Then please do nothing about SB 50 and kill it, including its companion bill in the assembly, Marc Berman. Please represent your actual constituents and say no to tall buildings built next door to single family homes ---- with very little parking!!!! And yes, that can happen in every neighborhood in Palo Alto if SB 50 passes.

Echoing "The Public Interest's" points. Kill SB50. We're already under-parked and gridlocked. Downtowns becoming office parks, with restaurants, retail and businesses serving residents being pushed out.

Decentralization out to committees is the opposite of what has happened in Washington the last several decades. Given the record in DC, this is probably a good thing.

Even if SB50 is shelved this is a losing battle for you. California is now a majority renter state and housing costs near jobs are out of control. Why should any of us let the Peninsula continue to push away housing and exacerbate this situation? Go sell your million dollar home and live somewhere that isn't the center of Silicon Valley if you don't want tall buildings near you, because the rest of us aren't going to keep paying ridiculous rents just so rich people can maintain their preferred type of suburbia and continue inflating their property values.

SB50 is terrible for renters. It’s so called protections are unenforceable in practice. Renters will be displaced in large numbers.

And it’s mostly about unaffordable market rate housing that does not “trickle down”.

It will soon come your way - we in Palo Alto expect you to do everything you can to kill SB50, Assemblyman Bergman.

@The Public Interest ---- Attacking rich people --- or anyone who owns a single family home in Silicon Valley --- really? that's your argument ?-- class warfare? So we see the real argument behind this: We should get to live in your town, just because jobs are located there. So who made the choice to accept a job in this town? Is that the only possible job to be had? Why not work closer to home? Why are we responsible for making your life work due to choices you made?

We do live in a capitalist market economy. And the reason that BART was created, like Caltrain, was to help bring workers to the job centers. Why not work on mass transit? And incentivizing jobs to locate closer to more affordable housing --- and closer to other communities?

Stop vilifying and smearing and blaming and guilting people.

Thanks again for this article and for teaming up with CalMatters.org, which does good work. As DC deadlooks while Sacramento moves away from deadlock, it is good to keep readers up to speed on how CA government works. It is too bad the posters above did not read this article -- which is about the workings of the Assembly and says nothing about Senate bills or housing.

One other thing to note is just how small the Assembly is. It has 80 members. When the US had a similar population (in the 1870s) it had 292 members. Given this, a newly elected Assembly member can find many things of value to work on (and show results to their constituents).

Oh that's rich to hear you talk about class warfare while exacerbating wealth and income disparity by trying to wall off your city and blame others for taking jobs there. People are rightfully fed up, and the passage of an SB50 or equivalent bill is inevitable.

"Go sell your million dollar home and live somewhere that isn't the center of Silicon Valley if you don't want tall buildings near you,"

It does seem to be about continuing to inflate home values, doesn't it?

There have been high-rise housing towers in Palo Alto for decades before the no-growthers rolled into town - The Marc, Leaning Chateau, the place at the end of Alma, Channing House, and the Birge Clark-esque high rise across from Laning Chateau. They are a mix of apartments, condos, and retirement units between all those buildings. Palo Alto did not die because high density housing was built. The process has been ongoing, at least until a small minority tried to block it.

Not to worry. SB50 is about to break the logjam.

It's the establishment stupid ... in a blue state where saying you are red is problematic, no one does it. Look in editorials, online or phone-in talk shows ... few admit to being Republicans or Conservatives, they claim to be independent or Libertarian. Half of CA Democrats are Republicans because after all since the 90's and Clinton the Democrats have veered farther right than Nixon and even Reagan, all done with the financing of the 1% and the collusion of the not-Liberal media.

The reality is that citizens cannot just assume we live in America and everything is fine and set forever. We find out we have to pay attention, work together, and ugh!, get along ... and we even have to try to understand the right-wing extremists and separate out the loonies from the one-track minded capitalists. The Founders told us this but we don't listen to well.

How come some comments can be liked some cannot?
All the ones I want to like cannot be liked:(

@Likebottom/Likebutton -- Try reloading the page. Sometimes that revives the buttons. Unless you have already clicked the like.