Read the full story here Web Link posted Friday, October 14, 2022, 6:55 AM
Town Square
Safe parking site offers refuge in one of the Bay Area's most expensive cities
Original post made on Oct 14, 2022
Read the full story here Web Link posted Friday, October 14, 2022, 6:55 AM
Comments (35)
a resident of Adobe-Meadow
on Oct 14, 2022 at 8:18 am
Lucille Waters is a registered user.
With all of its acreage, Stanford University should consider making space available for RV dwellers.
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Oct 14, 2022 at 8:24 am
felix is a registered user.
I am so grateful for Palo Alto’s Safe Parking Program, here and scattered around town.
And soon we will have 88 units of Transitional Housing.
The size of Ms. Reyes family (6) is why we must require developers to include larger units, not just studios and 1 bedrooms to house families.
a resident of Mountain View
on Oct 14, 2022 at 11:32 am
jhskrh is a registered user.
Kudos to PA Online for giving credit to cities that provide safe RV parking, meanwhile Mountain Voice chooses to focus only on those RV dwellers who refuse to even apply for safe parking, they do not report the downside of unrestricted street camping, crime, fires, sewage dumping. Their recent coverage highlights those RV dwellers who seem surprised that they have to obey the oversized vehicle ordinance after years of advance notice (while the lawsuit was being settled). I give credit to the Reyes family for using a dump station and keeping a clean space, I give also give credit to Mr Godinez for recognizing that another community might be a better fit for his budget.
a resident of Community Center
on Oct 14, 2022 at 11:40 am
jhskrh is a registered user.
@Lucille Waters - you can't be serious. Do you really think that Stanford would allow RV dwellers on their hallowed ground? Maybe they can also allocate some of their 29 Billion dollar endowment for a dump station, security, and social services.
a resident of Woodside
on Oct 14, 2022 at 11:50 am
Claudette is a registered user.
The Geng Road program sounds good. Offering services in addition to a space is what is needed. Offering dignity and safe living. Good job Palo Alto,
a resident of Embarcadero Oaks/Leland
on Oct 14, 2022 at 12:15 pm
Online Name is a registered user.
"@Lucille Waters - you can't be serious. Do you really think that Stanford would allow RV dwellers on their hallowed ground? Maybe they can also allocate some of their 29 Billion dollar endowment for a dump station, security, and social services."
What makes Stanford's refusal even worse is that some of the RV dwellers are construction workers who go home on weekends after working on Stanford's constant expansion and others are families of patients seeking long-term care at Stanford medical.
And how special of Stanford to buy up and remove the 700+ short-term rentals at Oak Creek on Sand Hill Rd from being used for the patenties and their families as well as others needed temporary housing.
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 14, 2022 at 1:52 pm
Lacie James is a registered user.
Stanford University should take a more active role in being part of the Palo Alto community by assisting in some of the more pressing social and fiscal responsibilities.
a resident of Professorville
on Oct 14, 2022 at 7:24 pm
birdie is a registered user.
RV parking is NOT the answer. She has lived in an RV > 4 years already. Do not encourage people to live in RVs. Obviously she cannot afford to live here, one of the most expensive places in the world.
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Oct 15, 2022 at 9:13 am
Anonymous is a registered user.
I agree with birdie. Let’s have common sense.
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 15, 2022 at 11:24 am
Native to the BAY is a registered user.
@Birdie. You surely must mean: RV, surviving on the street is not a "solution". It's an emergency. Rents, mortgages, land & property rising all over the country. When the City is taking 14 acres of once in a Century, North Ventura RM30 (Fry's re-zoned residential 30 years ago) opportunity , is deeply wrong. City Council Hearing Mon., Oct 17 item 7 . Where else does this city have in place, already zoned 14 acres of residential, prime centrally located property?? Where? Article is trite. The City's answer 4 un-homed is un "safe" parking & church lots. They agree on this.
