More affordable homes, sooner.
Menlo Park is on track to deliver the affordable homes we need by 2031 (see the official city report). Our certified Housing Element risk is not that we won’t deliver homes, it is the downtown parking-plaza program as drafted. That program has missed every interim deadline, and the City should amend the Housing Element before it becomes a liability for the entire city, exposing it to the builder’s remedy. We have drafted the amendment that keeps Menlo Park safe and ensures we build just as many deeply affordable homes in the high-resource part of the city, at lower cost.
Program H4.G commits the City to 345 deeply affordable homes on the downtown parking plazas: study in 2023, RFP in 2024, entitlements in 2025, homes in 2027. The study and the RFP each came a year late. Nothing has been entitled. In December 2025 three developers bid on the plazas and put a number on why: replacing 556 public parking spaces means a $33 to $63 million garage before the first home: the City’s independent financial review puts attributable public-parking costs at $30 to $54 million, and Related/Alta’s own December budget runs to $63 million all-in. Even with the land contributed at nominal cost, the review finds every proposal short by $19 to $45 million.
Deeply affordable homes Program H4.G commits to the downtown parking plazas, on a fixed schedule.
The year plaza entitlements were due. As of September 2026, none have been completed.
The replacement parking garage, before a single home is built.
What all 345 homes could cost the City under the amendment. Less than the garage alone.
Menlo Park has been out of compliance before. That is how 80 Willow happened.
From the start of 2023 until certification in March 2024, the City’s Housing Element was out of compliance, and state law let developers file under the builder’s remedy, which strips most of a city’s power to say no. 80 Willow Road, three buildings of 301 to 458 feet on a 6.7-acre site in Linfield Oaks, was filed in that window. A certified program the City cannot meet is the way back to it.
Understand the problemThe state grades programs, not just permits
The City’s own July 2026 staff report says so: “Where a city does not implement adopted and certified housing element policies or programs, HCD can revoke its finding that the city’s housing element is in compliance.” Portola Valley lost its finding in March 2024 over unimplemented programs.
None of this is a surprise. At the Council’s study session on the draft element, Ray Mueller said the plaza program would not pencil once the parking had to be replaced. Watch the clip →
The certified element already names the fix. Program H4.U tells the City to identify alternative sites when a program falls short. The sites exist. The amendment records them and retires the plaza program. How the legal path works →
“In conjunction with mid-cycle review to be conducted in 2027 (Program H1.H), evaluate progress in entitling projects on these sites, and identify alternative sites, as necessary, to address any RHNA shortfall.”CERTIFIED HOUSING ELEMENT, PROGRAM H4.U, P. 8-32
All 345 homes for less than the garage alone
The City’s contribution under the amendment, in three pieces.
The whole program costs less than the plaza garage alone at every point in both ranges: $14.8 million against $33 million at best, $31.5 million against $63 million at worst. The garage buys no homes. On the best plaza proposal, each very-low-income home consumes roughly $100,000 to $250,000 of public resources, about $193,000 at the cost model’s default parking credit. Under the amendment it is $43,000 to $91,000.
Working figures from the draft’s cost model. Attachment A, item 15, lists each for verification.
We ask the City Council to initiate an amendment promptly that retires the downtown parking-plaza program and credits the sites where its homes are already approved or under review, and to submit a draft to the state for review.
It changes no housing target, approves no building, and bans nothing.
Read the proposed amendmentThe document
2026 Amendment to the 2023–2031 Housing Element
The short version reads in five minutes. The full text, 29 pages, carries the sites, the capacity, the fair-housing analysis, the amended programs, and the list of every figure still to be verified.