Toll Brothers, a luxury home construction company, is building 43 townhomes and 13 ADUs — also known as in-law units or backyard homes — on a a 2.3-acre site at Tarob Court, about a mile and a half away from the Great Mall. The development will consist of eight multi-family buildings roughly 39 feet tall, and include 104 parking spaces.

Six of the townhomes will be reserved for moderate-income households, or 80% of the Average Median Income (AMI), — which is at least $145,040 for a family of four in Santa Clara county. Milpitas’s median household income is $169,460 while the AMI in the county in 2023 was $181,300.

Though the City Council green-lit the development Tuesday, it raised concerns about the need for more affordable housing in the city.

Mayor Carmen Montano said even moderate income levels are still “quite a bit of money” for Milpitas families.

“Our city needs to focus on really low income, because a lot of folks cannot afford $180,000,” she said during the meeting

Toll Brothers representative Nick Costa said the best way to provide low-income and very low-income housing in the city is to build apartments and team up with affordable builders. Developers need bigger sites to construct those apartments, he said, which are hard to find nowadays.

“We’re all going to have to start looking at finding bigger sites to build on,” he said during the meeting. “That’s just challenging where we are in the city and the state.”

The Tarob Court project — which was submitted in 2023 — is compliant with SB30 — a state law prohibiting local governments from creating laws that would reduce the legal limit on new housing within their borders or delay new housing. Since Toll Brothers is setting aside more than 10% of its units to moderate income households, the project can wavier some of the city’s permit expenses.

Vice Mayor Evelyn Chua said she liked the project because the developer “incorporated the concept of ADUs,” which are becoming a popular housing project option in the Bay Area due to their affordability and versatility.

In 2023, one out of every five homes built in the state was an ADU, according to recently released state data. Only three years ago, they represented one in every 10 new units.

The project aligns with existing city plans to provide roughly 7,000 additional new housing units in the southern portion of Milpitas, which includes land near the Great Mall shopping center, by 2040. The plan also includes allocating space for new developments, including providing up to three million square feet of new commercial employment space, 300,000 square feet of new retail space and 700 new hotel rooms.

Efforts to create new housing comes as the nine-county Bay Area is expected to build more than 441,000 new homes by 2031 to meet housing demands, a 15% increase in the region’s total housing stock. The counties must also allocate 40% of those homes for people with low or very-low incomes.

In April, Milpitas approved the construction of 118 affordable apartments near Main Street, half a mile from the VTA Great Mall light rail station. More than half of the units will be reserved for low-income families.

iCloud is a storage service that allows users to store and sync data across their devices, keeping information including photos, files, backups, passwords secure. The protesters — comprised mostly of child safety experts, advocates and  survivors of childhood sexual abuse — say the service allows perpetrators and abusers to confidently store and share child exploitation materials without getting caught by authorities.

Apple had spent years attempting to design a system that would identify and remove such content on the iCloud. The company ultimately scrapped the idea in late 2023, in response to concerns from digital rights groups that a scanning system would compromise the privacy and security of all iCloud users.

Shortly after, the child advocacy group Heat Initiative began organizing a campaign to demand that the company continue to move forward with detecting and reporting such materials. According to the Intercept, Heat is backed by “dark-money donors.”

Sarah Gardner, CEO of Heat, said in a statement after the protest that the the initiative is “transparent about its funders, which are made up of some of the most reputable safeguarding foundations in the world, including Oak Foundation and Children’s Investment Foundation Fund.  The group is also fiscally sponsored by Hopewell Fund.

The initiative, along child safety groups Wired Human and the Brave Movement, organized Monday’s protest.

Monday’s protest coincided with the first day of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference, an event when the company announces new tech features for its software programs. Gardner said Apple is leaving children safety behind in their conversations for new technologies, and needs to focus on protecting them.

“We don’t want to be here, but we feel like we have to,” Gardner said. “This is what it’s going to take to get people’s attention and get Apple to focus more on protecting children on their platform.”

As company officials and stakeholders passed through the Apple Park Visitor Center, child safety experts and advocates called out: “Build a future where children are protected.” Some spoke about their personal experiences with sexual abuse and voiced concerns about having more child safety measures in place.

“We’re not asking for much,” activist Sochil Martin said as the protester’s chants echoed in the background. “Apple has everything in their hands to do it.”

Their concerns also come as national leaders urge the passage of child safety bills including the Kids Online Safety Act, which would establishes guidelines to protect minors on social media platforms, including TikTok and Facebook.

