay foreign based landlords insane rents. They are contributing to these criminal landlords. Realtors complicit. Change the laws on foreign ownership, EB-5 ,and H1-B, and student visa abuse. Stop allowing our colleges, universities, and tech companies become nothing but visa mills. I can’t stand the abuse of such fraudsters in this city. It is no wonder why people and businesses are choosing to move away. Who would want to raise their kids here, or go to school with people who cheated to get in?
The ABAG number should be much lower in my honest opinion.
This county in general has a big problem. Look at the issues at the county level because a problem in one location appears to get solved in some other location – move the chairs around from place to place. People in MV keep appearing because they think we are suppose to solve their housing problems. Worse – they have talked ABAG into supporting this. Developers have a say in all of this at the state top level so the playing field is not equal. And we have opinion members in the city who have worked at Google so are pushing an agenda that supports their ultimate goals. Commissioners and PACC members have to be able to translate what city budgets are based on because we are not able to absorb shortfalls in other city/county budgets. Right now we have had unsuccessful discussions with SU concerning the school system support so within our city budget we have our own challenges.
Housing has to be supported by available and type of jobs an any area. San Jose has a wide variety of job types – low cost to high cost, an airport, hotels, major rail systems, etc. That is where low cost housing needs to be.
Has the ABAG lady in Berkley noticed that PG&E has moved from San Francisco to Oakland – Lake Merritt? That is a huge number of people. What we are running into is a group of authoritarian people who cannot manage a system which tracks the comings and goings of major business entities. We do not have to tolerate their lack of an up to date system and then dictate to the rest of the state.
Hey – go look at their system and question what they are inputting and how they are adjusting their numbers. The comings and goings of major businesses are printed in the paper – any business that reduces by a certain number is legally required to report to the state and publish those numbers in the business section of the papers. .This is not guess work – it is legally required information provided to the state and locally in the papers. It is maddening to read about all of the companies that are leaving. this area or laying off a large number of people then be told that we need to build houses for workers that do not exists.
Another example of how this state puts people in jobs because they are loyal party workers but have no skills for the jobs they are in. Since we are on legal turf then force their hand to figure out how they are managing the details of their reports. They should be legally required to back up their dictates with actual verifiable information. If HP says they are moving to a North San Jose location then that should be in the report. Do not tolerate nonsense.
The New York Times – Sunday 01/17 – Business Section Front page – “They Can’t Abandon the Bay Area Fast Enough”. Do not believe that what we read in our local papers is limited in the attention span of the national news. The problem is on the table and any amount of hype and false narratives is not going to stop it.
Anonymous wants her child to live here. Her child has grown up and has a job. Her child will go to where his job is and where his own family wants to live. My son grew up here and has no desire to live here – He lives in the east bay where his company has major effort and now his company has moved their headquarters to Nashville, TN.
Children when they grow up have different ideas of where they want to live and work. And their spouses have ideas of where they want to live and work.
The ABAG people are housed in SF? Their city is a empty shell and employees of the city are now being investigated for fraud. That is being followed by the SF Chronicle – we do not make that up.
Bottom line is the the cities in the South Bay need to challenge what ever ABAG is telling them because they do not have the right facts – they are just looking for payouts from the developers. And the developers are not doing very well right now.
The cities have to have a tax base to function and if no tax base then the whole city collapses.
Companies are slowly moving away. It is being done discretely. First groups are relocated, then slowly more people.
This began before Covid.
The cost of living, quality of life, impossibility of ever owning a home or having your children own a home in the area near you are real.
The tax advantages of moving a company to another state, and pay workers 1/2 to 1/3 less salary is a big plus for many companies.
No one wants to live or own high rise apartments with their families or rent these places for long.
I know of Facebook families who after years of commuting 4 hours to work, have decided to move to the East Coast and work from home and raise their families in areas with emphasis in community, church, and an over-all better quality of life.
No commute. They are happy to move away after several years of a grueling commute to a crappy rental with sketchy schools filled with first generation tiger parents.
Stanford has been hiring workers with 2 years degrees and given them Director titles. It shows their desperation, like admitting so many foreign students. It would make Jane Stanford turn over in her grave. She built Stanford for the education of California’s children. Jane Stanford had no idea the 2 billion people in the Eastern Countries would target her beloved university.
Somehow Stanford has forgotten Jane’s intentions.
