BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor
I can’t wait to see tomorrow night’s Menlo Park City Council meeting.
I hope to get an answer to a question that I’ve been wondering about: Why is the city government so gung ho about building high-density public housing in the parking lots adjacent to Santa Cruz Avenue when there’s an easier and more logical location — the City Hall campus on Laurel Street?
Wiping out 556 parking spaces in downtown Menlo Park doesn’t make any sense. Businesses in the area are having a tough enough time as it is. Eliminating their parking will be a death sentence to the mom-and-pop stores and restaurants.
Replace the parking
So far, the city hasn’t explained how it would replace those parking spaces. At a cost of up to $50,000 a space, that’s probably something they don’t want to talk about. But a plan to replace the 556 parking spaces should have already been rolled out.
City officials will tell the crowd tomorrow that state law requires them to provide more public housing. But it doesn’t have to be downtown.
The state is forcing the city to zone for a large amount of public housing because council made bad decisions in the past, such as approving the Facebook Village project with fewer homes than the jobs it would create. Kowtowing to Mark Zuckerberg has proven to be a big mistake.
Nasty surprise
The public is outraged by the city’s proposal. People are mad because this was sprung on them in November. The city made almost no effort to inform the public about this before it became an official proposal.
Council should kill this proposal. If it wants to provide public housing, consider places like the city hall campus or the underutilized VA campus on Willow Road.
If council moves this proposal forward tomorrow, opponents should put this on the ballot. The public will reject it overwhelmingly.
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Sidebar: Good intentions, bad results
High-density public housing projects have always been built with the best of intentions, a belief that cramming people into a high-rise building will result in utopia. Experience has shown it never works out that way.
Tomorrow night, if you go to the Menlo Park City Council meeting when they’ll consider building housing projects downtown, think about the U.S. cities where public housing became so crime-ridden that many residents are now calling for their demolition.
If you’ve lived in Chicago, you probably heard about the Cabrini-Green projects that once stood in the city’s North Side. Poverty striken tenants were confronted with violence and drugs every day. Nearby businesses closed, leaving empty storefronts. The Chicago Housing Authority demolished most of Cabrini-Green in 2011.
Other infamous public housing projects include Brooklyn’s Marcy Houses, Queensbridge Houses in Queens, Techwood Homes in Atlanta, the C.J. Peete Projects in New Orleans and Baltimore’s Johnston Square Apartments. Closer to home, San Francisco has the Sunnydale Projects, the Alice Griffith Housing Development, Geneva Towers and Bayview-Hunters Point apartments.
Of course, the proponents of the Menlo Park public housing projects will argue that things will be different this time. They’ll say that anybody who says crime will increase is a racist.
They’ll say anything to avoid discussing what went wrong in the past. But City Council should avoid repeating history.
Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays.
This is totally insane. They’re thinking that the low-income residents in this public housing will shop downtown, with restaurants where the tab for two is over $100! And what business can survive with no parking. The silly dream of cities with only bikes and pedestrians will never happen. Our city government is insane.
Maybe they need to be recalled if they don’t represent the constituents.
This has moved way too quickly and with no opportunity for the community to understand the scope of the issue and make an informed decision. What is the actual plan for downtown? What is the long term vision? Does this housing factor into that? Who knows?
What a bunch of drivel. You care about one thing and only one thing: Keeping the region filled with rich residents (and given socioeconomic divisions, residents of a certain complexion).
You lack any sympathy for those residents who keep your cushy city afloat, and would rather they live far away, with hour-or-more long commutes. You sow fear into the hearts of citizens in quite literally the identical manner that 60s and 70s America did in the era of white flight which killed our nation’s urban cores just with some new words. Your talk of “crime-ridden” public housing sounds awfully similar to the moral panic we see from the GOP despite the fact that all the data from across the nation shows that crime rates peaked decades ago and are not on track to come close to that peak again.
The “alternative” you proposed is to knock down a VA center, far away from the center of the city, amenities I have no doubt you take for granted, and transportation, not to mention being close to 101 leading to worsen air and noise pollution. You don’t want those “crime-ridden” places in your precious city at all, but if you must, you’d rather they stay far away so you don’t have to see them, and so you can preserve the neighborhood character in downtown Menlo Park, which three parking lots are doing so much to contribute to.
I hope the council makes the right decision and votes this up. If this city (and the wider region) is as progressive and forward thinking as our national voting statistics would suggest, they will. If not, it is a city of hypocrites, functionally no different from the GOP.
It’s telling you ignore most of Dave’s arguments. I’m guessing you’re part of the YIMBY Coalition that doesn’t have a stake in Menlo Park.
Dave indicated the land the VA occupies is underutilized. That’s correct. There’s no reason that Menlo Park shouldn’t consider that for it’s housing plan. But you seem to read that as “knock down a VA center.” Reactionary? Far mongering?
The land that the city council building occupies is enormous, and could house thousands of people. Why has that not been considered?
How do you explain high crime near public housing?
