To hear Sasha Zbrozek tell it, the story behind his plans to tear down his four-bedroom house in tony Los Altos Hills and replace it with an apartment complex is a simple tale of a young man’s California dream home being ruined by the region’s notorious red tape — and his decision to “rage against the machine.”
Just how might Zbrozek, a 34-year-old electrical engineer and Stanford grad, get away with his proposal to build 15 apartments and five townhomes in the wooded Silicon Valley suburb that’s long resisted multifamily housing?
Enter the “builder’s remedy,” a provision in state housing law that could allow property owners to override local zoning laws and push through projects of virtually any size almost anywhere they please.
Zbrozek’s plan is one of the first attempts in the Bay Area to invoke the provision, meant as a penalty for cities and counties that fall behind on their state-mandated future homebuilding plans.
As of Saturday afternoon, Los Altos Hills was just one of the 105 of 109 Bay Area cities and counties that hadn’t gotten the state to sign off on their every-eight-year plans due Jan. 31. And advocates aren’t optimistic the billionaire haven of Los Altos Hills, where the average home value according to Zillow is around $5 million, will get approval any time soon.
Zbrozek said he got the idea to use the builder’s remedy during what he describes as an ongoing nightmare trying to get the necessary approvals and permits to repair his home after it was severely water damaged by storms in 2019 not long after he bought it. So soon after the January housing plan deadline passed, he filed the proposal with the town’s planning department.
“There’s this option sitting in front of me to do something very different, and the town can’t say no,” Zbrozek said.
Zbrozek and his wife moved into the home, on a 2-acre property in a quiet neighborhood dotted with mansions near Foothill College, in hopes of raising a family there….
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