Dear Menlo Park City Council and Staff,
Thank you for your service and hard work. Please find attached and below a letter from Menlo Together, regarding the citys progress towards developing new affordable homes downtown.
All my best,
Karen Grove on behalf of Menlo Together
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April 9, 2026
Dear City Council and Staff,
Menlo Together appreciates the February 10th update on Housing Element Program H4.G and the plan to develop deeply affordable homes on the city-owned downtown parking lots. We appreciate staff’s work to compare the three proposals and present a timeline for next steps. The Feb 10 timeline presents dates and “sequential timing” and the result is a time range of November 2026 - April 2027 for approval of the DDA.
Unfortunately, we note that it is the second week of April and the first milestone on the timeline, a Community Open House walk-through event with display stations of each proposal, to be scheduled in “March 2026” has not been scheduled.
We request a revised timeline with updated interim milestones that avoids delaying the end goal to achieve DDA approval by November 2026 - April 2027.
The need for these new affordable homes is urgent and the consequences of further delay will be felt in the short and long term, by the entire city if the city falls out of Housing Element compliance, and by people in our community who need an affordable place to live.
For reference, our Housing Element commitment to the state was to complete entitlements (aka DDA) by the end of 2025.
Thank you for your dedication.
Karen Grove, on behalf of Menlo Together