They won’t say this, but this is government funded housing for the poor, otherwise know as “public housing.” Thank you for calling a spade a spade, and not bowing to the progressives who want to call it “affordable housing”
Dave were you there?
I am, and I am shocked at how many renters the YIMBY Coalition have imported to speak. Many Menlo Park homeowners and business owners have spoken but it seems our city council are only interested in the housing advocates. They don’t seem to care what property tax payers think. Our Mayor Combs extended the rantings of a YIMBY over the time limit. It’s clear to me that our own elected officials care more for the imported YIMBYs than they do for the people and businesses who pay taxes here in Menlo.
Yes and the mayor kept pushing his agenda that he wanted very low-cost housing in West Menlo as if the civic center was pushing it too far east! His lip service to the businesses was not convincing. It was actually shocking to see them push their agenda after the overwhelming majority said no to DT but agreed to other Civic Center.
Thank you, Dave. Of course the YIMBYs paid to import speakers — just like the GOP often does to fill empty seats — because they’re a rich GLOBAL organization — not just local or regional or state or national — GLOBAL.
Dave, please expose the sources of funding for YIMBY, YIMBY Law and all their other spinoffs. They’ve gotten big bucks — millions from tech ceos, often the same ones working to impoverish their gig workers and overcharge their customers like the delivery companies that spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying.
They fund and back the least qualified DODO (Developer Owned/Developer Operated) candidates who then spout lies / fairy tales — that no one wants cars or parking — all so their backers can increase their profits. Do they ever address the huge amount of private equity funds buying up homes and thus pushing up prices?
Of course not. They blame Grandma and Prop 13 but never mention commercial properties also benefiting from Prop 13 because their backers wouldn’t like that.
They’re destroying communities while spouting virtue-signalling fairy tales to get market rate housing for rich techies and abominations like what’s planned for the Sunset site, a Builder’s Remedy Project aka Berman’s Remedy — complete with hotels, offices, etc.
Bravo to Dave Price and the PA Daily Post for allowing opinions to be published. The Almanac News doesn’t allow comments that disagree with the YIMBY organizations or city council. It’s just propaganda at this point.
Agreed, which is why I don’t read the Almanac anymore. The Jan 10th issue was especially biased with their front page story praising Menlo Together.
Oh no! Menlo Park will be overrun by Stanford grad students. What will affluent retirees and their real estate agents who are the primary advertisers in the Post do?
Come on. That’s simply false. Right no, right here on this very page, I see ads for Termite Removal. 5 restaurants, Junk King, Energy House, a Civil War Round table meeting, a deli, a City-sponsored Emergency Preparedness free Class….
Do you really think people are blind?? Sort of like the fairy tales about how no one needs parking because no one wants cars and because everyone works within walking distance. Give me a break.
Recall the mayor and City Council. Their whole process for establishing low-income housing smells. They are jamming this one alternative down our throats without looking at other alternatives.
Sadly, they just don’t care about current homeowners in Menlo Park, or business owners for that matter. I really wanted to live out my years here but now am looking to retire in another part of the state.
I thought we had a housing crisis, climate crisis, homeless crisis, economic crisis downtown with vacancies, declining school enrollment, and supportive families broken apart. Or maybe that is just me….. Seems like a great idea to build hundreds of units for workers, shoppers, and new neighbors near transit, jobs, and services. Seems like this is the reason the state is cracking down. We get what we deserve then. P.S. Kiku Crossings is hardly a public housing eyesore. It is gorgeous with a giant (ridiculously underutilized) parking garage.
Where are they going to shop when the business are going to close? Where will they work when the businesses close? Who’s going to fund public transit or low-income housing now that the state’s in trouble and has a few more major expenses than when they made those promises? They’re also they same meal delivery companies the restaurants EXPLICITLY blame for their closures because they add 33% to every bill.
And news flash: Low-income folks don’t shop a lot.
You’d be better off telling Trump and DC about the climate crisis, homeless crisis, etc. than destroying our communities and alienating voters? Did you see how EVERY city in the Bay Area went much more heavily for Trump this time? Got any thoughts on why?
How about lobbying the big rich companies backing these high density projects why they don’t start paying living wages and stop spending literally hundreds of millions of $$$$ for the right to deny workers benefits, unemployment, etc?
Spot right on. After seeing the Daily Post front page today, I was concerned about the lack of balance in reporting since there are more than 2,800 who have signed a petition against the Menlo Park Parking Lot take over for an very dense housing development. Thank you Dave Price for speaking up and especially voicing our concerns.
Yes, thank you Dave Price! Please keep reporting on this issue as the Almanac (which I no longer read or support) only focuses on the Menlo Together side of the issue.
Governor Newsom is very unreasonable to require housing in already densely populated cities while he just purchased a $9.1 million mansion. I doubt he would consider giving up some of his land to house the homeless or build affordable housing. There are rural lower density regions in the state that should be looked into. Also, seminaries and burial sites have robbed a lot of space that could’ve been used for housing. Many gravesites go unvisited by loved ones, esp. as time goes by. There should be tax credits for people and their families who choose cremations over burial.