by Cherie Zaslawsky, Truth Be Told, ©2026
(Jul. 28, 2026) — There’s a slow-motion tragedy unfolding in many California cities, and no doubt in other cities across our nation.
And for my subscribers who are wondering why I haven’t been writing new articles of late, here’s my overdue explanation: My own tranquil suburb of Menlo Park, a bedroom community tucked away in a quiet corner of Silicon Valley, has been targeted for suburb-wrecking urbanization, and I’ve chosen to don my activist hat in the David vs. Goliath battle to save our downtown from an unwanted dystopian transformation. In some ways, it’s been as time-consuming as a full-time job.
SOME BACKGROUND
In a nutshell, to fulfill California’s various weaponized social engineering tactics, our City Council has decided we should fill our heavily used downtown parking lots with 7, 8 and 9-story “affordable housing projects:” i.e. subsidized housing. This would almost certainly result in more than half of our downtown small businesses closing due to the loss of their convenient parking lots, with more closures to follow during the 3-4 years of construction our small downtown would be subjected to.
The “parking-lot housing” plan that would do all this damage and more, targets three of our eight parking lots, all on the north side of our main shopping street of Santa Cruz Avenue. But the City Council isn’t stopping there. They’ve earmarked the five remaining lots on the south side of Santa Cruz Avenue for more high-rise, high-density apartment towers as well.
If this sounds surreal to you, as it should, imagine what it’s like for those of us who live here, for those who own downtown stores, salons or restaurants and their employees, as well as for those living in our neighboring suburbs without business districts of their own who shop in our town. Menlo Park’s City Council sprang this outrage on us in January 2025, and life has not been the same since.
Read the rest here.