Four who would focus on Palo Alto’s housing challenge

Palo Alto’s charm remains undeniable, with its thriving downtown, beautiful neighborhoods and proximity to Stanford University. The city has the highest jobs-to-housing ratio (estimated at 3.5-1) of any South Bay city, providing revenues that lead to a plethora of services.

But that jobs-to-housing imbalance will lead to a resumption of horrible traffic when the coronavirus pandemic eases. It also creates an intolerable situation for young families, teachers, police officers, firefighters and other workers who are essential for the city’s future success.

A divided Palo Alto City Council has done a lot of talking in recent years about housing, but its actions have been disappointing. Mayor Adrian Fine says that the city is falling woefully short of meeting the state’s housing goals. Palo Alto has given the OK over the last seven years to only about 28% of the state’s assigned goal of nearly 2,000 housing units. And fewer than 50 of those units were for

“very low”-income residents.

That makes solving Palo Alto’s affordable housing challenge and coping with the coronavirus pandemic the two biggest issues for the 10 candidates running for four seats on the City Council.

Two incumbents — Lydia Kou and Greg Tanaka — are running for reelection, but neither has been particularly effective. Councilwoman Liz Kniss is termed out, and Fine has decided not to run again.

We recommend former Councilman Pat Burt, Planning and Transportation Commissioners Cari Templeton and Ed Lauing, and teacher Greer Stone.

Pat Burt’s previous experience on the council during the Great Recession is invaluable. He served two terms on the council and nine years on the Planning and Transportation Commission. He wants to institute a business tax in Palo Alto that he says could triple the rate of affordable housing in the city. We wish he would work on improving his relationships with those who disagree with him, but he also has a history of being able to forge good compromises on the council.

Cari Templeton has a graduate degree from Stanford and worked as a project manager for Google for 10 years until 2017. She believes “Palo Alto has a moral imperative to address barriers to opportunity” for the next generation of residents. She has a good grasp on land-use issues from her work on the Planning and Transportation Commission and is fully committed to improving Palo Alto’s poor affordable-housing record.

Ed Lauing is an executive recruiter who previously ran startups. In addition to serving on the Planning and Transportation Commission, he spent seven years on the Parks and Recreation Commission and is a former chair of the Urban Ministry of Palo Alto. Lauing calls building affordable housing his No. 1 priority and would support greater incentives to developers to make it happen. His business experience would help the City Council work through financial issues related to the COVID-19 crisis.

Greer Stone, a teacher in the Palo Alto Unified School District, would bring a welcome perspective to the council. He has served on both the Santa Clara County Human Rights Commission and the Palo Alto Human Relations Commission and is a strong advocate for social and racial justice. As a renter, he has a clear understanding that Palo Alto’s housing policies have consistently failed the needs of the city’s most vulnerable residents. He advocates that the city embrace its comprehensive plan of creating 3,5454,420 new housing units by 2030. He backs a business tax that could be used to invest in affordable housing.

The remaining candidates include Rebecca Eisenberg, Steven Lee, Raven Malone and Ajit Varma, who chose not to participate in our endorsement process. Malone, an engineer, is a potential political standout. She is articulate and argues forcefully for housing as a human right and the need to provide fiber optic connections to every home in Palo Alto. But she lacks the experience of other candidates and would benefit from serving on a board or commission.

Thiessen debate column veers far from reality

The sun rising in the east, birds flying south for the winter, and Marc A. Thiessen declaring Donald Trump the victor in Tuesday’s presidential debate (“Biden cleared low bar set for him, but Trump won,” Opinion section, Oct. 1) — these are the truly predictable things we can all rely upon in these uncertain times.

In rare form even for him, Thiessen points out all the “blows” Trump “landed” against Joe Biden. He left out some details such as the sitting president of the United States failing repeatedly to denounce white supremacists, and, what’s more, actually telling them to “stand back and stand by.”