We need more affordable housing for our Firefighters and Police Officers.

A lot of misinformation in this article:

1) Last year's referendum (Measure D) was not about affordable housing, it was about wheather to rezone a property for high density development along a safe schools traffic route.

2) Comparing Palo Alto (population 63,000, 25 square miles) to Austin, Texas (population 840,000, 321 square miles), or Seattle, WA (population 634,000, 140 square miles) is comparing apples to oranges. The reporter should compare San Jose (population 980,000, 179 square miles) to Austin or Seattle - San Jose's median price in 2012 was $465,000. Of course apples to apples comparisons don't support their argument to turn Palo Alto into a high density housing mecca, so they make false comparisons.

3) The article says 42,000 jobs were added to Santa Clara County, but only 7,526 housing units created. During that same period there were over 1500 bank owned properties for sale, and over 4,200 housing units listed as "short sales" where the owner owes more to the bank than the house would sell for - those type of condition can make it much more difficult to fund housing development.

I find it very biased that the speakers are all slanted towards making the case of high density development in Palo Alto - as if Palo Alto has to carry the burden for all of Santa Clara County.

My perception of "Our Palo Alto" is it's a PR campaign for high density development, not a program to collect our feedback on what we want our city to be.

common sense - thank you for the corrections and your smart comments, which I agree with. The place comparisons just don't make sense.

The article does seem to get the idea across that your town is trying to shoulder too big of a burden. I'm all for affordable housing, but trying to cram in more places to live in a city bounded on one side by water is silly. That's not factoring in current traffic, lack of public transpo, etc. This all applies to immediate surrounding cities abutting the bay, too.

As much as I admire much of the smart planning for high density housing that exists in some parts of Europe, a good chunk of it was built *before* high population increases, not after, so duh - much easier to do. Also, much of it is ugly.

The push in this area for high density housing and cycling, plus the actual traffic increases are not a recipe for safety, if current trends are indicative.

Palo Alto hasn't been affordable, by & large, for quite sometime - why is it suddenly trying to be?

>Palo Alto hasn't been affordable, by & large, for quite sometime - why is it suddenly trying to be?

You know what they say when you find yourself in a hole, is to stop digging. There is a difference between Palo Alto being an expensive place to live, and being a place that is literally unaffordable, i.e. most people that work in the city, as well as most who live in it currently, couldn't afford to buy in here.

Yet, every house that goes on the market or every rental that becomes available is snapped up before you can blink your eyes. So obviously there are plenty of people who can afford PA.

Many teachers and police etc do not want to live in the community they live for good reasons. Also couples often work on different cities. Expecting people to want to live where they work is not realistic.

Interesting that two of the comments above mention traffic, yet no one discusses the biggest creator of that problem -- the place I call Winchester University (they just can't stop building). When all the new buildings are finished, they are going to need thousands more low-level, poorly paid employees who cannot afford to live anywhere near PA. They will be commuting and adding to the already bad traffic.

I'm not an advocate of high-density living, but it would make sense not to add more and more employees if there isn't affordable housing available.

What if those feckless CEOs supported a rollback of Prop 13 which provides incentives for people not to put their homes back on the market? It was large corporations that quietly funded the campaign for Prop 13 and created the problem in the first place. It is corporations that most benefit from Prop 13. Now they whine about the nasty side effects--fewer parcels and homes go on the market, leading to low supply in a period of high demand. Surprise! High prices. Fix the mess you made. Stop whining.

Many of the people who worked in Palo Alto cold not buy in this town - starting when I first moved here in 1967. Saratoga has NO low-income housing; let ABAG go bug them. If anyone wants to live where there is high density living, move to SAn Francisco, San Jose, Los Angles, New York City etc.

By the way firefights (who are also paramedics today) make around $150k in San Mateo County.

