Dear Menlo Park City Council and Staff,

I’m writing to express my strong support for option 4 on table 3 in the staff report - land donation from Prince Street to Eden Housing to achieve 26 truly affordable homes with mission-aligned property management, for seniors with extremely and very low incomes. The land donation partnership proposal is exactly the kind of creative, collaborative, civic contribution we should embrace. The proposal amplifies the public benefit of Prince Street’s original BMR agreement by more than ten-fold.

I was on the housing commission when we recommended approval of the BMR agreement that deferred production of two BMR homes that would be affordable to households with income levels of 50-80% AMI from the Santa Cruz project to a future housing project at 1162 El Camino Real. This proposal is so much better! Instead of two homes “technically” (but often not in actuality) affordable to households with incomes between 50-80% AMI, we have the opportunity to add to our city’s housing stock 26 homes for seniors affordable to seniors with significantly lower incomes.

That is 13 times more homes, and about double the level of affordability.

In addition, the city will benefit from partnering with Eden Housing who has the expertise to develop this small site affordable project and manage it in alignment with their non-profit affordable housing mission. I urge the city council to ask staff, “What would it take to make this work?” “What do you need from us to advance this solution?” and “How soon can we welcome these lower income seniors to the center of our city?”

Regards,
Karen Grove