Category: Menlo Park Neighbors for Affordable Homes

Our city needs a realistic and equitable plan for housing over the next decade

Every eight years, the state requires each city to update its plan for new housing at all income levels (this is called a “Housing Element”). Your personal story and input is a powerful way to influence the process to ensure Menlo Park’s housing plan is robust and fair.

It’s time to act together to shape a future for Menlo Park with homes for all. Please consider sending a personal email to Planning and Housing Commissioners by early afternoon, January 12th.

Need help? Have questions? Reach out to info@menlotogether.org.

You may want to highlight:

  • How the lack of housing at all income levels affects you and the people you care about. Be specific!
  • How more housing aligns with your values. At Menlo Together, we envision a city that is integrated and diverse, multi-generational, and environmentally sustainable. We envision an accessible and inviting downtown Menlo Park, with housing at all affordability levels, much less solo driving and with pedestrian and bike-friendly spaces, developed to produce zero net greenhouse gasses.
  • The importance of increasing the accessibility, vibrancy and climate-friendliness of downtown Menlo Park by building higher and denser housing near services and transit. (Note: removing some of the less realistic sites from the draft Housing Element would require the City to increase the amount of housing it plans for viable sites downtown, including city-owned parking lots and other locations in the downtown/El Camino area)
  • The benefits of building housing on city-owned land such as downtown parking lots include the potential for nonprofit housing developers to build homes for some of our most housing-insecure residents.
  • Why Menlo Park should plan for a variety of affordable housing options, including for seniors, veterans, people with disabilities, large families, and others with special needs.
  • The need for policies that prevent the displacement of our neighbors (42% of Menlo Park residents rent their homes), such as prohibiting unfair evictions and excessive rent increases, preventing discrimination and harassment, and preserving “naturally affordable housing” (such as homes in older buildings located in more affordable neighborhoods).
  • The opportunity to increase the viability of at least one potential housing site near highway 280 (such as the Sharon Heights Shopping Center). The city can incentivize housing at these sites by increasing the allowable height and density of buildings it allows on these properties.

More information:

Hear From Both Sides of Measure V

Join the Political Forum Webinar the Almanac is hosting this fall. Hear from both sides of the Measure V ballot measure via Zoon this upcoming Thursday, October 6, from 7 to 8 p.m. Almanac Editor Andrea Gemmet and Staff Writer Cameron Rebosio will pose questions to Nicole Chessari of Menlo Balance and Margarita Méndez of Menlo Park Neighbors for Affordable Homes.

Register Here

What’s this all about? This November, Menlo Park neighbors will vote on a local ballot measure designed to stop the Ravenswood City School District from creating affordable homes for teachers and staff at its Flood School site. The measure would also block future homes from being created for your neighbors throughout Menlo Park. YOU can stop this! Learn more about the measure here. 

Menlo Park Neighbors for Affordable Homes Ballot Measure Info Session

Join Menlo Park Neighbors for Affordable Homes and the Ravenswood City School District Community – teachers, staff, parents and neighbors, this Sunday August 28th, 3-4:30pm at Belle Haven School. You are invited!

This November, Menlo Park neighbors will vote on a local ballot measure designed to stop the Ravenswood City School District from creating affordable homes for teachers and staff at its Flood School site. The measure would also block future homes from being created for your neighbors throughout Menlo Park. YOU can stop this! Learn more about the measure here.

RSVP
Donate
Endorse

You’ll hear from Ravenswood district teachers, staff, and community members and learn how YOU can champion affordable homes by helping defeat the measure.

Staff housing for school districts can make a huge difference, not just in the lives of the teachers and other employees that serve our children, but for the entire community. This Associated Press video includes interviews with new residents of faculty housing completed this year in Daly City, very similar to what is being proposed in Menlo Park.

[1] The measure would require a regular-election vote of the public before changing zoning of low-density residential parcels, which include the vacant site of the former Flood School and several church parking lots where affordable housing could be created.

Independent Report finds that Ballot Measure would block affordable housing

Last month (June 28), your Menlo Park City Council Members commissioned an independent, objective impact analysis of a November 2022 Menlo Park ballot measure.

That report was released last Friday and the findings are clear – the ballot measure would create big barriers for affordable housing in Menlo Park and block teacher and staff housing for the Ravenswood City School District.

If the ballot measure passes in November 2022, it will:

  • Block affordable housing for teachers and school staff at the vacant site of the former Flood School site owned by Ravenswood City School District.
  • Lock in and exacerbate racial and economic segregation by blocking future homes in high opportunity neighborhoods which are predominantly upper income and white.
  • Limit the city’s ability to plan for housing for people at a variety of income levels, in conflict with the city’s General Plan
  • Put the city at risk of being sued by reducing our ability to affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH), as required by law (CA 2018 Assembly Bill 686)
  • Block Menlo Park Fire District from redeveloping their headquarters without a public vote.
  • Block Menlo Park religious organizations from redeveloping their properties without a public vote.

At the City Council meeting on Tuesday, July 26, council members will most likely vote to put this measure on the November ballot rather than enact it into law without a public vote, which is the only other option.  City Council measures can also express their opinions to the measure if they so choose.

To watch a presentation on the report and share your thoughts with the City Council, you can dial in by Zoom or phone.

Here’s the meeting information:

Agenda: Items J1 and J2
Zoom: https://zoom.us/join
Meeting ID: 831 3316 9409

Dial In: (669) 900-6833
Meeting ID: 831 3316 9409
Press *9 to raise hand to speak

The meeting starts at 5pm with a closed session.  The Ballot Measure item will likely get started some time after 7pm.  If you would like a text message or email when the item starts, rather than waiting, please send a message with your contact information to adina@menlotogether.org

Non-Single-Family Properties Affected by the Ballot Measure

Menlo Park Neighbors for Affordable Homes Campaign Kick-Off

Join a growing list of residents, organizations, and local leaders on
Sunday, July 31 from 3-4:30pm. We will meet at Flood Park in the Fir Group Picnic Area. We will provide light refreshments.

RSVP Endorse   Donate

Our vision at Menlo Together is of a city that is integrated and diverse, multi-generational, and environmentally sustainable and includes affordable homes throughout the city for people and families from all walks of life. That’s why we are proud to join Menlo Park Neighbors for Affordable Homes to OPPOSE an anti-affordable housing measure this November!

On November 8, Menlo Park voters will decide on a local ballot measure designed to stop the Ravenswood City School District (RCSD) from creating affordable homes for teachers and staff at its Flood School site1. The measure would also block future homes from being created for your neighbors throughout Menlo Park. If it passes, it will spread to other cities and make it that much harder for everyone you know to find quality affordable homes. YOU can stop this.

At the kick-off, you’ll hear from affordable housing champions, including a resident of the Jefferson Union High School District’s affordable workforce housing in Daly City, and talk about how YOU can champion affordable homes by helping defeat the measure.

Watch this this video to see for yourself how staff housing for school districts can make a huge difference, not just in the lives of the teachers and other employees that serve our children, but for the entire community.

Join Menlo Park Neighbors for Affordable Homes and learn how YOU can help defeat the anti-affordable housing measure, preserve the ability of Ravenswood City School District to use their land and resources to support their staff, and support affordable housing in all neighborhoods in Menlo Park. With YOUR help, we can do this! 

[1] The measure would require a regular-election vote of the public before changing zoning of low-density residential parcels, which include the vacant site of the former Flood School and several church parking lots where affordable housing could be created.