Honorable Mayor Wolosin, Vice Mayor Taylor, Councilmembers Combs, Nash and Doerr, and Staff,
The staff is to be commended for the short turnaround for the incorporation of the Planning and Housing Commissions’ recommendations on the final 2023-2031 Housing Element (HE). A thorough, inclusive, and equitable HE also needs to include the seven (7) subject areas with recommendations for policies and procedures as outlined in the letter from Climate Resilient Communities (CRC). The community of Belle Haven has provided significant information throughout the Environmental Justice Element process (EJE) and the information can not be excluded.
The inclusion of the recommendations will demonstrate the city’s ability to recognize and apply the EJE as a component of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) requirement. This will also demonstrate that even though fifty (50) HE outreach surveys from Belle Haven where inadvertently destroyed, the city does in fact value and incorporates the voice of all it’s residents.
Recognizing we are “down to the wire” on our submission by the deadline, at a minimum, a strong statement indicating our intention to revision the HE to include the EJE recommended subject areas with policies and procedures, should be included. It will probably be ninety (90) days before the Housing and Community Development (HDC) responses to our revised HE submission. The deadline for the EJE inclusion-revisions to be submitted by staff to HCD should be no later than March 31, 2023.
Respectfully,
Pam D. Jones, Menlo Park resident Belle Haven neighbor
The impossible dissipates when I becomes WE.
Forgetting history is the path to re-writing history.
PamÉlla
