HOUSING
While 2/3 of homes (rental and for-sale) are market rate, fully 1/3 of them will remain permanently affordable. This is a truly diverse neighborhood-one wrapped around a park and within a safe and easy walk to four schools, five churches, a coffee place, hardware store, credit union, and full-service grocery.
East Palo Alto also welcomed and supported development of nonprofit sponsored homes. For every housing unit that was demolished during redevelopment of the Gateway 101 Shopping Center and University Circle office/hotel complex, more than one new unit of non-profit housing was built. A portion of the Transient Occupancy Tax is even dedicated to finance production of permanently affordable housing. Sustainable affordability of housing does not occur by happenstance, it is a product of deliberate design. The local commitment to maintain a diverse and inclusive community as the City of East Palo Alto grows, must be applied and
interpreted whenever and wherever development occurs. Take for example the full range of housing opportunities in one area, the “superblock” bounded by O’Connor, Clarke, Pulgas and the Bayshore freeway. Half of the homes situated there currently were there before 1970. It was all agricultural through the 1950’s, and was still half agricultural when the first internal streets were built. Today there are 570 homes in this superblock, a mix of houses, apartments and mobile homes. For every five households, two own houses, two rent apartments, and one owns a mobile home on a rented pad. These households’ housing costs range from as little as $200 per month to as much as $5,000.
The diversity of housing opportunity in this one superblock is representative of the community as a whole. In very general terms, out of every ten homes in East Palo Alto: 5 are houses, 4 are apartments, 1 is a townhouse, condo, duplex, tri-plex or mobile home; 5 homes are occupied by renters, and 5 by homeowners, 1 of which rents or shares space with another family (as room mates, or in a secondary unit, or the other half of a duplex) ; 6 homes are market rent or market price, while 4 are cost-controlled or community-assisted (through rent control, rental assistance, nonprofit sponsored, and inclusionary below-market-rate homes). This diversity of housing opportunity is a measure of success for the City in its attempts to support sustainable diversity EAST PALO ALTO INFORMATION 2013 47