East Palo Alto school offices will make way for 430 homes

The Ravenswood City School District runs its business out of 13 low office buildings at Euclid Avenue and Donohoe Street, on about four acres a block off University Avenue. The district needs a fraction of that space. Within a few years the offices are set to come down for 430 affordable apartments, with district teachers, bus drivers and paraeducators first in line for many of them.

That makes 2120 Euclid Avenue one of the largest affordable housing projects East Palo Alto has ever approved, built on land the school district keeps. The homes would sit in a city where Houseberry's East Palo Alto data puts the typical home at about $1.13 million in September 2026, roughly 6.7 times what a family of four earning 80 percent of San Mateo County's median income makes in a year.

What's on the lot, and what replaces it

The state's environmental record for the project, a Notice of Exemption filed August 12, 2026, lists 13 occupied office buildings totaling about 49,088 square feet coming down. In their place go two buildings totaling about 923,224 square feet, with roughly 2,000 square feet of shop space on the ground floor. The city treated it as infill and exempted it from a full environmental review.

SF YIMBY reported the approved design on October 14. Building A has 220 apartments and Building B has 210. The mix leans small: 12 studios, 275 one-bedrooms, 119 two-bedrooms and 24 three-bedrooms. There are 438 parking spaces and 344 bike spaces. The architect is AO, an Orange County firm.

Bell Street Park, which backs onto the site from University Avenue, gets a new basketball court and two emergency access roads as part of the deal. The YMCA at 2180 Euclid stays next door.

One more thing about the developer, because the city's page is out of date. If you look up the project on the city's website you will find a different developer and a smaller building. The city's design review page for DR24-002 still names USA Properties Fund and describes two five-story buildings of 206 and 224 homes. That page reflects the 2023 and 2024 applications and was never updated.

Every 2026 record names The Pacific Companies, through its affiliate Pacific West Communities, and two six-story buildings. That includes the August state filing and the Almanac's September 8 report on the City Council vote. We trust the newer records. The district's board first authorized lease talks with USA Properties in June 2023, and no public record we found explains the handoff.

Who gets to live there

This is where the City Council spent its time. On September 1 it approved an alternative way for the project to meet East Palo Alto's affordable housing rules, and moved nine units that had been set at 80 percent of median income down to 50 percent, the Almanac reported.

The Almanac's breakdown splits the building into layers. Thirty-nine units satisfy the city's own affordability rule: 18 at 30 percent of median income, 3 at 50 percent and 18 at 60 percent. Another 78 come from the state density bonus, most of them at 60 percent. A third block of 78 is paid for by Sand Hill Property Company, which agreed to put $14 million into this project toward the affordable housing it owes for its own Woodland Park redevelopment.

Then the preferences. 195 units fall under East Palo Alto's local preference policy, and Ravenswood employees get priority beyond that. Vice Mayor Ruben Abrica pointed to the reason the district has spare land in the first place: "enrollment keeps going down."

What it does to the blocks around it

Six stories is tall for this part of East Palo Alto, and the honest trade-off is traffic and construction at the Donohoe and University corner, which already carries Highway 101 traffic. Commissioners pressed the developer on construction impacts, tree replacement and traffic when they approved it. Parking runs about one space per apartment.

On price, the project lands in the most affordable pocket of a very expensive map. Here is how East Palo Alto compares with the neighborhoods just across Highway 101 and San Francisquito Creek, from Belle Haven to Crescent Park, using Houseberry's scores and its September 2026 price histories.

The spread is the point. According to Houseberry data, a typical Crescent Park home costs about five times a typical East Palo Alto home, and over the last year Crescent Park rose about 7 percent while East Palo Alto rose about 1.5 percent. East Palo Alto's standout score on our neighborhood page is public spaces, at 4.0 out of 5. Schools score 2.5. Houseberry's school score reflects state testing data for the schools that serve the area, and it is the number a Ravenswood teacher would know better than anyone.

Our view

We think this is the right use of the land. A district with falling enrollment and an office campus two to three times bigger than it needs has turned that surplus into a 99-year income stream and housing its own staff can afford. It keeps the land.

The fair criticism is about depth, not direction. Shifting nine units from 80 percent to 50 percent of median income helps, but most of the building still sits at 60 percent, which in San Mateo County means a two-bedroom rent ceiling around $3,051 a month. For a paraeducator, that is still a lot. The project is a big step for a city of about 28,900 people, and it is not the whole answer.

The approvals are done. The next hurdles are financing and the demolition and relocation of the district office, which plans a new building on Bay Road. Construction is pencilled in for as early as June 2027, with phase one taking about 16 months and phase two about 17.

If you are weighing a move to the area, see how East Palo Alto stacks up against nearby cities on Houseberry's East Palo Alto ranking, and check the Menlo Park rankings for Belle Haven. By spring 2030, if the schedule holds, 430 more households will be living on the block where the district used to do its paperwork.

Sources

• SF YIMBY: Affordable housing approved at 2120 Euclid Avenue, East Palo Alto, October 14, 2026
• CEQAnet: Notice of Exemption, SCH 2026080345
• The Almanac: Giant teacher housing project advances in East Palo Alto, September 8, 2026
• City of East Palo Alto: DR24-002 project page
• The Almanac: Ravenswood board weighs ground lease terms, September 23, 2023
• California HCD: 2026 state income limits