The dismal science: economics. Basic math is to be used. The amount of money to be used for "affordable housing" is a drop in the bucket with rental units costing around 700K (high land valuation) each to build. To get "affordable housing" you have to wait for years and be lucky enough to win the lottery. The great majority who don't get subsidized housing pay for the few luck winners. Politicians can't come clean about this because it will lose them votes. Developed countries are also broke because of the retiring baby boomers. Now global warming. Heh, but the sun's still shining. George Drysdale a social science teacher

Thank you, Mark Noack and Kevin Forestieri, for this excellent article that provides an in-depth primer on this complicated and contentious issue.

The voters knew that there is not a big need for low income SENIOR housing in Palo Alto! This would have been mainly occupied by parents of immigrants residing in Palo Alto, just like the existing low income housing projects Palo Alto already has (specifically the one near Terman Middle School). The parents are low income because they are retired and they currently live with their children, who are high income. Why subsidize housing for high income families?

The cost of land is high in Palo Alto, and you could raise the value of any piece of land if you granted it an exemption to have 5 times the density that zoning allows. Thankfully, the stupid idea in Sacramento to allow skipping over local rules would not apply to cases where local zoning was so completely violated.

It's still a really bad idea, because many cities already require more than 5% low income units from every project. The state law would cut that back down to 5%. And this is progress?

Note that this fake character, "George Drysdale", has been posting the same garbage across other websites.

He claims that all economists agree that rent control is a bad idea. ALL economists. Yet, that is simply not true. Thousands do not hold that opinion. Since he is incorrect on that basic fact, it is safe to assume the rest of his writing is garbage.

But even if what he writes is true, that's ok economists would believe that rent control devestates communities, that is simply not the case in MV. By state law, rent control would only apply to older rentals. That is a small percent of what we have now. And, a big AND, it won't apply to any new housing!!!

So, how can rent control devastate MV? It can't. It won't cause MV to fall like the "Soviet Union". What it WILL do is to provide some stability to renters in some of the lower priced units.

But, but, but what about the contention that rent controlled units would not be slick, fancy and have all the amenities? Well, guess who PAYS for those amenities? THE RENTERS!!!! Not every renter wants those amenities (how many actually USE the pool?). So by preventing the landlords from raising the rent by double-digits, we will have apartments with more modest amenities, but with happy long term MV residents.

The 50-era right wing voter will continue to argue for Reagans supply-side economics, Bush's wars and brilliant tax cut on the wealthy. They will continue to argue that the '07 economic collapse and the 9/11 attack was unrelated to the Republicsn party controlling the presidency during those events. Now they are coming out of the woodworks to complain about rent control. Wake up! The barbarians are at the gates!

Rent control is the right thing to do.

Why is Mountain View the only city trying to provide housing for everyone? It's not only our responsibility. The other cities don't step up because they know it's a bad idea. Mountain View is the only city being silly and now we'll all pay the price. I never thought I would say this, but I can't wait to move out of this city.

Thank you again, authors, for this well-researched article. I don't agree with it completely, though. Mr. @Drysdale makes a valid point, which nobody here has rebutted, about subsidized housing. Too often, the bulk of the discussion is about a few hundred units of subsidized housing here and there, which are a drop in the bucket compared to pent-up demand.

The United States population grows by about 1% a year. I believe that all Bay Area cities, Mountain View included, should target a 1.5% annual growth of their housing stock. The extra 0.5% is to make up for past decades of artificially stunted growth and stimulate the economy.

It would certainly be nice if more of the housing that is built could be priced lower. However, this is probably only a dream, even if Mountain View allowed 20-story towers. Everyone always wants to live in the newest apartments, with beautiful fixtures and the latest fads in interior design. In fact, only the well-heeled can afford it. But if cities don't allow this housing to be built, the upper middle class will gobble up the older housing stock, driving up prices. Conversely, the new construction that we're seeing now will reduce upward price pressure on apartments that could be home to the middle class.

The proposed senior housing project in Palo Alto included 60 senior units PLUS 12 selling some of the land to a developer to build an additional 12 units of market rate housing on a lot that was zoned for 13 or so units. So 72 units in total. I suspect if it was simply senior housing, the project would have gone through.

Interestingly, I personally know three young couples (late 20's to early/mid 30's) with no children (and no immediate plans for children) with both spouses working full time, and when these couples where very recently looking for a new place to live (for various reasons; newlyweds, relocating after living overseas, etc.) not one of these couples was interested in living in any of the newly constructed 4-6 story apartment buildings that have recently sprung up, up and down the Peninsula...not because they couldn't afford them, but because they didn't want to live stacked on top of each other with no real sense of privacy or open space. They each wound up in small, older apartment complexes (one only 4 units) with lots of open space, balconies, trees, parking and quiet. These apartments are in Mountain View, Los Gatos, & Palo Alto...and my friends are thrilled that they were able to find something other than the new, dense, mid/high-rise apartments.

Don't be fooled, not all young professionals desire to live in those dense 4-6 story apartment buildings...it seems more like we are being told that's where we 'should' want to live.

The emperor has no clothes.