I love the comment about first generation “Tiger Parents”. WE are also looking at first generation Tiger legislators. People whose parents came to the US after WW2 now pose as the “experts” on the US Constitution and what the US is suppose to be doing now.
The US rebuilt Western Europe after WW2 under the Marshall Plan. Fast forward to today the European Union rules the member countries and dictates on trade, monetary funding for country projects concerning climate change, immigration – mostly from Africa. Yet the current editorial position is that the US is suppose to rule the world. They have not caught up with the world since WW2.
Foreign students pay more for their education. Time at UCLA whole schools of disciplines were predomitly foreign based students. UC Berkley is filled with foreign students. I flew one time back through Paris and the whole plane coming to SFO was filled with either returning students or students going to a US college.
College is big business.
“Foreign students pay more for their education.”
Indeed they do — which is one reason schools like Stanford, Wharton etc. have such big foreign recruiting programs. Note also how active Stanford, for example, has been in lobbying to keep H1B visa wages low — at the expense of American workers and/or full0time employees with benefits vs the lower-paid contractors.
More discussion in the SJM/BAN 01/19/21 concerning Mr. Weiner’s explanations on how the assignment of housing numbers are conjured vs local disagreement on those numbers – “Think tanks says housing goals are wrong – others call it propaganda.”
Don’t we live in great times? If you challenge what the “state” conjures then it is “propaganda”. Reality is that is exactly what the state is producing – inflated numbers which have no relation to actual numeric data of where the companies are now which is a legal requirement to the state to gauge other financial assignment of funds. And the housing advocates are for the additional housing and destruction of cities basic floor plans.
Housing is available all over the state – you can read the weekend papers where the real estate section lays out pictures, prices, locations. Companies are moving out of upper Silicon Valley with a lot of new building in north San Jose. That is where you put housing. New housing is going up in Gilroy. If the housing is there then why build unattractive housing and ruin the whole purpose of why people move here.
WOW – topic on the news is deprogramming people who do not agree with you. How about deprogramming Mr. Weiner and Ms. Atkins – SB50. They are obviously in the throes of political tunnel vision and are unable to grasp the realities of the state of the state – which is now reported / discussed on TV, LA Times, NY Times. You cannot pretend away the fact that big business is moving out of state to locations which have better cost of housing, less taxes, more space, less regulations. The requirement for housing has to fit the job market.
And when Mr. Weiner is not plowing through the housing issues he is plowing through childhood sex issues – that latest legislation is concerning the child’s right to claim their sexual identity when they have conflicting body parts, typically corrected after birth. His preoccupation with these topics is a signal of a set of occurrences in his childhood which he must be trying to correct now. So we are the beneficiaries of his childhood issues. Hey – just say NO.
If anyone reads the weekend real estate section of the papers you will see major communities with new homes, a community center, trails, schools, playing fields – all planned out. All beautifully organized and planned out. New growth in Gilroy and going south will have the same organized housing plans – that is what people are buying into. Then we have someone who sits in SF – Mr. Weiner of SB50 fame – is busy trying to destroy the very city structure on the peninsula which people bought into in a prior generation. All at a time when major corporations are moving out of the area – and out of the state.
Question – how does half of the state get to buy into organized, beautiful communities and the other half is being thrown under the bus and their residential areas being torn apart. How is someone who sits in SF – which itself is falling apart with people leaving get to dictate the destruction of the residential neighborhoods that we all bought into? What is wrong with this picture? And why do cities buckle under to a economic position which makes no sense? Who is selling the hype here? Question the plan, question the hype.
In the SF Chronicle 01/26 – “Regional housing plan worries SF Officials”. “Plan Bay Area” now has the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) renegotiating the allocation of new housing. They are focusing on the SF Bayview area which has a lot of low cost housing. If they get their way they will drive out the diverse population that lives in that section, tear it down, and replace with new residential units. Where is the ACLU on that topic?
Cities throughout the bay area are resisting and calling out how the numbers are derived. How did this city get thrown in as the sacrificial lamb for this project? We are not a switching station, we get no money to support our desires for the remaking of our crossing points at street level, and no recognition that the major companies that generate business are in MP and MV?
Worth you read – lots of people named – blame thrown around. It is what most novelist call a Cluster F##k. I am concerned that local peoples have contributed this city as a token of their desired advancement up the political chain of command. WE have received little benefit from these agencies and then sit with potential law suits that will cost this city money. This is no way to run a rail road – or housing.
