This is a second request, as the first one posted on 6/2/16 has not been answered.


I CALL ON THE MOUNTAIN VIEW VOICE TO ENACT IT'S OWN TRANSPARENCY RULES FOR THE BENEFIT OF MOUNTAIN VIEW RESIDENTS, FOR ALL ISSUES POLITICAL.


There is no bigger "Shadowy Group" than the Mountain View Voice paper.
[Portion removed; criticize all you want, but don't claim to know the Voice's intentions.]
The city council has passed a set of new disclosure rules for elections, and candidates. The Voice should adopt similar rules themselves if they continue to be actively involved in writing editorials telling the council how they should vote, what new ordinances are needed, and telling voters how they should vote.

The Voice is the single most powerful, influential media print in our city. Their candidates that they endorse are mostly approved by voters who have no information about the people at the Voice. As residents in our city, we need to have information as to who the people are in the Voice so we can make an informed decision.
Their free, one sided stories, that they give to their candidates and or agenda, is no different than outside groups spending their own money on mailers, yet council did not address this. This is not free speech but politico speech with the intent to have power in government.

1- The publisher and editors, Bill Johnson, Andrea Gemmet and Associate Editor Renee Batti, need to state what city and state they live in.
They also need to state what committees-boards-organization that they are on, or advise to, past and present. They should similarly comply with the new requirements that the city passed and list their donors.
In all articles that they write in the Voice, at the bottom of it should be clearly stated any conflict of interest in that story, for current and past persons involved with the paper.

2- All reporters should state what city they live in. State what committees-boards-organization that they are on, or advise to, past and present.
All articles they write should state any conflict of interest.

3-Ballot measures and candidates that the Voice supports and asks residents to vote for, opposing point of view on those measures and candidates should have their view and closing statement stated as well, on the same page at the same time.

4-Any Voice employee who logs onto the Voice website and makes any comments in any of the threads, that they shall only use their real name for the screen name and state that they are an employee of the paper.

The residents of our community needs full transparency from everyone involved that affects our community. The Voice has been the least transparent to date, and it is time for that to be corrected.

Why should we give any credibility to the Voice, for issues that they say we need to vote on, if the editorial board does not live in our city?

The Voice has already shown how dishonest they are with the current issue of rent control. They have never done a story on the other side, which is the business side of the rental business.

The Voice has not done one story on who the group called the"Mountain View Tenants Coalition" is.
They have not mentioned that there are staff and or former staff from the Voice paper working for this group. The Silicon Valley Business Journal has mentioned this.

They have not done any reporting as to how many people from the Mountain View Day Worker Center make up this MVTC group.

They also have not stated any disclosures on any of these stories regarding if any of the reporters are involved in any conflict of interest.

They have not run any stories on where this group is getting the money needed to pay the signature gathers the $4 per signature, or to mention the outside-faith based groups pushing this issue,as they did in the late 1990's.

The Voice, and their activist candidates only want to know if any money comes in from any type of real estate group so that they could automatically call them names and discredit them.

The community needs to know all of the truth.

Agree with you, the Voice has been totally dishonest.

Just look at the story they wrote, "Tenants group to submit signatures for rent-cap measure"

What a lie, this whole story is about the new 5 panel rent board that will have power to make new laws. The voters will not have the power to vote them out or change these new laws if we do not like them. These powers should only be with the city council, those who we vote on directly. It will be just like San Francisco where you will not be able to evict anyone for any reason, including if the property owner wanted to move in any family into a unit. The rent board in S.F routinely denies property owners this right by saying that they have ulterior motives.

If this group wanted new laws, they should have stated that now, but they know if they did it now it would not pass in November. There are numerous laws that already protects Tenants,as an example landlords can not keep security deposits without a legal reason. Tenants can go to small claims court and Sue for treble damages. This is already law.

If council member Lenny Siegel had his first rent control measure pass in 1982 the city today would more resemble East Palo Alto than the vibrant city we have today.

There is a reason why people do not want to move to East Palo Alto, East San Jose, San Leandro, Alameda, Oakland and even San Francisco is the number one city in all of United States for property crimes. All these cities have rent control.

Everyone also needs to remember that this rent control will not apply to single family homes, condominiums, town homes, duplex's or granny units, and apartment complexes built in 1994 and later.

Get ready for a drastically different image for ALL of Mountain View if this passes. Think about the other rent control cities in the bay area, this will effect all property owners.

