A year after Palo Alto first adopted its housing plan, which has yet to be certified by the state, the City Council voted to revise it for a second time — including by attempting to ensure minority and low-income residents have access to housing.
After the Planning and Transportation Commission on Monday night unanimously endorsed the revised housing plan, officially known as the “housing element,” the council voted 6-1 to incorporate the changes. Council Member Lydia Kou, who said the housing plan lacked “community spaces” and clear funding mechanisms, dissented.
The city submitted its housing element, which was due last January, to the California Department of Housing & Community Development in June last year, but it has yet to be certified and was sent back to Palo Alto requesting revisions.
Palo Alto is targeting building at least 6,000 units by 2031 to meet its state-determined housing goals. That stays the same.
Some substantive revisions include identifying land suitable for housing development. Other updates were minor, such as updating or expanding demographic data and improving particular phrasing in the housing plan.
Every eight years, local governments are required to submit a housing element, a document that outlines how cities will add a specific number of homes at a range of price points.
In recent years, state regulators have been scrutinizing cities’ housing plans more closely than ever before, as the state struggles with soaring housing costs and a housing shortage.
Nearby Menlo Park had its housing element certified only last March after several revisions. Meanwhile small-but-wealthy Portola Valley had its housing element de-certified after it failed to take steps to allow new multifamily housing.
Not having a certified housing element means that a city could be subject to consequences like the builder’s remedy, which allows developers to ignore a city’s zoning rules as long as 20% of the units are set aside as affordable.
While Palo Alto currently has several builder’s remedy projects already in the pipeline, Councilmember Julie Lythcott-Haims said she was optimistic the state would approve this version of the plan.
“If the staff are confident, I’m confident,” Lythcott-Haims said.
The councilmember said she was satisfied with how the revised plan uses stronger language to tackle access to housing for minority communities.
“My concern is always about equity and the housing commission is compelling us to focus on affirmatively furthering fair housing and combat our racially segregated areas of affluence,” Lythcott-Haims said.
During the three-hour meeting, Lythcott-Haims expressed some initial concern the plan would confine low-income housing to inaccessible parts of town, but said that city staff ultimately clarified that was not what the plan is suggesting.
“When I saw that they were putting specialized populations on the east side of US-101, I expressed a concern about that and they were pretty clear that’s not actually what they’re intending to do,” she said.
She also supports a revision to the plan that would calculate the fees for building accessory dwelling units (ADUs), or granny flats, on single-family properties based on square footage rather than by unit.
“The fact that our impact fees right now are on a per-unit basis completely is a penalty on small housing so they’re going to swap it,” Lythcott-Haims said. “So those fees should become more reasonable.”
The city is hoping to encourage property owners in single-family neighborhoods to build at least 512 ADUs.
The City Council would have to pass an ordinance that would make changes to the impact fees to bolster the production of ADUs.
The City Council also asked city staff to add a minor amendment to the housing plan that extends the “housing focus area” along El Camino Real, which would allow developers to build mixed-use, taller and higher-density buildings
Palo Alto already adopted new zoning rules late last year that would allow taller and denser housing projects.
Emily Ann Ramos of SV@Home, a Silicon Valley affordable housing coalition, who stayed for the entire meeting, said that while Palo Alto is behind, as this housing cycle already started in 2023, it was a “good effort” to get in compliance with state regulations.
“I think Palo Alto is trying very hard to finally get this over the finish line,” said Ramos, who is also a Mountain View City Council member. “When you go for housing element compliance, you really can’t just go for that bare minimum. You have to really have to overshoot it just to make sure that you reach compliance.”