No one expects cities to meet their RHNA for affordable housing. No developer would submit a project with the percentages of affordable housing in their RHNA, and a City is not allowed to mandate those percentages because it would make the project financially unfeasible. Nor is the State going to supply the money for affordable housing. The end of Redevelopment stopped the money necessary to build affordable housing.
Everyone knows that the RHNA numbers came from bogus RHND numbers that double-counted (embarcaderoinstitute.com/portfolio-items/double-counting-in-the-latest-housing-needs-assessment/).
Cities don’t have money to build the affordable housing which can cost upwards of $800,000 per unit. The State is trying to pass a constitutional amendment, ACA1 which would lower the threshold for bond measures for housing to 55% from 2/3. Then the State would insist that the funding for affordable housing would be funded by existing residents through bond measures (property taxes).
When a City fails to meet their RHNA then SB-35 kicks in, eliminating the requirement that the project complies with CEQA, and eliminating any discretion by the City Council. It also requires between ten and fifty percent affordable housing, but in most cities there is already a ten to fifteen percent affordable housing requirement, and SB-35 doesn’t get around a City’s affordable requirements, but SB-330 allows developers to take waivers and concessions to get around a City’s requirements for the affordable housing to be inclusionary and that it be built to the same sizes and standards as the market-rate housing.
With increased remote-working, falling rents, and the exodus of well-off renters to areas where they can buy a single-family home, developers aren’t going to build high-density housing projects that are extremely costly to build. In fact we were seeing this even pre-pandemic with property owners deciding to not build projects that cities has already approved.
Stanford University has the biggest ownership of property and is the biggest employer in this area. A large portion of their property is not developed, and or under developed. People keep focusing on the city of Palo Alto which is built out to its borders as being the focal point for development. Why not the biggest landholder and biggest employer?
I suspect that the individual home owner in a city looks like easy pickings but SU is not easy pickings. Likewise in the city of SF the individual homeowner is the target when we all know that the city has a huge amount of land that is underdeveloped.
Time to turn this around – the people pushing housing need to provide city, county, and state owned land for their political imaginings. A huge amount of land was conscripted by the state for HSR – very clever – no HSR so the state owns a lot of land. That is where your housing is going to go. The continual use of individual owned land in this state for government demanded projects is now on the table.
We need more housing everywhere across the bay area. If a city cannot meet RHNA goals, the state needs to set the path clean for a home builder to come in and well, build more homes for families that want to live in modern, dense communities. This NIMBYism around maintaining neighborhood ‘character’ like how it was in the 1950s has got to stop.
Everyone from all socio-economic backgrounds regardless of skin color, race, gender should be able to live in our communities. This implied racism around maintaining ‘neighborhood’ character has got to stop.
Same preprogrammed message. If you are against density then you are racist. Another self-serving stereotype fashioned for the politics of today. Sorry – does not sell in PA. We have a very diverse population – on my street Asian, Indian, South American, and Black. They are here because they want their children in this school system. Then they stay because they have established relationships in this community. And they have good jobs so can afford to be here. Now you would not know that if you live in the hills.
In Daly City they have hills filled with homes. Maybe that is where we need some density.
Read the real estate section of the paper – they are selling homes in neighborhoods. That is the reality today. From one end of the state to the other end that is how cities are set up. Density is relative to transit corridors, not neighborhoods.
@Resident 1-Adobe Meadows
Why are you so driven towards keeping newer residents out of Palo Alto?
All you do is suggest other places for people live, some undesirable locales.
While affordability is the key constraint to purchasing a residential dwelling in Palo Alto, potential residents should not be discouraged from residing here. That is Real Estate 101.
As far as overdevelopment in Palo Alto is concerned, just tear-down the vacant office buildings or convert them into living spaces. Though chances are they will not be cheap, the conversions would in turn accommodate newer residents who wish to and who can afford to reside in Palo Alto.
As for me, I am currently a renter and will be completing my post-doc in two more years.
Then I will relocate elsewhere so you can have other aspiring or more recent residents to chastise.
There is ideology, hype and reality. Read the real estate section of the paper. Houses throughout the bay area are turning over at a very fast rate. There is no lack of new residents in this city and the bay area. Read the business section of the paper – google is going to put 7.000 people in their MV village in the planning stages. FB is planning a new village in the north of 101 village – another huge group. MP has new apartments north of 101. PA has new apartments on Park and planning new buildings on ECR. New housing is coming on line all over the place with many announcements of new housing in the planning stages.