I'm open to other options besides rent control; I've seen it work against cities in the past and don't want MV to be added to that list.

I will vote no for sure!

Get ready for all the hit pieces that will be coming out from the Voice, going after anyone from the other side, and to write one emotional story after another, and none of them will be fact checked for any truth, just repeat the same lines that the proponents say as the Voice is part of this group.

@NoTrustInTheVoice

Thank you for standing up for Mountain View. I have felt this way for a while now. I constantly feel I'm being manipulated by The Voice. With regard to elections and editorials, I've started doing the exact opposite of whatever they suggest. I am so certain this is how we have the current city council that we do. Most people didn't read up on the candidates and just voted for what the Voice recommended, thinking the Voice has the best in mind for Mountain View.

Does anyone in leadership at the Voice even LIVE in Mountain View??? If not, then why are we even listening to them??? They probably live in Atherton or Woodside and will NEVER have to actually live with any of the policies the support!

The Voice serves a small group of people in Mountain View. The editorial support this small group of people receives is an embarrassment. An embarrassment of riches have been bestowed upon them by the city with a helping spoonful of media attention provided by the Voice. This small association of activists (serving happily on every city volunteer committee) have been gifted speed humps, speed bumps and red warning flags on their stop signs. The roundabouts installed are truly an example of city waste supported by the Voice and local activists. The money spent to install water, electricity, landscaping and signage to each of these roundabouts could have been better spent on helping hundreds of less fortunate. Hundreds of thousand of dollars were spent that could have supported many deserving people. No worries though, as this group has received approval to build companion units the undeserved will not be able to afford. Plus, they are about to receive street parking permits that will making parking downtown even more impossible.

A portion from my original post has been deleted by the moderator at the Voice, so I will rephrase my question,


"Is it their intention to install a "Publishers Council and or Publishers Candidates?"


Is the Voice going to ignore these same transparency rules for themselves as they routinely demand from others?

I find the ranters above pretty funny. Let's see - the Voice didn't endorse me for office. The Voice ran 2 Editorials (in a row) on my startup as an elected official (Both very unfavorable). [Bd. Member, MVWSD]

The Voice is a privately owned publishing company. No different than Fox New, the Hurst Papers under William R. Hurst, or any other bunch of journalists (MSNBC or PBS anyone) trying to make a living.

Embarcadero Publishing's owner is a pain in the rear to both the Palo Alto School Board and the PA City Council. Usually, I'd say, when those local governments are making dumb decisions under a cloud of secrecy.

So - follow A. Huff's lead - form your own publishing mini-empire, make your public mark, and sell out to a bigger firm. Getting your comments and commentaries and Editorials read all-the-while.

Here is to a free and public press. (I paid my subscription)

"Huffington, of the Huffington Post"

@No Trustin the Voice
You should take your own advice and use your real name

Wow, what a bunch of propaganda from both sides. Yikes. Look, rents are out of sight here -- demand outstrips supply these days. We can ignore it and see what happens. I understand that option. It might be okay. But I'd support setting aside some small percentage of available rentals for people who provide important city services and don't get paid enough money to afford market rent.

I know "rent control" has a bad reputation, so call it whatever you want, but I'd rather subsidize people to live here if they provide valuable services instead of paying every city worker $200,000 so they can afford to rent nearby. If the surrounding cities got together and set aside a small subset of housing for people starting out in their careers in nearby private industry, I'd support that too.

As a business owner in Mountain View, it's very hard for me to hire entry level people and that makes it hard to run a profitable business. If my business closes, then that hurts more people. The amount of housing stock set aside would have to be a small amount of the overall capacity or it will begin to push up the prices elsewhere.

I wish we could have these types of discussions without all the table banging and vitriol. It's a difficult and important topic.

Rent control advocates should visit Berkeley and see for themselves what awaits Mountain View if rent control is instituted. Personally, although I sympathize with the tenants, I do not believe rent control to be a good solution for the city.

MV voters should visit San Jose and Los Gatos to see how rent control saves some residents from exploitation and ouster. Decontrol on turnover ensures that landlords still profit greatly from the housing shortage.

No Thanks!

I moved here from San Jose 2 years ago.

Been there, done that, not again.

Let's keep Mountain View the way it is. That is why I moved here.

@ No Thanks. No one (except maybe an apartment landlord) moved to Mountain View to get away from San Jose because it has rent control for older apartments. Mountain View is not being kept "the way it is" by soaring rents and the massive departure of familes that cannot afford to stay.
But nice try Mr. "No Thanks."

