The Shame of Palo Alto: an Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

AG: Objections have been raised that increasing the housing density in Palo Alto and across the Bay Area will just lead to more congestion and reduce the quality of life. Do you think that those are valid objections to increasing density or is that a distraction from the major issue at hand?

KD: I don’t think there’s truth in that. I think that most of the traffic that we’re seeing is because people are commuting from their homes to work and they are living far away from where they work. That’s the traffic that we’re seeing, and there would actually be far less traffic if people were able to live in the same community where they work. If you look at the people who actually live and work in Palo Alto, a substantial number of them are walking or biking to work, so they’re not part of the traffic. So no, I don’t think adding housing is going to cause more congestion; I think it’s actually going to relieve a lot of the congestion that we’re seeing.

I would also add that housing and transportation are two things that have to go hand in hand, and we have to be building up our public transportation infrastructure, and there’s a lot that we can do in that direction. But when you ask me about whether it’s a deflection, I would say it is, because in my experience the people who say, ‘well, we can’t have housing because that will create transportation issues,’ they’re the very same people who show up to protest public transportation.

AG: Given that this is a Bay Area-wide problem, is it possible for Palo Alto, Mountain View, Menlo Park, etc., on their own to resolve this situation, or do we need to go larger, up to the state level?

KD: Cities are definitely capable of changing their direction. They’re definitely capable of allowing more housing in their cities. You’re seeing Redwood City, you’re seeing Mountain View adding thousands of units of housing. But most cities on the peninsula are not doing that [for a Bay Area city-by-city breakdown of 2007–2014 housing goals and actual housing construction, see here]. And even to the extent that places like Redwood City are doing it, they cannot fix the housing shortage. It really is an effort that has to be taken by all parts of the Bay Area. And unfortunately, for individual cities the incentives are not well aligned to build housing. Individual cities are mostly controlled by wealthy homeowners who don’t need more housing; they already live in a house and they are not interested in having newcomers come to their cities. They’re not interested in any impacts that might happen with that, and in general they’re not interested in their city growing.

And there are also fiscal reasons for why this happens. Given the way that property taxes are set up in California [for a more detailed explanation of California property tax law, see this explanation of Proposition 13], it is a financial burden for cities to go out and build the infrastructure necessary for housing. There’s much greater incentive to build out office space or hotels or things like that that actually get you tax revenue. All the incentives are aligned against cities building more housing, so I think that if you really want an impact in California, you need to take on a greater role to create the right incentives for cities to do the right thing for the region as a whole. I think at least some of that has to be tying things like transportation funds, school funds, and other monies that states give out to cities to whether or not those cities are actually meeting their stated housing goals.

AG: Stanford has been a crucial part of Silicon Valley’s culture and talent pipeline for decades. What do you see as Stanford’s role in housing politics, and do you think it can or should do anything?

KD: I think Stanford is in a tough position because I think Stanford has always tried very hard to be a good neighbor to Palo Alto. They’ve tried to be very friendly and supportive. I think it’s very hard, given the current environment. I get that, but at the same time, Stanford has been relatively quiet about what’s going on in Palo Alto and the Bay Area in general with respect to housing. I know that Stanford itself is trying to add a certain amount of housing for its employees or students or faculty, and that’s great; we definitely need that, but there’s also something to be said for trying to hear about what Palo Alto is doing, because if it continues this way, eventually we really are going to drive businesses and young people away. I mean, it’s driving me away, right?

And at that point, the locus of organization and development is going to shift; it’s going to go somewhere else. And I think that will be an extraordinarily painful thing for Stanford. It means less opportunities for its students, it means less collaboration between businesses and professors. I don’t think Stanford wants to be in a place that used to be the innovation capital of the world, but that’s kind of where we’re headed.

AG: Do you have any final comment that you want to make, one that is particularly relevant to undergraduates, many of whom will live and work in the Bay Area after graduating?

KD: I would say that when you look around at the city and you see that it’s not what you want it to be, that the housing isn’t affordable, that things aren’t walkable, that things aren’t bikeable, that the place is littered with strip malls: the answer is that all of those decisions are made at the local city government level. I know a lot of people are paying attention to national politics and the presidential election, but in reality the most things that most affect people’s lives, that affect their housing, that affect what’s around them, where they can go and where they can hang out, all those decisions are made at the local level, and so I urge them to pay attention to their local politics and I urge them very strongly to vote. Even if you’re a renter or you’re not sure how long you’re going to be there somewhere, register to vote and vote, because otherwise your interests will never be taken into account.

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