Connect the new housing with articles about any cities ability to process waste, available water, available electricity. Any housing requires infrastructure which at this point is aging and needs to be upgraded. Note we just had a face-off with PG&E over their upgrades they wanted to put at a high school.
Not chastising the residents who have to pay for all of this – chastising the city planning departments who are not connecting the total service the the city is required to perform with taxpayer dollars.
Developers tend now to be out of state, focused on their single property with no recognition of what other projects are also in process. It is the cities job to oversee the capabilities on any one’s city to support the new ventures.
SU is not doing it’s part with all of their open land to produce housing for it’s affiliates. Putting more housing on open land will then require upgrades to their
waste management structure – a cost they would prefer not to incur.
Nothing like a person who lives in the hills and calls himself bean bag and a SU student to lecture every one on what is suppose to be happening in the bay area. Are you suppose to be the reality checker? I – like every other home owner – am besieged by real estate people continually “informing” the home owners how much their home is worth and how fast they can turn it over. Statistics provided for the immediate area and the bay area in total And the local papers – SFC today continually print articles about people leaving the bay area for the outer fringes in the state, and out-of-state. Idaho is doing a big business now. We are surrounded by creditable sources who are telling us what is going on. That is the reality of TODAY projected into the future. That is what each city has to bank on regarding how they manage the overall services to a city and the budget for the city.
Each contributor is reflecting on their own experience and impact on them personally. From a cities’ perspective they have to consider how the total impact is affecting their ability to provide the required services to the whole city.
Bean Bag is sitting up where we are encountering major problems at Foot Hill Park. It is a “density” issue, a “parking issue”, a “financial issue”, a “personnel issue”.
As to people at SU – SU has to increase the housing for it’s students. Does it reward it’s students for chastising a city to provide housing? SU has open land – a rarity. The city does not have open land.
How about all of the EPA contributors -look at all of the new housing in that city. Whole sections are being rebuilt with new housing. And charter schools. How can they sit there and call for new housing when it is happening in their city? Go chastise your own city for new housing.
Advocacy groups abound with their dedicated members citing their rendition of purpose. Advocacy groups make a business of telling everyone else what is going on with no recognition of what is going on.
quotation > “I – like every other home owner – am besieged by real estate people continually “informing” the home owners how much their home is worth and how fast they can turn it over.”
∆ You should be grateful that your home has increased in value, is in a desirable locale and has many potential buyers willing to pay top dollar (especially from overseas).
That said…it is downright selfish to deprive others who wish to reside in Palo Alto but due to affordability constraints, can only opt for a condo or mixed-usage high-rise dwelling.
The essence of further development is to assure reasonable housing provisions for all, including teachers, high-tech employees, and service people earning below median incomes.
As a real estate agent, I strive to fit all of my clients into dwellings they not only appreciate but can afford.
It is time for many Palo Alto NIMBYs to look beyond themselves and to do their part towards accepting others regardless of one’s race, color or creed and certain earning capacities.
Perhaps this restrictive mindset is why the Foothills Park opening became such a controversial issue.
A closed door policy is oftentimes symbolic of a closed mind.
AN RE Agent from Portola Valley? What is happening in Portola Valley? City residents are trying to stop SU from building housing on their pristine hills. That housing is for the people who post on this blog – advanced degree people.
Obviously the city of Portola Valley is demonstrating the very qualities you are choosing to identify – which is simply a statement of what is happening right now.
And using the race card has no application to the city of PA – but has a lot to do with the city of Portola Valley.
FHP is a demonstration of all of the faults of density, parking, city personnel, city finances, lack of good planning. The tax payers expect more from the state, county, and city.
Is Portola Valley in San Mateo County? This is what I call the “Shoehorn Effect” – off load all of the bothersome issues onto some other city – not your city.
East Palo Alto is going through a gentrification process. New neighborhoods in the area of the shopping center. Charter schools. New buildings in process. That is viewed as a positive. All levels of housing available.
Now look at some of the postings for Palo Alto. Some people are looking for a reverse of gentrification. Yes – a four-plex in a R-1 single housing location is reverse gentrification. And they are trying to wrap this in “feel good” narratives worthy of a stage actor, aka politician. Let’s call this what it is. And it seems to be aimed at Palo Alto. Duly noted.
Jem, I’m sorry to disappoint you but you might have drunk the cool-aid of
expecting “affordable”, BMR, housing here in Palo Alto. Why won’t that happen?
