BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Managing Editor
A split Palo Alto City Council tonight (April 7) voted to support a bill by state Sen. Josh Becker that aims to rein the Builder’s Remedy, a state law that has led to proposals for much larger buildings than cities have planned for.
All council members were interested in the idea, but Vicki Veenker, Julie Lythcott-Haims and George Lu voted to not support the bill due to outstanding questions and concerns they have about it.
Lu said because the bill is so nascent, it’s unclear if it applies to the three skyscrapers proposed for 80 Willow Road in Menlo Park.
The project for 80 Willow, the former Sunset Magazine headquarters, was the inspiration for the bill.
The Builder’s Remedy allows developers to ignore local rules in cities that were late on their 2023-2031 Housing Element, a state-mandated plan that lays out how the city will allow thousands of new homes.
Becker’s SB 457 would require Builder’s Remedy projects to have a complete application rather than a preliminary application, City Manager Ed Shikada told previously council.
SB 457 would also close a window from when cities sent in their 2023-2031 Housing Element and when the state approved the plan.
Palo Alto’s largest Builder’s Remedy project is three towers reaching 17 stories on top of Mollie Stone’s grocery store at 156 California Ave.
Lythcott-Haims said she is worried the city may lose its new reputation among developers as being much more open to development than in the past.
All three council members who voted no were quick to decry the 80 Willow project, with Veenker referring to the proposal, which includes a 38-story tower, as a monstrosity.
Councilmen Ed Lauing, Greer Stone, Pat Burt and Keith Reckdahl all voted in favor of supporting Becker’s bill.
Burt tried to assuage his colleague’s worries about the bill being in its early stages by saying it will become more refined as it progresses.
“This is common sense reform that rewards good faith planning,” Stone said.
Supporting the bill means the city’s name will appear on a list of those who support it when analysis is done on the bill. The council had also considered, more so at its March 24 meeting, whether to sponsor the bill, which would have meant a city representative would have had to testify before the Legislature about the possible effects of the bill.
“Lu said because the bill is so nascent, it’s unclear if it applies to the three skyscrapers proposed for 80 Willow Road in Menlo Park.”
OK, let’s say it doesn’t apply to the Sunset project and only to future applications. What’s wrong with that?
Maybe it’s not possible to stop that monstrosity, but Mr. Lu, what’s wrong with trying? I realize you’re just Julie’s hand puppet, but why don’t you think for yourself?
You ought to be supporting anything that would possibly stop things like that.
Well said. Live in Southern California, but husband from Menlo Park. Just hit with our own builder’s remedy project. Our small city (LA suburb) was out of compliance. We are zoned single family. Our city “accepted” a settlement so we are stuck with 2 duplexes across the street from us. I cannot find any precedent for builder’s remedy applying to single family zoning. Their low income unit — one 500 sq foot ADU.
This vote is suspicious. Three councilors favor monster projects. How did that happen?
So Julie Lythcott-Haims thinks that if she supports 34-story towers, she’ll get more housing for the homeless. How does that work? Is that Russian oligarch going to lease out a $5,000-a-month apartment on the 30th floor to a heroin addict living in a tent next to the creek?
Regardless of whether you agree with Builder’s Remedy or not, Becker’s bill cleans up one of its most unintentional (but predictable) “dumb government” aspects: it gets years of HCD delays out of the loop.
Having HCD in Sacramento do detailed reviews of 500 cities’ housing plans almost simultaneously was always going to be a bottleneck, even for an efficient agency — which HCD is not. And the actual way HCD approached these, micromanaging every plan, three or four rounds of negotiation with every city and activist group, including aspects with dubious impact on actually building housing (“write us a DEI essay about your city”), in some cases interviewing local property owners as to their construction intentions, and without ever having an objective approval criteria, threw multiple years of dithering and hundreds of millions of dollars of basically redundant paperwork into the process.
This episode says more about the critical-thinking facilities of three local electeds than it does about Builder’s Remedy or housing policy.
I have always said the constitutionality of Builder’s Remedy should be challenged given the 6th cycle Housing Element is certified by HCD instead of each municipality as was done in prior cycles. This is really not appropriate from an “internal audit” standpoint as they could be slow or “deliberately slow”.
The way the 3 bill opponents kept trying to change the subject from improving the bad Builder’s Remedy provisions showed how little they care about “their” community while looking for any excuse to favor their developer backers.
But when “Lythcott-Haims said she is worried the city may lose its new reputation among developers as being much more open to development than in the past,” I had to laugh.
What’s she’s really worried about is keeping her lead in campaign contributions from those developers as a freshman candidate who’d never held office.
When voting in the next election, always track who’s funding whom so you can vote for the candidates who see Palo Alto as a community, not a commodity to be sold to the highest bidders.
I’m usually not a single-issue voter, but I know who who will never get my vote — Veenker, Lu and Crazy JLH.
Really hoping these three are voted out in the next election. Way to read the room. I am from Southern California and a Builder’s Remedy was applied across the street from me despite single family zoning. Now I get to look at two duplexes — as they are subdividing a 10,500 sq foot lot. Was hopeful some landmark legislation was pending due to Josh Becker. It will not help me, but maybe helpful for others. Glad to see four other stand up council members pushed this through.
Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of “How to Raise an Adult,” salivating over the potential for massive skyscrapers no one can afford to live in.
Makes fiddling while Rome burned seem quaint, maybe even normal.
Julie needs a job and figures she can parlay her council position into something that pays. Remember how Karen Holman was caught taking “finders fees” from developers? Give the developers what they want (a late Housing Element to allow Builder’s Remedy projects) and you can be assured of fat paychecks in the years ahead. Nobody walks away from council broke.
For once I agree with Ms. Julie. The Sunset project is actually more than a flagrant foul, it’s an abomination.
JLH, Lu and Veenker don’t EVER seem to care about the residents who are already living here and our rapidly deteriorating quality of life. They are far more interested in future, low income residents to satisfy virtue signaling pet passion projects than getting to the business of Palo Alto and its residents. Please vote them out!