Los Altos Hills Floats Reduction of Multifamily Project

Los Altos Hills officials might be having some buyer’s remorse about allowing housing in the tony enclave.

The town council is looking to reduce the size of a multifamily development, which includes the municipality’s first affordable housing, after voting in 2023 to legalize apartments at Twin Oaks Court, Cal Matters reported. The vote came out of a need to meet state-mandated housing requirements of 489 new units by the end of the decade as part of the town’s housing element.

Now, the proposed Twin Oaks Court development could be shaved down in size. Developer Twin Oaks Court LLC filed a preliminary application for a 598-unit project there, hoping to take advantage of state density bonuses by including 56 units for affordable housing. Residents revolted, however, and the council is looking to cut the site’s capacity to 92 units total.

“This is exactly what we’ve been asking you to protect us from,” resident Martha Bowden told officials. “This would be a disaster.”

The idea of squeezing in hundreds of people on a small cul-de-sac next to I-280 was “totally inappropriate,” according to resident Michael Grady, who created a petition for the town to reconsider its original plan for the site.

“This is illustrative of exactly why I’ve been saying for over a year and a half that the housing element as drafted is a time bomb,” Grady said.

Los Altos Hills wouldn’t be alone in its pursuit. Other wealthy enclaves like Carmel and South Pasadena have moved to tweak state-approved housing plans, often citing “calculation errors” or resident backlash. In Sausalito, officials successfully reduced densities on a contested condo site, while Rancho Palos Verdes tried the same before backing off under legal pressure.

“Local agencies should not be allowed to amend their housing elements the moment that they are confronted with a real housing development project,” the California Housing Defense Fund, wrote in a letter to the California Department of Housing and Community Development on Los Altos Hills.

Governor Gavis Newsom has also stood fast behind the state’s mandated goals in the housing element.

Some residents, though, are on board with the plan to keep as many units as possible at the site.

“After the housing element was accepted, residents and the council were wailing, ‘But it’s steep at Twin Oaks,’” Anne Paulson, a member of the Los Altos Affordable Housing Alliance, said. “They nevertheless chose those sites, instead of flatter sites down the hill. They shouldn’t get to weasel out of what they promised on the basis that they just noticed steep land is steep.”

The fight over the Twin Oaks project’s size is indicative of the larger long-running issue of state versus local control in housing development. “We’re in the testing-the-waters phase,” Matt Gelfand of Californians for Homeownership said. “If some smaller cities can get away with it, others will follow.”

— Chris Malone Méndez