Apple declined to comment on the protest, and instead provided this news organization with a 2023 letter exchange between Gardner and Erik Neuenschwander, Apple’s director of user privacy and child safety, that addressed the company’s reasoning for scrapping the system.

Neuenschwander said implementing a system would compromised the security and privacy of users, and would open the door, “for bulk surveillance and could create a desire to search other encrypted messaging systems across content types (such as images, videos, text, or audio) and content categories.”

But protester Christine Almadjian said those features are not enough to protect children or hold predators accountable for possessing sexual abuse material. Almadjian, who is part of the national End Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse of Children Coalition, said Apple needs to continue finding ways to identify and flag down such content.

“We’re trying to engage in a dialog with Apple to implement these changes,” she said Monday. “They don’t feel like these are necessary actions.”

Then finally, she was handed a lifeline.

The family moved into a Sunnyvale apartment in 2020 owned by Aresa Properties — whose mission is to provide housing to low-income families on their property sites and is creating affordable ADUs, also known as in-law units or backyard homes, in the city and elsewhere.

“It’s important to be able to give people a place to call home,” Inukihaangana said Friday, surrounded by Aresa Properties owners, their supporters and local leaders to celebrate the opening of their first ADU at Helen Avenue, located north of El Camino Real.

Three other ADUs are in the works at Aresa’s existing properties around the city and another will come to West San Jose in 2025, according to Teresa Agustin, principal partner at the company. They partner with local housing agencies — including Santa Clara County Housing Authority, Life Moves and Sunnyvale Community Services — to find families in need to fill their units. The company especially has a soft spot for single mothers with young kids.

“We believe stable housing can help minimize trauma for children and youth,” Agustin said. “They can focus on their education and ultimately change the trajectory of their future in a positive way.”

The market price for a Sunnyvale duplex like Helen Avenue’s, which is a one-bedroom that can fit two to three people, is around $2,600. Aresa works with the agencies and individual families to negotiate a price that works for them, Agustin said.

The units are becoming popular building options for Californians. In 2023, one out of every five homes built in the state was an ADU, according to recently released state data. Only three years ago, they represented one in every 10 new units.

Aresa Properties CEO Arman Bashi said he encourages other landlord to build ADUs for local low-income families to help the region’s growing housing crisis.

“We want people to see that they can be done, and that it can be successful for both parties,” Bashi said Friday.

The California state Legislature previously passed several bills lowering barriers to building ADUs to encourage more housing projects. AB 68, which passed in 2019, sped up the approval process from 120 days to 60 and prohibited local officials from imposing requirements around lot size and parking. AB 881 passed the next year and prevented cities from requiring owners to live on the property, opening up the possibility for landlords to build rental ADUs.

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors recently allowed residents two sets of pre-approved plans for building ADUs on their residential property by the end of the year. The streamlined process is intended to open up more affordable housing in the region, according to District 3 County Supervisor Otto Lee.

Nearby, the City of Milpitas has also launched a program to speed up the ADU permitting process. In Walnut Creek, the City Council approved amendments to the city’s ADU ordinance allowing religious leaders to help residents struggling to secure affordable housing.

“There’s no one silver bullet to solve the problem,” Lee said Friday. “But having ADUs can help us.”

One of the South Bay’s largest free summertime events, the Sunnyvale Art and Wine Festival typically takes place in June and has been drawing thousands of locals and vendors to the city for almost 50 years. In the past, the CEO of the chamber has been tasked with organizing the festival and communicating with city staff, vendor promoters and community members.

But in October, because the CEO retired and the board had to take over, the board decided they didn’t have enough resources, time or funding to put on the 2024 event. They revisited the decision in February after receiving feedback from city staff and elected officials, but reached the same conclusion, Board Chair Andreu Reall said in a statement.

Reall did not immediately respond to a question about how much the festival costs.

The chamber said it is making plans to resume the event in 2025, which would be the 50th festival.

City spokesperson Jennifer Garnett said the festival is not a city-sponsored event, and the staff’s only role has been to approve the festival’s permit application. Staff are “as disappointed as everyone else to miss it this summer,” Garnett said.

Locals and festival participants say they are also disappointed that the cancellation was not made public.

Terry Allie, owner of California Artist — a service promoter that connects local artist vendors to Bay Area festivals — said he was not told about the decision until he contacted the chamber directly at the end of January. Allie claims the cancellation was due to mismanagement from the previous chamber director and the chamber’s failure to find a replacement. Reall did not immediately respond to a question about the mismanagement claim.

