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I'm glad the city is setting some guidelines on this. Eichlers have lots of character, and it is sad to see them being replaced by uninteresting boxes, not to mention the very real privacy issues involved!

I repeat my post from the other thread. I think it is worth considering a compromise. A nearby home in one neighborhood has most of its windows on the side, huge walls of windows. This is most definitely not neighborly even if it was code.


I don't believe we should prevent Eichler or any other style of home from building a second story, but we should most definitely make some rules that would be considered common sense. I have mentioned this before and have ideas that I would consider common sense.

The second story should be only a certain percentage of the home footprint, say 60%. The second story should have no overhangs of the first story. The second story should only have windows at the back and front of the story, not allowed at the sides. No balconies, decks, etc. should be allowed on second stories. All windows on the second story should have a depth limit but not necessarily a width limit, in other words not floor to ceiling and not below an average waist height. All bathrooms for new and remodel windows should have mandatory frosted windows as opposed to clear windows.

To me these sort of common sense restrictions would allow a family to expand their living space without causing too much concern to immediate neighbors.

Allowing carte blanche second stories make no sense. A little give and take on both sides makes a lot of sense.

The Eichler neighborhoods are a Planned Community. My street has every type person on it - no lack of diversity. The title of this stream is suggestive and inaccurate. Our neighborhood has set up a set of guidelines that are approved by the city and stipulates any building changes and the requirement for approval. That is why it is called a planned community. The Eichler communities through the bay area and Palm Springs are noted as to location and history. We have a magazine that lists the communities and historic value.

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They are stereotyping by ethnicity.

"The traditional definition of race and ethnicity is related to biological and sociological factors respectively. Race refers to a person's physical characteristics, such as bone structure and skin, hair, or eye color. Ethnicity, however, refers to cultural factors, including nationality, regional culture, ancestry, and language.
An example of race is brown, white, or black skin (all from various parts of the world), while an example of ethnicity is German or Spanish ancestry (regardless of race) or Han Chinese. Your race is determined by how you look while your ethnicity is determined based on the social and cultural groups you belong to. You can have more than one ethnicities but you are said to have one race, even if it's "mixed race". "

Huh? "Resident" proposed that second stories be allowed to have windows on their backs but not their sides. Why is that? You prefer your back neighbors looking into your house but not your side neighbors? That seems odd to me because the back of my Eichler is solid glass, while the dining room side has a window but doesn't need a lot of privacy and the bedroom side barely has windows.

I suggest that the guidelines have more to do with the privacy needs of the actual neighbors than blanket rules about sides and backs that might be totally inappropriate for a specific situation.

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I attended the meeting and would like to clarify the tangent being discussed above.

Most people there were supportive of the project, yet they were also thoughtful enough to highlight for the consultants that they were NOT fully representative of all Palo Alto Eichler owners. Lots of white hair. No attendees with small children. The meeting was from 6:30-8:30 on a Tuesday night during Passover. That was mentioned as was ensuring the involvement of the broad community of Eichler homeowners as this project moves forward.

Can't the residents come up with some sort of covenants or create a homeowners association? Why is this something the city is involved in?

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Why are you all going on about "race"? How did you get off on that tangent? And why is the title of this stream so incendiary? We are talking about a planned community that has recreational facilities in each cluster. The Eichler homes are famous - there are clusters all over - Palm Springs, Marin County, and the design is copied by other architects. We established guidelines/restrictions way back when concerning the adding of second stories - this is not a start from scratch situation or a do-over. Again - I have all types of people on my street s get off that topic - inappropriate.

The reason I suggest windows at the back and not the side is because generally that means there is a great distance between properties and property lines. With the prospect of trees or high shrubbery, privacy concerns are not the same as being able to see or be seen from the adjacent property at the side rather than the property at the end of the backyard.

@resident, people are talking about race and lack of diversity because historically race(i.e. redlining) played a part in who could originally purchase eichlers and other homes in Palo Alto.

Web Link

Quote from link:
"Today middle and upper class black residents are scattered throughout largely white and Asian neighborhoods in the city. And although recent newspaper reports paint a picture of openness in Palo Alto toward black residents, the legacy of years of housing discrimination is still with us. Despite the massive migration of blacks to the Peninsula in the postwar years, Palo Alto’s African-American population still stands at just 2%, as it has since the Great Depression. And if Palo Alto’s population does not entirely look like America today, it is clearly because the city shut its doors to some Americans in the past."

I am so happy that we all are now consumed by political nonsense. The Eichler homes were built at a time when Lockheed and Ford Aerospace were the largest employers in the area for a for-profit tax producing business. If you have not noticed all government contract companies have a equal opportunity requirement for doing business with the Government. They get graded on that in competitive bidding wars. So you can have a number of high school graduates working in the non-technical areas and the companies at that time paid for college costs if applicable to the job requirements. So there was opportunity for everyone. Due to the high CA state tax rate applied to for-profit companies they are moving to lower tax burden states.
So why is this a topic for this stream? Another developer in the area is the Kaufman/Broad homes in the same area. It was just a matter of when you arrived and what was available. We do have neighborhood associations with elected leaders. I thought I was in one neighborhood until I joined and found out I was in a different neighborhood. If anyone is going to change up the design features then a notification needs to be sent out by the city so people can comment if the design is incompatible with the neighborhood. We are not in the wild west here. As to EPA comments - back in that time you were a farm country and all of those homes were built over time.

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I wish you folks in the Eichler neighborhoods the best of luck with this effort, but I'm not optimistic. The same consultant was responsible for developing the Professorville design guidelines. Those replaced the simpler guidelines developed by the residents' committee with more than a hundred pages of conditions, and did a questionable job of acknowledging both the development history of the neighborhood and the styles of architecture present here. (Coincidentally, Professorville has a couple of two-story Eichlers). My neighbors across the street have been stuck for months trying to get a modest project approved, despite the fact that the guidelines are supposed to be voluntary. They've even had to ask this same consultant to interpret the guidelines for them. I wonder if they had to pay the consultant for that.

IS this another spendathon for PA? We don't need a consultant for the Eichler Community. We have a whole volume of Eichler expert construction companies who are very aware of the Eichler requirements. There is a whole Eichler Network for this purpose.