How much in taxes does Google contribute?

Yea!!

After reading the homeless car dwellers, this is an encouraging initiative to help provide affordable housing.

Congrats.

In different words, the City Council takes an average $300 from each resident and gives it to a developer. This is going to have no benefit in terms of reducing "homeless people living in cars" or housing costs in the area. It's a boondoggle and a waste of money.

Give a man a fish and he is fed for a day, teach a man to fish and he can feed himself.

Create a system which makes people dependent on handouts from the city government and you will create a new money consuming bureaucracy, create disincentives to reach self-sufficiency, and attract more people from surrounding areas who need help.

This does more to create government employees than help low-wage earners.

This project wouldn't need its fat subsidy if we had more market-rate development to keep prices down. We and Sunnyvale, that is, which is plopping down big office buildings all over the place and not much housing.

I sincerely hope this new housing is offered to current Mountain View public school district teachers first. Our teachers desperately need affordable housing, and I can't think of a more deserving, hard-working group to be awarded first dibs.

@housing for teachers, I completely agree that teachers (and police, fire, other critical community members) should have priority housing. Unfortunately, I believe our teachers are "reasonably well paid" and therefore fall outside of the range required for subsidized housing.

My good friend is a teacher in the district. She has shared many recent experiences of her peers who are being priced out-- some choosing to live in sad conditions for the time being, others who will be moving out of the district this summer after many years of being priced out, finally pushed to their breaking point.

I hope we can find solutions here. Building more housing is an important piece of the puzzle, but perhaps we could also put some percentage of housing stock under the control of the school district. Rather than pushing for 30% BMR in North Bayshore, how about 20% BMR and 10% "community service provider". The school district could then rent it to its teachers at a rate and priority that make sense for them.

It wouldn't be perfect, but taking no action is quickly becoming a non-option.

Teachers salaries, and family situations make some beginning teachers or teachers who are the sole support of their families eligible for these BMR units. There are current and former MVWSD teachers who have and still benefit from the City BMR developments. Thank you Councilman McAlister for your amendment, which put 27 more units within reach of MVWSD teachers (and other employees like classroom aides). Thank you to the other Council members who supported this housing and the amendment.

SN is a Trustee of the MVWSD, these are his own opinions

The MVWSD Bd. has a "Teacher Housing" discussion item on the tentative agenda for March 17

@Steve Nelson, thanks for sharing. Do you have a sense of the numbers of teachers who might be eligible currently?

As for my friend-of-a-friend, her husband is also employed with a somewhat above median salary, which puts them out of range of BMR, but also out of range of market rate. Sad to see them priced out and leaving the area.

@ BJD When I stared discussing these things in ernest with Candidate Siegel before the 2014 election, he indicated that he had 'at least 5 different ways' he knew of that these things can be financed. As we have continued talking - it is clear that different methods have different limitations on participation And different school employees have different family means - and desires for this housing. There are as yet no 'straw men'. So, it depends.

There is a new article in the May 13 Voice on this very topic.

What an unconscionable waste of taxpayer money this is.

I don't think it's a bit unreasonable. Uncle Joe would have liked it, and Sam Drucker too. It's NOT taxpayer
money. It comes from in lieu fees from developers.