Palo Alto Matters - Community voices for sustainable solutions
News, data, commentary and connections to help Palo Alto residents get informed, get involved, and speak up about community concerns.
Palo Alto Daily Post – by Matt Niksa / July 27, 2017
A shortage of parking is hurting retailers and restaurants in downtown Palo Alto and in the California Avenue district, not only because it reduces the number of customers but it is also making it hard to keep workers, panelists said at a discussion on local retail issues yesterday.
Foster City is considering updates to its regulations on secondary units as it aims to comply with state mandates promoting the residences as a means to address the affordable housing crisis….
Palo Alto Weekly – by Gennady Sheyner / July 21, 2017
After meeting community opposition in its most recent bid to build an affordable-housing complex in its home town, the nonprofit Palo Alto Housing is hoping for a better reception — and outcome — for its new proposal: a 67-unit development on El Camino Real, in the Ventura neighborhood.
San Francisco Examiner – OpEd by Leslie Dreyer, Joseph Smooke and Sarah Sherburn-Zimmer / July 20, 2017
Your platform, which relies on the filtering theory, states, “Today’s new, expensive housing becomes tomorrow’s inexpensive housing.” This theory doesn’t hold true for San Francisco, nor likely any other city strangled by the current global speculative market. When the California Legislative Analyst’s Office misused UC Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project data to advocate for the construction of market-rate housing as an anti-displacement tool, the researchers responded, in summary, by saying:
Palo Alto Daily Post – by Emily Mibach / July 12, 2017
Facebook’s proposal to develop a 59-acre business park on Willow Road in Menlo Park into a “Village” with homes, stores and 1.75 million square feet of office space doesn’t answer some major questions about housing and traffic.
Palo Alto Weekly – by Gennady Sheyner / July 14, 2017
More than perhaps any other City Hall program, code enforcement is a custom-built operation that mirrors its community.
Palo Alto Weekly – by Gennady Sheyner / July 14, 2017
For a team that consists of just three people, Palo Alto’s code enforcers have been facing an unprecedented level of public scrutiny of late. In January, the council received the latest National Citizens Survey that showed a troubling trend: only 52 percent of the respondents rated Palo Alto code enforcement as “good” or “excellent” in 2016, down from 59 percent in 2015 and 62 percent in 2014.
Palo Alto Daily Post – by Emily Mabach / July 13, 2017
A judge has ruled that a development company temporarily doesn’t have to pay the city of Palo Alto a $5,000-a-day fine for failing to provide a grocery store in the Edgewood Shopping Center.
Palo Alto Weekly – by Gennady Sheyner / July 12, 2017
Palo Alto’s effort to chip away at what many in City Hall acknowledge to be a “housing crisis” advanced on Wednesday night, when the city’s Planning and Transportation Commission threw its support behind a plan to construct two buildings with 50 apartments at an El Camino Real site that until recently was occupied by Mike’s Bikes.
The plan from The Sobrato Organization calls for replacing the building and parking lot at 3001 El Camino Real with a four-story development with 19,800 square feet of retail and 30 apartments and a three-story building with 20 apartments.
The Almanac – by Kate Bradshaw / July 10. 2017
Facebook, which hit 2 billion users June 27, has announced plans for a major new office, residential and retail development near its headquarters at Willow Road and Bayfront Expressway in Menlo Park.
