Wow...."When you open the floodgates, you don't know if you're going to have a flood or a trickle," said Mayor Ken Rosenberg. "But you say yes to projects because you need it." Guess what Ken? When you open the floodgates and the dam is overflowing, it does not trickle. There will be a flood of traffic through every part of the city, a flood of pollution and strain on all city services, a flood of crime already on the rise, a flood of warming temperatures from growth of a concrete jungle and destruction of the urban forest and open space, more pollution into the bay from storm run off....... We need a smarter plan from smarter planners! Eliminate Rosenberg, Showalter and Siegel from council. They must be smoking the recreational.

Here's hoping for more, and taller, high-density housing in 2018 and beyond. And hopefully more housing bills to raise egregious height limits and prevent bad-faith obstructions by home owner groups.

I’d like to see some high rise condos be built near Castro St. It’s time to go up!

Exactly when did the people of Mountain View get to vote on having their city turned into an urban jungle? I don't recall getting to make a decision about sacrificing the quality of life here or handing that right over to the pack of incompetents on the city council.

The current city "plan" stinks to high heaven. The city services are already overtaxed and that won't get better as the city shoehorns more and more people into this town.

It's time to halt the building until the pack of jokers on the council can tell us why Mountain View is a sacrificial lamb to their "vision" of another San Francisco, complete with the crime and blight that goes with it. Perhaps they need a field trip to the Tenderloin before they continue their decimation of this town. I'm sure they could find an empty VTA bus to drive them there.

It is disappointing to see NIMBY comments here.

It is disappointing to see people blindly supporting growth with no planning, no thought or foresight for traffic, infrastructure, resources.

It's hard to plan when home owners and housing groups obstruct to growth of any kind. I'll take what I can get until the State finally cracks down on abusive homeowner group obstruction practices and let's cities actually plan out long-term growth strategies without having to worry about NIMBY groups detailing everything.

I remember when I was young and naïve and used to blurt out NIMBY at every chance! I now realize that the "Wisdom of the Elders" mostly spoke the truth like those times you never listened to your parents and later wished you had listened. Agree with mv2003 that we haven't heard many solutions for all the other issues. It kind of took the wind out of our sails when we took a friend out for a birthday dinner and it took 45 minutes to go less than 2 miles. Imagine if a wild fire like Santa Rosa's had no way to escape. We do need affordable housing but if Manhattan keeps building up and their prices aren't getting cheaper maybe these large companies can help by expanding in Merced or Fresno where they can build cheaper and include transportation. We don't have the Metro or the Tube in London. I have lived in both places and for more positive growth we need transportation, parks, schools, water, wastewater etc. My guess is less than 5% of all that planned housing will be affordable.

@Barbie

Manhattan is cheaper than SF, and by being a very dense urban core it helps by soaking up housing demand which keeps the outer boroughs cheaper. Instead, here in the Bay Area, we barely build anything and it's expensive across the entire region.

Your statements are false in context. The point is New York is hardly cheaper and still unaffordable for most. The transportation system moves mass amounts of people rapidly and without cars. The Bay Area has been building for decades and up until 10-15yrs ago has the onslaught of office buildings created the unbalanced shortage of housing. The second half of highway 85 opened the whole south bay to Gilroy. Ironically the mass of new housing raised the value of surrounding areas because of transportation access. Build it and they will come. Unfortunately poor planning still exists.

Your statements are false in general. Your argument is that Manhattan is hardly cheaper despite being full of high density housing. It's actually reasonably cheaper than SF, for one, and even then, let's say we took away half of the residential skyscrapers in Manhattan. What do you suppose that reduced supply would do to the cost of housing in and around the region? I'll give you a hint: it wouldn't go down.

There's been no mass building of housing in the Bay Area. We've underbuilt compared to the population growth for decades. You think that a new suburb and a few 4 story buildings here and there is mass building?

Can we all please remember that renting is not helping people thrive? At best it is helping people tread. Their rent payments are building the equity of the developer, which is fine by me as I don't rent.

Also, it's not hard to see what will happen to home prices when you add 10k renters to the area. Eventually most of them will want to build equity themselves.

And in response to earlier poats, Manhattan housing prices have not risen much because the city built tons of condos that went unsold and it added to both the stock for ownership and rentals.