Longtime Sunnyvale resident Peter Cirigliano — who has been attending the festival since the ’80s — said he only heard about this year’s cancellation through a friend.

“It was disappointing that it was sort of canceled without so much as a notice or notification,” Cirigliano said. “It’s almost like they sort of hoped no one would notice.”

The 67-year-old looks forward to attending the festival during that first weekend in June, when he’ll spend time walking around downtown Murphy Avenue admiring the products of local artisans, listening to live music and basking in the “small town feel” the festival provides.

He still plans to make a trip to other upcoming art and wine events, like Mountain View’s in September, but prefers the convenience of Sunnyvale’s festival.

“I prefer to go to the ones nearby, especially if I can bike to it,” he said.

In the past, Lisa Ramos, owner of Monolisa — a small business where she creates and sells handmade bags and jewelry — regularly attended Sunnyvale’s Art and Wine Festival to connect with her South Bay customers. The Clayton resident was looking forward to promoting and selling her products again at the 2024 festival before hearing about the cancellation from Allie.

“It’s a bummer because we rely on these events,” she said. “When these shows are canceled, it means you have to find another show to fill in that weekend, or else you won’t be making money.”

The Rise, a mixed-use housing project, will include shops, offices and 2,400 residential spaces, with half reserved for affordable units. The project was green-lit by the City Council in February and will be built on the 50-acre former mall site at the corner of North Wolfe Road and Stevens Creek Boulevard near Interstate 280.

Sand Hill Property Co, which owns the property, said developers are preparing the site for utilities and infrastructure installation over the summer, with building construction to follow. “Most of the mobilization will be in the fall timeframe, that’s when people will definitely start to notice activity on site,” said Reed Moulds, a managing director with Sand Hill Property,

Residents can obtain construction updates through Sand Hill’s Good Neighbor Program, including alerts about activities such as dust mitigation, material recycling, schedules, traffic control and truck routes

“It’s always been a priority of ours to have good communication with the community and the city,” Moulds said. “We’re going to continue to make that a priority.”

The Rise could potentially be completed by 2028, but Moulds said the timeline heavily depends on the state of the local real estate market. The last couple of years have been challenging for the industry, as companies in the Bay Area and nationwide struggle to find financing amid high interest rates and inflation.

Some developers have decided to delay or scrap projects until the forecast improves, while others have been forced to tweak their projects to make them more inviting for construction lenders. A prior version of The Rise, for instance, proposed buildings with a combination of rental and for-sale housing in tall towers above ground-floor shops and restaurants. Sand Hill modified the council-approved version to include shorter buildings above ground-floor commercial space, or for-sale housing above the commercial spaces — but not both.

The Rise’s eventual completion will help Cupertino reach its goal to add more than 4,500 new homes by 2031.

Efren Flores, owner of Holder’s Country Inn restaurant on North Wolfe Road, which is directly across from the site, said he is looking forward to the project’s completion. Holder’s has been on Wolfe for two years, ever since its original South De Anza Boulevard location burned down.

An influx of new residents moving in to the Rise can help bring new customers and opportunities for Cupertino businesses, he said.

“We’re nearly right in front of it, so we’re going to be getting the noises and dust from construction,” Flores said. “but in the long run, it’s going to be very beneficial for us and other businesses.”

The road to approving the ambitious project has been a rocky one.

A 2018 initial proposal by Sand Hill for The Rise included adding hundreds of more housing, office and commercial spaces alongside a plethora of community benefits, including a new performing arts center, city hall and emergency response center. The development would have been approved under SB35, a state law that requires local governments to streamline housing projects in cities that fail to build enough housing.

Neil Park-McClintick, president for the local pro-housing group Cupertino for All, said he would have loved to see the space reach its full potential with the initial design. Even though the current design is downsized, the Cupertino native looks forward to having the Rise built.

The Rise “will really be the centerpiece of the city,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to have a more transit-oriented city, and bring in a large amount of jobs and projects.”

The Sunnyvale City Council recently temporarily suspended its ban on natural gas in new buildings, which was first adopted in 2022 to help cut Sunnyvale’s greenhouse emissions in half by the end of the decade.

Recently, Cupertino announced the city will suspend its gas ban until this fall. In the East Bay, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors earlier this month agreed to pause their all-electric building requirement and gas ban in unincorporated areas of the county. San Mateo County and San Luis Obispo also recently suspended their bans.

