Why this wealthy South Bay suburb is at the center of the next big fight over California housing

By Ben Christopher, CalMatters

In January 2023, the town council of Los Altos Hills, a mansion-studded bedroom community perched above Silicon Valley, reluctantly voted to legalize some apartment buildings.

It was a historic vote. Incorporated in 1956 by well-to-do hill dwellers trying to keep out the encroaching urbanity of nearby cities, the town’s “ country residence zoning ” rules only permit the construction of one type of building: Single-family homes, and no more than one per acre.

But town officials felt they had no choice. Bowing to state mandates to plan for more residential development, they zeroed in on three sites with apartment potential. The most promising of the three was Twin Oaks Court, a cluster of lots on a dead-end street sprouting from a frontage road along the