If "rent control was not discussed by the panel" then why bring it up (twice) in this report about the panel? Countless other matters were not discussed (though some people might consider them relevant to the larger context), but they did not get highlighted in this article.

Is it a news report, or an editorial?

Building more houses does not guarantee that the occupants will work in Mt. View. All it can guarantee is a lot more traffic and headaches.

@Hmmm

Of course not, but adding jobs without allowing the building of homes guarantees inbound commuters.

When planning housing in North Bayshore, there are other issues besides imbalance.

Web Link

Can you build affordable housing in MV that won't add any cars, but actually reduce traffic, won't impact our schools, but actually generate enough supply to cool down escalating prices to help keep our current renting families in MV, all the while reducing the carbon footprint and consumption of our region?

Yes you can, by zoning North Bayshore to allow micro-housing that is not car based, that doesn't allow private cars. Micro-housing brings problems when they are away from workplaces (like in Portland). Micro housing near transit hubs won't work either since our giant North Bayshore industrial center is off the transit grid.

I ask anyone who cares about MV's housing issue just watch 30 seconds of this 100 square foot micro house Youtube link Web Link and then I welcome any criticism of this concept.

Micro housing is the only way to offer affordable housing on the expensive commercial land in North Bayshore. If no developer or resident wants it, then nothing happens, but please don't kill innovation through zoning limitations.

If Apple and Samsung can continue to engineer a more ecological, smaller, faster, longer lasting phone, why can't we apply the same engineering can-do to our housing crisis, rather than think more the same.

A Resident of North Bayshore,
Christopher Chiang

Redwood shores and redwood city. Building housing north bay shores will only move more city resources to google employees.

All houses even if built will over $1m priced for google or Inuit seeking more city resources. For the size of moutain view it is over crowded .

We already closed some family enjoyable places including plans to shut the movie theatre.

Let's have a balanced approach and keep city around the size it is.

Why are other cities NOT discussing this . All the cities around us have the same problem. Maybe the builders have found their counsel because of small voter turn out but we can change that in 2016 easily as there will be more voter turn out.

Wow. One guy who bought a house in 1968 for next to nothing and pays 1978 Prop. 13 property taxes is complaining about talk of trying to make housing more affordable. He should cash in and get out.

"I am being forced out by Lenny Siegel and his buddies," Sosnow said."

As a fellow homeowner, I fail to see how building more housing, which will be largely apartments and condos, will cause his single family home to devalue 25%. I've lived here long enough to see two housing bubbles and busts and it's been driven by economic downturns, not excess supply. Overbuilding is a bigger issue in new construction at the edges of suburban sprawl, like Hollister and Tracy, not in infill. There's always a strong market for a centrally located single family home.

And besides, if his home's value were to drop 25%, it would be 25% of an inflated price. I know my home has more than quadrupled in value in the last 20 years, from $230K to $950K, with the last $100K in the last year or so.

So I'm having a hard time swallowing the idea that Sosnow is "being forced out of town" when in fact it's the people who do not own homes that are being forced out. Between the high rents and/or inability to buy million dollar townhomes with property taxes that are probably 10x what Sosnow pays, it's not a matter of scrimping and saving a bit.

Perhaps some of the homeowners whose single family homes and quiet residential neighborhoods abut massive (say, 4 story 160+ unit) apartment development proposals, which will share property line with many of these single family homes...well, maybe those homeowners feel like they are being forced out, for many reasons.

Unless or until one of these behemoth development proposals is planned & approved - literally next to (and towering over) your backyard - then I imagine it may be hard to understand just how distressing such a development proposal may be for residents of the soon to be affected neighborhood. And to those of you who are inclined to holler 'NIMBY' you might want to take a breath, because it seems like many of these residents don't favor these types of developments - abutting single family residential homes - anywhere in the city.

It's not that hard to understand, respect R-1 zoning and STOP planning for massive multi-story apartments to be built literally backing up to single story single family homes, and stop RE/UP-zoning areas prior to precise plans having been completed & approved, as a means to 'fast-track' these types of development proposals.

I envisioned living the rest of life in my little home in my quiet neighborhood in Mountain View, however, I purchased property outside Mountain View as a hedge...you know, just in case. Sadly, it would appear as if "just in case" is rapidly approaching. I'll be sad to leave, but I doubt I will be missed because, you know, evidently people like me are something to be reviled...homeowners who would like to keep their neighborhood free of 4 story apartments towering over a quiet neighborhood of single story homes. What I find stunning is just how dismissive staff and council (in general) has been regarding residents concerns over these types of developments. Telling, really. I have never felt like my comments related to any of this were anything more than "noise" that required a response, and the responses were always dismissive, at best.

The deck has been stacked against homeowners like me from the get go, which sadly means that it is time to get out. It would be a mistake to think that I feel like I have any real choice over my decision to leave Mountain View. Quality of life matters, and I am unwilling to live the rest of my life in a city whose leaders don't respect me and clearly would prefer it if people like me left town. So yeah, I'll oblige.

