Interesting, informative and engaging article.  But there is a voice missing here.  That of the YOU the people that live here, those of us living in the most impacted areas, like Ventura.   The height, massing and parking restrictions are in place for a reason.  We need them to guard against traffic, parking and congestion that our infrastructure just can't handle right now, that the neighborhoods were not laid out to absorb.

We grow weary of the double-standard, of the call for more housing while runaway office development is permitted, while perfectly good opportunities like the VTA lot are being given away to developers, while giant developers run roughshod over neighborhood zoning protections.   Feel good terms like “affordable housing” are manipulated into getting folks to buy into supporting housing giveaways for rich people and accelerating institutional incursions into neighborhoods. 

The impacts of runaway expansion by the Stanford General Use Permit, which we are handing that noble institution on a platter, Palantir, Google, etc. are being forced on to the people that live here.   One example, of many:  the City is contemplating handing the developer Windy Hill a sweet deal, up-zoning a property and getting virtually nothing for it.  That lot could be 100% BMR (BELOW MARKET RATE) housing. The City has that power.  So please don't talk to me about the struggles the City is having housing people. Why must residents bear the social costs and reap NO benefits, struggling to get a fair hearing in the press or at City Hall? Our voices need to be heard, not just those with vested interests.

Corporations and developers seek to drown out our voices.  They are building, expanding and BACKING elected officials and working behind the scenes with some of our city staff and some housing advocates to skew the narrative to demonize the people that live here into fossils and NIMBYS and reactionaries.  We are, by and large nice people, who love our neighborhoods and the way of life that we have worked hard for, the beloved culture we have contributed to.  We the people have made Palo Alto into an amazing community in which to live and now we’re ask to get out of the way for the demolition teams.


When our voices are left out of the conversation as this article does, we must not let ourselves be paved over, silenced or forgotten. We will not “go gentle into that good night.”

" In 2013, the council effectively abolished the PC zone after voters overturned the council's last PC approval — an application from the nonprofit Palo Alto Housing to build 60 apartments for low-income seniors and 12 market-rate single-family homes on a former orchard on Maybell Avenue. In freezing PCs, the council all but ensured that projects like the Maybell development won't even have a chance to go through the city's infamously grueling approval process."

Maybell was the single greatest tragedy and demonstrated lack of compassion by the local residents is recent Palo Alto history. The land has since been squandered on a few luxury homes at way below allowable zoning. A true example of egregious NIMBY behavior.

I beg the Planning and Transportation Committee and City Council to avoid mechanical residential parking lifts in their "parking lite" venture - at all costs. The one at May-field Place is unwieldy, too complicated and breaks down frequently. When it's not in service no-one can get their car in or out.Loss of work time, late for school and generally a major pain. Consequently everyone including, Vista Center and Fambrini's is squeezing into a less than 45 designated spaces in the outside lot.As well they are forced to park in the College Terrace and California Ave neighborhoods and adjacent business' - it's also forcing children to cross El Camino - highly dangerous!! My friend figures they spent 2 million on this type of "electronic parking valet" that is "user unfriendly" and far from meets a reasonable parking accommodation for busy working families who have to come and go throughout their day. She is under a lot of stress finding parking for her family.

"Palo Alto's housing production seems especially paltry in the context of the region."

Simple enough explanation: Palo Alto is largely built out while other areas of the region had/have space available for infill. We should expect that our housing will always lag behind the region's and that we will NEVER balance the jobs:housing equation. We could help ourselves, though, by curbing our enthusiasm for new commercial development.

There's another solution that requires a lot less hand-wringing and expense. Just take some of the overbuilt office space around here and make it housing. Two birds, one stone--fewer jobs, more housing.

" Mayor Liz Kniss, one of the council's staunchest housing advocates"

And during her multi-year terms on the council one of the staunchest advocates for commercial developers of offices, Even though it has been clear for decades that Palo Alto had a housing shortage.

"Maybell was the single greatest tragedy and demonstrated lack of compassion by the local residents is recent Palo Alto history. The land has since been squandered on a few luxury homes at way below allowable zoning. A true example of egregious NIMBY behavior."

I saw lots of compassion by local residents. It was completely unbending proponents of a plan that was largely for-profit and utterly insensitive to the context, safety, and overdevelopment -- proponents who were unwilling to this day to do anything but smear, libel, and believe the worst of their neighbors as your post evidences -- who are largely responsible for the lack of affordable housing resulting from that situation..

