The “Wrenching Transformation” of Our Suburbs: From Idyllic to Dystopian

What’s happening in the Silicon Valley suburb of Menlo Park, where I happen to live, should concern everyone.

Unlike its bustling neighbor Palo Alto, Menlo Park is a classic bedroom community. Much of the city’s appeal is centered on its “village character” downtown with its assortment of Mom & Pop businesses in mostly one-story buildings.

Yet Menlo Park’s City Council plans to convert three of our busy downtown parking plazas serving our one-of-a-kind small businesses, into high-density 7 and 8-story subsidized housing projects.

If this housing is built, half of our small businesses would be likely to close during the 3 years of construction alone, and more upon completion when our tranquil small-town ambience morphs into chaos and crowding as a thousand new residents move into the 345 units in apartment towers shoehorned between our one-story buildings.

When locals first learned of this plan, many exclaimed: “That makes no sense!” That sentiment eventually resulted in civic action and a ballot measure slated for the upcoming November election.

And sadly, Menlo Park is not the only city facing such radical urbanization in Silicon Valley and beyond. It’s open season on suburbs throughout the country.

THE ”WHY” QUESTION

What we’re witnessing in the SF Bay Area is not normal city planning or normal growth. Massive high-rise apartment complexes are popping up in our suburbs as if teleported from Chinese ghost cities. As a special incentive for people who might otherwise not wish to live in these prefab monoliths, many units are offered below market rate, as “affordable housing.” And since California is notoriously generous with OPM—other people’s money—even if a family of four earns up to $250,000 per year in certain Bay Area counties, they’ll qualify for a hefty rent reduction.

On the flip side, developers are incentivized by the lure of the “density bonus”: if they make a certain percentage of the units “affordable,” they get to greatly increase the number of units in the development, so everyone wins—everyone except the middle class residents who have long called these cities home.

The Milton: Affordable Housing complex in Redwood City

THE BIG LIE

The concept being sold to the public is that “We need more housing!” even though people are leaving California in droves. In fact, the only increase in population we’re seeing is that of “undocumented immigrants“—aka illegal aliens—whom our local police are diligently protecting from those meanies from ICE who are federally charged with deporting them.

In the meantime, an explosion of inner-city style tenements-in-the-making are metastasizing all over our cherished bedroom communities.

And since our suburbs are largely built out, i.e. lacking much in the way of vacant land, these are classified as “in-fill” developments—literally squeezed into places where the residents’ response is often a heart-wrenching cry of “That will destroy our downtown!” that is ignored by their own city councils.

SOCIAL ENGINEERING ON STEROIDS

In truth there is no “housing crisis.” That’s a fabrication by California’s one-party government that used the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) to create the infamous Plan Bay Area (PBA) back in 2013.

This plan created a one-size-fits-all template for all 9 Bay Area counties and their 101 cities, to strip our cities of their uniqueness through compulsory urbanization, and to cram most of the growth along “transit corridors”—bus and train lines—for the purpose of incentivizing public transportation and curtailing our reliance on cars.

While Plan Bay Area may have been the first iteration of the urbanization of our suburbs, the state soon enshrined its template as public policy by weaponizing existing statutes and creating a barrage of new legislation to deprive cities of their historic and cherished local control.

Before you count your blessings since you live elsewhere, remember the motto: “As California goes, so goes the nation.”

FOLLOW THE MONEY

We’re now getting a taste of what Al Gore referred to as the “wrenching transformation” we’d have to endure to “save the planet.” And, as always, there’s major money involved.

Big developers, often using the “affordable housing” ruse to qualify for “density bonuses,” easily secure approvals for shockingly out-of-scale projects beyond their wildest dreams. They’re making out like bandits.

But they’re not alone. There’s a bandwagon of profiteering non-governmental agencies (NGOs) using acronyms like YIMBY—Yes in My Backyard—that virtue-signal their love for “the poor” by lobbying for multistory, multi-family public housing projects while collecting substantial donations all the way to the bank. As of 2024, YIMBY Law’s 501 C-3 boasted $2.23 million—not bad for selfless do-gooders.

THE ”C” WORD

While many people are sounding the alarm about dangers posed by digital IDs and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBCD) and whether they could lead to our version of China’s Social Credit system, few are calling attention to another aspect of encroaching Communism happening under our noses in real time: the physical re-engineering of our communities. That’s what is really going on in Menlo Park and other Bay Area cities—it’s not just a squabble over parking lots.

Take a look at a few of the projects being foisted on our beleaguered suburbs against their will: here, here, here, and here. And from Redwood City: here and here—scroll down to view the first three developments. And last but not least, take a look at this 21-story warehouse-like housing for senior citizens here.

Interestingly, this charmless, utilitarian architectural style has its forebears under Communism as well. After all, it’s a cheap, convenient way to sequester a large number of people in a relatively small space. Perhaps our homegrown Socialists got their idea from the Soviets. Take a look at some East Berlin Plattenbau housing projects. And for the icing on the cake, see this article: Putin orders demolition of Moscow’s Iconic Post-war Apartment Blocks. Funny how things change: Putin demolished Russia’s stack-and-pack housing just as California ramped up building ours.

AGENDA 21/2030 AND THE SUPPOSEDLY NON-EXISTENT PLAN FOR GLOBAL GOVERNMENT

Curiously, what Plan Bay Area calls “transit-oriented development,” in “priority development areas”— i.e. high-density urbanized dwellings near bus or train lines—versus uninhabited “priority conservation areas,” finds an eerie parallel in Agenda 21’s densely populated “Human Settlements” versus “Wildlife Corridors,” where people are prohibited from venturing.

And Agenda 21 is quietly but rapidly unfolding across our nation in matters pertaining to zoning and land control.

While it’s likely that few people battling to preserve their cities, as well as few in the YIMBY crowd, understand the larger implications of these local struggles, it’s no longer possible to dismiss the planned “wrenching transformation” of America as a “conspiracy theory.”

Dismantling our suburbs means foreclosing on the American Dream—a shortcut to upending America. That’s why we have to fight back locally as well as nationally.

The war against our way of life is real, and the battlefield is quite literally our suburbs: mine in Menlo Park, and yours, wherever you live.

©2026 Cherie Zaslawsky. All rights reserved.

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