Dear City Council Members,
I am writing to you to express my enthusiastic support for the proposal to build affordable housing on downtown surplus land that is currently critically under utilized as parking.
I was born and raised in Menlo Park. I went to college in Portland OR, graduated this spring, and moved back in with my parents in the Willows. Moving back in with your parents is not most 23 year olds first choice, and this decision was shaped in no small part by the utter lack of other options. As I have been slogging through the endless job search, many of the jobs that I am qualified for in this area (that require a bachelor’s degree) pay approximately 20-25$ an hour, putting yearly compensation at around 50,000. Median rent in Menlo Park rose 30% last year and is now at $3,370 per month for a one bedroom apartment, which is about $40,500 per year. That would mean spending 80% or more of my income on housing if I wanted to stay in the community. “Low income” housing when based off local averages just means “normal income” housing.
The proposed downtown developments stand to greatly benefit other people in similar situations: new college grads/young professionals not in tech fields, people in important but low paying jobs (teachers in MPCSD start at just under $80,000 per year) that are critical parts of our communities like teachers, nurses, home healthcare professionals, young families, and more.
Downtown Menlo Park is already floundering and there is plenty of parking available. I am a regular visitor of downtown and have never been unable to find parking. The main parking related challenge is the condition and other peoples use of the parking lots: aisles are regularly made impassable due to large vehicles parked blocking through traffic. I was in Downtown Menlo Park on December 21, one of what is theoretically one of the busiest shopping days of the year (Saturday before Christmas) and parked in Plaza 3. This is one of the lots in question that people are claiming to be so mission critical to downtown “vitality” and “survival” and it was at most 20% full. I believe that downtown business are struggling and will continue to struggle because of their catering to the elderly and wealthy segment of the Menlo Park population with no thought to or acknowledgement of demographic shifts or shifts in needs for certain types of retail.
Menlo Park must, both by state law, and for its own sake, build more housing somewhere. Replacing poor condition and poorly utilized parking lots with apartment complexes that include more parking in an area with already existing infrastructure and access to public transportation and groceries and schools is a fantastic idea and the best possible place to do so. Existing development projects along El Camino and in progress projects like the SRI campus redevelopment are already underway with the residential components being rapidly filled, bringing in a wider variety of ground floor retail and patronization of that retail to Menlo Park. Leaving derelict parking lots alone because some business owners are too shortsighted to realize that more people living nearby might mean more business for them would be a critical error for Menlo Park and leave us in the dust behind other Peninsula towns that are figuring out how to keep up with the times. If downtown businesses truly believe these parking lots to be so critical to their survival, they can get together to buy them from the city at market rate, make them private lots, and be in charge of parking enforcement and maintenance.
I urge you to vote to move this project forward and create more critically needed housing in Menlo Park for people who are already critical members of this community.
Thank you,
Amelia Richardson