Unlike the example of Eden housing given above, no one ever tried to make the focus at Maybell just the affordable housing, except the maligned neighbors who were and are being accused of being NIMBY's. The insistence of advocates of avoiding the unpleasant fact that Maybell proposal was a majority for-profit development, and that the profits of the upzoned for-profit homes were only going to the developer is what doomed the project.

Yes, the fact that advocates treated it like a NIMBY situation, when I know for a fact that neighbors approached City Councilmembers to see how to address the overdevelopment while keeping the affordable housing, and asked in public meetings for a "working group" like the one the same people and the same neighborhood used to keep Terman School AND produce affordable housing 20 years earlier -- yes, the fact that advocates were so unbending, unrealistic, nasty, and uncharitable toward other residents is a real tragedy even today.

The fact that the same people keep harping on that like it was a loss for affordable housing, when the additional $15 million that was used to save Buena Vista came from the sale of Maybell is hypocritical and largely responsible for an utter lack of collaboration to focus on affordable housing today. Perhaps these people recall that an offer of about $15 million was made early and rejected, but $30million (after the Maybell referendum when it became clear to the developer that the neighborhood would never allow their proposed upzoning) was accepted (the additional $15 million coming from the sale of Maybell).

There is no way Buena Vista would have been saved if Maybell had gone the other way, and this was a motivation of many of the maligned residents to push hard to overturn the rezoning, despite the neverending nastiness of advocates. The political situation at the time was such that City Council believed residents could never win a land use referendum, so no developer had any reason to believe Buena Vista couldn't be upzoned. If you recall, the developer pulled out just after the referendum was successful.

I personally know many people responsible for civic assets in our town who were ready to roll up their sleeves for the affordable housing at Maybell who were so hurt by what the proponents did that they haven't been involved since. The Weekly hasn't helped in the obvious bias toward those willing to wield their easy but false smears against good people.

So long as the self-serving, false, and vitriolic attitudes by supposed advocates prevents them from ever seeing the goodwill in their neighbors or reaching out to people who were trying to work for their cause (while also having their needs and concerns respected), the cause of affordable housing will indeed be stunted in our area.

The real tragedy is that those who remember Maybell as a cartoonish NIMBY vs affordable housing are only preventing residents from coming together to counter the real villain here: companies overpopulating Palo Alto and not moving where they can grow but instead wanting to turn it into a company town, and the developers who want to cash in by dangerously overdeveloping beyond what the infrastructure can handle.

Posted by Native to the Bay, a resident of Leland Manor/Garland Drive

>> I beg the Planning and Transportation Committee and City Council to avoid mechanical residential parking lifts in their "parking lite" venture - at all costs. The one at May-field Place is unwieldy, too complicated and breaks down frequently.

I haven't seen it action. But, IIRC, 70 small 1-bath units on 1.8 "mixed use" acres. I don't know how many jobs were added in the mixed use part, but, 1.8 acres in 30/acre townhouses would be 54 nice-sized well-parked units. And no added jobs. Which would -you- rather have? But, of course, that wasn't an option because the land would have "cost too much". It is a trap that we will never get out of unless we stop building new office space.

Annette, Amen! Cramming more housing units into a built-out town is just going to make both the residents who are already here and the ones being crammed in less content with their living situation.

And, yes, why not convert the office space into residential when and if one of these small tech companies either outgrows its space or goes belly up. It is "two birds one stone", cutting down on commuters coming into town and creating space for service workers who want to live near their jobs.

Why not also look to other cities like Los Altos, Woodside, and Atherton? How are they exempt from sharing the responsibility of providing affordable housing?

Housing, to the rescue, again and again. I was getting a little worried that there wouldn't be much for us commenters to talk about and hash around and post on PAO. Now we've got enough material to sustain us for a couple weeks at least. C'mon, lighten up. I'm just trying to add a little humor into this. Blame Jay Thorwaldson...he's the one who started all this with his "Off Deadline" columns. I'm just kidding, Jay. Hope to meet and have coffee with you again, sometime soon. Now to the more serious stuff.

@Becky Sanders

Excellent response. I could tell it was from your heart. It affects your neighborhood, not mine, nor neighborhoods of anyone sitting on CC. It's so easy for TPC to create new zoning, or raise from the dead, old zoning, and approve and pass on to CC for approval, housing projects in other neighborhoods that will dramatically affect d fffand change the character of those neighborhoods.

I loved your point about an opportunity missed/lost for BMR housing at the VTA site. Money talks! And our commissioners and CC listen.

