While Becker voted to advance the bill, he emphasized in an interview that his support hinges on significant changes that would need to be made to the legislation before it comes back to the Senate for a final vote
“I will not vote on this bill on the way back unless the radius has changed”
The bill also proved divisive in Palo Alto, where City Council member Pat Burt described the prior version of the bill as a “one-size-fits-all” proposal that takes the “chainsaw to local zoning.”
“We’re talking about 55 feet and 5 stories by right without any parking requirements in an Eichler neighborhood” Burt said at an April meeting, referring to Eichler neighborhoods in south Palo Alto that are within half a mile of the San Antonio Caltrain station.
Isn’t near transit stations exactly where you’d want to put high density housing?
Americans have so much of their wealth sunk in their real estate / home that they eye any change with deep suspicion and an eye on how it affects their home value. Surely, a 5 story building next to your ranch home is going to lower your home value, so it must not happen.
I think this is a dilemma that everybody in the Bay Area faces: you can universally agree that more housing and especially more dense housing needs to be built, but you can’t allow it to be built near you because that drags your home value down. Even just a 5% drop in value may be all the equity you built if you are a recent buyer.
I guess a compromise might be to give people near these new buildings a property tax rebate as counterbalance. Also, instead of mandating parking, maybe you mandate that people moving into spaces designed to be near public transit not register cars there.
I used to live in this area. These people have money. I don’t mean they have money like their daughter whips a Benz and extra properties. Nah man some folks in this area have that fuck you money, like bury bodies money
Haha, so USA can’t have five story buildings because the parking lot would have to be really big. ½ mile is 800 m? That’s fine, distance wise from the train station. Maybe 0.4 miles would be better but you can still walk ½ mile in a bit over ten minutes.
How do you get “USA” from one neighborhood in one city in one state?
It’s also California: the weather is usually really good. Maybe this “Becker” should add an amendment that requires bike roads to be built instead of parking spots.
I assume he’s against being proactive in problem solving, though.
Well that’s the thing, this bill actually removes the minimum parking requirements. The opposition is just NIMBY
