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Affordable housing in Portola Valley — why it’s important and how it should be planned for — is the topic for a community meeting at 7:30 p.m. tonight (March 26) at Woodside Priory School and Thursday evening, March 28, at the same time at Corte Madera Middle School.
The Priory is located at 302 Portola Road. The event is set to take place in Father Christopher’s Room, located within Founders Hall.
By state law, Portola Valley, along with every town in California, must plan for socio-economic diversity among its residents. Town officials, through a group of volunteers on an ad hoc committee, are seeking feedback from the public on town values and aspirations related to affordable housing.
More meetings are scheduled for the weeks ahead: on Wednesday morning, April 3, in the Valley Presbyterian Church, and on Monday evening, April 8, at the Alpine Hills Swim & Tennis Club. Less formal meetings in the homes of ad hoc committee members are planned. Refer to the town’s website and PV Forum for schedules and locations.
Why is this important? Officials from the California Department of Housing and Community Development assert that the state has a housing crisis in that too many people are not able to live near their workplaces. Local government land-use regulations are seen as a principal source of the problem, a member of the Portola Valley planning staff has said.
HCD and regional agencies have been addressing the issue with planning quotas for each community that are updated periodically. Towns have an obligation to show how they would accommodate specific numbers of dwellings in four income categories, including very low to moderate incomes.
Residents can submit comments at Town Hall on weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 5 p.m. To download a blank comment form, go to this link.
For more information, contact Interim Planning Department Manager Steve Padovan at 851-1700, ext. 212, or spadovan@portolavalley.net.
By Dave Boyce
By Dave Boyce
By Dave Boyce
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Affordable Housing: The Almanac story contains a link to a town website where one can click on another link to a form for submitting input to the committee on affordable housing. While all of this is laudable, the forms provided could not be written on from my iPad. I wonder how many others will experience this difficulty and then forget to download the form onto their computer and fill in and then transmit a response. We will never know. I propose that an email link in a future article by the Almanac would greatly facilitate maximizing the number of comments on tis important issue.