Dear City Council

Kate Downing was formerly a planning commissioner in the City of Palo Alto. She recently resigned from her position and, about about a day ago, she posted her resignation letter on Medium. It has since gone viral.

The reason it has spread so quickly, I think, is because it addresses the very same issues that so many cities around the world are facing: a lack of housing supply and eroding affordability.

As a developer, I obviously have a vested interest in this matter. But to the extent that I can put that aside, I really do believe that our goal should be to build inclusive, rather than exclusive, cities.

For instance, when I think of great cities such as New York and Toronto, I think of their history of taking in a large number of immigrants and then empowering them to climb the socioeconomic ladder. There’s something magical about that. One of my best friends likes to talk about this potential as “immigrant hustle.”

But when we sterilize our cities by allowing only the incumbents to survive, I believe we place that socioeconomic potential in jeopardy. So for that reason, I am reposting Kate’s entire letter. I have bolded the points that stood out for me. Let me know what you think in the comments.

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Dear City Council Members and Palo Alto Residents,

This letter serves as my official resignation from the Planning and Transportation Commission. My family has decided to move to Santa Cruz. After many years of trying to make it work in Palo Alto, my husband and I cannot see a way to stay in Palo Alto and raise a family here. We rent our current home with another couple for $6200 a month; if we wanted to buy the same home and share it with children and not roommates, it would cost $2.7M and our monthly payment would be $12,177 a month in mortgage, taxes, and insurance. That’s $146,127 per year — an entire professional’s income before taxes. This is unaffordable even for an attorney and a software engineer.

It’s clear that if professionals like me cannot raise a family here, then all of our teachers, first responders, and service workers are in dire straits. We already see openings at our police department that we can’t fill and numerous teacher contracts that we can’t renew because the cost of housing is astronomical not just in Palo Alto but many miles in each direction.