Well, as you have already noticed, all the affordable housing have closed their waiting lists. Very little “affordable” is being built in Palo Alto because that kind of housing needs to be funded by our city, through loans, or private non-profit agencies. No for-profit developers will build 100% affordable housing! Sorry that you have to live in your van. Maybe you should move to another state where you can hopefully work toward, HOME OWNERSHIP. That is the only way you can build wealth!
California is the most highly taxed state in the union. If you look at Zillow and the newspapers there are higher and lower cost of living areas in the state. The coast line is higher cost by definition. The inner sections of CA are very reasonable. Why do people then go to one of the highest cost of living sections in the country if they do not have the educational resources for employment? And this specific location the employment is in a very specific skill set. You can read the ads for employment in the paper. Throughout the coastal regions there are job centers with more diversity – airports, ship ports. Shopping centers are going out of business so that is one area of employment that has suffered. The food industry has suffered.
Relatives in SOCAL in the Riverside, San Bernardino area have a lot of space to spread out and a lower cost of living. Given climate issues SOCAL is a better choice for lower cost in utilities and people who have fewer resource choices.
Why focus on Palo Alto? it is no different than other cities in the bay area. Focus on the decision making of the individual that is not sitting down and making good life decisions. I know I cannot afford Beverly Hills, Malibu, Atherton, Hillsborough. I am not sitting around grinding my teeth over that fact. People have to organize what they have and recognize where they need to be to best fit those facts. And it is not the cities job to fund people who cannot make good life decisions when all of the facts are there and available. This city is built out to the borders. Trying to shame is into some other fact is not going to work.
The hypocrisy of focusing on Palo Alto while ignoring Portola Valley, Atherton, Los Altos Hills, Woodside etc is staggering but keeps the YIMBY shills busy.
Re prices, when I moved here decades ago from Princeton, NJ, I snarked, “Add a zero to the price and shrink the lot size by a factor of 3 or 4.” I got my first tax bill and shocked my land was assessed at more than the house — which means there’s no way there’s going to “affordable” housing here.
Look at prices around the country: lots of wonderful houses in interesting diverse college towns for much less than here. Muxh Lower taxes, too.
Re employment, the tech industry is working so tirelessly to automate jobs out of existence I shudder to think where we’ll be with all the truck drivers, factory workers, customer service people etc. out of work. They just spent $220,000,000 to avoid making their “gig workers” full-time employees with benefits and stock options. Now they’re being sued for violating their promises to pay the gig workers at least minimum wage albeit still no benefits.
The same delivery companies that pushed up prices on the restaurant industry are now successfully pitching their cheap delivery services to companies like Safeway as cheaper replacements for their employees — until they can automate their fleets with self-driving vehicles and drones.
We’ve already got a rapidly growing homeless population, increased crime as people struggle to survive, etc. I shudder to think where we’ll be in 20 years.
Joe Garofoli is the political columnist for the SFC in their Sunday papers. He reports on the political activity focusing on what ever the topic of day is. He is now incorporating a feature on why people leave – California Exit Interview. It reports how the decision was made, monetary differences between where the person was in the city and now where they are now – this week Arizona. The whole decision making process is provided by the person who moved. So far these are young millennials who have employment opportunities and are well-qualified to make good decisions which they are going to live with. So far it is a good section to read as well as instructive. The price differences are staggering. When you look at the rent in SF vs the rent they are now paying you can see that they have a path forward to create a better life.
I am concerned that there are activist groups who are egging people to come here with some promise that the state is going to provide funds. So far the state is in big trouble and that is not going to happen. The city of SF is not bailing people out – it is a major city. Why focus on PA? why not SF?
Meet ABAGS demands, or meet our climate goals. Choose one.
Understand the difference between single family housing and a commercially owned living complex. Property taxes are paid by a single family owned house. When the house is sold the property tax is automatically updated to the current sales price. If you look at the papers houses are being sold on a continual basis. That is a continual revenue stream to the city and county for all of those bond issues you see on the property tax bill. The bond issue assume that there will be a continual revenue stream to support the assumed budgets.
In a commercially owned apartment complex the property tax is at the last selling price of the building. The continual steam of renters never see the property tax bill and the rent keeps going up to reach current market value. That is profit for the commercial owner. As the rent is raised that is more profit for the owner. The renter is then caught in the cross-hairs of being pushed out for some one who will pay a higher rent.
I was in San Jose for my shot and the area of First Street and Zanker at Tasman and there are huge apartment complexes which are little cities in themselves. They are sitting in the middle of huge business buildings – Broadband, Cisco, Samsung, etc.