The pauses come in the wake of the Ninth Court declining in January to rehear Berkeley’s ban on natural gas in new buildings, which was first struck down by the court in April 2023. A panel of judges ruled that Berkeley cannot prohibit natural gas due to a pre-existing federal energy law.

Berkeley has since agreed to repeal the ban. The Ninth Court’s ruling doesn’t affect cities that have taken a building code-based approach to adopting natural gas bans — like Sunnyvale, Palo Alto and Mountain View — but those cities are also choosing to suspend bans to avoid possible litigation or other legal issues in the future.

In 2019, the California Restaurant Association (CRA) sued Berkeley for implementing the gas ban claiming it was “passed with a disregard for available cooking technologies and ultimately for small businesses in the community that rely on gas-burning equipment for their cuisines.”

But environmentalists say all-electric buildings — which have no natural gas or propane plumbing installed and use electricity as the sole source of energy for heating, cooking and other home appliances — are more affordable, energy-efficient and crucial for accomplishing California’s goal of achieving 100% zero-carbon energy by 2045.

“Building electrification is a huge opportunity,” said Pamela Leonard, deputy director of marketing and communications for Silicon Valley Clean Energy. “There’s a climate benefit, of no longer polluting as you’re putting in new buildings that are going to last 50 to 100 years, but there is also a cost aspect — it costs more to build with gas.”

Dashiell Leeds, conservation coordinator at the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter, said using gas appliances contributes to poor air quality and exposes people to pollutants like nitrogen oxide.

“Every new gas pipeline installed is a public health liability and step backward on climate change,” he said. “The more we can avoid the hazards of gas pipelines and gas appliances in new buildings, the better off we all are.”

In the wake of the court decision, organizations like Silicon Valley Clean Energy, a Sunnyvale-based not-for-profit agency that provides clean electricity for 96% of residents and businesses across Santa Clara County, are looking for ways to encourage people to be eco-friendly.

Zoe Elizabeth, deputy director of Decarbonization Programs and Policy at Silicon Valley Clean Energy, said more homeowners and housing markets are becoming aware of the benefits of electric buildings, and are choosing to use them without direction from local governments.

Sunnyvale city spokesperson Jennifer Garnett said the city has other measures besides its suspended gas ban to encourage electric infrastructure, including allowing residential and commercial projects with all-electric designs to increase their floor area ratio. City staff will present the council with other ways to deter local builders from installing gas piping after six months.

“We do not anticipate that this short pause will negatively affect our ability to meet our climate action targets,” Garnett said in a statement. “We’ll also continue to encourage all-electric adoption.”

While cities and advocacy groups try to promote electric usage, some local business owners say they like gas better but are prepared to be flexible.

“I enjoy cooking with gas more,” said The Heirloom Chef co-owner and personal chef Erika Minkowsky. “I think there is more control with the temperature.”

The Heirloom Chef is a personal chef service that caters mainly to the East Bay and San Fransisco region. The local chef team often uses their client’s gas and electric appliances to create meals. Still, Minkowsky said electrical appliances are better for the environment and supports using them, even if they take a while to get used to.

“You can get used to anything if you practice enough,” she said.

Claudio Bono, managing director for the Cupertino Hotel, also supports the idea of no-gas buildings but is concerned about the practicality of going all-electric. The building uses electricity to run appliances like laundry machines and gas for cooking in the kitchen.

“If the switch was easy, we would love to have that,” Bono said. “But in a hybrid way, so if one thing falls we have another (power source) to sustain us operationally.”

The City Council Tuesday night adopted its housing element, which is a blueprint submitted every eight years to the state outlining how the city will add a specific number of local homes at a range of price points. The document, which proposes creating new zoning categories to allow for high-density projects in residential areas, will head to the Planning Commission for deliberation in June.

The state Housing and Community Development Department (HCD) endorsed Cupertino’s housing plan last month, more than a year after the city missed the original January 2023 deadline to submit it. The zoning process is necessary to keep the city’s plan compliant with the endorsement and avoid penalties, including being subject to the builder’s remedy, a legal mechanism that allows developers to push through projects that are larger than local zoning laws would otherwise permit.

“That really is what HCD has conditioned this project on, is that we need to be able to rezone our priority housing sites,” said Luke Connolly, assistant director of community development for the city.

