If this takes off it will be a nightmare for Silicon Valley. It isn't just a matter of building housing - you also need transportation routes in, out, and around town. 237 and 101 aren't crowded enough? Oh, wait, just take our excellent subway system - Oops! I forgot - we don't have one - or anything else resembling decent mass transit. Maybe we can build one in a few weeks? Like BART got built out so rapidly?

You can pack people in like NYC but without the NYC mass transit system, nothing will move.

I wouldn't worry about parking. We will have an excellent parking lot. It will be called El Camino.

No, city council. You got it wrong. My property, my rules. If I build a companion unit, it's for my purposes, not yours. Whether that purpose is to have a place for visiting family to stay, or to rent to a long-term tenant, or to leave it vacant except for short-term rentals, or to use it as an art studio or a laboratory, that's my affair, not yours. If I rent it out, I will price it according to market rates, without any regard for your desire for low-cost housing.

I hope the City keeps working on this we should have 100s of applicators if the rules are favorable.

I desperately want to build convert a detached garage to companion unit but there's so many hoops to jump through. Such as requiring fire sprinklers and fire inspection by fire department. And the cost to the property taxes. It's so expensive to build and would take 10+ years to recoup. If only they would not charge so much for the fees and permits. Then I would do it.

They're at it again. They just want to wave a magic wand and make everything OK again. To paraphrase my response, "Who will rid us of this troublesome so-called city council?"

"Such as requiring fire sprinklers and fire inspection by fire department."

Also known as: ensuring that the unit your building isn't a fiery death trap? Oh, what a burden!

Maybe the response was underwhelming because most people enjoy the privacy of their own backyards. Ours is private property. We would like to keep it that way.

Montainer Homes (Web Link provides contemporary shipping container companion units. Here's a video of their home demo at the Computer Museum from last year: Web Link
Their smallest 200 square foot modular with permits and perm. foundation cost $50,000. Small homes like this easily meet offset requirements. $50,000, it's not hard to imagine homeowners breaking in just a few years of rent at levels that renters would find very affordable in this market.

@ @david, gee, do you have fire sprinklers in YOUR house? Building inspection and safety regulations are out of control. I am required to put a smoke detector in every bedroom, in one case two are less than 3ft from the other. Now one cannot put upgraded electrical panel on exterior bedroom or bathroom wall without expensive new casing. Faucets must be low flow (so you then spend three times longer in order to get fully rinsed off, dishes in sinks AND bodies in showers).

It's called "educated beyond intellect". Or cronyism. Or "caving to lobbyist".

But let's just keep letting government take control of every aspect of our lives. It's good for us!

I do have fire sprinklers in my house. Again, it's about ensuring that I don't live in a fiery death trap. Why is this controversial?

The person you are referring to must subscribe to libertarian philosophy -- namely, that everyone should have the freedom to die in house fires.

Don't forget that they should also be allowed to rent out fiery death traps to tenants. Once those tenants die in a house fire, people will know not to rent that unit again! The free market at work.

I'd love to see some decent research evaluating the cost-benefit status of fire sprinklers in SMALL (less than 2,500sf or so) single story, single family detached houses.

Sprinklers aren't a panacea for residential fires. The

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Eliminate the park fees and we'll get the housing. Encourage the housing. The state should not have to dictate how to be more open about this. Our homeless problem is real and it's now. The more supply we can add, the more naturally thing will balance. Anyone can charge what they wish, or use their unit flexibly. Lenny's Airbnb limitation will solve itself if there are tons of them in MV. The prices will naturally go down. Rents would go down with more supply. Stop being so frustratingly closed minded about this and open it up and decrease the fees. If you find the flood is to large of an inundation, you can always make new laws later to tighten rules up again. Just do it already!

It would be nice to have a link to the actual changes adopted. This sounds like they have reduced the setback standards but it isn't clear whether they are restricting from the state standards, being more lose than those or have simply accepted the state standards.

It takes a while to plan a big project like a garage conversion. We've been planning once since July and still haven't applied for a permit.

We left in 2013 after TCE exposure killed our two cats and gave my partner a rare blood disease. Is there any mechanism in place to protect the homeowners active in this program from liability for TCE exposure?

Companion units are not subject to rent control and the city is giving away 3-4 city street parking permits in Old Mountain View.

Now is the time to build that Airbnb in your garage, get your cars on the street, leave the RV in the driveway and walk downtown. Life is good.

There is a container mall in downtown Las Vegas. It is 2 stories high, and includes every kind of store imaginable. It is amazing what has been done with these shipping containers! They have a courtyard with a stage and live entertainment several times a week, and also events like dog shows. I look forward to going there as much as the other places in LV. Might be fun to live in one.

"In a galaxy far, far away, there were no liberals and life was good. I left Mountain View four years ago and my life is so much better. "

And yet, you keep coming back.

"I'd love to see some decent research "

There's a new website for finding stuff - google.com

It's way too expensive to build here for companion units to take off. I would propose the city council allows for SFH's to be rebuilt as two family homes (two story, duplexes, whatever). Adding an extra unit is onerous.

As for code enforcement - yes, the code is ridiculous, so you comply in ridiculous ways. Put in all the required garbage, and take it all out the moment the inspector leaves. Drill out those shower restrictor plates, remove the low-flow faucet heads, leave a sane number of smoke detectors, and put in regular light switches in place of those ridiculous auto-off things. They don't come back and re-check, and these are all feel good measures which have no net effect.

I've never heard of residential fire sprinklers until now.

In this area, the short-term (i.e., Airbnb) and long-term markets are linked through the large number of weekly commuters. Give them garage conversions to live in, and more apartments will become available.

The newer national building code for new residential construction that MV has adopted for several years- requires the newest type of low-cost residential-grade fire sprinklers. (I didn't know this was an add-on space requirement) These systems are many times cheaper per/sq/ft than the older commercial and public building systems. They do this by smaller plastic piping, and simple spray heads. (like - sewer and cold water piping has long changed from clay/cement/galvanized iron to plastic)

Unlike gov building retrofits - new or retrofit Residential fire sprinklers have shown to benefit life-saving as well as fire-damage /disruption-of-service savings.

sn is a former Trustee of the MVWSD