That "San Jose and Los Gatos" comment, with its "nice try" snark, illustrates, nicely itself, the mind-set of rent-control dogma.

When those of us who, in the real world, are NOT "landlords," and have experienced the downsides of real rent control in other cities -- the well-known effects that its advocates never acknowledge, and (in their myopic true-believer zeal) may not even know anything about -- these testimonies clash with the official dogma, therefore they must be attacked and belittled.

That's behavior right from the pages of Orwell, or of Orwell's real-life inspiration, the Soviet Union in the 1930's (which had its True Believers too). The official Party Line: rent control is a benign "David vs. Goliath" initiative to help virtuous needy renters; the only objection to it must be from greedy self-interested landlords, who will spend millions opposing it. That the reality is much, much more complicated than this Party Line (as with all ideological dogmas) threatens it, so True Believers labor to mute the reality.  When people honestly report corruptions that rent control brings, its perverse exacerbation of the very factors that created the rent crisis, affluent tenants who exploit it and permanently occupy rentals, the out-in-the-cold bitterness of renters who find themselves needing to move and nothing available AT ALL -- these realities are intolerable challenges to the Party Line, therefore must be censored by any means available.

If all these rent controlled cities are so great to live in, why did you not go live there to begin with?

It is about quality of life, it you think there are no downsides to capping the income of the older apartment buildings, there are. I lived in a gated complex and the "other people in the neighborhood"kept getting into the garages and breaking into the cars and some where getting into some of the units.

Everybody in the building new where these"people" where living, in the older apartments buildings in the area. The manager new this as well as she could only say that with the way it is with the city's rent control, it was to difficult to evict the problem tenants. Then it gets to a point where most of the people in the building are just like these trouble makers and the landlord can not do anything about it.

If you want to turn Mtn.View into another city that has far more consequences that come with rent control,that effects everyone and all property owners in the city, you have no right to call anyone names for pointing out those issues.

The Constitution and Bill of Rights protects private property rights. Correct me if I'm wrong but there is no wording that grants anyone rights to live anywhere they want - that's a personal preference. It has nothing to do with anything else and to link this to rent control or BMR is an agenda, not a right.

To these anti-poor republitards realize that rent control ordinances have not caused significant livability problems in any of the local cities mentioned?

Property values have gone up in all cities at similar rates to other cities. What other objective measure is there???

Rent controlled cities have sidewalks, so we better get rid of those or we will turn into East Palo Alto! Derp!

Reading all the anti-voice comments by anonymous submissions: I suspect it is one person writing under a different name each time, as they all sound the same and repeat the same illogical disjointed thought stream. I believe the Voice meets the needs of Mountain View and clearly shows diverse opinions. Sounds like the writer is following Donald Trump's example of having a temper-tantrum if he doesn't get his way about something...just rant and rant and repeat yourself and think that will influence people? Especially when the rant lacks logic and substance. For once I think Steve Nelson nailed it with his comments.

[Post removed; you are welcome to re-post your message using the name you've already posted under -- not with "Jane," which is being used by a fellow poster on this thread.]

[Post removed; stay on topic].

See: there it comes. "Republitards." "Anti-poor." Psychologists of ideology love to oberve comments like that, because they reveal how people actually "think."

Now, none of the many residents I know who oppose rent control is a landlord. AFAIK, none of them is even a Republican (not that the label even is relevant here, except to illustrate the name-calling typical of ideological thinking). They're sympathetic to real victims of the rental crisis, but they know about rent control, its side effects that have nothing to do with the problems of today's desperate tenants, its general economic cluelessness.

But to the ideological True Believers, constrained to interpret all of reality from within the unconscious blinders imposed by their ideology, realities like those make no sense, and are threatening. So they must be explained away (always from within the ideology's assumptions), or else belittled, or shouted down with rhetoric ad nauseum.

You will notice too that the True Believers never answer the penetrating questions asked in these forums. Like, if rent-controlled cities were so great all along, why DIDN'T you move there already? (You'd learn quick, by the way, that moving IN to rent-controlled towns is not so easy. Done that.) And, what are the full connections between the "Tenants' Coalition" and the Day Workers Center. And who paid those signature gatherers the $4 per signature, so useful to the petition? They will always try to deflect attention from these real issues of transparency.

I finally understand why some people are opposed to rent control. If apartments are able to charge astronomically high price, then only the people with the most money will be able to live there! That's fine for the wealthy, but what about everybody else? You don't care, right? You want them to live hours away, right?

