Can We Agree Redwood City Has Major Problems?

This past week, The Guardian newspaper in the UK featured Redwood City as a city with severe displacement problems. You would therefore think that everyone locally would also agree that Redwood City’s lack of affordable housing at all income levels, ongoing evictions, excessive traffic, lack of real public transportation options and even sufficient water were uniformly understood to be major problems; you would be wrong.

Unfortunately in particular the majority if not all of the Redwood City City Council, local government officials and city staff think that most if not all of those things are not issues. The problem of course is if there is no problem there is no need to find solutions. We or really they can just keep on doing the same things they have been doing for years and things will continue as they are. The reality however is continuing to do the same thing only makes these problems worse.

It is only by acknowledging that these are indeed problems that we can start working to create solutions. Not only the majority of the residents of Redwood City know that these problems exist and that they are getting worse but even the international press does. The good news is that residents are actually trying to find solutions. However it isn’t enough to just agree on the problems that is only the first step.

The second step will be to solve these problems. Some people feel that we have stop development especially the building of more and more office space that only exacerbates the regional housing jobs imbalance. Some people feel that we can build our way out of these problems. That the only problem is the amount of time it will take for us to build all the necessary additional office and housing units. Some people feel that a mix of rent control, rent stabilization, just cause eviction or other type of ordinances is the best way to fix at least the housing part of the problems.

However before we can get to the stage of trying to figure out solutions we, meaning not only the residents but our local government officials, staff and city council will have to agree there even is a problem. If you agree that there is a problem we invite you to join our protest on October 15th. Help us convince local government officials, staff, and City Council that we really do have a problem. Once we all agree, we can all work together to find and implement solutions.

Help spread the word: @Oct15March #Oct15March