How to kill affordable housing: review it forever
Everyone says they want worker housing. The trick is to review it, workshop it, and “get it right” until it quietly dies on the vine.
Celebrity chef Thomas Keller showed up at a town council meeting in Yountville, California, this week to insist he supports affordable housing… just not this plan, and not this design, and not this budget, and not without yet another, and another, and another round of meetings, surveys, and revisions.
Restaurateur and celebrated chef Thomas Keller scolded a small Napa Valley town council this week, reprimanding the Yountville Town Council for poor communication and spending too much money on a proposed affordable housing project.
Keller owns several restaurants in Yountville, including the three-Michelin-star French Laundry. The housing project is planned for a site two blocks away from his luxury restaurant.
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“I am all for employee housing,” Keller said. “Because I know some of you have been sending out the wrong message about, ‘I’m against employee housing.’ I am not. I am for employee housing, but I am for employee housing that is actually going to work.”
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Keller’s stance on Tuesday mirrored his previous statements in a news release published last month in which he criticized the plans, saying that the “studio-heavy, dormitory-style approach” did not work for Yountville workers. SFGATE reached out to the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group on Tuesday, but they declined to comment beyond what Keller said at Tuesday’s meeting.
In my hometown of Venice, California, reviewing affordable housing projects into the ground is a long-standing tradition. One group will say it’s not good enough, another will say it is disruptive. Everyone except the folks living on the street wins.
Everyone says they want worker housing. The trick is to review it, workshop it, and “get it right” until it quietly dies on the vine.
Of course, Keller doesn’t want any of the poor close enough to his $500 per person average diners to discomfit them in any way. I wonder if he pays enough to keep his staff in nicer housing.
I remember when Charlie Trotter threatened to move to Indiana in response to some new city regulation and the city council just shrugged and told him to go ahead. Maybe Yountsville should suggest the same.