Cupertino identifies 36 sites to accommodate the units, which are mainly located along Stevens Creek and De Anza boulevards and single-family neighborhoods in the western portion of the city. More than half of the 4,588 units will be built at The Rise, a housing project approved by the council last month on the site of the former Vallco Shopping Mall.

Despite months of intense planning, not every councilmember was on board with the plan. Kitty Moore was the only councilmember who voted against the adoption, concerned that factors, including the environmental impact of the city’s housing plan, were not examined throughly.

“My greatest concern is that this approach would not result in an attainable solution to the housing affordability problem,” Moore said Tuesday. “I believe we have a council majority and other forces strongly urging us to rubber stamp this housing element.”

Liang Chao, the only councilmember to abstain from the vote, said she understands that HUD compliance is important, but could not support the housing element because of an “undemocratic” and “non-transparent” planning process by city staff. Chao claimed that there have been no “substantive” deliberations in public meetings on the proposed housing policies and densities since 2022, when the council first assessed housing sites.

Councilmember Hung Wei, who was in favor of the adoption, said city staff worked hard over the years to create an element that complies with state law and communicate with HCD that Cupertino is “willing to move forward and willing to open its doors to new residents in a reasonable and rational way.”

The housing element isn’t perfect, but it is better for the city to move forward with the plan than fall out of compliance with state law and face consequences like lawsuits and the builder’s remedy, Wei said.

When Cupertino missed the deadline, pro-housing organizations YIMBY Law and the California Housing Defense filed a lawsuit against the city for noncompliance. The legal battle ended in January, after the Santa Clara County Superior Court ruled that the city must allow builder’s remedy projects by developers who filed affordable housing projects after the 2023 deadline.

“We need to face reality,” she said Tuesday. “There are consequences if we do not have a certified housing element.”

Founded in 2020 by Cupertino resident Sherry Meng, Turtleworks is known by South Bay residents for being an accessible custom embroidery service where people of all abilities can work together.

The business’s mascot is the humble turtle, and serves as a reminder that anyone, no matter their pace or ability, can work hard and achieve their goals, Meng said.

Local businesses and private parties can place orders online or in-person at Turtleworks’ West Campbell Avenue office, located west of San Tomas Expressway. With the help of several commercial embroidery machines, the crew stitches uniform designs onto dozens of bags, caps, shirts and more.

Although only a handful of employees and interns work consistently on orders, the business collaborates with nearby Fremont Union, Campbell Union and Los Gatos-Saratoga Union high school districts to recruit adults with disabilities to help. They are paid by the school districts for their time.

Making machine-made embroidery products is a very visual process that can be broken up into smaller tasks, which is perfect for people who have special needs, Meng said. Depending on their ability, the helpers are trained to perform a variety of jobs, including loading embroidery hoops into machines, packaging orders and speaking to customers. The opportunity not only provides the adults with technical experience, but also social ones.

“We don’t isolate them,” Meng said. “If a customer comes in, we let them talk to customers and help them. Here we try to create a good and supportive working environment.”

Intern Maya Rumale found out about Turtleworks through her special education program at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino. Since October 2023, the senior, who has special needs, has been coming into the office twice a week to clean up supplies, cut thread backings off of finished pieces and load embroidery hoops.

“It’s the kind of job where I don’t realize time is passing,” the 17-year-old said recently inside the office. “I go to work and I’m like, oh, two hours are done already?”

Rumale said she appreciates working in a space that supports people with special needs.

“I don’t know how many other places do that,” she said. “I feel like people with special needs need spaces that are pretty much solely for them, and committed to supporting them.”

Her response is exactly what Meng hoped for when she set out to establish the shop.

A former Silicon Valley engineer, Meng left her day job in 2009 to care for her two children, one of whom is autistic. She started volunteering with Friends of Children with Special Needs (FCSN), a Fremont nonprofit that helps individuals with special needs and their families.

Meng developed a passion for creating life and job skills training opportunities. She created work programs for FCSN high school and postsecondary students, including operations where students could make soaps and repurpose recycled legos to sell them to community members.

She decided to take her ideas outside of the nonprofit world and opened the Turtleworks office in 2020, right before Santa Clara County’s pandemic shelter-in place orders took effect.

“I didn’t have embroidery experience,” Meng said. “After we opened, there was the pandemic, and there was nobody who could help me or teach me.”

