Palo Alto officials say a pending state bill would strip their control of land uses in the city and possibly result in exceptionally tall housing developments along high-transit areas.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, last month introduced State Bill 827, which aims to boost housing density in and near transit corridors. If passed in its current form, the bill would allow buildings that include housing units to be as tall as 85 feet within a quarter-mile of busy transit corridors where buses stop at least every 15 minutes during peak commute hours, or within one block of a major transit stop, such as Palo Alto’s two Caltrain stations.
In a Feb. 13 letter, Mayor Liz Kniss asks Wiener to put the bill on hold while the city grapples with more than a dozen new state housing laws that went into effect at the start of the year.
Kniss states the city already is trying to fight the housing shortage by amending rules to allow for denser housing in high-transit areas, and Wiener’s bill “could diminish local acceptance of residential development and undermine our local efforts.” Kniss wrote the letter without consulting the full council.
Arthur Keller, who served as co-chairman of the city’s Citizens Advisory Committee on the Comprehensive Plan Update, said the legislation would essentially wrest local control of land uses from the city. He said the proposal might make sense in larger cities such as San Francisco, but not in a city where fewer than 10 percent of residents and employees use mass transit.
“Basing such a drastic land-use decision on transit that most people don’t take seems inappropriate,” Keller said. “A one-size-fits-all rule doesn’t make sense.”
The League of California Cities also opposes the bill, saying it would allow private for-profit developers and transit agencies to determine housing densities, parking requirements and design review standards along transit corridors that in some cases could be miles from an actual bus stop and might not include any below-market units.
“Under the measure, developers would be given the means to generate additional profits without any requirement to construct affordable housing units,” according to a statement from the League of California Cities.
Jennifer Chang Hetterly, a former city Parks and Recreation commissioner who also served on the Citizens Advisory Committee, recently wrote on her website Palo Alto Matters that if the bill becomes law, more than one-third of the city could be converted to dense housing developments, more than half of which currently is zoned for single-family homes.
Chang Hetterly warns that such an extensive conversion could in turn lead to additional problems, such as interfering with pending redevelopment plans in the South of Forest Area and Ventura neighborhoods and forcing the city to come up with additional parks, schools and community facilities.
“How will it impact the local economy when all commercial uses within the transit-rich area have to compete with more highly entitled housing developments (akin to government incentives for office growth in recent years)?” she wrote. “Will they have to move farther from transit? Will it promote displacement of low and moderate income residents from older, more affordable housing stock?”
California’s high-tech community, meanwhile, lauds the bill. In a letter to Wiener, 130 tech executives and venture capital partners said they “solidly support” the plan because it will help them grow their companies.
“The lack of homebuilding in California imperils our ability to hire employees and grow our companies,” wrote the group, which includes CEOs of Salesforce, Twitter, Lyft, Yelp and Mozilla. “We recognize that the housing shortage leads to displacement, crushing rent burdens, long commutes, and environmental harm, and we want to be part of the solution.”
Keller said the legislation would make it more difficult for below-market housing developments, such as the recently approved Mayfield Place on El Camino Real, to be constructed in the city, because allowing taller buildings will increase the price of land.
“When you immediately raise the price of land, it makes it that much more difficult to build housing projects, because they have to pay for the land,” he said. “If you maintain zoning restrictions and increase requirements for inclusionary zoning, that keeps a lid on the price of land and makes it easier to build 100 percent affordable housing.”
Keller said Wiener’s bill would enable developers to displace low-income residents, as happened when San Francisco allowed for higher density in its Fillmore and Western Addition neighborhoods. He said a better bill would require one housing unit for every new job created because that would tackle the housing/jobs gap while dealing with needed services in a more comprehensive manner.
“You build 100 housing units, you can add 100 jobs,” he said. “We need to lift everything together. We need housing built and transportation to go hand in hand. We need schools, parks and community centers to grow with the housing.”