Oh, the goals 'dreamers' set. I had one. I was going to play an even par round of golf at Paly. All I could muster was breaking 80 twice.

"For Mayor Liz Kniss, one of the council's staunchest housing advocates, the Housing Work Plan represents a chance for the city to get out of the housing slump. Just minutes after her election as mayor in January, Kniss told the crowd assembled in City Hall that Palo Alto needs to get "more creative" on housing and made a pitch for approving one senior-housing project this year. She also acknowledged the pushback the council will likely receive from the community as it considers new housing projects and asked residents to "keep an open mind" when those projects get to the council for approval."

I like Liz, for what she's done and how well she's served us for so many years in the past, but, her current optimism on housing leaves me a little puzzled. I don't question her sincerity, or sanity, or that of any other CC members, but wonder if they won't feel a little silly, maybe stupid, when they will be so far off from meeting their housing goals of 300 units/yr! What parcels in town do they know about, where 300 units can be built next year...if they can convince developers to build them? One year in and we're already under water.
No chance for 300 units this year.

As long as housing will be the main topic, and often the only topic, there is little chance much progress can be made. We should all thank Fran Wagstaff for all the good work she did years ago. If we, locally and regionally, can't solve the transit, transportation, infrastructure, and parking issues that plague us, and they go along with housing, then I really worry about the future of 'my town'.

@Online Name from Barron Park,

Excellent points. Remember that Los Altos's city charter requires them to put residents' needs first. Also compare their representation on commissions and town councils vs ours. Remember 4 years ago they banned our most aggressive Planning & Transportation official from pushing his over-development policies on them, telling him to stick to Palo Alto.

Los Altos official blasts Palo Alto planning commissioner

Original post made by My Nguyen, Old Palo Alto, on Dec 9, 2014

Web Link

@Online Name

I think it's based on the number of businesses, i.e., jobs and employees in the towns/cities. Bedroom communities are exempt. Not many businesses there...just house maids, handymen, gardeners, pool cleaners, and home care providers who commute there to work. Being rich has it's rewards. Always!

I still love my bungalow in SPA.

You do the editing on my jumbled/misspelled words in my first comment. You know what I meant. That's what's important.

@Stop the defamation of your neighbors will help

you said:
"utterly insensitive...smear, libel, and believe the worst of their neighbors .... advocates were so unbending, unrealistic, nasty, and uncharitable...
keep harping ... utter lack of collaboration ... neverending nastiness of advocates.... smears against good people ... self-serving, false, and vitriolic attitudes by supposed advocates "

Hello Pot. This is the kettle.

"@Stop the defamation of your neighbors will help

you said:
"utterly insensitive...smear, libel, and believe the worst of their neighbors .... advocates were so unbending, unrealistic, nasty, and uncharitable...
keep harping ... utter lack of collaboration ... neverending nastiness of advocates.... smears against good people ... self-serving, false, and vitriolic attitudes by supposed advocates "

Objective observations such as you catalog here are defamatory only if their objective does not deserve them. Their objective richly deserves them.

I have watched our "affordable housing" advocates in action many times, desperately pushing their visions onto other neighborhoods to keep them from happening in their own precious R-1 enclaves. Such hypocrites earn and deserve all the objective cataloging of their tactics that their observers care to compile.

Writing to applaud Becky Sanders for an excellent response. I hope CC reads what you wrote and takes it to heart in their deliberations.

I also applaud JH for pointing out the irony of our mayor being a staunch supporter of housing. First she promotes the development that is in large part responsible for the problems the city faces, then she promotes a solution that requires - wait for it - MORE development. However you slice it, development is at the core of what she promotes most. Small wonder that she (and others with the same mindset) have enjoyed developer donations to their campaign funds.

But it is not yet too late to apply the brakes and press for sustainable, smart growth. Attend Council meetings, watch if you cannot, write to the City and Council Members, engage with your neighborhood, and cast informed votes instead of name recognition votes. It is worth keeping in mind that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. We do need to accommodate some growth, but we don't have to be dense about it.

To Native to the Bay, “The electronic parking valet at May-field Place is unwieldy, too complicated and breaks down frequently.”

