Dear City Council,
My husband and I have loved living in Menlo Park since purchasing our home in 2009, and before that we were renters on the peninsula since the early 2000s. Our two kids are learning Spanish in the wonderful MPCSD schools. I am a professor and I have many colleagues who rent in the area, and two of my daughter's best friends' families are renters in the Willows neighborhood. We both know very well what it is like not only purchasing a house, but renting too - we were renters in the area ourselves for over a decade before we purchased.
Recently two different Menlo Balance canvassers came to our door and asked if we'd sign a petition to prevent apartments from being built nearby. My husband fielded the first, and I fielded the second. We both refused to sign, and I said that I am firmly in support of more housing. When the canvasser asked, "but in YOUR neighborhood?" I said yes, absolutely! Teachers, delivery people, janitors, and workers of all sorts deserve to be able to live near their jobs if they want to.
I have had so many colleagues forced to move in the middle of their school year, uprooting their children from their schools and friends and creating chaos in their lives and for their own students. I moreover have many colleagues who are unable to afford living near the universities where they work. Like primary school teachers, many college professors, especially in the humanities and social sciences, do not make a lot of money -- but we also deserve to be able to live near our jobs. I have many Stanford colleagues who rent two-bedroom apartments as families of four because it is all they can afford, and other colleagues who commute from Aptos or farther.
During the pandemic, I noticed that the congestion along Willow Road did not ease, because so many Stanford hospital essential workers also cannot afford to live near their jobs. I have done research with families in Richmond, California who commute to food and cleaning jobs in Silicon Valley tech firms. A few years ago I got a Stanford alumni magazine that profiled a Stanford janitor who commuted two hours each way to Stanford from the Central Valley. The magazine extolled his dedication; I saw an abject failure to ease the burden such long commutes have on so many around and beyond the Bay Area, as well as the huge environmental toll of that much driving.
For all of these reasons and more, I am strongly supportive of a dramatic increase in high-density housing in a variety of unit sizes, for a variety of income levels. Building high-density housing near transportation corridors will ease commute traffic, not worsen it, because people can live close to their jobs. High-density housing is moreover far more water-efficient per person than single-family houses with water-thirsty landscaping.
Moreover, we cannot only build studio apartments for single workers - if they choose to start a family, they will have to make the difficult choice to either squeeze their families into a unit that is much too small for their needs or move farther away.
I am strongly in favor of a few points in particular.
First, I was appalled to see the plans to build so little housing at the SRI/USGS site. While I understand that retail spaces make cities more money, we just put a massive amount of retail square footage along El Camino Real. What we need is more housing. This site is one of the few actually viable sites identified in the housing element draft, and we need to make the most of this historic opportunity to create a lot of high-density housing. We should build higher and denser, focusing on creating walkable and transit-friendly communities over providing parking.
Second, I am also in strong support of housing at the former Flood School site, as well as in the Sharon Heights shopping center. While not as close to mass transit, these are close to major freeways, and I support the development of good transit options and dedicated bike lanes to these sites.
Third, I am in strong support of building affordable housing on city-owned land, including downtown parking lots and above city buildings. This would allow nonprofit housing developers to build homes for some of our most housing-insecure residents.
Finally, we must also work to prevent the displacement of our neighbors who rent. I am strongly in support of laws prohibiting unfair evictions and excessive rent increases and also want to prevent discrimination and harassment with strong enforcement mechanisms for existing laws. While I think that nearly anybody who wants to buy should be able to afford to, those who do choose to rent should also be protected.
I thank the City Council for the hard, but crucial, work they do to balance the many diverse needs and desires of city residents. I encourage you to consider not just present-day residents, but the generations to come. This housing element update is a crucial opportunity to not try to freeze Menlo Park in 1960's amber but to bring it firmly into the 21st century. We should be adding density everywhere we can - yes, even in my backyard!
Thank you for your time,
Morgan Ames
resident of the Willows