The city cries poor & no land 4housing, while tossing out housing sites which R feasible & doable 4 housing 4 all income, ages, family size & abilities. Why we r we not outraged 2 speak out against atrocious, egregious decision making from our Council, City Manager, City Planning. So we don't "own" Fry's site, yet we have control over what is done with it. Why the city takes RM30 and down zoning? Why remove McCarther Park transit site from housing site inventory? Or remove city public parking, ripe for housing --all swiped off the table. City Hall metaphorically, tarp'ing over excellent, appropriate areas 4 housing.
No one must have to live without a home!!! No one. Most who are attempting to survive out of doors & without walls or windows, w/out roofs, are native to this state. Instead the City wants to upzone Industrial/ROLM/COM polluted Bay, flood zones, on top of a freeway, a public transit desert where no schools or infrastructure 4 housing exist. What did City Planning Director Jonathan Laith (johnny come lately) "wrongly"assume a few weeks back, when CC voted 2 ID sea level rise area 4 sub par housing -- w/out a plan, w/out an EIR. He sheepishly, "Because so many of us have hybrid cars the freeway is a good option 4 transit". The city is hording the best parcels, the most feasible, 4 climate mitigation, 4 greedy profiteering. CC "Fry's" parcel hearing. Mon 7 City Hall.
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Oct 15, 2022 at 12:28 pm
Jerry is a registered user.
Let's be brutally honest here. Safe Parking programs simply don't work. Move Mountain View's own statistics bear this out. 100 out of 380 clients is a roughly 25% success rate.
When you think critically about the economics of these programs, it's really obvious that someone who has lost their home and/or job will have great difficulty in the Bay Area recovering from that and staying above board. Although I am sympathetic to people in that position, those people are not suddenly going to get a job that pays three times their previous salary. Housing prices in the Bay Area are not going to magically plunge to half of what they are now.
Studies by UC San Diego and the Homeless Policy Research Institute of Safe Parking programs on the West Coast show that the average success rate of these programs is less than 20%. They also show that a sizable number of people fall back into homelessness after getting permanent or transitional housing.
These programs are feel-good band-aids that really don't address the fundamental (and complex) issues of homelessness.
The programs make local snowflakes feel like they are changing the world for the better but they aren't all that successful. Virtue signaling on a community scale.
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 15, 2022 at 2:01 pm
Native to the BAY is a registered user.
@Claudette have you ever been w/out the safety of a home or lived in an unsafe location? There is no dignity in temporary solutions to a crisis for our un-homed & a real California massive canyon like housing hole. Where are we supposed to put Cali's PIT 160,000 unhoused?
Correction: Fry's is 15 acres of residential zoned site. And this is slated to be torn-apart, down-zoned, split up and parceled off, forever. Billionaire developer, Sobrato "owns" the land yet City Hall has control over what to do there. CC wants 1000's of additional sqft to be re-zoned commercial at Fry's? Maybe for a car dealership, what!! 1/2 our commercial buildings are sitting hollowed out, empty un-leased, for sale ! And yet plan for more commercial -- maybe for another hotel ?? What will we lose, or gain by chopping up a sacred, once in a Century opportunity. A paltry 74 low-income cheaply manufactured homes and a tiny park. Chu provided jobs & housing to his employees let's do the same, in honor of what he did.
21Cent. CC is threatened with a Sabroto SB330 lawsuit if they don't comply w/ demands for multi million dollar, ultra luxury town home "condominiums". Our current sitting CC r either cowards or purely callous not to stand up against private interests like this & Billionaire bullying threats.
There is something very wrong w/a deal of a meager 4 $5Million cash advance, 1 acre of low-income homes & 2 acre park. CC, City Manager, Planning dept r giving away, for pennies -- a rare, 15 acre parcel of residential zoning. Sabroto please reconsider the plan for a more equitable. quality, fair trade off, housing for all. Study the Mayfield Agreement b/tween Stanford & City. Le(land) exclusive housing deal for their own. Looks like Sobrato and City Hall are using the same flawed "blueprint" for Fry's so city can upzone a Bay shore toxic, flood zone & down zone a transit rich, w infrastructure, climate friendly already zoned residential site. Just say, "no deal to Billionaires!!"