Story Tellers:

"Wow. One guy who bought a house in 1968 for next to nothing and pays 1978 Prop. 13 property taxes is complaining about talk of trying to make housing more affordable. He should cash in and get out."

~~~~~~~~~~

^^^ Aaand here we have another example of exactly what I mentioned in my above post. Why should this homeowner "cash in and get out"?

Why?

Why should anyone be made to feel like they have no other options besides selling their HOME and "getting out"?

And who are you to tell someone - anyone - who may have their entire life and life savings invested not only in their home but also in their community, that they should just leave because they may have concerns about the direction the city seems to be headed, in no small part (it would appear)to appease one employer in the city?

By some estimations, we appear to have a growing problem with diminishing prospective solutions; limited local space with inadequate measures to maintain present living standards at affordable levels.
There seems to be a limited range of thought, centered about how to accommodate a rapid influx of workers within the bounds of the North Bayshore development. It has been pointed out that said development is beyond the reach of municipal transport, and that point has been vastly understated- of all the likely solutions, it strikes me as the most practical approach, to readily bring workers to and from an area with limited room for expansion.
For instance, take advantage of VTA's plan to add a second track to Caltrain's downtown Castro street station; simply extend the added track to follow Shoreline Boulevard to the Google/Intuit complex. The purpose is mainly to extend the housing possibilities further down the peninsula to relieve local pressures within Mountain View. Short of that, encourage Google et al to develop their own light mass-transport solution to the Castro Caltrain station, emphasizing off-street conveyance as a means to cope with the dreaded traffic gridlock, already affecting highway 101.
In view of the present use of private buses to shuttle employees to and from San Francisco, these ideas do not seem impractical. Commuters currently favor their private transportation, but given the likelihood of future congestion and rising expense, convenient and reliable public transport will find its place.

@MVResident67 I'm not saying that everyone will necessarily like the changes that come as our city grows. I get that. What I'm saying is for a homeowner to claim he's being "forced out" is inaccurate. People who can no longer afford to live here are being forced out, not people who don't like the changes that are coming and choose to move away.

And in particular, for him to cry about potentially losing value on property that has seen enormous gains in the last four decades comes off as selfish to people who are truly being forced out because of a low supply of housing that caused prices to spike out of control.

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?

The article refers to a resident who bought a home in 1968. That home cost him $20,000-$60,000. He pays property taxes based on the 1978 assessed value. He can now sell his house for over a million dollars. If he thinks the value (aka price) of his home could plummet because one person was elected to the City Council and wants to leave, he should cash in and get out. An alternative is to stop whining, stick around and work to fix any problems the city faces or to forestall any decisions that could reduce the value of his house. Love it or leave it or fix it. Or, just keep on whining about your million dollar profit on your 1968 house. It is a free country - especially for homeowners.

The paper reports in this article that after I said the election showed the power of big $$ and big corporations more than it did what the of MV residents are thinking, Julie Lovins responded to my "accusation" that the three elected candidates are "corrupt" by asserting that this is not so because she knows all three of them personally.

Well if the Voice got her words right, then she missed the entire meaning of what I was saying.

I made no insinuation that anyone was corrupt. I'm saying that when a candidate wants to achieve exactly what big money, big corporations and big developers want, then big bucks produce a win for them with help that brings them the victory. Let me give you just one example: A slick, glossy, professionally very well produced mailer goes out that makes the candidate look like a real good choice, especially for the uninvolved or uninformed or undecided voter. It makes them look like they literally shine compared to the images of the other candidates.

The big guys can always swing an election, perfectly legally, in the direction of the candidates they prefer, like those who will nitpick their projects less and will allow them to build a lot more, a lot faster, even if results end up a lot less desirable for MV residents.

This is very unfortunate yet true, so we residents of MV must stay on top of: Who running will do the best for MV in the long run? Who are the more knowledgeable candidates? Which know the pros and cons of projects in the pipeline? Who has stayed involved in all matters that concern the city? These are the important criteria by which to vote, as opposed to only noticing those who run on only one issue and are not up to speed on any of the others, and/or who run by promising falsehoods and the totally impossible.

We must not allow ourselves to be an uninvolved, uninformed, or too easily impressed voter! Talk at length to the candidates before you vote (if they won't take the time to meet with you, then you've learned something really important to start with). Attend city council and EPC meetings and know the issues. Stay involved. Know the drawbacks of every so called benefit. Keep our council members aware of how they can better serve our interests. They are supposed to represent us!

@Linda - It would of course be very wrong to say that any of the elected candidates are “corrupt”.

However, this election absolutely was corrupted by outside money.

The candidates all agreed to a spending limit of $22,689, but this agreement was made meaningless by a large injection of outside money for three candidates. The cynically-named “Neighborhood Empowerment Coalition” was responsible for much of it. The NEC appears to exist for the purpose of hiding the actual source of the funds, which seem to have come largely from major developers, including Prometheus and Greystar.

