To Palo Alto City Council
We would first like to thank you, the Citizen's Advisory Committee, City Staff and the PTC for a huge effort in getting the Comprehensive Plan drafted. There was clearly a lively debate and a well-supported discussion.
We urge you to adopt the Comprehensive Plan so we can move forward to implement the many good ideas to prioritize expanding housing supply and affordability building on council's recent action to make it easier to add accessory dwelling units (ADUs) In particular:
The Who: While we need to expand housing generally to make up for existing shortages and plan for growth, priority should be given to expanding the supply of housing affordable to low and moderate income families. It is important to remember that many residents facing severe housing challenges are not eligible for below market rate housing even if we could dramatically increase supply.
The Where: We support the locations identified in the Comp Plan--downtown, near Cal Ave, along El Camino and on Stanford lands in the city including the shopping center. Concentrating new housing here will build a customer base for existing retail centers, protect single family neighborhoods and provide access to services, shopping, transit and reduce the need for many non work car trips.
The How: The Comp Plan and the recent colleagues' memo on housing contain many good ideas for staff and council to build on. If there are future zoning changes—including selective easing of our height restrictions-- that will be required to help meet our goals, we hope that you will prioritize these. We support a multi-pronged approach including removing barriers to building housing, adopting policies that lower the cost of building housing so more affordable rents are possible, expanding funding for below market rate housing and revisiting ideas for strengthening existing renter protections focused on fair notice, just cause eviction protection, and mediation.
Thank you for pushing the work this far. Let's get the Comp Plan adopted so we can move to implement housing policies to improve supply and affordability.
Sincerely,
Sandra Slater
(on behalf of the Palo Alto Forward Steering Committee and the undersigned)
