Menlo Park is being touted as the “gold standard” in the county for affordable housing incentives, according to a housing watchdog.

The nonprofit Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County on July 20 released an assessment of the affordable housing situation with data from a nexus study of county jurisdictions in 2015. It found that five cities — South San Francisco, Brisbane, Pacifica, Half Moon Bay and Millbrae — have missed out on a total of more than $50 million in affordable housing dollars since 2015 by not having policies in place to collect money for below-market housing units through fees on commercial developments.

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Between 2010 and 2014, 54,600 new jobs were created in the county, but just 2,100 new housing units were built, according to the council’s report.

“There needs to be some balance between jobs and housing,” said Leora Tanjuatco, organizing director for the Housing Leadership Council. “Given that we’re two years out of nexus studies (and) there’s a few stragglers, we wanted to highlight some missed opportunities.”

The report calls out Menlo Park for being the county’s earliest adopter of commercial linkage fees geared at affordable housing, back in 1988. The adoption was “precipitated by Sun Microsystems establishing their headquarters in Menlo Park,” Tanjuatco said.

“Menlo Park has incredible vision in this area and incredible leadership in affordable housing,” she said. “They’re the gold standard.”