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 15, 2022 at 9:26 pm
Native to the BAY is a registered user.
@online name. Stanford's answer 2 low-income housing is thier 2017 Related/Mayfield place, 2500 ECR. A Schlock shell. It's like camping out. David Baker. made it REALLY attractive looking on outside. I invite you in. No hot water. Cheap @#s appliances. Paint & vinyl peeling. Mayor Burt & Co. cut a deal w Stanford 10yrs ago. Stanford got premium (le)land "the land" up. The city got an exclusive "public" soccer field @ Page Mill. Poor people 3/4 of aqueezed Sequa-constructed units. Built top of cracking concert, dirty soil. Bad management, piles of paperwork to submit yearly, no storage, a broken parking puzzle & when "you put your lips together & just blow" all might explode. Extremely unsafe 2 all living creatures. tow threats, no EV charge stations & its an "all-electric"site. Ha. I have been a renter all of my long, senior life, & I have never, ever lived such a demeaning existence ! Related is retaliatory, revenge-filled, super unprofessional management. Last year shut us out of Christmas Bureau $$. Why? Because Related said zero of us qualified! Hello. We r all poor. How else did we get in here? Pandemic! b damned Then 3 days later, she sent out "pay your back rent or prepare to be evicted", notices. We were shut out of desperately needed donations from Christmas Bureau. A check which helps poor families buy gifts 4 their kids. This r. $ we received for 5 years, prior. The Related management hung up on PA's historic Christmas Bureau & left poor tenants to fend. This year, management is slated to "qualify" 4 the "gift" w an in-person interview. How stupid is this? What a joke. How is she going to nail down 71 families in a few short weeks? So @online name, The city provides meager, low-bottom parking spots for RV's as a miracle making of itinerant life. Because? There is no rent stabilization here in PA. Because the CC is existing virtually from email messages & billionaire developers "I do what my staff & my stocks tell me to do" from City Hall dias votes.
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 15, 2022 at 11:51 pm
Native to the BAY is a registered user.
@LucilleWaters @Felix @jhskrh Why even discuss "safe" parking or "RV dwelling? Hello. 911. 160,000 PIT (point in time) Californians are w/out permanent shelter. It's like returning to England's Dickens "Hard Times". CA is in midst of a Climate crisis, humans are forever un-homed & suffering the effects, first, and foremost, an economic tech, calamity. This must be dealt w pronto. Not Electric Heat / Cooling pumps for SFHowners 4 1000 safe Old Palo Alto. The fact we are saying "great! RV dwelling i.e. families have a parking spot. yeah" is pathetic, & sorely inadequate. 15 acres of residentially zoned property at Fry's is about to get parsed if we don't act quickly, collectively & for social good. Sabroto. Yes, they do philanthropy work yet ziltch paying 4 homes for the poor. 300 years ago, in Albany NY the first "poor house" was erected. Then Hull house in NYC. where my Great Aunties worked. Why do the other, richer residents see camping out in a park or parking lot, as a better-than-nothing option? My grandparents retired from MN to San Mateo in 1951 using a life's saving of $10K for a nothing house off BayShore. They were over the moon. Yet now it takes millions of dollars to purchase that very same shack. There is something very wrong. Is a hand full of soil, like in Woody Allen's "Love and Death" worth it? The old Rabi shouts "Look. I have land" with dirt n his hand. In the mid-20th Cent, one could rent a Calif house on a minimum-wage job. W a roommate. Now. Like the family featured above w a grandma & 2 under 18, & an RV. No to 3 X income 2 rent, No 700 credit, No $100 an hour job. The picture is grim. Gold was a standard once, then shareholders ruled, and now it's software engineer pay & the dirt under foot. Since there is nill in US Constitution 4 guaranteed right to afe, habitable, quality home. I plead. Sabroto extend your Billion $ corporate reach 2 home needy, Not just fund literacy programs 4 the poor. A home nook to read our donated book is primo.
a resident of JLS Middle School
on Oct 16, 2022 at 9:34 am
MyFeelz is a registered user.
