Boarding house proposal on Willow Road faces scrutiny

This is not what the neighborhood needs. It will not be subject to any below market housing and will be used to pack in as any people as possible and to maximize profits from a slumlord.

Google the owner of the property "Reza Valiyee" and you get story after story with titles like "Berkeley and Fresno Landlords Nominated to Landlord Hall of Shame" and "Berkeley Dogging Landlord / City wants Reza Valiyee to keep on cleaning up" There is story after story about how bad this guy is and how he ignores city codes. We really don't want this person building this type of property in Menlo Park. If he can't be stopped at the very least he needs to be required to meet all the zoning requirements including the minimum number of parking spaces.

Not commenting on the specifics of the proposal. This seems like a great idea. We are told needs for affordable housing are dire. Here is an answer that costs less to live in than condos, apartments, and increases density. One more tool kit in supplying housing that fits between single family housing and homeless shelters or sleeping on the streets.
Embrace this idea with an open mind before blaming an unknown landlord or dismissing the idea as unworkable.
Our history books are loaded with examples of successful boarding houses. My grandfather and grandmother were both living in a boarding house in the early turn of the last century when they met.

Howard,

This will not be affordable housing, they are getting around having tp provide market rate housing because they will only have one kitchen. And I do not think we should discount the owner and his history. Allowing him to build this boarding house would be a mistake for the neighborhood.

Per the suggestion in Brian's first comment, above, I did a quick web search for "reza valiyee landlord" and this individual appears to have a two-decade+ career in Berkeley of "maintaining" blighted buildings and stalling on city-mandated cleanup work, going so far as to spend a weekend in jail in the late 1990s rather than comply with a court-ordered cleanup effort. Numerous similar complaints are easily surfaced on the web, such that Mr. Valiyee should never see his way past our Planning Commission unless he convinces everyone he's utterly changed the way he does business in the recent past.

Far better, assuming his disdain for clean, to-code properties and city mandates has not waned, let him build some small number of townhomes on the property and be done with Menlo Park altogether.

I hope the parking variance is rejected for this project. It’s quite simple: increase parking to 16 spaces or better yet reduce units to 14 and preferably fewer. The city should further enforce the no overnight parking code along Coleman as in the rest of the city to prevent tenants from doubling up or more, overcrowding these units, and spilling vehicles onto city streets. This property is right off of Coleman which is the sole route for kids cycling from the Willows to the Lower Laurel campus. It is already crowded and dangerous. The last things that route needs is more traffic and more vehicles parking or pulling out onto that street making it less safe for kids to get to school.