​No matter where you begin in life, success starts at home. When we have safe, secure places to live, parents earn more, kids learn better, health and well-being improve, and our community is strengthened because it now has the building blocks needed to thrive.

We urge Menlo Park Leaders to take action now to enact strong tenant protections and establish programs to support tenants so that all Menlo Park residents can thrive.

Specifically, we call on Menlo Park leaders to take concrete steps to:

1. Expand Just Cause for Eviction and Enact Rent Stabilization

Just Cause for Eviction should close loopholes in state law by covering
tenants of any tenure as well as those who rent newer units and those in
single family homes and condos.

Eviction Data Collection: Create an ordinance through which a notice of
eviction must be filed with the City as a condition of enforceability.

2. Require four months’ rent relocation assistance (paid by landlord)

3. Host Frequent Tenant ‘know your rights’ (KYR) education, in-person, in community, in English and Spanish

4. Establish an Office of Tenant Relations with

Regular, bilingual Tenant KYR education

Enforcement assistance to tenants facing eviction

Emergency rental assistance through continuation of the Housing
Assistance Program

The 2023-2031 Menlo Park Housing Element includes most of these important tenant protection policies. We urge the city to prioritize the implementation of the policies already in our Housing Element and to include the rest in the next draft of our current Housing Element.

Why do we need tenant protections and tenant resources?

Faced with an ongoing housing shortage and soaring rents, our tenants
are at ever-increasing risk of housing instability, overcrowding,
displacement, and homelessness.

As of 2019, 40% of Menlo Park renters were rent-burdened and 24% of
Menlo Park renters were severely rent-burdened. Low income households,
households of color, female-headed households, and households with
children are most at risk when rents go up.

Housing instability causes life-long health impacts–especially on children–
and it affects the entire community.

Unaffordable housing costs force people to make sacrifices, leading to a
lack of healthy food, medical care, and childcare

Overcrowding causes stress, impedes schoolwork, spreads disease, and
leads to sleep deprivation

Displacement causes extreme stress, and disrupts friendships and social
ties, forces families apart, threatens job stability, disrupts education,
and, impedes health maintenance

Finding housing far away leads to long commutes, which worsen air
quality, threatens physical health due to hours in a car, inhibits civic
engagement, and forces people to spend time away from their family
and community

Becoming homeless leads to dramatic reductions in health

Nearly half (42%) of Menlo Park residents rent their home. If we want to
live in a city that is integrated and diverse, multi-generational, vibrant,
civically engaged and healthy, then we must shape a community in
which renters can thrive.