Articles like these should be uplifting, but there's always a crowd of privileged people saying this or that system doesn't work, so it's better not to offer any help at all. @Jerry, your "Let's be brutally honest here. Safe Parking programs simply don't work. Move Mountain View's own statistics bear this out. 100 out of 380 clients is a roughly 25% success rate" comment fails to recognize that 25% people are helped. What's the rate of success without the program? 0%.
Here's why "a sizable number of people fall back into homelessness after getting permanent or transitional housing." You give the person a new set of clothes, get them a haircut, use funding to pay for 1st, last and security deposit, find a willing landlord and then say "fly, be free little birdie". Scratch their name off the list, they have been housed "permanently". As the first month goes by, the renter realizes they are never going to be able to afford the rent on their own. The second month, they pay nothing. Landlord evicts them, pocketing all the money the agency supplied and both the agency and the landlord shake their head saying "NEVER AGAIN!" You can get someone IN to an apartment but they have to have the social skills to get and keep a job. The first thing to go when you're homeless is your social skills. When society has turned you out, you become more like an animal. Because you have to have your animal instincts on red alert at all times. So, while many people here think this is just a substance abuse issue or a "the heart wants what the heart wants" issue (for those of you think homeless people WANT to be homeless for eternity) it's NOT TRUE.
This article is about real people. Next time you go to the grocery store, or a bank, or a Starbucks, look at the people who are helping you complete your transaction. Many of them are homeless but you would never guess. If not for service employees, you wouldn't have anybody to do for you. Most privileged people are not programmed for DIY.
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Oct 16, 2022 at 12:36 pm
Jerry is a registered user.
@MyFeelz If you read my comment carefully, you'll notice that I'm NOT suggesting that we don't provide any homeless programs. My point is that this particular program is not effective and uses a lot of resources for little gain.
Do I have a better solution? Honestly, no I don't. But there are a lot of smart people who study homelessness full-time.
Yes, 25% is a lot better than 0%. But that also means that 75% of the people who've entered the program are now sadly disappointed and demoralized. They were given rosy promises that they'd be back on their feet in no time and that didn't happen. As such, they are less likely to engage in services in the future and more likely to be permanently homeless.
Will the success rate ever be 100%? Absolutely not and to think so is delusional. But 25% is pretty sad, given the resources and attention devoted to this program. We can do better.
By their own admission, the leaders of these programs have great difficulty tracking clients once they've left the program. So even the numbers published by Move Mountain View are highly sus.
I don't think news stories should be "uplifting". They should be factual, non-biased, and cover all points of view. If I wanted something uplifting, I'd go read Maya Angelou.
Just for once, I'd like to see the usual journalists who cover this beat go out and interview someone who's flopped out of this program to get their perspective. What worked? What didn't?
That would be a positive step away from the tired old narrative of angry NIMBY's vs the holier-than-thou do-gooders.
a resident of JLS Middle School
on Oct 16, 2022 at 5:48 pm
MyFeelz is a registered user.
Jerry, the opposite of "uplifting" is "depressing". To read an article at this publication that suggest there is hope for the homeless, that is the word "uplifting" in action.
There are a whole lot of moving parts in people's lives in order to be given "permanent housing". This would mean radical and rapid change in homeless people's lives to obain permanent housing. And it doesn't happen overnight. I speak from personal experience on this. I wouldn't accept anything with strings I couldn't abide. Many programs require beneficiaries to use services that are not always useful in the housing game.
Where I do agree with you is surveying those who dropped out to learn the reasons why. I can guess at least half the reasons off the top of my head. And of those half, they fall under the category of non-housing issues that are outside of the scope of the program
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Oct 16, 2022 at 7:29 pm
Jerry is a registered user.
