This math makes no sense, my three bedroom house has a rebuild cost of 200k. I believe this number to be slightly off, it is created by an insurance company after all. I cannot imagine a one bedroom studio in a much larger development could be 2 1/2 times the cost.

The building is FIVE STORIES tall. How many stories is your house? :)
I think construction gets tricky (and expensive) as you go up and there's bound to be a parking garage and going down is even more expensive.

What lesson to be learned? We have/had too many political conservatives voting in our elections and trying to keep taxes as low as possible. As a result, our infrastructure is underfunded, which includes affordable housing. We should have been doing this years ago rather than waiting until the cost was sky high.

I still think we should do the project (and many more infrastructure projects too) even with the high costs. Cities should build for the future and the only way to do that is to start NOW!

We owe military veterans who served honorably and I have no problem with helping them out, but "affordable housing" has to be paid for and you can only get so much from developers. That leaves the rest of us working people to subsidize the rest of the cost. We pay the higher rent and don't have the money to do much other than paying our bills and trying to survive this expensive economy. The people who aren't part of the affluent society of Silicon Valley can't pay the bills for those who are less fortunate forever. We get dragged into the downward economic cycle and will become members of the poorer part of society that we now help support. Affordable housing does not need to be fancy as so many of these new places are. It needs to be well built and safe. If people want to pay less rent they need to do without the extras that more expensive complexes have such as pools, weight rooms, gated grounds, fancy landscaping and other things that make it cost more to build and maintain. If it was less expensive to build and rent was much lower people could save some to move to better place and maybe a house some day. I've paid high rent around here for so long that I can't afford to pay more. If I didn't have the good fortune to inherit the means to move I would be moving somewhere less expensive as it it just not possible for me to afford to live here any more. It is sad to say that as I've had a pretty good income but not enough to save to buy a house. Everyone of us that are caught in this dilemma can't afford to stay and can't afford to move. What are we supposed to do when it is time to retire? Living here leaves us living in a stressful environment that shortens our lives and leaves us with no good solutions to our economic problems.

The City of Mountain View requires numerous permit and construction fees, e.g., $30,000 per Apartment Unit for Park and Recreation Fee; $20 per square foot for Below Market Rate Housing Fee (this fee subsidizes this project); $20 per square foot for a Community Benefit Fee. The City will require Prevailing Wage or Living Wage which means Union Contracts that make construction more expensive. There is an encroachment paid for a dumpster on the Street and you have to use Recology Dumpsters which cost double than what private companies charge. There is a water and sewer hook-up fee of $50,000...the list goes on and on and on...and now the City requires land dedication for wider pedestrian and bicycle paths which reduces the land available for housing and open space. Essentially the City wants high-rise development because that is the only way you can pay for all these fees and open space and set back requirements. Go to the Housing Forum in October to hear more...

On a per square foot cost basis, my developer/construction friends tell me that a 5 story building is one of the most expensive, much more expensive than a 4 story building and much more expensive than a 10 story building, again per square foot. Either make it bigger or smaller, but don't keep it at 5 stories.
In addition, typically low income housing costs 30% more to build than does market rate housing and is generally lower quality (e.g. wall heaters rather than forced air)as well. Why? Overhead and time delays and meddling by multiple public agencies. The mere fact that the cost to buy a house or condo has gone up dramatically does not mean that the cost to build has gone up, other than the cost of land and cost of permits and fees.
A project like this will mean that a handful of lottery winners will have a safe and comfortable room to call their own, and all of the others will be left out in the cold.
This is waste, pure and simple, spending too much to benefit too few.

This affordable housing sounds like a good idea, if a little expensive. But we should all be aware that it will only help the 100-200 lucky people who win the housing lottery. Tens of thousands of people are being priced out of Mountain View. One or two affordable housing developments is a drop in the ocean.

The real solution is to allow lots of new unsubsidized housing developments. Even if the new units are pricey, they will reduce the competition for our existing stock of rental units, and hold back rent increases there. Economy 101: Supply and demand.

Why don't you tell us who you work for? You work for Googles house planning. Well we do not want to turn this into the slums of Mumbi, just so that you can bring in more people to crowd up our streets. Simple economy 101, if there is no more places, go somewhere where there is.

@Cost -- So the problem is not out of control projects but the unwillingness of people to throw more and more money at it?

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

Lewis Carroll

In the case of unaffordable “affordable housing”, this pig most definitely does not have wings. 60 units and 5 stories on just 1/2 acre? Well over $500,000 per studio before cost overruns? What about sufficient on-site parking? This pig UhcvJjust doesn’t fly.

Even aside from merits or criticisms of this project, we must somehow (constitutional amendment? Supreme-Court edict? decency and common sense?) drop forever this sleazy Orwellian euphemism of "affordable" for subsidized housing.

No housing, no matter how constructed, is any more "affordable" if it's on the open market -- it rents and sells for whatever someone is willing to pay, which today is a lot. Only developers, building trades, politicians, and professional nonprofit managers who make their living off it use the slick spin term "affordable" -- worse than car dealers euphemizing USED vehicles as "pre-owned," or obnoxious advertisements calling their sales "events."

Crocdundee above also nailed the cruel reality hiding behind the euphemism: however much peddled to the public as feel-good projects, subsidized residences are so few and token in number that the fraction of needy people they benefit approaches zero. Yes, "a handful of lottery winners will have a safe and comfortable room to call their own, and all of the others will be left out in the cold." Why not just simplify the process, cut out ALL the greedy middlemen, and buy the prospective tenants lottery tickets instead?

@PH: We absolutely owe the veterans but shouldn't funding come from the federal level (DoD or VA) instead of the city?

The veterans housed would be housed here for a reason. They need to be close to the VA Palo Alto and the leading spinal cord and head trauma facility. Or should we just have VA Palo Alto move out so Google can move in? The cost is the tax you pay for having veteran's go fight the nation's wars while Silicon Valley reaps the profits of the military-industrial complex.

Problem is the unions, solution hire outside contractors.

Sure. Build low income housing at the expense of all taxpayers who will ever be born. Borrow the money. Just don't limit what landlords can charge. Those landlords have paid good money to politicians to not be limited in their pursuit of profit. Okay. They paid a small fraction of what they can make, but buying politicians is a wise investment.

Why would it serve "mainly veterans"? Is it veterans plus friends of politicians?