March 21, 2016
Dear Mayor Burt and Council members:
Many cities view affordable housing as a "bitter pill," a necessity perhaps but one that provides no amenities and improvements to a community. The League of Women Voters of Palo Alto would like
our city instead to think of affordable housing as one tool to help build more walkable and vibrant communities that offer strong support for retail and lessened dependency on auto trips, and at the same time encourage population diversity.
In this spirit, we urge you to move forward with many of the visionary goals and programs suggested tonight by City staff.
In particular, we support efforts to build housing in transit-oriented zones along El Camino Real that is appropriate to seniors, millennials, and low-income workers by rezoning to favor smaller-sized units. Steps can be taken to ensure that these folks do not rely on cars for transportation, thus fostering walkability and strengthening local retail. To achieve this, zoning densities must be increased where appropriate and parking restrictions relaxed wherever feasible.
We also support many other strategies mentioned in the staff report, such as steps to support co-housing and accessory units. Parking restrictions should be reduced for accessory units. Additionally, we support minimum densities for certain zoned districts such as RM 15. We would like to see the Fry's site included as part of the transit-oriented zone surrounding California Avenue.
We do not support removing South El Camino sites from the housing inventory, since sensitively designed affordable housing could actually enhance this part of our community for everyone's benefit. In general, in order to allow home builders and citizens to choose the most effective tools for a given site, we recommend that the City provide a flexible toolkit rather than set immutable requirements. In certain cases, this might even include exceeding the height limit in transit-oriented areas when the effect will be to create more openness and community at those sites.
Although our comments tonight have primarily focused on affordable housing, increasing the overall housing stock can slow the upward pressure of rents and prices for all income levels. We hope you will support efforts for a diversity of housing types tonight.
Sincerely,
Ellen Forbes, President