Wow, so the voice article missed the details of the Maybell project. it was 2 fold. 12 units of market rate housing where the city code only allowed 6 or so, issue #1. Then there was the issue of the so-called affordable housing, where it would be 60 units
where the city code allowed 10 homes. So 6 times the allowed density on the affordable proposal and twice the density on the money making market-rate portion. These are material aspects contributing to the opposition. A better location might well have
resulted in a different response, as would a less monstrous proposal or one not limiting itself to senior housing. There's just no reason to focus on seniors for affordable housing in Palo Alto. It makes the project garner LESS support, not more, because there is less such need.

More agitation from the Voice in favor of government sponsored housing and ultimately, rent control. Get over it - the peninsula cities are very nice places to live and not everyone can afford to live here. In any event, it looks like the market may be peaking. If so, will all the tenants who have been agitating for rent control agree to pay above market rents to help out their landlords? Doubtful.

Palo Alto is infamous for objecting to any new dense housing project, but putting the kybosh on senior housing is a new low, even for them.
Senior housing is in short supply in the Bay Area, and most voters realize this. People don't realize that they will certainly need senior housing someday, and most will want to remain in the communities they're familiar with, near long-time friends and neighbors.
Stopping denser, close-in senior or other housing is really like shooting yourself in the foot.

@Clarity:
That's fine, not everyone wants to live in midrise apartment blocks. And yet, people still line up to pay $4000/month for those apartments. I also know a bunch of people who want the quiet life. But I also have colleagues who commute from San Francisco to San Jose every day because this area is too boring for them. Different strokes for different folks.

And in any case, nobody is suggesting that we should get rid of the quiet neighborhoods that we have. The overwhelming majority of Mountain View and Palo Alto residents today live in quiet neighborhoods. All we want is to set aside a few areas for higher density. And that's exactly what ABAG is pushing: "priority development areas". El Camino, San Antonio, downtown, etc.

I assume that Mr. Noack did a lot of research before writing his article. Unfortunately, his article strongly suggests that he clearly doesn’t understand the issues behind the Maybell Referendum at all.

He quotes one of the people, Candice Gonzalez, who must still be in denial as to what caused her organization, the Palo Alto Housing Corporation (PAHC), to lose the Referendum even though outspending the neighborhood 9 to 1 and, for reasons still unknown to the neighborhood, never opening up discussions with the neighborhood once the Referendum papers were filed and later after her organization lost the Referendum. Did Mr. Noack talk with anyone from the neighborhood? He certainly doesn’t quote any of us who were deeply involved at the time.

We were not “opposed to development in Palo Alto” as Ms. Gonzalez states. We were opposed to the development the PAHC proposed, with 12 two- and three-story homes on extremely small lots (in addition to the 60 senior units). We have two such single-family developments nearby in Palo Alto and the neighborhood felt that the one proposed by the PAHC was not compatible with our neighborhood. In addition, the 60 senior units were going to be squeezed onto one acre – or RM-60 in Palo Alto zoning terms. The property was zoned RM-15 (a maximum of 15 units per acre) and the highest density residential zone we have in Palo Alto is RM-40 (40 units per acre), which is pretty dense. The RM-60 proposed (albeit couched in a Planned Community rezone) was off the charts on the high side. Parking and traffic were unresolved ancillary issues, particularly regarding Maybell Avenue, which was and still is a designated “Safe Route to Schools”, as we have four schools in our neighborhood and Maybell is a heavily traveled road to get students to and from those schools.

But, bottom line, it was the unwavering and inflexible demand of the PAHC and its supporters (including the Palo Alto City Council) that they simply had to have the 12 homes on extremely small lots, which the neighborhood strenuously objected to. But why discuss the issues with the neighborhood when you know you are going to win the Referendum?

The lesson to be learned: when a developer of any type is proposing something that people in the neighborhood strongly oppose, sit down with them and see if mutually satisfactory solutions can be found. It’s been done before in Palo Alto. I suspect it can be done again IF developers are open minded and don’t stonewall their demands.

The opening of this article - on the proposed Maybell project - demonstrates why this problem has been so hard to address. Rather than listen to the various stakeholders and trying to engage in problem-solving, the advocates engaged in bullying and demonizing anyone who raised questions. Concerned about the impact of the traffic pattern on a safe-route to schools -- you weren't really concerned about the safety of children, but it was only a smokescreen to keep poor minorities out of the neighborhood. Never mind that there was already substantial amounts of affordable housing, including the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park, in the neighborhood. Never mind that the vast majority of concerns expressed were for the market-rate housing that occupied over half of the project. Never mind that Palo Alto Housing Corp gave contradictory answers to questions and was repeatedly caught misrepresenting the project. ...
Ask yourself, does a Walgreens Drug Store qualify as a grocery store? Does a Planned Parenthood clinic qualify as an appropriate medical facility for seniors? To the sponsors of the Maybell project they did.

Even when the writing was on the wall, the sponsors refused to try to save the project (the opponents of the original project encouraged them to try). Instead, they sold the land for a large profit to a developer who build market-rate housing there.

If you were attempting to engage in problem-solving with sponsors who demonstrated they were not trustworthy, that held you in contempt, and whose analysis was little better than bumper-sticker slogans, how successful do you think you would be.

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