Hello Menlo Park City Council,
I am passing along the following letter from the Executive Director of Climate Resilient Communities regarding the important relationship between the Housing Element and the Environmental Justice Element. It is attached as a pdf and copied below:
__________________________________________
Menlo Park City Council
Dear Council Members Doerr, Nash, Combs, Vice-Mayor Taylor, Mayor Wolosin, and Menlo Park City Staff,
Thank you for all of the hard work you have done throughout the General Plan update process. I am writing on behalf of Climate Resilient Communities, the organization brought in as a partner to ensure widespread and equitable community engagement among Belle Haven residents on the Environmental Justice and Safety Elements. I’d like to congratulate you all on your strong effort to update the General Plan. I am well aware of the countless hours of time the council, staff, and the public have spent trying to forge this important plan.
Through this process, working closely with staff and community members, we have come to recognize the direct linkages between the Housing Element and priority topics in the Environmental Justice Element, which we would like to make clear to the Council and public.
As I hope you are aware, the community outreach effort conducted so far among Belle Haven residents on the Environmental Justice Element has been extremely robust. More than 150 residents attended in-person meetings to learn about the element and identify their priorities. Our previously submitted and publicly available outreach report synthesizing those findings begins on page 123 of the Draft Environmental Justice Element pdf. City staff has worked very hard to ensure we have the tools we need to ensure equitable access to a process that in too many cities remains opaque.
Council members and staff can view the results of the survey we conducted at this link, as it offers direct insight into some of the housing vulnerabilities experienced disproportionately by Belle Haven residents. More than 320 Belle Haven households are represented in the survey, meaning more than 1500 residents are represented by statistically significant findings. Setting the Filter to None, the Prevalence to Health Issues or Environmental Impacts, and the Group By to Neighborhood shows disparities between respondents in Belle Haven and the rest of Menlo Park.
Through all of this engagement, residents consistently cited insecure, unsafe, low-quality, or unaffordable housing as their greatest environmental concern, demonstrating the inherent connection between housing and climate justice. Addressing the safety, stability, affordability, and quality of homes in the Housing Element is therefore vital to creating a strong Environmental Justice Element that is responsive to a previously unmatched level of community interest and engagement.
The current draft of the Environmental Justice Element relies extensively on policies and programs advanced in the Housing Element to fulfill its stated goal to “Provide Safe and Sanitary Homes for all Residents”. Without a strong Housing Element that does everything possible to prevent displacement and protect tenants, the city risks disappointing many residents who engaged sincerely with the public process, many for the first time. A strong Housing Element is an absolutely essential part of a strong Environmental Justice Element.
Our goal is only to express the concerns of the community as relayed to us in terms that are clearly actionable for Councilmembers. To that end, CRC believes that including the following policies in the Housing Element would address the most pressing community concerns as conveyed through our extensive outreach work and help ensure legally compliant and socially just Housing and Environmental Justice Elements:
* Expanded rent control measures (referenced explicitly by 4 public commenters).
* Just Cause for Eviction for tenants of any tenure.
* Relocation assistance for no-cause evictions paid by the landlord, equal to four months rent (or more for families with special needs).
* In-person, in-language, culturally competent, expert tenant education delivered at least four times per year.
* A right to legal counsel at no expense for people faced with eviction proceedings.
* The distribution of new housing throughout the city and in high-resource areas and transportation corridors, not concentrated in Belle Haven.
* Supporting the creation of a community land trust or other vehicle to acquire property to use to build deeply affordable housing.
While the Environmental Justice Element does not carry the same consequences for non-compliance as the Housing Element, the City of Menlo Park undertook the process of creating an Environmental Justice Element out of a sincere interest in engaging and addressing the concerns of residents facing the greatest environmental burdens. The City of Menlo Park undertook this process to demonstrate its ability to be a leader in the Bay Area on Climate and Environmental Justice and it is our sincere hope that the voices of residents will be heard clearly and that the City can claim that label. Thank you for all your effort, interest, and dedication to this project.
Kind regards,
Violet Wulf-Saena
Founder and Executive Director of Climate Resilient Communities
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[https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fci3.googleusercontent.com%2fmail-sig%2fAIorK4zTGly8PMs_zH08Grle3Tnz5bfhXCWlKjpg7MHL0QbxORnYFLEpCq4rIDMlw3ITXsjbrlJld1U&c=E,1,VQh3bhdEWDNCVTPUtgkMMfWhL33WMFgB9m_zETBjIeZNB67r8wOnWpkNQoc7PWt93T-Jv3dbOFZWwLDih0_dT989JMe7gRZkhvca9ZfQCCupnw,,&typo=1]
Cade Cannedy
Program Manager
Climate Resilient Communities
3921 East Bayshore Road, Palo Alto, CA94303-4303
https://www.climatercommunities.org/
575-776-7667