After searching online for instructions, Meng eventually got the hang of using the machines and began providing online and onsite training sessions to the Turtleworks crew. They completed 400 orders in 2023, and have completed 180 so far this year. Winter holiday times are usually the busiest times for custom orders, according to Meng, but Mother’s Day and graduation season are also popular.

For the past two years Kristi Saso, president of the San Jose-based commercial maintenance company Pro-Sweep, has used Turtleworks to embroider her company’s logo onto different caps, shirts and jackets.

Saso admires how Meng is creating work opportunities for young adults with special needs, an age group that is often overlooked by society.

“The fact that she is so patient and allows them to learn skills that will benefit them throughout their entire life,” Saso said, “it’s unbelievably generous to our community and so important.”

What she didn’t know was that the creams contained ingredients such as retinol and hyaluronic acid. Both can improve the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles by increasing skin cell production, but they also can cause irritation that results in redness and itchiness, especially on young skin.

The Palo Alto eighth-grader learned that the hard way when her face started turning red and blotchy.

“I would use her products without knowing my skin was pretty sensitive,” Emily said. “Now I have to be careful about the products I’m using.”

While anti-aging products are generally intended for those over 30, Emily said she often sees teenagers buying and using them in social media videos. That’s why she’s supporting a bill introduced last month by state Assemblymember Alex Lee, a 28-year-old Milpitas Democrat, that would ban the sale of anti-aging skin care or cosmetic products containing certain ingredients like retinol to children under the age of 13.

More and more children and teenagers are being exposed to adult skin care products through social media and purchasing them at trendy retail stores, a phenomenon dubbed “Sephora Kids” after the popular beauty products store. The anti-aging product market was estimated to be 10.14 billion in 2023 and is expected to reach 16.38 billion by 2030, according to a January market research report.

Using products containing retinols and acids at a young age can lead to eczema and irritant contact dermatitis, according to Sunil Dhawan, a dermatologist with the Center for Dermatology, which has locations in Milpitas and Fremont.

“There are more kids who we are seeing as patients that have multiple regimes and stuff that they are doing, for no good reason other than (seeing it) on TikTok and Instagram,” Dhawan said. “It’s amazing how they refuse to accept the fact that it’s the product that’s making their eczema worse, because they are using harsh retinol-based products which are not suitable for young kids and young sensitive skin.”

If passed, AB 2491 would require businesses to take steps to uphold the ban, including placing a notice next to products or online descriptions indicating they are not meant for anyone under 13, or requiring purchasers to verify their ages with an ID.

“That’s why (this bill) is going after the sale of anti-aging products,” Lee said. “because right now it’s super easy for kids to walk up and buy it off of the shelf.”

But the Personal Care Products Council, a Washington, D.C.,-based trade association that represents hundreds of global cosmetics and personal care products companies, opposes the bill, calling it “a hastily drafted attempt to use legislative force to stop a social media trend. Every ingredient targeted by this bill is safe when used as directed at the appropriate age.”

The bill recently cleared the state’s Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee, and is now headed to the Appropriations Committee, which reviews all bills with fiscal impact once they pass a policy committee.

While the proposal is a first for California, age-related cosmetic bans have been established in other places. In March, the Swedish pharmacy chain Apotek Hjärtat, which has about 390 pharmacies in Sweden, began restricting the sale of advanced skin care products including retinol and alpha hydroxy acids to customers under 15.

Carol Chan, Emily’s mother, who also supports the ban, said stores shouldn’t sell any anti-aging products to children. She hopes the bill will raise awareness about the importance of checking product ingredients.

“We just see the buzz words, like ‘anti-wrinkle’ and ‘anti-aging,’ and don’t realize what the actual ingredients are in there,” Chan said. “That’s scary; even I’m not conscious of it. I can’t imagine an 11- or 13-year-old really caring. They just say it smells good, it feels good, and it’s free — it’s on the counter of my mom’s bathroom, so I’m going to try it.”

But other youngsters have some reservations about implementing a full ban.

Thirteen-year-old Noga Arditi of Palo Alto thinks preteens should be able to choose whether to purchase cosmetic products.

“They should learn about (products) before they put it on their skin, but maybe not ban it totally from people,” the seventh-grader said.

Before deciding whether to support the bill, Palo Alto resident Ellen Payne said she would like to see more research conducted on the long-term effects of children using anti-aging products.

“I’m interested in learning more about the scientific basis of the bill,” she said. “The harmful effects (anti-aging products) have on the skin, and more on the social and psychological effects.”

