Original post made on Jul 15, 2022

Looks like a great first step in paving over paradise. Maybe next cycle we can put a road and houses up Windy Hill. Congrats.

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How did this turn out to be the conclusion of that lengthy process? Why are we putting moderate income in our rural business areas? What is wrong with low income housing why does it have to be made to look like projects? There are many good people who work in our area and who need housing here.. We know that we provided a good deal of jobs to people who love the outdoors, plants, large animals and small, and we know that we would like to decrease traffic in Portola Valley. What stops us from providing low and very low income housing in the places that provide country type labor jobs and where the people who work those jobs want to be which is in the country? Why are we destroying our local business that support our environment and rural spaces? This Glen Oaks solution flies directly in the face of all our efforts. Least practical , most destructive. Practical solutions and common sense combined with local knowledge seems to have lost their sway... Hopefully when the rubber hits the road, common sense and environmental solutions will regain respect. Mary

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The one-size-fits-all State HCD mandates put small towns like Portola Valley “between a rock and a hard place.” We have to deal with extreme wildfire and earthquake risks, while lacking access to public transportation, have minimal commercial infrastructure, and don’t even have a post office. Especially challenging is equitably accommodating the priority goal to provide sites for affordable housing. The current housing-element proposal concentrates the HCD-mandated very-low-income multi-family housing (58 of the 60 proposed units, without any mix of higher-income units) in a small (“gateway”) area at the town boundary. In addition to obliterating Dorothy Ford Park, the town’s first and most visually prominent open-space preserve (acquired 50 years ago with donations for this purpose from early town residents), the proposed housing-element plan seems in violation of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing state law (AB 686). This law explicitly requires that affordable housing sites “should be identified throughout the community,” and that the community should “ensure that sites for lower-income households are not concentrated in segregated areas.” Rather than geographically marginalizing and isolating affordable housing at one place on the edge of town, shouldn’t Portola Valley propose to mix lower-income multi-family housing among multiple sites located more centrally and distributed more widely in the town?

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Regarding: "The town added in a clause that the owner opting for rezoning has to live on-site to prevent developers from buying up land." I believe this is a factual error. There is currently no such clause in the draft housing element, and as far as I know there was no proposal from the AHHEC, Planning Committee, or Town Council to add such a clause. Summary notes from the 7/13 Town Council meeting only include: "Added limitations to the Opt-In Rezoning Program to limit projects to four units per site (rather than four units per acre) and require a discretionary review process."

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Portola Valley residents should be ashamed of their regressive housing stance but they're too oblivious.

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