Bay area housing costs is increasing every quarter it seems. I wanted to share one comment on this issue.

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/print/story/2016/08/19/high-price-to-pay

Posted by Gale Johnson, a resident of Adobe-Meadow
on Aug 19, 2016 at 1:31 pm

Yes, excellent article on the historical perspective and views of current CC members, other community leaders, committee members, and prospective future CC members running for the open seats in November’s election.

Now if real viable solutions would be implemented that would be nice. Idealism won’t get housing built. It will take clear rational thought to accomplish it without impacting our quality of life very much. It will have some impact, no question. There have been several ideas put forward that could work and I’ve supported some of them previously. Increasing the height limit in certain areas (65 feet) to allow building more housing units on the same footprint. My thought is that they should be built near the work centers so that the employees wouldn’t have to commute and could walk to work. I’ve even suggested a couple of Channing House sized buildings, but that would require higher height limits and their locations would have to be carefully selected. Sorry, I don’t have any locations in mind.

My thinking has been that these units would be occupied by either the young tech workers, mostly singles, or the older retired citizens of our community. These ‘bookend’ groups would have no or minimal impact on our schools. I won’t comment on the infrastructure impact because I just don’t know. Yes, fewer car commuters, thus less traffic congestion and parking problems, but the utilities part I just don’t know about. Aren’t I so humble to say ‘I don’t know’ when I don’t know? lol!

“Economist Steve Levy, who is affiliated with Palo Alto Forward, likewise argued that the city should take a “flexible” approach and use performance measures to mitigate the impacts of growth.” Oh, how I wish I could understand what that means. I’m trying to visualize what those ‘performance measures’ might be and how they would mitigate the impacts of growth. I’ll keep trying by concentrating very hard for a vision to appear.

I really liked the historical facts presented in the article. That took a lot of research and I thank you for doing that Gennady.

Now, let’s go ahead and relax some of our ordinances and change zoning as necessary, but judiciously, and then wait for the developers to rush in with their proposals for housing only projects, including affordable housing. How long do you think we’ll have to wait?? I’ll check the actuarial tables again but I don’t think I’ll be around to see it happen.

The rate of growth cited in the article was very revealing. From 2000 to 2012 it averaged 173 units per year. I’d like to know what kind of units they were and their locations, but that’s not all that important. But to reach the goal of 6000 additional units by 2030 (14 years) would require 429 units per year.
That’s 2.5x the rate over that 12 year period. I really hope I’m not the first one to make that calculation. Certainly many of our CC members knew that already. Right?

As much as I didn’t like much of what Kate Downing had to say, I think she was right on one thing. Uncontrolled building of office space, allowed over many years by many developer friendly administrations, caused the job-housing imbalance.

Back again to the ‘more housing needed’ topic: Let’s do a little checking, recon, before we take action. Let’s ask those developers what they would charge the renters of micro, studio, 1 bdrm, 2 bdrm, and family sized units.

I have a hunch none would be affordable for our day workers who do our gardening, house cleaning, work in the restaurants we love, do handyman jobs, and perform care giving duties in assisted living facilities or in our homes.