This sounds like a hound out to me. This guy say's he has been relying on this for years. Years, Really. You give a man fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and he is fed for life.

Eventually the government should wake up to the realization that it must be the employer of last resort. #MMT

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Neighborhoods often resist "development", equating it with greedy developers and unresponsive city government. But when housing is tight, rents go up, and suddenly the bottom 1/3 of the population has no place to go. A robust economy needs all levels! Fact is, the Bay area is growing. If we deny it, we just ensure that blue collar workers, the working poor, and seniors will eventually be pushed over the line into temporary or even permanent poverty.

Jerry is right. Skyrocketing rents is a sign of a housing shortage and it is hurting the poor disproportionately. We need to build more housing, and make more of it walkable mixed development.

I suggest the readers of this article just go down to the place on Stierlin Road at hand out time. They will see people jumping in luxury cars with bags of free food. This article portrays the one guy who was given a bike, should be an article of those abusing the system.

I'm confused because last year I heard kids say that they got a lot of toys at home for Christmas
and then got more at the police station. Does anyone check on who might need help
and who is scamming ? Makes me question my charity gifts for this year.

OK, yes I understand some do abuse the system, gaming the system or whatever you want to call it. Most people coming for help, really do need the help, donations are needed, food is needed.

Here we are living in one of the wealthiest part of the world yet we have seniors going hungry, possibly becoming homeless or lives of people can change in a moment.

Car Accident, loss of job, rent increase, age, health or whatever life throw at you.

Anyone who suggests more development as the solution to high rent prices is simply out of touch. The new apartment buildings that have already gone up in Mountain View all charge rents that far exceed the average for the area. Additional housing is not depressing prices. Please revise your economic models accordingly.

One obvious safe-guard to spiraling costs, which can be enacted immediately, is rent control, but the city council is too callous to put forward such a desperately needed measure.

Hey, I was born here and grew up in Mountain View. To observer and Kevin, you guys are misguided, ill-informed and plain obnoxious. I can not afford to live in this area. Most of my childhood friends have moved far away. Our community is now a population of have and have nots. There are 10,000 homeless people from San Francisco to San Jose. Some are local, many are not. You two seem so callous and cold, you probably wish the homeless were all dead. Higher education is expensive and out of reach, it's almost impossible to acquire new marketable skills. Meanwhile, the local CEO's have in-sourced, outsourced, automated and off-shored so many of our local jobs. So teach me, or come up with a better solution instead of blabbering about fishing. Why would you fish here anyway, it's all polluted and the fish are deformed. Read the other article in the Voice about contaminated ground water.

Just because you have walkable mix of houses, doesn't mean that all of them will not own cars. We already have enough houses and apartments and we have traffic thanks to people like you that want more and more people bunched up. I guess we should make this look like the slums of india.

Before we add one more apartment complex, I think the city needs to change the timing of the lights to allow a smoother traffic flow. Or is there no money for that?

'Hand up' suggests short term rescue, with guidance out of whatever temporary misery is being experienced. From the article, these giveaways seem more like simple handout/maintenance programs. I'm sure they're appreciated, but they won't do squat to actually end any problems.

Observer writes: "This article portrays the one guy who was given a bike"--

What article are you reading? I see nothing about a bike in this article.

See photo #3, looks like a $400 Schwinn to me.

Musical: So the fellow has a tricycle so he can carry his groceries and stuff and get around. You speculated that it cost $400.

What are you proposing that he do? Sell the bike and get around how? Carry groceries around how?

Obviously the guy doesn't own a car. Are you suggesting that poor people don't need any transportation?

Yes, there are poor people who own cars and TV sets and personal computers. Have you thought how much cash you would really raise if you sold your car, your TV set, your PC? Not very much, far less than you paid for it. And you still need to get around--shopping, job hunting, getting kids to the doctor; your TV provides some inexpensive entertainment because you can't afford to go to movies or other entertainment; and your PC is probably worth at most a couple hundred bucks.

The notion (implied by other people) that poor people should be stripped of all their possessions before they can get food for their families is just stunning.

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