As a College Terrace resident I have discovered that these types of lift parts and retrodpgrades have to be ordered months and months in advance and can only come from Germany. It takes six to twelve months to arrive by sea. These unfortunate local family residents have to endure overcrowding, unsafe street parking and lift situations with robotic moving parts - all while their infant and toddler children potentially roam while parking curbside near El Camino or a three ton vehicle “lifts” into p place. tenants are afraid of losing this outside surface parking so remotely “idle” their vehicles for 30minutes in a temporary spot before leaving their apartment and to enter their car. vehement off site neighbors and out of towners continue to park in very limited overburdened Mayfield Place Visitor and Handicap spots. Meaning: Retail and visitor parking is priority, above and beyond city residents. A 95 car capacity “auto lift” virtually remains empty. The lift does not accommodate for trucks or larger SUV’s or Sienna mini vans. What a tragic waist of resources and thousands of square footage of unused space - while the majority of residents scramble to find any empty spot within two or three blocks of the complex. I am asking the Planning and Transpotation Commission and City Council to remedy this dire family parking crisis immediately.

Again, there is no such thing as "affordable housing" just subsidized housing. Atherton understands this, as does candidate for governor Chiang (treasurer of state). Look at Silicon Valley as a whole and there's massive amounts of land that can be developed as apartment houses, a real estate investors first choice now. The problem: government. Government evolves Silicon Valley should engineer. The prime case in point: The Buena Vista boondogle, less for much more. " . . . The great Santa Cruz land swindle." Google. The only real investors in apartment houses are looking to invest in Oregon and Washington state where rent control is against the law and property is intelligently utilized and respected.

I'm sorry but we need LESS housing, not more housing. We need to actually reduce some of the housing that has been built in the last 10 years. Quality of life is declining, more traffic, pollution, long lines everywhere. Few people will say this but it's true.

And now our newly elected local US Representative, Ro Khanna, is getting into the fray. He is a very brave man to speak out and say he didn't want to live in an area where Google and Facebook dominate and shape the future of SV, and cause the imbalance of affordable housing. Add in the wealthy foreign investors that pay cash for properties, and where does that leave us? Sadly, with the low income and even middle income folks left out of the American dream of home ownership! How much funding is available to support the subsidized housing for the very low income folks?

@george drysdale

Good points, and the final chapter, last act, of the BV misadventure, is still to come. No actors should come back on stage to take a bow on this one. As bad a deal as it was, it was probably the last and only hope of doing anything substantial for BMR housing in this very rich, elite town, while shamming to be inclusive.

The CC candidates can't avoid it. They will have to address and talk about housing, how much they support it, how they plan to move it along to meet the goal of adding 300 units per year, while trying to explain why not much has been done during the last decade or two. Hold the line, all you loosely defined and falsely accused NIMBY's. Put the burden back on them. There were never enough NIMBY's to influence what happened...well maybe that little fuss-up about Maybell, but that went thru a legal process to get it on the ballot, and the people spoke. Can we stop talking about that? It's old news.

Another plus for mayor Liz Kniss...her letter opposing state legislation re housing that takes decisions out of local government control. If I remember correctly there was a little tea tax fuss-up that resulted in a party in Boston Harbor quite a long time ago, around the time we became a nation.

The Bay Area has a population in excess of 7 million people, most of whom would love to live in Palo Alto. The only way to make homes in Palo Alto "affordable" for everyone who wants to come is to reduce the number of people who want to come by making Palo Alto as congested and overpopulated as Los Angeles.

That seem to be the goal of Palo Alto Online and our own duplicitous "public servants," and they're rapidly getting their way. I suppose at least no one will envy us then, since we'll all be equally miserable.

If you want to understand City Hall's priorities, don't listen to what they say, watch what they do.

Back in December 2016, City Council voted to increase development fees for office buildings to $60 per square foot with the proceeds marked for affordable housing.

Just three months later, the newly sworn-in uber-growth contingent (Adrian Fine, Cory Wolbach, Greg Scharff, Greg Tanaka, and Liz Kniss) voted to nearly halve this rate to $35 per square foot.

At the time, Mr. Fine said "We don't want to use fees to punish development or halt office growth."

See Web Link

It seems very clear that the gang-of-five Council majority favors office development over affordable housing.

My feeling is that halting office growth is exactly what we do want to do. As long as developers have the possibility of building offices -- which is the most lucrative option -- they will remain far less interested in housing of any kind.

Off the top of my head, it seems we could address a variety of issues if we:

- Put a moratorium on office development
- Eliminate developer perks such as increased density, reduced parking, etc.
- Incentivize the conversion of offices to housing
- Increase the required percentage of below-market units

Deprived of massive office expansion and unnecessary giveaways, developers would find a way to be maximize profit by accommodating market and below-market units within a single property.