What the anti-rent-control zealots fail to grasp is that there still will be plenty of non-rent controlled options in MV that will be rented out at sky-high prices. Thanks to that horrible state law, local communities cannot democratically set the rules that are right for them. Also, the proposed MV ordinances carves out exceptions!
Cannot rent control:
Anything built after 1995.
Single family homes.
Duplexes.
Triplexes.

So, don't worry.... The wealthy will always find a place to stay. The only difference is that hard working families won't have their rent raised dramatically, so they are forced out. There is a community benefit to having long term residents of all socioeconomic levels.

I'm curious as to why this is limited to properties built before 1995. Why not for properties built after? Wouldn't the ones built prior be those needing more upkeep and maintenance?

I signed the initiative. I was a (duplex) landlord in another town for 20 years. I do not know if I Will VOTE for the initiative when it is on the November ballot. But - it's sure great for civic discussion (for some of us) and 'thought' isn't it? :)

@mvresident2003
Properties built after 1995 are exempted by state law (Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act). That's why local rent control measures apply only to properties built before 1995.

Everyone should read the 6/17/16 Voice edition. Front page has a story titled,

"Construction boom brings revene, and problems, for city's projects"

It is a story about how several projects that went out to bid for work in the city, and bids came back far higher than the inflated budget that the city had forecast..

One particular project was to replace broken sidewalks, only 2 qualified bids came back and they both where 50% above the city's budgeted amount.

As a result, the city council postponed these projects.

This is a very important point for everyone to understand. This rent control initiative will only allow a CPI increase, which is 2% today. There is no way that any property owner or landlord can pay to have work done to their property when the inflationary index for labor and material is far-far higher than CPI. You will have no improvements done and repairs will not be done properly to keep costs down. You will have empty units that will have walls washed and not painted, carpets will not be replaced but dyed, over and over, appliances will not be replaced but repaired over and over, and on and on it will go. This will be the new world for the old rental stock in Mountain View. You have your proof here with this article. These same issues that the city council faces with contractors is the same that a property owner faces with their contractors.

You can go to East Palo Alto, Oakland, San Leandro, Berkley, Hayward, East San Jose, Mission district and other areas of San Francisco-which is the number one city in all of United States for all property crimes, and see for your self the condition of the rental housing stock and the problems that these blighted areas cause for the rest of the city.

Rent controlled city's also make it virtually impossible to evict any bad tenant you have in the building. As a result you will only get these same type of people to live in those buildings as the landlord will have no motivation to go thru the trouble of filing a petition with the rent board to ask permission to evict them. They routinely say no in all the other rent controlled city's. It will be no different here.

If you are a renter, if you had constant complaints about another tenant in your building, and we had rent control here, what do you think your landlord would do if he could not get him to cooperate? I will tell you, NOTHING. Your choice will be to live with it or move. If you have a responsible landlord with no rent control, the outcome would be different as many would evict him. He would be served a 3 day notice or a 30 day notice to leave. If you doubt that will happen here, ask your self how these other city's, like East Palo Alto got to be so bad.

Rent control affects everyone in the city, not just renters.

There is a reason why these outside groups targeted only the 3 other city's on this side of the bay. The other city's have more homeowners than renters, and in the past when this issue came before the voters those city's with more homeowners always voted it down. Mountain View has already voted this down back in 1982 when council member Lenny Siegel brought this before the voters, hopefully that will happen again.

Mountain View today is such a vibrant city where people want to come and live in. Had rent control passed in 1982, the city today would more resemble East Palo Alto.

People need to demand proof what these proponents are saying, most if not all is false.

Demand to see documents that says people where evicted just to raise rents.
Demand people to provide the property address where people say they are having 150% rent increase every 2 years.
Make them prove what they are alleging, no more scare tactics, just provide the proof. We can follow up with the property owner and verify this. Do not believe anything the Voice says on this issue.

We have ten's of thousands of renters in this city, I would like to see them produce a list of 1000 people with all these claims as to what is going on with these evil landlords.

The proponents of rent control are asking for a change to the city, they need to produce the evidence to warrant such a change.

Just so everyone knows the truth, the market rent in 2001 for a 1 bedroom was $1500, in 2003 that same unit was $850. Market rent for that same unit from 2001 is $2100 today. That is a 35% increase. Proponents like to use the recession level lows of the rent to make misleading claims as to how much rents have really increased.