STANFORD, California — Nestled just south of Stanford University’s campus, amid narrow winding roads lined with imposing oaks and historical estates, an exclusive enclave has neighbors pitted against neighbors over a legal battle that poses a new twist on the region’s housing crisis.
The Upper San Juan neighborhood, once home to two men who later became U.S. presidents as well as a secretary of state, has 123 single-family homes that mostly house senior university faculty and some of their widows, who retain their houses through their lifetimes.
The battle here is an all-too-familiar story in the Bay Area. Residents who have lived in their homes for decades are clashing with those raising alarm bells over the area’s exorbitant housing costs and lack of development. The issue in Upper San Juan has put some of the Stanford faculty in a vice, turning it into a radioactive topic of conversation and laying bare starkly different views about how to tackle the region’s housing woes.