Every new development in Palo Alto seems to be for office space--and large office buildings. On University (replacing MacArthur Park) Park Blvd, El Camino at Page Mill, California Ave, etc. Put in mixed use--retail on first floor and apartments above. You cannot keep growing office space and ignore housing. If every office development adjacent to residential areas or transit was required to be mixed use, you would soon meet your quota for housing and maybe even decrease the traffic (when people can live near where they work or near transit).

>Saratoga has NO low-income housing; let ABAG go bug them.

ABAG probably won't bug them because they aren't a major high density employment center like Palo Alto.

I don't understand why people single out teachers and fire fighter/ police officers for needing special deals for more affordable housing. There are many employees in every sector that can't afford housing in Palo Alto or other surrounding communities. Their jobs are no more or less important than others as a community requires workers from all sectors in order to thrive.

What's it like to grow up there now??? (class of '66) Even possible?

I agree with the insight provided by Common Sense. Defeating Measure D said NO to more dense housing in Palo Alto. As a home owner, our quality of life has been on a downward spiral since the mid 1980s given the dense development of commercial real estate, apartments, condos, and multifamily homes.

Here's the new message from Palo Altains: no more development.

New Start-ups can reside in the East Bay, East Palo Alto, or other parts of the country that can use their enterprise to revitalize those communities and spread the wealth of the new information economy.

Several factors contribute to our problem. As the article says, employment is growing and housing is not. We have a City Council that is deluded into thinking that bikes are the answer. Imagine biking from Fremont every day ... and that's nearby!
We need a car traffic and parking solution, and a part of that is NOT more housing and office space.
The article fuGenevieve Sharrow, whose firm MIG Consulting is helping the city compose its new Housing Element, told the audience that the city is facing a state mandate requiring it to identify sites for between 350 and 400 new housing units for the period of 2015-2023 (the city would not have to actually construct the units).
"It is really a goal for the city to try to meet by putting in place policies and helping the market facilitate this process," Sharrow said.
Most of Palo Alto's allocated 1,988 housing units can be rolled over from the existing Housing Element, which the city completed last year. rther states," NOTE: WE DON'T HAVE TO ACTUALLY BUILD THEM!
Finally, I've lived in Palo Alto for almost 40 years. The comments about Prop 13 are correct. We couldn't live here, where we raised our family and have been retired for 15 years if not for Prop 13.
When I was earning money and paid for my home, my salary was nowhere near what is the "average" today.
(And I didn't have to compete for housing with people who've cashed out stock options or with rich foreign nationals.)
The end result of Palo Alto's building and traffic policies is squeezing out those of us who spent years making the city and our school system what it is.

Louie - excellent points. THANK YOU. Same on this end - given the huge increase in property values (driven by the Tech Industry, cashed out stock option types, foreign nationals, second Gold-Rush buyers from all over the nation) only PROP 13 allows a large portion of us 1978 and before residents to live here. Otherwise, we can not afford the property taxes on a retirement income. And if the trend continues (with urbanization and high tech density), then when the post 1978 buyers retire they too will either have to cash out and move or their kids who inherit their homes will have to do the same.

Of course, from a purely selfish perspective, if the urbanization of Palo Alto goes unabated and follows the same curve beginning in the early 1980s, then the current generation paying down on their homes may plan to move thirty-years from now anyways and won't care what Palo Alto looks like: a home that is just a cash cow for one's own retirement plans outside of the Bay Area or California. In contrast, I believe we are at a point where the density of housing, traffic, lack of parking, pollution, aggressive drivers, and crowds in general will begin to affect the value of all our properties. It certainly has impacted our quality of life.

The insane overdevelopment Downtown is creating a nightmare as the City
streets become more dangerous. Each of the last two mornings when I
went for coffee Downtown there were accidents just after I arrived, one on University and one on Ramona. On the way a bicyclist blew through a stop
sign at full speed as he signaled "left turn" in front of two cars, another potential accident. People need to understand the dimensions of the problems being created as more and more projects already approved are yet to be completed.The City is becoming a congested, ugly, commute and
construction zone, where everybody is in a hurry with delivery trucks clogging the streets and people searching for parking spaces. The infrastructure cannot handle this level of development. This City is being
over-run and absolutely ruined.

