Picture this: traffic with lines of cars piling up as parking spaces are cluttered with sedans and your favorite restaurant down the street closing down. What do all of these have in common? Well, it is likely that each has been caused to a certain degree by a change in residential dynamics in   one particular thing: the weed like growth of new apartments sprouting in what used to be the old lovable garden of Santa Clara.

First, by adding more apartments in the area, city council will cause Santa Clara to feel more overcrowded than ever before. For instance, as of now, Santa Clara only has two main high schools: Wilcox High School and Santa Clara High School. If hundreds of new families start moving in to these new large-scale apartments, picture how cluttered schools would be with all the incoming students. Remember the beginning of this year when you or some of your friends had to sacrifice one of your classes because there were too many people taking it? Remember the chaotic first two weeks of school when nobody knew their schedule and there was a line out the office door for students who wanted a seventh period? If even a hundred more students had attended this year, classes would have been even harder to obtain—even if you signed up for it last year—and many students would have had to sacrifice the class they wanted to learn about with something else.  By adding more apartments, city council will cause the quality of local schools and educational opportunities to diminish.

Secondly, if local businesses continue to close while new apartments continue to be built, locals will not only lose the convenience of living close to stores and shops, but we will also lose the charming and comfortable suburban atmosphere that once embodied Santa Clara. For example, I would like to specifically address the new six-story apartments planned to be built over what used to be the Office Max and Moonlite Lanes Bowling Alley right on El Camino Real. Not only would these new apartments cause bigger lines in stores and detract from the convenience of quick shopping locals used to enjoy, but new apartments would also wreak havoc upon busy intersections such as El Camino and Kiely—which some already consider to have terrible traffic—ultimately making it harder for people to get to places on time, especially when hundreds of families are using the same streets to get to school in the morning and return home from work during rush hour.

Although building new apartments may help newcomers who want to live in Santa Clara, it actually hurts local businesses, overcrowds schools, and takes away from the old, comfy, spacious feeling that Santa Clara once offered.