That is appropriate for that location. It is very impressive. That is not going to happen here because we do not have open land like in that location.
The bottom line is that there is no value to the city to destruct the single family owned neighborhood. There is little value to the renter because they are at the mercy of the builder who will be keeping the rent at market value. Apartments on ECR are subject to more cost control because they were given some restrictions to build there. They are monitored more closely to meet some requirements. The city benefits by the continual selling of residential single owner homes, the county benefits. More tax money generated produces more services to the taxpayers – all taxpayers.
previously quoted…
“The bottom line is that there is no value to the city to destruct the single family owned neighborhood.”
I agree and speaking as a real estate agent, some Palo Alto homeowners should simply invest in their respective neighborhoods by remodeling and/or refurbishing their existing residencies to make them more appealing to other homebuyers which means even more $$ at the time of sale.
There are many nicely maintained neighborhoods in Palo Alto while others are absolutely horrendous and to expect top dollar just because of a zip code borders on ludicrous although many newer homebuyers are willing to make the financial sacrifice.
As Resident 1-Adobe has seemingly emphasized, there are other locales to reside but many current Palo Alto residents should seriously consider making their properties a bit more presentable if they still want to call Palo Alto an exclusive community.
When a single-family owned house is getting ready to be sold the real estate agencies help by identifying issues that need to be corrected to bring the house up to current specifications. That is termite, infrastructure issues, plumbing issues. Also they help with the outside plantings for better appeal on the street view. New paint job, new fencing. I know that I now have to have a fan in the Master bath to be up to spec – a window does not cut it.
Meanwhile the commercial owner has no stipulation to upgrade spec issues and touchy topic like mold, termites, water leakage because the tenants are just victims of what ever the current status is. The tenant in a commercial building is at the mercy of the commercial owner.
Like to remind people here that Santa Clara County is one of the highest cost of living counties in the state. Medicare is evaluated by county and all things relative to the state government are determined by county. Los Angeles has a wider variety of housing – unlimited choices, and lower health care rates.
The people who live here are paying out for higher cost of goods, higher cost of food, higher cost of the home improvements and required updates to the homes for breakage. When people pop up with schemes to further complicate the high cost of living in this area then watch out. The taxpayer in Santa Clara County is already taxed to the limit.
Re the bathroom fan, we took a class on remodeling baths and kitchens years ago and the instructor started reviewing some of the absurd regs in addition to the bathroom fan like motion-sensitive bathroom lights that automatically shut off after a specific time when no motion has been detected.
HELLO! You might be soaking in the tub or sitting on the toilet or standing there brushing your teeth and suddenly you’re stuck in the dark!!
The people in the class were horrified and discouraged. The guest contractor lecturers spoke about how they could disable the fixes required for $$$$ after the remodel passed inspection.
I shudder to think of what the genius bureaucrats have since come up with since.
“There are many nicely maintained neighborhoods in Palo Alto while others are absolutely horrendous and to expect top dollar just because of a zip code borders on ludicrous…”
∆ Concurring but some folks simply do not take pride in their appearances whether it be personal or residential.
Still Palo Alto residential real estate commands top dollar.
“When a single-family owned house is getting ready to be sold the real estate agencies help by identifying issues that need to be corrected to bring the house up to current specifications.”
∆ Like preparing for a first date where one wishes to make the best first appearance?
“There are many nicely maintained neighborhoods in Palo Alto while others are absolutely horrendous and to expect top dollar just because of a zip code borders on ludicrous…”
∆ Concurring but some folks simply do not take pride in their appearances whether it be personal or residential.
Still Palo Alto residential real estate commands top dollar.
“When a single-family owned house is getting ready to be sold the real estate agencies help by identifying issues that need to be corrected to bring the house up to current specifications.”
∆ Like preparing for a first date where one wishes to make the best possible first impression?
Cavendish – in order to make the home transfer of ownership the T’s have to be crossed and the I’s dotted. Multiple agencies review all to make sure that the house is up to spec. And that can change on any day. I wanted to upgrade the bathroom and the company refused because there was no bathroom fan. So I have to hire a specialist on bathroom upgrades that can also put in the fan. I think the city then signs off on that. And of course that increases the property tax depending on what type of upgrade level a person gets to. Being a home owner is a lot of work. Being a renter depending on your circumstance is better but you have no guarantee the rent will not go up.