Palo Alto’s proposed housing ordinance would do little to increase the city’s rental stock and just create more parking problems, according to some of about two dozen residents who spoke against it at a City Council meeting this week.

The ordinance, which the council will consider approving on Dec. 3, is supposed to help the city reach its goal of providing 300 new housing units a year through 2030.

It would require existing and future rental developments to provide only one parking space per studio instead of the current 1.25, one per single-bedroom apartment instead of 1.5, and no more than two for apartments with two bedrooms or more. The parking requirements would apply to existing as well as new buildings.

Becky Saunders, co-chairwoman of Palo Alto Neighborhoods, said the proposal contains no economic analysis of how housing construction would increase, rents would be lowered or less parking would lead to production of more affordable units.

Other speakers at Monday’s meeting urged the council to postpone the discussion until after the holidays, when more people are likely to chime in and a new council is seated. Council members Lydia Kou, Tom DuBois and Karen Holman unsuccessfully tried to postpone a vote on the ordinance until early next year.

A staff analysis of the ordinance acknowledges that the proposed change in parking requirements and relaxation of building heights and densities in high-transit areas of the city won’t help achieve the council’s housing goal. Staff said existing policies and market conditions “continue to favor commercial development over housing particularly downtown and in the California Avenue area.”

Critics also said found fault with the city’s parking study and contended staff outreach prior to the hearing was almost exclusively limited to developers. Staff held 16 meetings about the proposed ordinance with developers and one at-large community meeting, attended by about 30 people.

“The parking study that was done is flawed in design, the findings are presented in a misleading way and its conclusions are simply wrong,” resident Carol Scott said. “I fail to understand why stakeholders who are not residents, who are not voters in the city, get priority in working on ordinances over residents who are affected.”

Among the dozen-plus speakers who supported the ordinance were representatives of Silicon Valley at Home, League of Women Voters of Palo Alto and Palo Alto Housing. Many asked that the council increase the allowable building height and density in future downtown and California Avenue business district housing developments and eliminate the protections for ground-level retail in below-market multi-family developments, particularly along El Camino Real and around downtown.

“By requiring retail in an affordable housing project, you are essentially killing the project because the affordable housing developer can’t get financing for that portion,” said Bonnie Packer of League of Women Voters of Palo Alto.

Evan Goldin, a renter who also backs the ordinance, urged the council to consider a policy of having tenants pay for parking spaces separately from their units

“I pay $4,000 a month for rent for a two-bedroom,” Goldin said. “You know how much I pay for my car to sit underneath my house? Zero dollars. That is not fair. I should be paying the cost of that car so I think about the cost of that car every time I make that car payment.”