The NEC spent $34,728 to get Ken Rosenberg elected, $25,455 on behalf of Pat Showalter, and $26,192 for Ellen Kamei (not elected).

Rosenberg also received $18,930 from the National Association of Realtors, bringing his outside money to $53,658. None of the other candidates received anything remotely close to this in outside support.

This does not bode well for the future of Mountain View city government. What will happen at the next election?

The “NEC” should be dragged into the light. The Voice has reported on it, but only scratched the surface. Perhaps the Mercury would like to pick up the slack. Exactly who arranged for this money to be spent on these candidates, and why?

It's silly to say that outside money corrupted this council election. Spending money on mailers is a lousy way to get your message across. Most of them get thrown in the trash. Rosenberg, Showalter and Siegal all had huge name recognition. The other candidates didn't and we're known only to political groupies that follow local politics. There are a lot of democratic voters in this town so Kamei and and Mtichak should have done better but they also sold out to the public unions. In the end the voters got it right and put pro-growth housing people in office. To the no-growth whiners that regularly blog , you got whipped by your overconfidence that your opinions really matter and represent the majority of where people in this town want to go. Most people see that high density is going in transit areas and realize this is acceptable and don't believe all of the hyperbole about the doom and gloom forecast by the no-growthers.

@Concerned Citizen:

I agree totally with your last comment. The NEC does the exact opposite of it's title, the Neighborhood Empowerment Coalition, by over powering the voices of the neighborhood by swaying things with their big money. And, yes, "Outside Money," fancy, high gloss, professionally well produced mailers and door hangers, etc., can sway the uninvolved, unconcerned, unenlightened and/or marginally interested voter.

The Nat. Ass. of Realtors obviously does the same, to further their interests in moving real estate. Those of us who want to protect our investment in our homes and our vision of our future in our comfortable community that we helped to shape are the losers here. It's not fair.

But it's even more unfair to the huge number of services workers struggling to stay in MV and currently living comfortably in the older buildings that flank ECR. As these residences were the first to be build decades ago, and the building spread from ECR out to form the current expanse of suburbs, they are older and thus cheaper to live in.

As the Precise Plan for ECR replaces housing complexes like these for its new, very costly stack & pack housing, many people are getting displaced.

MV is proceeding with a plan that trades affordable/attainable perfectly good housing for more but much pricier housing!

We talk about wanting affordable/attainable housing and appreciating diversity, but if this plan goes through as is, we are making a city that houses a homogeneous socioeconomic group of only the better paid people.

The correction would be to narrow the change area of the plan to just immediately along ECR, not reaching back further into the existing, older neighborhoods.

A couple floors above retail right on ECR won't remove these poor people, but the area of the plan now illustrated in red extended into current housing that will dump so many families.

Every well paying, high tech job requires three service workers to support it. And yet we are pursuing a large plan that will force these service workers to add to the commute into & out of MV each work day!

If you read the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the El Camino Real Precise Plan you will find that it states something to the effect of, some people will be affected by the loss of housing related to new/redevelopment, but because new housing is being added there will be "no significant impact". Uh, I am pretty sure that the people who will lose their home/housing because of these projects may consider said loss to be pretty freaking significant.

In general, I love how the EIR's dismiss virtually everything as "less than significant". The contortions made in order to justify, rationalize and ultimately dismiss every single thing as "no significant impact" would be hilarious...if it wasn't so nefarious and, well, so significant.

Random...the draft EIR for 801 El Camino Real talked about the shadows that will be cast from the four story apartment blocks that will be towering over the one and two story residential homes and flats behind this proposed development, and I actually laughed out loud at the audacity of the rationalization as to why the shadows cast by these 50 foot++ buildings would have "no significant impact" on these residences...and what it boiled down to was the shadows will be cast over these residences mostly in the winter months when, because of the cold temperatures people wouldn't be using their yards anyway. Aaaahahahaha. Really? Is that the best rationalization you could come up with? Did you take a poll of the people who live in the affected residences and ask if they like to use their yards in the winter months, or if they minded that their yards and homes are now being relegated to dwell forever more in the shadows cast by multiple four story blocks of buildings which literally backs up to their property lines? Is the developer going to pay for the increased energy bills these residents will undoubtedly be saddled with in order to warm up their homes since the sun will no longer be able to warm them up?

The average temperature in Mountain View in December is 60 degrees. For the EIR to assert that there will be no significant impact to the nearby residences - which will be covered in shadows from the proposed development - because, well because people just don't use their yards in the winters months is, well, flat out not true.

Read those EIR's people...they are eye popping in their temerity.

Here's the draft EIR for 801 El Camino Real, Greystar's development proposal for the corner of Castro Street & ECR.
Web Link



Here's the link to the draft El Camino Real precise plan:
Web Link