The term "affordable housing" is a cruel hoax. The housing itself remains unaffordable; only much of the cost to support it is shifted onto undeserving third parties. It was The Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher (I think) who quite correctly said "The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." That most certainly is the case with the economically insane policy of "affordable" housing.

A better approach would be to reduce the insane growth in office space, and incentivize big employers to distribute jobs more widely (with more work from home and small offices located in areas away from SF and the Peninsula).

That would reduce traffic, congestion, and greenhouse gases while also making housing here more affordable due to lower demand.

How about taxing any company with 500+ employees in Mountain View an annual fee of 2% of each employees total compensation (including options)? That would incentivize companies to use local space more wisely and provide funding to help with smarter development and more affordable housing.

We need another ballot measure that would limit the number on the annual new housing permits to the CPI number.

If a 2%,CPI, increase is acceptable to rental price increases to "save our community" then that same 2% should be used to limit our growth to "save our community".

Something about this doesn't ring true. The people in charge of development are telling us how bad things are, but they're not owning up to how they created the mess. Why did they allow such an imbalance to develop over a period of so many years? Was it that hard to see we were headed for a cliff? And why should we believe those same temptations won't take us further down the track to the same outcome? It's time for civic leaders to admit to the dynamics that seduced them into such poor decisions for so long. Otherwise, why should we trust they'll do anything different? Why are we planning on 1.3 million new jobs? Is there no option to trim that number back? If not, then it seems we're watching a "slow moving train wreck" when our (elected) hands are on the controls?

It would then suck to be almost poor. Cant buy a house cant qualify to buy a cheap house. Is that middle class?

I'm proud of Mountain View for working to add housing and address this issue head on, but I am frustrated with the communities surrounding us and their willingness to look to us to solve this issue for them. How to get them to step up to the plate?

Of COURSE there's an easy fix -

"No, Apple, you are NOT approved to build another spaceship"

"No, Google, you are NOT approved to build another Googleplex"

Basically, you control growth based on your population, roads, infrastructure, etc. We're a small valley surrounded by mountains, an ocean, and a bay.

Blanket approvals for high-tech growth, and cities are shocked to find out there's an affordability crisis?

There are no solutions, just trade offs.

George Drysdale economics teacher