Dear Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council members, and honorable staff,
I’m Jenny Michel, a native living in D3, a recovering homeless teacher, and bus rider.
Personal comments on mental health month and the lawsuit against our 6th housing element contracted goals:
First I want to thank the City of Menlo Park for our incredible library services and the various celebrations of mental health month in May. Our son is obsessed with the library, ordering books, navigating your vast services, and reading those books! Similarly, I enjoyed the open mic and grabbing books for mental health. I felt welcomed, normalized, supported, and able to support other neighbors. Plus the books have been incredibly insightful!
May was challenging because we lost another important Dylan, but also because I’ve been in and out of the hospital since April. Tomorrow, the 4th, I’ll have open heart surgery. If for some reason I don’t make it, it is important I convey one last time, my deep love and gratitude for our special city I’ve known as my home. Our son is headed to Hillview in the fall, and I trust he will continue his advocacy of public transit.
I wrote this like a month ago and have been unwell to speak at council. Now that my future is unknown, I’ll submit these now just in case I don’t have another opportunity.
I had a few comments regarding the lawsuit challenging the housing we’ve committed to the state of California to foster on our parking lots downtown.
For those who don’t remember, I am a recovering Not in my backyard gal. I helped stop the transition and shared housing project proposed at 555 Willow Road. Our apartment looks directly down on that parcel. Mentally, I supported affordable housing, but in fact, I helped kill it. I don’t find NIMBY a slur. If you don’t want housing in your backyard, just own it. It’s okay to be honest like I am.
As a commercial property manager, I see the lawsuit is fundamentally flawed in that the parking assessment is what I liken to an amenity tenants help pay for in their CAM’s or common area maintenance. It’s like the lawsuit is saying any capital improvement project a landlord completes is now subject to the tenant having an owning interest. WHAT? If a tenant pays their amortization schedule for the capital improvements, they now have a right to determine how the asset is held, managed, used, financed, or disposed of. NO. Tenants pay for their use of the building at their pro rata share. Similarly, the parking assessment is an amenity of quote free parking use by your patrons that you help pay for. It does not give you owning interest in the parcels.
Further, I call baloney on the claims that there is a commitment to build affordable housing west of El Camino. I dare you to demonstrate I am wrong with these simple suggestions:
Drop the lawsuit
And/or reallocate all monies raised and labor investments into getting stakeholders and homeowners THIRSTY to build housing on city owned land west of ECR.
And/or to follow the City of Sacramento’s lead by rallying the city to eliminate single family or exclusionary zoning. This would allow for disbursed infill housing like small apartments or the neighborhood scale building being used in Seattle that features 5 stories, 1 elevator, 1 staircase, and 13 family sized homes. Access to homeownership - check!
Double super bonus would be to have your billionaire clients just buy land and donate to the city for housing development use near transit. It would be tax deductible.
Mega bonus would be to participate in the St Raymond’s CEO sleepout by participating and/or donating money that was scheduled for June 20th. Check the website for the new date. Challenge your current perspective on the housing crisis and understand how our ‘clock’ really works - we manipulate the market with manufactured scarcity.
Lastly, despite my love of the book Paved Paradise, I now highly recommend reading Traffic: why we drive the way we do and what it says about us by Tom Vanderbilt. It’s been a joy to read these books and listen to neighbors talk about traffic concerns.
I’ll be in pre-op tonight and probably miss the meeting. I hope it is productive and know that I’ll being experiencing FOMO.
Thank you for your consideration! Jenny from the Coleman Place block