I first came to this area in 1964 and worked in Palo Alto. I did live in Palo Alto for a bit. I had two roommates. When I found a place on my own I moved to Mountain View. Many others who arrived at the same time did the same.
Palo alto has never been a low income place to live unless you could find an "in law" cottage or a room in a large house or had several roommates.
Many people I have known could buy a small cottage in palo alto, but decided to live in San Jose or the east bay because they wanted a newer or larger place.
Stop the development in palo alto.

You have deleted my text, while claiming I entered the wrong verification number, but I entered the correct number.

This housing problem can't be solved, without comment, but I see your browser is too tricky, to allow saving, of text, while your verification code nuisance does not work, properly.

Your editorials aren't worth the trouble, of receiving e-mail. Unsubscribed!

Lots of affordable housing in EPA......Just saying.......flame suit on....

Interesting to note that Palo Alto is hiring a consulting firm MIG to do the Council's dirty work. City Leaders don't want to deal with the heat of all their up zoning and stack and pack housing, so they hand it off to a committee and a consulting firm. I'm sure if the City supports ABAG numbers/allotments, they can find 1 City Planner to do this work. If they don't agree with ABAG's criteria then they should use the City Attorney to sue ABAG's numbers and criteria so that our City can start controlling its own land use decisions. Native Palo Altan

Keep in mind that ABAG would. to be hassling us if so many business and corporations had not moved here! Far more people work here than live here, in what was always a bedroom community-- hence the imbalance Stop trying to turn this into an urban nightmare.

Here's a recent thread about how to find a lot of those housing units without controversy, increasing traffic, or building new buildings:
Web Link

"the county added about 42,000 jobs since 2012, it has only constructed 7,526 homes, she said."

does anyone know where the info on jobs and housing come from?

how are new jobs reported, and are jobs lost netted out?

county numbers?


"the county added about 42,000 jobs since 2012, it has only constructed 7,526 homes, she said."

does anyone know where the info on jobs and housing come from?

how are new jobs reported, and are jobs lost netted out?"


also wonder how reliable this data is

A "Open Forum" article appeared in the weekend papers - SF Chronicle - "Suburbs key to easing imbalance". This is written from the point of view of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose which are - have been targeted for high density development. The article is lamenting that local small / suburban cities work to prohibit high density growth.

The article is pushing for regional planning which pushes the density development down into the suburbs where local companies locate their businesses - Facebook in Menlo Park; Google in Mountain View; Yahoo in Sunnyvale; Pleasanton - Safeway; San Ramon - Chevron; Cupertino - Apple. The Open Forum is authored by a San Francisco senior staff attorney at a civil rights law firm - Public Advocates, Inc.

The article misses that many of those companies have divisions in the downtown city of San Francisco. Most companies now have divisions scattered around where the younger employees live.

A central theme I see in this whole issue is that the ownership of property is being shifted from individuals to large developments owned by corporations. The individual is being replaced by the corporation as the owner of property. Not good.

The other thing the article misses is that the suburbs don't have adequate public transportation nor do they have the walkability to services and essential items like grocery stores that are available in Cities.

The other thing that I wish they had commented on was the fact that Google wanted to build housing for its workers near the Googleplex in Mountain View and the City of Mountain View refused to let them. Doesn't make much sense to me....

Final thought - along El Camino in all of these towns, we should get over our fear of taller housing developments. Not 50 stories, but there could easily be 10-12 story buildings in a few spots in Palo Alto.

Mountain View has some big issues that the EPA is addressing. Moffett Field is a super fund site which precludes it for housing. There is seepage of toxic chemicals in the sewer system that is moving into the current housing areas. The EPA is busy tracking this and has community meetings it puts on to address this problem. Most closed military bases are super fund sites that require a lot of work to clean up. A lot of government attention and funding is being focused on the clean-up of this problem. Every location you look at may have some residing problem that qualifies how the property is used.