This would help balance both the jobs-housing ratio and inbound vs. outbound traffic flow. More residents and fewer workers would help support retail. And last but not least, my understanding is that people with lower-incomes achieve better outcomes when they reside in mixed-income settings rather than segregated projects.

@ Lost Opportunity: Sorry but you choose to ignore the facts on the proposed Maybell project. The project could have been built within the existing zoning requirements. But instead they wanted to go too high, too dense and under-parked. [Portion removed.]

"It seems very clear that the gang-of-five Council majority favors office development over affordable housing."

Hear, hear. Their current enthusiasm for affordable housing rings as hollowly as their faux residentialism they used to get themselves elected. But they had an objective on that round of prevarication, so we must ask what their present goal might be.

I see a stalking horse campaign to kill the 50 ft height limit under the guise of building affordable housing. That accomplished, we will learn that, my oh my, developers will build affordable housing only as microscopic inclusions in huge office developments, which Kniss and the Kids will swiftly approve. Then, as with the discredited PC giveaway process, even the few ostensibly required affordable housing units will quietly fail to appear in our spanking new 15-story office towers.

@Crescent Park Dad
Re Maybell - the referenced poster is right.
“The land has since been squandered on a few luxury homes at way below allowable zoning. A true example of egregious NIMBY behavior”

The locals caused that underdevelopment. They just didn’t want any development at all and fought till it was WAY below existing zoning.

Please reduce housing. We have too much housing at it is. Traffic, pollution are at the highest level in Palo Alto history. Stop ruining the city.

It's not enough to reduce housing, which is one of two factors that are absolutely destroying P.A. and its way of life. Commercial development must be halted for a decade or so. There are too many jobs here, on top of too many people, both day visitors and permanent residents. P.A. has no capacity or capability to accommodating either at this level, let alone with the crazy levels off development and densifications the Uber development crowd has in mind. This town is built out, and its infrastructure on all levels is that of a small town. The politicians over the years, through scandalous ineptitude and corruption have allowed it to develop way beyond its capacity, and now it is a horror show that must be stopped.

Posted by mauricio, a resident of Embarcadero Oaks/Leland

>> It's not enough to reduce housing, which is one of two factors that are absolutely destroying P.A. and its way of life. Commercial development must be halted for a decade or so. There are too many jobs here, on top of too many people, both day visitors and permanent residents. P.A. has no capacity or capability to accommodating either at this level,

I have to disagree with the concept that added housing has created these problems. Recent additions to housing in Palo Alto have been modest. The traffic problems are the result of commuters and associated commercial activities. The commuters are a result of both additional office space development, and, over-utilization of existing office space. Engineers and programmers who don't appreciate sharing head lice with their neighbors should start insisting on their 100 square feet of space. Some of these new workstation areas are ridiculously overcrowded.

Palo Alto is too crowded and has too much crime for any new housing, especially low income housing. The city council supported the 29 million dollar purchase of the Buena Vista Trailer Park, which is a firetrap with excess housing. It deteriorates the neighborhood and affects property values and uses up most parking on Los Robles.

Not to mention we have to call the police to complain about noise from their endless Satuday night parties with blaring speakers. When I call the police they tell me that they have already gotten half a dozen calls about the noise.
The city really did a disservice to Palo Alto residents by supporting keeping that group of people togehter instead of building new housing for the other hundreds of people needing lower cost housing in Palo Alto.

@Jerry99
$40.4 Million
Web Link

Plus the the recent request for $30 Million more for repairs.

I hope the Council doesn't purposely misinterpret support for BMR housing as unconditional support for any and all ways of producing it. I'll bet public support for building BMR declines rapidly the further and further you deviate from the current zoning code to get it.

If City wants BMR projects, then City needs to use its funds to make zoning compliant BMR projects financially feasible. If any project should have been financially unviable it should have been a parking lot full of 50+ year old trailers. Yet at Buena Vista money was flying in from every direction... $15 million, $40 million, $70 million, up up and away. No amount of money is too much to preserve a parking lot full of trailers for all of eternity. If trailer park is financially feasible, so is CN zoned building at Wilton.

Three years ago PA met the State deadline to submit a report identifying new housing sites to be complaint with the RHNA mandated allocations. How can we residents see the report and the locations of the identified sites? How many developers/contractors have shown interest in building on those sites? If CC is really serious about adding 300 housing units per year then they must have already identified sites for this year's and at least the next 2-3 year's developments...one would think.

Would Fran Wagstaff please come out of retirement and help the folks at City Hall out on this?