Teachers cannot afford to live here because the high rent. Some people always try to use rent control to solve the problem. Rent control always fails, however. The reason is very simple, because it defies the economy 101. Rent increases is due to supply and demand. Builders will not build new apartments where have rent control. Business always try to find the locations where it can get the largest return on investment. Some seniors depend rent income on living expense. Rent control will deprive the livelihood of these seniors. In my opinion, the long term feasible solution is negotiating with builders to build homes in remote low cost areas upto 90 minutes one way travel time, even outside of Mountain View and Mountain View will provides bus services for the people who live there. You may think 90 minutes one way is too far. I have worked at San Francisco and taken Caltran and bus to go to my office, it took more than 80 minutes to get to my office door to door. In New York city, some people need to take two hours to get to work. The good things of not driving is that I can take a nap, go online or do some work. If Mountain View guarantees that minimum numbers of renters will live there for several years, some of the builders may willing to take some business risks. Mountain View has many bus services but if you have paid attention to it you will find the ridership is so low, most of the time they are almost empty. Builders are not interested in building homes in remote areas because of the risk that nobody want to live there. Lower income people don't want to live there is because lacking public transportation. Any new undeveloped areas have the same caveat. It is like chicken and egg situation. Government will not provide bus service to the locations where have too few people. Lower income people do not want live there because there is no public transportation and other services. Builders don't want to build homes there is because low demand for housing. If Mountain View and nearby governments guarantee there will be renters and provide bus services, the problem of high rent in this area will be solved. Not just for teachers, but also the workers for other low salary jobs can live there. On the bus, a free WiFi will be provided. The back of the seats can be flipped, so, four people can facing each other. This way, people can chat or play games. I would even recommend allow people eat on the bus. Why not? Don't you eat on airplane? Just put a trash can on the bus like any fast food joint. Teachers can prepare the class work and grade the students on the bus. If people can eat, work, texting, and entertain on the bus, it will lower the resistance of long ride to work. Bus ride will become an extended office and recreation area. Many people buy things online, groceries and even meals can be delivered to people's home, thus, lack of services in remote area is not a big problems anymore. The families in the remote area and teachers at schools don's really need to own their own cars. They can have a pool of cars to share in case they need to get somewhere locally. Don't forget, Silicon Valley is the hi-tech capital of the world. We should certainly take the advantages of the hi-tech with forward disruptive thinking. I certainly believe this is a much better way than rent control to solve the unaffordable high cost housing issue of Mountain View.

Fred Lee

Totally astute and correct. I have a PhD and this was my area of emphasis also my PhD Thesis. Conclusion: Rent control is never successful or just in it's application. The market does adjust itself, hence the beauty of the free market, a pillar of capitalist democracy. Who desires to live in less than a free democracy?

I have THREE PhDs and TWO Nobel prizes in economics. MV doesn't have a "free market" as there are strict controls on supply. Markets that are truly based on a "free democracy" (quoting my less learned colleague above) are balanced. That means we either need to remove all controls on supply or add controls on price.

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