Guest opinion: Stanford, not community, should pay for housing impacts it creates

By Karen Grove

Over 100 people attended meetings last week to comment on Menlo Park’s proposed Tenant Relocation Assistance ordinance. Supporters urged the city to protect residents from the traumatic social, economic, and health impacts of displacement. Others objected to the burden to landlords and property owners. People on opposite sides of the issue vehemently agree that Menlo Park must dramatically increase its supply of housing, including affordable housing.

Opportunities ahead include increasing height limits and density downtown, affordable housing as a component of the proposed Civic Center library renovation project, and making better use of our downtown parking plazas.

However, even our best efforts won’t compensate for 9,600 new people on campus that are part of Stanford’s 2018 General Use Plan – unless we act now.

Where will these people live? Who will ensure they have access to safe, affordable housing? How many more valued members of our community will be displaced because of increased housing pressure from Stanford students, faculty, and staff?

Fortunately, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors has a real solution in front of it right now – two of them, in fact. The supervisors are considering two ordinances that would oblige Stanford to address increased housing demand resulting from its own growth, rather than forcing neighboring communities to bear the burden.

First, to account for the affordable housing demand generated by Stanford’s academic development, the board is considering an affordable housing impact fee. It would be a one-time fee per each new square foot of academic space that Stanford develops. It would fund the affordable housing necessary to meet the increased demand created by Stanford’s academic expansion.

The fee proposed by the Board of Supervisors was determined through an industry-standard “nexus study.” The same nexus methodology has been employed by many other jurisdictions that assess housing impact fees.

The Stanford nexus study found that in order to fully fund the new housing necessitated by its academic expansion, Stanford should pay as much as $143 per square foot. The board is currently considering an impact fee of $68.50 – less than half the calculated cost of meeting the demand for affordable housing arising from Stanford’s proposed growth.

An affordable housing fee at this amount would ensure that Stanford pays something closer to the actual cost of the affordable housing impacts of its academic space development than the current $35-per-square-foot fee.

As helpful as that is, the affordable housing impact fee does not address the demand for affordable housing generated by the university’s residential development (turns out housing itself creates a demand for affordable housing!). The university plans to add 550 housing units for its faculty and staff, which creates new demand for additional affordable housing for the restaurant staff, maintenance workers, and others who provide much-needed services to those 550 new households.

To address the housing impacts from residential development on the Stanford campus, the second solution the Board of Supervisors is considering is an inclusionary zoning ordinance. This ordinance requires that a certain percentage of housing units built are set aside as affordable to families with extremely low to moderate incomes.

Inclusionary zoning ordinances have long been a staple of sound housing policy. Menlo Park has a 15 percent inclusionary requirement for all residential developments over 20 units. Palo Alto requires new developments to price 10 percent of units as affordable. San Francisco sets its inclusionary rate between 12 percent and 20 percent.

Santa Clara County staff has proposed that 16 percent of units developed on the Stanford campus be affordable to people with extremely low to moderate incomes. The 16 percent rate is grounded in the math surrounding Stanford’s development: It is the percent necessary to ensure that Stanford’s housing impacts don’t spill over into neighboring communities, including ours.

Over the course of the 2018 general use plan (GUP), the inclusionary zoning ordinance would add up to 88 units available to the members of our community who struggle the most to find housing within their budget.

Taken together, the affordable housing fee and the inclusionary zoning ordinance help to guarantee that Stanford absorbs the cost of housing for its residential and academic growth. The Board of Supervisors is close to requiring that Stanford address the housing demand that it creates. Even though these two measures don’t fully mitigate the demand for housing created by Stanford’s proposed development, they take us two steps closer. I will be there to voice my support when the supervisors consider these ordinances on Tuesday, Sept. 25, and I hope you will join me.

Karen Grove is a Menlo Park resident and city housing commissioner, writing for herself and not for the commission. She is also chair of the Grove Foundation and president of the Grove Action Fund, both of which make grants to safety-net organizations in Belle Haven, East Palo Alto, and North Fair Oaks.