@MyFeelz Could you share the top reasons why you think people drop out of the program? If you speak from personal experience, I can't second guess anything you say here. When you say "non-housing" issues, what is that? Maybe solutions to these problems could be included in the scope of the program in the future.
a resident of JLS Middle School
on Oct 17, 2022 at 9:28 am
MyFeelz is a registered user.
Jerry, things like check-ins that may feel like one is on probation, valid current registration and insurance and driver's license -- that's just in the move mountain view program itself. In order for case managers to assist with housing, one of the first immediate problems is where to legally park the rig after getting housed. I wouldn't be willing to part with my only escape route if the housing didn't end up being as permanent as it should. Second, if they DO part with the rig, how do they get where they need to go after? Let's say they trade the rig for a car. And they can get some housing assistance with move-in costs. If a family of four moves into a two bedroom place, and 3 out of 4 are children, the only income will be from the adult. There needs to be a rent subsidy, completely outside of the scope of move mountain view. There are requirements that may not fit all of the RV dwellers, to get housed. But if the program is throwing these solutions at you and none of them stick, it's not because homeless people are picky. It's because they've already been down that (name the obstacle) road and know it led nowhere. Many times, I was "offered" things like "affordable housing" (LIHTC) that's really only affordable if at least two of the tenants are working. Section 8 allows families to spend 30% of their income on housing, but the wait list is years long. In a perfect world, landlords would and could develop a thing called empathy, as in "there but for the grace of God go I" and help get everyone housed. So I can see if move mountain view gives you all the applications and you can pass the economic means test but not the social tests, or vice versa, I don't know how long a RV dweller can stay, without accepting any case management. If it's indefinite, then their success rate is higher because people permanently housed on Geng Road should be considered "success stories". That, because they have to meet minimum standards to get in at all.
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 17, 2022 at 12:24 pm
Native to the BAY is a registered user.
@MyFeelz "In a perfect world, landlords would and could develop a thing called empathy, as in "there but for the grace of God go I" and help..." Exactly. There was more types of Landlords like this in BA in the 60's/70's. My mom (or dad) or both. Would meet a "groovy" type of landlord first. My parents would offer things like work on the home in trade for a lease or less rent. It was a working for "rent" trade. Often though my dad did stellar work and my mom had faith, it did not work out, because inevitably my dad would fail from a massive egocentric addictive personality disorder i.e drink and drugs. Yet we lived in some awesome fixer upper homes yet it was itinerate all the same. The in-laws were weary of the antics so so help there. Many of those same address' are still rentals today. More stunning is how many times were were un-housed on the mercy of friends or state park camp grounds -- rules still applied. I used the think at least we never lived out of our car... And now this is often the next step to the street squalor. Home, Couch, Car, Street -- not always in that order. Our Cali below $100,000 income residents are basically being served a permanent solution to the increasing cost of housing and retardation of wages: Temporary transitory itinerant (Gypsy) life "on the [dangerous] road". So. Unless of course one owns or has owned for a llloooong time a SFH.
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 17, 2022 at 12:40 pm
Native to the BAY is a registered user.
@Jerry and @MyFeelz . The American saying "pull your self up by your boot strap "scraps" is as unreal as the "American Dream "idelogs. Landlords used to rent for very different objectives than the capitalistic Reaganesque world of right now 50 years ago. It's now a leather lashing to keep us down, down, down." Occupy wall street is Occupy Main Street from the dirty window of a car, a RV, a parking spot. Aggressive solutions NOW. The only answer is extreme interventions. Yet there are not enough CSW's , case workers, disappearing Gov funding, staff who are living as well in from the steering wheel of thier commutes, yaddi yaddi yaddi. 1200 bills signed by Gruesome, yet it'll take a Century of disappearing dollars, law suits and fights between R1 boundaries dwellers, to get a one family or addiction off our Sunny Cali Main Street and into a home of our own, to live, grow, dream, become ...
a resident of another community
on Oct 17, 2022 at 12:58 pm
MyFeelz is a registered user.