Her 12-year-old daughter, Tessa, who sticks to using moisturizers and sunscreens, wonders why the “Sephora Kids” her age would even use such products in the first place.

“From the videos I’ve seen, they seem annoying. They don’t really need to use it,” she said. “They are already pretty young. They don’t need to look younger.”

A Sunnyvale nonprofit is on a quest to reduce that amount, while also supporting local crafters.

At a warehouse at 1240 Birchwood Drive, FabMo volunteers collect hundreds of scraps of fabric, along with leathers, tiles, carpets and more, and the organization sells them at an affordable price. Their efforts help save roughly 70 tons of materials from ending up in the landfill each year. Most of their inventory comes from weekly donations made by dozens of San Francisco Design Center showrooms, but others come from community members hoping their materials can be creatively repurposed.

Palo Alto resident Hannah Cranch is the co-founder of the organization, which opened its Sunnyvale headquarters in 2020. As a former school teacher, Cranch would collect and distribute discarded fabrics to her peers, who would then use the material for classroom projects.

“I knew that other art teachers would be wild eyes to get these gorgeous things,” she said inside the warehouse recently, surrounded by yards of colorful fabric. “That’s what made me say, ‘Wait, wait, stop throwing things out. Other people can make use of them.’”

As her collection grew, Cranch and her husband, Jonathan, were inspired to open a sustainable place where locals could easily access the materials, including aspiring textile and fiber artists or teachers in need of craft supplies. Jonathan, who died in 2022, helped FabMo apply for nonprofit status in 2010, opening its doors to dozens of volunteers hoping to join the cause. They set up shop inside warehouses in Palo Alto and Mountain View before moving to Birch.

“It’s a great social environment to volunteer in,” said long-time volunteer Holly Welstein. “I just love it when someone new comes in and says, ‘Wow, all of this stuff was going to be thrown away?’ That’s definitely the response you get.”

Interested shop-goers can make an online appointment to visit the Sunnyvale facility, or place an order to pick up materials through their online store. The nonprofit also hosts meet-ups and workshops around the South Bay, where local residents can learn new skills and meet like-minded creators.

We recently asked Cranch about her experience with FabMo. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Q: What does FabMo stand for?

A: Fabrics and More. My husband thought of the name.

Q: Where does FabMo get its donations?

A: We drive up (to the San Francisco Design Center) once a week with black plastic bags. We do the work, go around every floor in the building, every show room and speak with them personally — “Do you have anything today? What about your carpets?” Stuff like that.

(Private parties) have become a very major source of donations for us. We don’t solicit those, but people now inquire all the time. There is a heightened awareness of the problem — textiles don’t recycle well.

Q: What are your thoughts on textile waste?

A: We’re very happy that the problem of textile waste is coming to the forefront. We are seeing other places in the U.S. address it and some really interesting things happening in Italy and in Australia. There’s a building and energizing of interest to problem solve. While we think what we’re doing is pretty unique, it’s delightful to hear about similar places in Austin and Colorado, a little bit of a place in Seattle, New York and Philadelphia.

Q: What are some exciting projects people have created from shopping at FabMo?

A: So much of what we see is so truly inspiring, it’s overwhelming. People have done amazing things with different types of fabrics and piecing them together into quilts, it’s just amazing, amazing stuff. One woman, who does our FabMo newsletter, made a traditional quilt using silk. She had these stars that almost glowed because the shininess of the silk was offset by the colors. Its mind-boggling how much time that would take.

Q: What do you enjoy the most about FabMo?

A: The incredible support we get from volunteers, and getting to know people and see what their interests and passions are. Also knowing that what we’re all doing is doing something to make the community better, or help in some way. It’s really neat to have people feel useful.

Some who come for the first time actually say, “I’m so overwhelmed,” and we say, “That’s OK, just come back another time.” Not that we want to make people feel gasp-y, but just to have them appreciate that it is monumental. That’s kind of fun.

Name: Hannah Cranch

Age: 81

Position: Co-Founder, FabMo

Education: San Jose State University, majored in education and minored in French and English

Residence: Palo Alto

Five things about Hannah:

— Hannah and her husband, Johnathan, first held fabric distribution events inside their Palo Alto home.

— She is not a huge consumer, and likes to find ways to reduce waste.

— She has adopted pets for the last 50 years, including cats and dogs and chickens.

— She worked as an art teacher in the Palo Alto Unified School District

— She has a fascination with learning languages.