Candidates clash over housing at latest election forum – Palo Alto Daily Post

BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Editor

In the final debate of the Palo Alto City Council race, all seven candidates made their stance on housing clear: four of them are happy to build, and three would rather not understand that the city is government-mandated. state to do so.

Candidates Ed Lauing, Doria Summa and Brian Hamachek are reluctant to fill the state’s estimate of 6,086 homes in Palo Alto over the next eight years. Both Lauing and Summa said the quota was too inflated and they didn’t like the state’s “top-down” or “one-size-fits-all” approach.

Hamacheck went further and said building many units — a 20% increase in Palo Alto housing stock — would destroy the city. “It would be a disaster if that were to happen,” he said.

On the other side, Julie Lythcott-Haims, Vicki Veenker and Lisa Forssell were more enthusiastic about building the accommodations.

“Not only do I accept, but I celebrate the state’s mandate,” Forssell said.

Alex Comsa is also pro-housing, but his ideas are off the beaten path, such as building thousands of apartments at the Palo Alto airport.

Both Forssell and Veenker said they want Palo Alto to provide area plans that show developers what they can build in certain places, like along El Camino Real or San Antonio Road. The city could rule out those plans in two years rather than focusing on one project at a time, Forssell said.
Lythcott-Haims said the city faces an existential question.

“Where will people go if our city doesn’t do its part? she asked. “We need to respond to the demographic realities of our moment, rather than sticking our heads in the sand and saying, ‘No, no, not here, not here – do it there. “”

Lauing said there’s no limit to the number of people who want to live in Palo Alto, and the city doesn’t have to accommodate them all. The city should focus on people who need to live here, like those who need to work here or have low incomes.

Summa said the housing crisis is not caused by a lack of housing, but rather by a lack of affordable housing.

This is why Summa, together with Lauing, supports the focus on 100% affordable projects and lets the market take care of the rest.

It’s a different approach than Lythcott-Haims, which said it wants developers to build apartment complexes with 20% of units capped at below-market rent.

Lauing said a 20% accessibility rate is not achievable for developers to make a profit. And if 15% of the units are affordable, then the city would have to build an unfathomable number of homes at market price to meet the state’s quota for affordable units, he said.
Lythcott-Haims responded that she would also look at 100% affordable housing projects and that she supports both approaches. But it’s best if high-income and low-income residents live together, she said.

Lythcott-Haims then asked Summa how she would pay for 100% affordable housing projects. Summa said it was very difficult and required contributions from all levels of government and non-profit developers.

Summa and Lythcott-Haims also had discussions about the Maybell project, which was a proposal to build a 60-unit apartment complex for low-income seniors, as well as 12 single-family homes, in the neighborhood of Green Acres. Residents put the development on the ballot and a majority of voters rejected the proposal in November 2013.

Summa said the project is no longer relevant now and she doesn’t know why Lythcott-Haims is still talking about it. Voters determined the outcome, she said.

“To say you don’t like it is to say you don’t like democracy,” Summa said.

Lythcott-Haims said she brought up the Maybell project because it was in her neighborhood, so it’s personal. She also said that the United States has a history of bad victories at the polls.