@Native, what I can't believe is the rent-gouging landlords of today were the kids of the groovy landlords who in many cases inherited their near-teardowns and "gentrified" them. The collapse of the housing net-work is now based purely on greed, mortgage finance, and "whatever the market will bear" all swirling around in a bowl of margaritas with salt on the rim, drunk at their second homes in faraway places where they bemoan the lack of service personnel to meet their every whim. They have created the lack of personnel. If I could have figured out how to game the COVID CA$H would I have done it? Pretty sure I wouldn't. Short term hefty government paychecks followed by longterm "still too poor to cope" is just pie-in-the-sky, and I can't live on that longterm. But plenty of people DID cash in on it, and many of them are children of baby boomers. The festival is still on but it's happening on yachts and luxury private planes we will never get to experience. And when one is thankful to have a car to fall back on as a housing backup plan, that is a precarious position. Yet, it is what the baby boomer generation has handed down. They have bequeathed a "if you have to ask you can't afford it" mentality to everyone who was born after them. Which reminds me, the top reason people will drop out of the RV spot of their dreams and never attain permanent housing is the ever-lovin bottom dollar and the credit rating that goes with it. Things that go ding on your credit report: Evictions, slow or no pay, lack of credit cards, or not having any debt at all. All or most of RV dwellers will not be able to get housed without a voucher. I hope the Geng Roaders will let them stay at least 10 years, so they might be able to get near the top of a section 8 waiting list.
a resident of Barron Park
on Oct 17, 2022 at 4:15 pm
Jamie Brooks is a registered user.
@MyFeelz
There is nothing wrong with having money and enjoying the good life. That is what many of our 'Greatest Generation' parents strived for and their fortunate Baby Boomer beneficiaries should not be condemned nor ostracized for thriving in the material world and celebrating its extrinsic bounties.
Inflation has raised the prices of real property and if a $25K Palo Alto house purchased in 1960 now sells for $3M who's to blame? Count your blessings!
As for the others left behind, the world is always going to be made up of haves and have nots unless one embraces a socialist or communist political-economic system and even those don't work once a taste for money is established.
What goes on elsewhere is immaterial as taking care of oneself is a personal responsibility not a societal one...except for tending to the disabled and the elderly.
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 17, 2022 at 4:47 pm
Native to the BAY is a registered user.
@MyFeelz. Too sage 4 reelz. BTW there was mostly amicable partings in between rentals, 100 landlords and family stability and sparing us any official "evictions" on our record -- That contained some land owner empathy .... ?! It was when the 1980's hit where things got really down and dirty with property profiteering. FF 2016 the biggest ingredients in the landlord greed stew, tttrrruumpp. The nastiest of private property law thrown at the poor .
a resident of JLS Middle School
on Oct 17, 2022 at 11:18 pm
MyFeelz is a registered user.
@JamieBrooks, put down the brandy snifter for just a second. The baby boomers brought us the peace and freedom love generation, the long haired hippies, and the "no nukes" generation and now you're WHAT? Wallowing in benjamins,and the best you can say for yourself is "taking care of oneself is a personal responsibility" and repeating your mantra, "thriving in the material world and celebrating its extrinsic bounties" ?? Don't that beat all. The problem with that is while you're jetsetting with the offshore account club, the world is falling apart. In case you haven't noticed, there are precious few materials left on Earth. Last one to get to the spaceship to Mars is a rotten egg.
And as for you, @Native, I agree as usual with your commentary, always right on the button. What I want to know is how is it you can make successive posts but I can't? >whaaaaa< Yes we all knew when the worst corrupt real estate typhoon got elected it would be bad for real estate. Somebody needs to wake Biden up, his plan for revamping HUD is too little, too late. 2022 FMR's came out and half the country got chopped off at the knees. That's right, some of the poorest people in the country now have even fewer housing "choices" thanks to the shrinking of the FMR. It won't get fixed until another year from now. By then, hundreds of thousands more people will be homeless looking for an RV to sleep in. The robber barons bubble has burst, though, because with nobody left who can afford the rent, those robbers will be looking at heavily unutilized properties. What a sham. I mean shame. No, I guess I mean both.
