County land use restrictions passed in 2023 will impede Stanford’s ability to expand on-campus housing alongside planned construction of new academic buildings, said a University official at a Jan. 15 meeting of Santa Clara’s Housing, Land Use, Environment and Transportation (HLUET) Committee.
The county updated the Stanford Community Plan in 2023 to include revised guidelines for future campus development projects. The update ties academic expansion to the building of new housing and adjusts metrics used to track congestion. During the Jan. 15 meeting, city planners presented the updated policies to the HLUET Committee in anticipation of StanfordNext, the University’s upcoming proposal for campus growth slated for submission in 2026.
Though the Community Plan aims to manage growth, Stanford believes its specificity hinders the University’s ability to address diverse needs of faculty, students and staff, according to StanfordNext project executive Whitney McNair.
The county’s new policies include a requirement for 75% of new housing to be built on campus, rather than on other Stanford-owned lands in Palo Alto. The University must also directly construct affordable properties before developing academic buildings, a departure from previous rules allowing Stanford to pay “in-lieu” fees to satisfy affordable housing requirements. In line with previous policies, the plan mandates that the University offset any increase in commute traffic caused by new development, such as by subsidizing public transit passes for residents.
According to Santa Clara Department of Planning and Development representative Jacqueline Onciano, the removal of in-lieu fees was a response to their “historic inability… to provide adequate resources to fully fund new housing developments.” During the meeting, urban planning consultant Geoff Bradley noted how such fees only accounted for around 12% of the funding required for affordable housing projects in the past.
While Onciano described the Plan as providing “a lot of flexibility in where and how to build housing,” McNair disagreed. The rules “add barriers to new housing production,” she said during the public comment portion of the meeting.
According to a 2023 letter from Stanford official Erin Efner to the county Board of Supervisors, the updated policies “are overly restrictive and will likely affect both the timing and amount of housing that Stanford can deliver.” McNair believes these limitations mean Stanford has less latitude to tackle issues creatively. “If something is very specific on how it’s to be addressed, it just limits the ability to think,” she said in an interview with The Daily.
Currently, 93% of faculty, staff and postdoctoral students commute to campus, Bradley said during the meeting. But McNair believes the statistic misses critical nuance. It “take[s] all of those populations and roll[s] them together,” she said, claiming the figure disregards differences in housing needs and preferences among groups. More flexibility, McNair believes, would allow the University to create an array of programs catered to each subpopulation.
Stanford and the county have struggled to bridge expectations for development in the past. The University withdrew its previous land use proposal — known as a General Use Plan (GUP) — in 2019, following disagreements with the county on traffic management and investment in local community benefits.
The University is currently operating under a General Use Permit (GUP) approved in 2000, but is approaching the limit of 2,035,000 square feet of new academic space it allows. A new GUP would “unlock the next generation of teaching, research, student, and living spaces on the Stanford campus,” Efner wrote in an email to The Daily.
StanfordNext, which forms a council of advisors from the surrounding region, represents an effort by the University to prevent such disconnects. According to McNair, the University’s priority is understanding the concerns of affiliates and the surrounding community. “I think solutions are best rooted in, ‘what are the demand characteristics?’” she said. McNair describes StanfordNext’s approach as “look[ing] to see what can be supportive and of greatest interest and support for those different groups”.
Despite differing visions for Stanford’s future, McNair expressed that the University and the county were aligned on their main priorities. “We are focused on a process that helps ensure that Stanford can remain a global leader in research, innovation and education, while fostering meaningful shared and enduring community benefits and partnerships,” she said at the meeting. “I believe the county shares this goal.”