Proposed cafe for seniors means longtime lunch program will need new home

Palo Alto Weekly – by Jocelyn Dong / August 16, 2017

Palo Alto nonprofit Avenidas won’t house La Comida after renovation of senior center is complete

Avenidas, the downtown Palo Alto nonprofit that provides services to seniors, plans to open a cafe in its center at 450 Bryant St. — ending speculation that it might continue to host longtime lunch program La Comida.

Keene: City to hold off on evictions of First Baptist groups

Palo Alto Weekly – by Elinor Aspegren, Shawna Chen and Jocelyn Dong / August 15, 2017

Pastors, others say allowing churches to rent space to various community groups should be allowed

Unhappy over the City of Palo Alto’s planned eviction of a dozen nonprofit organizations and businesses that have been using First Baptist Church in Palo Alto as their home, members of the groups and their supporters turned out in force on Monday to plead with the City Council to change zoning rules to allow them to stay.

Dear YIMBYs: The brutal, unfettered market won’t stop displacement

San Francisco Examiner – OpEd by   and  / 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:

  • Producing tons of market-rate units to lower rents may take generations and may never actually work to relieve displacement pressures.
  • Subsidized units for low-income folks have more than twice the impact on reducing displacement pressures…

A City’s Moral Impetus

Palo Alto Matters – Guest Commentary by Greer Stone / June 25, 2017

Santa Clara County Human Relations Commissioner, Chairman of the Santa Clara County Justice Review Committee, and former Chair of Palo Alto’s Human Relations Commission

In 2003 the world was a different place. A gallon of gas cost $1.79, a dozen eggs would run you $1.24, and the average price of a home in Palo Alto cost $1,179,000. The world had never heard of Barack Obama, and Donald Trump had not even begun his reality show, let alone his career in politics. Yes, much has changed, but unfortunately, the funding provided by the City of Palo Alto to help the most vulnerable members of our community has not.