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 20, 2022 at 8:40 am
Native to the BAY is a registered user.
@MyFeelz were you just too sad to comment on "Rough Reception ...Creek Side" ? Housing deny'ers out in full force, with their metaphoric pitchforks and torches burning down proposals for rental homes.
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Oct 20, 2022 at 9:33 am
resident3 is a registered user.
@Native to the Bay,
“burning down proposals for rental homes.”
It’s a fact that projects get rejected by towns or communities all the time. The drama may be about a lot of things but the reality is that developers have to make up for the BMR portion of the buildings and that’s the real negotiation. Attacking people because they are pointing out things like traffic safety, loss of local businesses and making them sound evil seems unnecessary in the face of a blunt money issue. Whatever the path forward is, using these situations to characterize people’s concerns as evil won’t make money appear out of nowhere to make up for what developers are asking for. And we saw how quickly money gets negotiated away by the powers that be at City Hall.
a resident of Embarcadero Oaks/Leland
on Oct 20, 2022 at 9:50 am
Online Name is a registered user.
What are "deny'ers"? Do you mean "deniers" which is a real word just like the real facts of traffic safety, loss of local businesses, land costs etc that no magic wand can make vanish?
a resident of another community
on Oct 21, 2022 at 1:03 pm
MyFeelz is a registered user.
@Native I was stupefied. It felt like a distraction thread, as in "Oh look, a cute bunny just sitting on our doorstep" kind of thing. I think the whole proposal was designed as a distraction or an excuse so the City can tell the State, "Hey, we're trying to comply with housing regulations, but this Deli, we just can't live without". But it achieved its goal -- and look, nobody's paying attention to the RV dwellers any more. The Geng Roaders are in a Palo Alto location that the city has named the program with a Mountain name to create distance. Because we all know Palo Alto is not a place where there are any homeless people! Mountain View is where all the RV dwellers are. Not PA! Re: "@Online Name" -- We all know what we're talking about without having to police linguistic style.
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 21, 2022 at 11:33 pm
Native to the BAY is a registered user.
@anonymous Not one of the commenters at the fake facts "Creek Side study session" or any of the CC spoke with the substance of knowing any one of the 12-15 longtime employed, sandwich makers at the Driftwood. It was a crude session of false assumptions. What did Kuo say? She was simply appalled (or whatever word of Evil making she made it out to be) that the developer requested a fee waiver. I thought I'd entered the wet rock circle of the Weird Sisters' "Hell, fire, and brimstone" with all her pounding the Dias to protect the power of the BNA's boundary beyond the "barren" dried-up, Matero mote.
Stone, the only "renter" on the Das falsely and audaciously conjectures, Driftwood for sure would not survive" a two-year relocation should construction for rental housing temporary replace a deli . Even when there are a ton of abandoned storefronts along that block of ECR, ripe for a local business that could be "home" to Driftwood in the interim. It's a fact. Fambrini's Cafe (a long-time local fav) relocated while Related Mayfield Place was being piled up, laminated, and glued together, 2015-2017. Fambrini's currently has a line down the block to get a delicious brunch. Stone was lying outright to us while pleasing his CC fancy, "DuWhatsup" & Fillsummms utterances and untruths. I detest followers. And Stone is far from a leader for rent stabilization or renters, even when he is residing in a BMR rental unit as a rent-burdened tenant slaving away as a public school "teacher" in our district. Phooey to the fools who take a citizenry of knowledgeable participants, making themselves look like humble pie. What is it called at Geng Road? Mountain Camp? Oh no, that was the Duveneck low-income program canceled this summer because low-paid camp councilors rose up and said, "I ain't gonna stand for it." And how the City Hall changes city boundaries, and names of locations all carried by the failing electrical static of a billionaire's raspberry, fart.
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 21, 2022 at 11:52 pm
Native to the BAY is a registered user.
[Post removed.]
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Oct 22, 2022 at 9:00 am
resident3 is a registered user.
