2 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Letters: It's not a story of rich people against housing in Menlo Park. Here's what is at stake
Regarding 'This rich California city is losing its mind over a housing project — and it shows why new rules are needed' (Emily Hoeven, June 28): Menlo Park has many neighborhoods with varying levels of housing. It is not just a wealthy town fighting low-income housing, as Chronicle Columnist Emily Hoeven would lead one to believe. And, I am not a NIMBY lunatic.
Our downtown area is akin to a public square — a place to gather, to run errands and enjoy the ambiance of a small, suburban community. Most people access it by car because there is little public transportation, and the parking is located behind the storefronts. The success of our businesses comes from this access, which allows people from the entire area, and of a range of ages and abilities, to park and walk in downtown.
The city's plan reduces the parking where more is needed. To replace this safe, accessible parking and the walkability of downtown with high-rise housing is a short-sighted, destructive and easy answer to state-mandated housing pressure.
Virtually all downtown businesses line up against this plan; other locations, other options have been suggested.
I encourage Hoeven to dig deeper next time, to work to undo bias and labels, and to present the full story in all its complications for our city and for the times in which we live.
Lynne McClure, Menlo Park
More planning needed
Regarding 'This rich California city is losing its mind over a housing project — and it shows why new rules are needed' (Emily Hoeven, June 28): Chronicle columnist Emily Hoeven called the lawsuit opposing the city's downtown housing plan 'unhinged.' It's a striking word. When a journalist frames a perspective that way, it stops being a conversation and starts becoming an agenda.
The group I'm involved with, Civifolia, doesn't support using the California Environmental Quality Act to block inclusive, climate-friendly housing.
At the same time, sound governance requires more than clinging to one idea as conditions change. It calls for legally grounded, adaptable strategies designed for long-term success.
Civifolia recommends four steps that Menlo Park can take to preserve local control and comply with state law:
Add affordable housing-prioritized sites in eastern Menlo Park that were left out of the city's Housing Element for reasons inconsistent with fair housing goals.
Work transparently with the state to address downtown site risks.
Pursue redevelopment of the newly sold U.S. Geological Survey campus.
Reevaluate large city-owned land near Burgess Park.
This isn't a culture war, it's a planning challenge. And it demands solutions, not sides.
Skyler Ellis, contributor, Civifolia, Menlo Park
Who writes history of Trump?
Regarding 'SCOTUS deals huge blow to judges' power to rein in Trump in birthright citizenship case' (Politics, June 27): The courts are the last check on the president, but as Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett admits, the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, doesn't have unbridled authority to enforce its decisions.
Barrett has cautioned against an 'imperial judiciary,' emphasizing that while the executive branch has to follow the law, the judiciary's ability to force that compliance has limitations.
Following Friday's U.S. Supreme Court rulings, I fear that history will document how President Donald Trump's three appointments to the Supreme Court had an enormous impact on the erosion of the rule of law and destruction of our democratic republic.
It is becoming clear that all power may have been ceded to the executive branch — something that our founding fathers wished to prevent. I'd be hard pressed to refute the claim that we now live in a dictatorial autocracy.
Will historians be intimidated and coerced by the president? If they acquiesce, Trump, discursively, may be able to write the future, what communication scholars call the rhetorical construction of history.
And that, I worry, will take decades to correct and will result in the loss of what the Constitution guarantees all of us in the Bill of Rights.
