STANFORD — Nestled simply south of Stanford College’s campus, amid slender winding roads lined with imposing oaks and historic estates, an unique enclave has neighbors pitted in opposition to neighbors over a authorized battle that poses a brand new twist on the area’s housing disaster.
The Higher San Juan neighborhood, as soon as residence to 2 males who later grew to become U.S. presidents in addition to a secretary of state, has 123 single-family houses that largely home senior college school and a few of their widows, who retain their homes by means of their lifetimes.
The battle right here is an all-too-familiar story within the Bay Space. Residents who've lived of their houses for many years are clashing with these elevating alarm bells over the world’s exorbitant housing prices and lack of improvement. The difficulty in Higher San Juan has put a few of the Stanford school in a vice, turning it right into a radioactive subject of dialog and laying naked starkly completely different views about find out how to deal with the area’s housing woes.
A brand new lawsuit, filed by a Stanford professor and a housing advocacy group, claims Santa Clara County broke state regulation after amending Higher San Juan’s improvement requirements. The modifications got here after years of issues from residents who needed to protect the character of their neighborhood. The adjustments elevated entrance yard setbacks and put a cap on lot protection of each single-family and multi-family houses.
“If cities and counties can merely sidestep state regulation and forestall development of housing, that’s simply actually unhealthy for residents round this whole state,” stated Ken Shotts, a tenured political economic system professor who lives in an adjoining neighborhood. He and the California Renters Authorized Advocacy and Schooling Fund are suing the county.
County officers, nevertheless, insist that they haven’t made it any tougher to construct in Higher San Juan and are legally within the clear. Throughout a vote in Could, County Supervisor Joe Simitian, whose district consists of the Stanford space, described the brand new guidelines as “modest.”
“It’s simple once we take a look at this specific neighborhood in isolation to neglect that there are 8,000 acres of Stanford land,” Simitian stated in the course of the assembly. “There's fairly a little bit of alternative and fairly a little bit of flexibility if there's a want to create further housing.” He and the county’s authorized counsel each declined an interview request.
Higher San Juan and close by neighborhoods had been created only a handful of years after the college was established in 1885, with the aim of getting school and employees dwell on campus. However Higher San Juan particularly is exclusive – its lot sizes are a lot bigger than the encompassing space’s. So are its previous residents. Each Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy as soon as lived in Higher San Juan. So did former Secretary of State George Shultz.
The neighborhood’s historic houses, many over a century previous, are leased by the residents whereas Stanford owns the land beneath them.
Within the intervening years, Stanford and the county have battled over the prospect of including extra housing. The college sued the county in 2018 over a brand new regulation that aimed to advertise extra reasonably priced developments, although Stanford dropped the case in 2020. The college additionally withdrew its software from the county’s planning division in 2019 over what would have been a serious enlargement of each pupil and school housing.
Within the Higher San Juan neighborhood particularly, the college has promised to attempt to alleviate the school housing scarcity. The Cabrillo-Dolores School Houses, set to be accomplished subsequent 12 months, changed two unoccupied single-family houses with seven new ones.
The worth tag for the brand new developments have but to be decided. Sale costs of surrounding houses lately vary between $2 million to $4 million.
However the Cabrillo-Dolores improvement has met resistance from some Higher San Juan residents ever since its inception in 2015. They claimed that the brand new houses weren’t a superb match for the historic neighborhood, so the Board of Supervisors started exploring choices to protect the neighborhood’s character.
Final spring, county supervisors unanimously voted to vary the minimal distance houses should be set again from the road to 30 ft from 25 ft, whereas establishing requirements for a way a lot of rather a lot could be coated by a home to twenty% for single-family houses and at 35% for multi-family houses. 
The lawsuit in opposition to these adjustments is a very thorny one for Higher San Juan residents, a number of of whom declined to debate the case, with one stating that it might disturb the harmonious relationships that had been developed over years.
One resident, English professor Blair Hoxby, maintains that the county guidelines aren’t making it any tougher for school to dwell there.
“County requirements are not protecting individuals out of the neighborhood,” wrote Hoxby in an emailed response. “The issue shouldn't be an absence of houses.” Hoxby stated there are “lovely, vacant” homes in the marketplace in Higher San Juan that aren’t being bought.
He added: “We'd be delighted to welcome Professor Shotts as a neighbor and would gladly invite his household over for a meal and a stroll across the neighborhood.”
Plaintiffs within the case argue that the supervisors’ adjustments violate Senate Invoice 330, which was handed in 2019 and is meant to assist forestall native governments from instituting new legal guidelines that do “something that will reduce the depth of housing.”
Todd Williams, an East Bay-based housing legal professional, stated that the county supervisors’ adjustments in all probability fall right into a authorized grey zone. The county didn’t outright change the zoning of Higher San Juan however modified guidelines on the perimeters that a decide could decide make housing tougher.
“There's a actual rigidity proper now with what the state Legislature is making an attempt to do to deal with the housing disaster and native governments sustaining their discretion over native land use coverage,” stated Williams. “That is an space of the regulation that has not beforehand been examined.”
For Shotts, the reply is easy.
“I feel that is simply unhealthy public coverage,” he stated concerning the county’s new guidelines. “What we want on this space is extra housing.”