Again your statements are incorrect. Though it does not apply to todays market, your facts of the areas history are wrong. But go ahead and spew misinformation for your agenda. New York is hardly cheaper as the second most expensive rental market in the world this year. That does not include a parking space. Happy New Year!

So wait, Manhattan manages to house far more people than SF, for cheaper, and it's not relevant? Okie dokie.

I am also wondering in the city has plans to prevent investors buying up half the new supply? That has been a factor not talked about much affecting supply. British Columbia has a foreign buyers tax. I am not sure how well it is working, but we need to look at all solutions. Cupertino has a first home buyers program as well that MV should investigate. Simply adding a 50% increase in population without thorough planning and foresight is incredibly irresponsible. There are plenty of opportunities to build equity just two hours away or less. I have purchased 12 rentals from '10 to '16 for less than half a house here. We are now looking at San Antonio, Dallas, Houston and Portland. 130K can get you in a fixer 3/2. You have do what is best for your family. Happy New Year !

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psr:
Exactly when did the people of Mountain View get to vote on having their city turned into an urban jungle? I don't recall getting to make a decision about sacrificing the quality of life here or handing that right over to the pack of incompetents on the city council.

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Umm, Nov 8 2016, Nov 4 2014, etc. Next time will be in less than 9 months.

People of Mountain View did vote for city council that promised housing. And they are starting to deliver. I for instance, very happy with the way city council addresses the problem.

Many homeowners move to Mountain View because they enjoyed the small town, suburban feel, and quality of life. They could have moved to San Francisco, but chose Mountain View.

Now, the renter majority has elected a city council that does not care about th homeowners or renters. They are beholden to the developers and believe in growth, growth, growth and more growth. They don't care if they destroy the quality of life in Mountain View as long as they make the Developers happy.

Many homeowners move to Mountain View because they enjoyed the small town, suburban feel, and quality of life. They could have moved to San Francisco, but chose Mountain View.

Now, the renter majority has elected a city council that does not care about the homeowners or renters. They are beholden to the developers and believe in growth, growth, growth and more growth. They don't care if they destroy the quality of life in Mountain View as long as they make the Developers happy.

Mountain View has a wonderful downtown, parks, and people. I live in a small apartment, bike to work across 101, am quiet, peaceful, and pay plenty of taxes.

While I understand long-time residents don't want Mountain View's lovely character to ever change, I want to suggest that those of us who rent here also vote here and very much would welcome the opportunity to purchase a home in this fine town.

I'm not asking for something cheap or a handout, but I have rights, too, and am happy that our elected officials have approved some badly needed housing.

I would ask long-time Mountain View residents to recall that they were once new to this city, too. It welcomed you then. Please try to be more understanding of and more welcoming to those of us who have arrived more recently and are looking for the opportunity to buy a home here now.

We're not just cars on your streets, we're people, too -- just like you, fellow citizens!

@heart-MV, I'm curious to know exactly what "I have rights too" means specifically?

It's sad that people don't realize the real issue with growth stems from the different treatment of commercial via residential (ownership or rental) under prop 13. The relief for homeowners hasn't hurt residential construction. Instead the massive subsidy of business office property has caused cities to allow way more new construction in the effort to increase property tax revenue. Only new construction is taxed in a way that adds to the property tax base. Land is in special legal titles where it will basically NEVER change hands. Ground leases and other tricks then allow new construction while the land value doesn't go up more than 2% per year in the property tax base. One sign of this is that in Santa Clara county the fraction of taxes paid by office and commercial non residential property has dropped from 29% to 24% since 2000. Think of all the new office construction during that period, which did add to the base. By contrast there has been little new residential construction and still that fraction of the base did go up.

There's an initiative underway to do a split role situation. I hope that passes. If it does the business real property will pay a lot bigger share going forward, and
residential will pay a small share. Then cities won't need to allow massive buildings increasing the jobs/housing imbalance, just to keep the property tax revenue on the increase.

Mountain View certainly added massively to this problem. Way too many offices. They should not all have been approved. We didn't need the jobs and there's no place for the workers to live. The office buildings need to be taxed for the land they sit on, and not at artificially depressed valuations.

Oops, correction. Residential will pay a SMALLER share. Right now it pays 76%. That needs to go down. It has increased over time. Makes no sense. It should drop back below 2/3 of the total base.