@MyFeelz,
“I think the whole proposal was designed as a distraction or an excuse so the City can tell the State, "Hey, we're trying to comply with housing regulations, but this Deli, we just can't live without".
I don’t mean to distract from the topic but if every proposal started with a Deli, maybe it wouldn’t get so much pushback. Economist Steve Levy suggests that mitigations can come “later” so that City time and money go to every square foot…nothing left to workout the Deli where neighbors could walk or bike to.
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 22, 2022 at 2:01 pm
Native to the BAY is a registered user.
@onlinename. Too many SFH owners r rental housing deny'ers using metaphoric shields "keep out. private property!" City Hall replaces good, viable, feasible, climate friendly sites -- swiping them away at the University transit site. Old Palo Alto Neighborhood Association cheering victory. Sabrato tosses out shillings in exchange 4 down-zoning 10 acres of RM30 zoned residential @ Fry's x adding, 30,000 sqft commercial auto dealership. The N. Ventura NA is cheering, victory. Stanford snapped up 700 (any guess to the acres of this site? Can't find a #) where senior citizens are getting rent increases & who are not cheering victory. 28 acres parcel at Cubberely parcel in the hands of PAUSD. Green Meadow NA gearing up 4 their Victory. Oxford rental housing plan getting buried by CC. Barren Park NA housing deny'ers cheering victory. One side r City Hall'ers, the Billionaire land corp Sabroto & (Le)land Stanford & PAUSD.
On the other, Palo Alto NA's & HOA SFH owner rental housing deny'ers. And there is STILL NO HOMES for our retail or custodial security service workers, nannies, public school teachers, hospital workers, nurses, health care aides, auto shop mechanics, musicians, painters, mail carriers, public servants . I near almost believe the Climate deny'ers r alive & within our very City Hall!! Anyone care 2 count up total acreage being removed from rental, affordable parcels 4 low-moderate income homes? In the eye of the crisis, the best CC can commit is RV slot lot at geng rd & 70 overnight pods on an old potty site at Baylands.
City Hall plans to up-zones ROLM/INDUST/COM HWY101, a transportation desert, near sea level rise, w toxic soil, near a polluted freeway. Because there is no NA's over there, unless you count RV dwellers. ROLM as far away as could possibly go w/out drowning in the bay & zero R1 zones where all the SFH owner NA's are throwing wight, power & prestige. What happened 2 sacrifice?? Can't we all just work together is alive a well as it ever was.
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Oct 22, 2022 at 3:01 pm
resident3 is a registered user.
@Native to the Bay,
“What happened 2 sacrifice??”
I think that’s what builders want to know when they throw proposals out, to see if they stick. From Stanford to the businesses lobbyists, they don’t seem to care much about effects of building on any community…it’s just a test about what they can take. Most probably don’t live here, there’s surrounding cities with mansions. Sacrifice is a big word, and it depends who has what to give. Asking a town where practically half the population rents, hard to get a perfect answer but I bet that the people who will sacrifice more are not the investors who don’t live here , they only want their cash.
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Oct 22, 2022 at 11:23 pm
Native to the BAY is a registered user.
@resident3 The California Real Estate Association today issued a formal apology for decades of discriminatory exclusionary practices -- denying persons of color a stake in the property ownership game. PA might be considering doing the same with action. HOA's and neighborhood associations who all speak volumes about exclusion with the "saving the character of our neighborhood" and "it doesn't pencil out" . It is a woefully wrong direction going on for decades. Time to move away from these prejudicial, virtual gated community business practices and change the culture. This means moving aside ever so for more rental housing on good viable, feasible parcels like Creek Side, RM30 zoned Fry's, University Center, City-owned surface parking lots, and yet even Cubberley. Time for a change. Let's get families off the street, out of RV living, couches, floors, closets, garages... The game must change, and change begins with me. Time to boycott your HOA and Neighborhood Associations that block by block, lock people out. Time for PA to invest in first-time home owners program. Time to sacrifice a little to move humans into homes.
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