I would like Mountain View residents to read the comments currently being posted on the Palo Alto Online about this proposal. One building being proposed for teacher housing, that's Palo Alto's contribution to helping to solve the housing crisis, and most of the comments posted by Palo Alto residents are complete against it.

Web Link

Mountain View is having 10,000+ units shoved down it's throat as MV residents continue to be guilt-tripped into doing "our fair share to solve the housing imbalance" and Palo Alto is unwilling to support even one building. How do our City and County leaders let this happen? If housing is that urgently needed, then ALL bay area cities need to contribute. Palo Alto has just as much office space as Mountain View does and offers even fewer houses. They should be building just as much as Mountain View is, but they are not and none of our leaders are holding them accountable (Mr. Simitian, I'm looking at you). They complain over one tiny building. It makes me sick.

No more housing in Mountain View until Palo Alto and other cities are willing to do their fair share as well. Otherwise Mountain View residents are being taken for complete suckers with our quality of life diminishing greatly while residents in Palo Alto etc get to maintain theirs. I am happy to help solve this problem, but I'm not willing to be the only one doing so.

Luckily the housing bills passed last year in the California legislature make this a moot issue. Both Mountain View and Palo Alto are under the expected quantity of housing units they're expected to have, so as long as a development is proposed that meets zoning requirements then it can't be blocked.

Great! So I should expect to see Joe Simitian and all the regional low-income housing organizations making a greater effort to put more housing in Palo Alto? Mid-Pen housing is ALL OVER Mountain View and looking to expand. I just got a letter in the mail this weekend about more low-income housing going in at the Shorebreeze Apartments on Shoreline. So will those organizations (Mid Pen housing, for example) start proposing more projects in Palo Alto? No reason not to right, if they cannot be blocked. I look forward to see that.

This is the type of forward thinking, problem solving initiative we need for our teachers! Thank you Joe Simitian! Let's work together and make this happen.

Hmm, in another article today it said the cost of a teacher is around 100,000 dollars.

And for every one working, there are 2 picking up pension checks of almost equal value and one of them is double dipping, by going back to work and now picking up a salary + pension check.

And you're telling me teachers can't afford a 3000 dollar apartment? And now we need to setup housing for them? What's wrong with this picture?

@Hmmmm

Are you under the impression that the take-home on a 100k salary makes a 3000 a month apartment affordable?

Why not let them live in San Jose where the urban lifestyle is embraced instead of foisting additional high density housing and all of its detritus on those who would like some peace, quiet and privacy? Mass transit and construction are already underway there.
Look to neighboring Sunnyvale to see the negative effects of unbridled construction and poor traffic planning. There is gridlock at several intersections and insufficient parking. The new apartments or condos at Bernardo and Evelyn will only exacerbate the problem. And the old construction along Mathilda at the shopping center will create more traffic nightmares for the community across the street.

@Robyn

Mountain View is a jobs hub where multiple forms of mass transit intersect. Housing close to those jobs and at mass transit nodes will reduce traffic. But Mountain View grew beyond a sleepy town over a decade ago and it's not going back there.

It might be good for MVWSD and MVLA boards to consider buying in ($$$$$$) but only if the land is retained in public ownership and the districts are "guaranteed" control of the unit percentages that they contributed to.

15% stake - you get to control 15% of the units for your own district employees. Otherwise Palo Alto USD will swap up most of the units.

This site takes about 20-30 minutes for an El Camino or Central Ave. car commute during morning rush hours to MVWSD schools. Both old Cooper school site and Cuesta Annex (land-swap) site would be better for MVWSD public school employees.

SNelson

Let us preserve what we have. Higher density creates conflict over limited resources. We are experiencing that conflict now. Bringing more people in will only exacerbate the problems.

@Robyn

Everyone else, those of us who are renters and those trying to eek out some form of property ownership in the area, shouldn't have to bear the rising housing costs that come with you wanting to preserve a suburbia for yourself that's not even there anymore.

Mountain View is a transit hub and right in the center of one of the hottest job markets in the entire world. You're trying to treat it like it's a sleepy town in the middle of the rust belt. What you're trying to achieve is never going to happen, and at most you'll just slow the growth and externalize the cost of that onto others.

Anyone who thinks more people are *not* going to move here is delusional. Google has an estimated market cap of $800 billion - that's larger than many individual countries. They will find a way to bring their talent to the area.

So glad we purchased property out of state a few years ago, just in case. Count me - a lifelong bay area resident - among the soon to be "out migration" people. We are fortunate, we can afford to stay here, but we have chosen to leave because we don't care for the degraded quality of life that we are experiencing - and will continue to experience here - as the large tech companies are allowed to massively expand their footprints, with very little regard to the numerous negative externalities they are causing within the area. The supposed "mitigations" which get offered up to offset these substantial negative impacts have been laughable to date. Seriously.

Take a good look around and ask yourself if you like what you see, and if the transformation this city (and others around here) are undergoing is one that is going to ultimately make your life better, and a healthier place to live. That's what we did, and when the rose colored glasses were removed the answer was, "Nope."

Interesting analogy about this going on in another thread, hopefully I can cut and paste it here. It's full of FACTS, not "we-should-do-this-because-it-sounds-good-and-makes-us-feel-good-about-ourselves",
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PA teachers, on average, make more than Bay Area tech workers, on average.

Anyone trying to argue otherwise hasn't looked at the data. Normalizing the data to make financial comparisons apples-to-apples makes this clear. Observe:

number of days worked/year:
For teachers that's public data on ed-data.org. For tech workers we have to calculate it by subtracting out weekends(52*2), holidays(10) and vacation time(15, which is generous for this math):

* PA teacher days worked (service days): 186 days Web Link
* average tech worker days worked: 365-52-52-10-15=236 days

* PA teacher average salary: $101,408 (2015-16 school year) Web Link
* tech worker average salary: $124,000 Web Link

So, average pay-per-workday is:
* PA teacher: $101,408/186 = $545.20/day
* tech worker: $124,000/236 = $525.42/day

Let's see what the PA teacher salary would look like if teachers had the same # of workdays as a tech worker: (101,408/186)*236 = $128,668.22/year in adjusted salary.

apples-apples normalized result:
PA teacher average salary: $128,668.22/year
tech worker average salary: $124,000.00/year

And keep in mind that this does not factor in the teacher's very generous (taxpayer backed) pension plan.

Perhaps Mr. Simitian SHOULD investigate dedicated housing for a particular class of workers: TECH WORKERS. We're getting outpriced by the income of teachers like those in Palo Alto Unified.

@mvresident

You acknowledged the actual number of days teachers worked, made up a what-if scenario where they work more days and make more money, and then went on to make a conclusion using your what-if scenario as if it were the reality. What was the point of that?

mvresident provides is a good starting point for discussion given that teachers work approximately nine months each year not the usual 12 months that most of us do.
Take your income and apply 25% to housing costs. That is what you can afford. That is a rule of thumb that is useful.
The large influx of workers has changed the landscape. If fully built out, as some suggest, Mountain View will not be recognizable to future generations. It will be a western version of Mumbai, Amsterdam, Accra, Mexico City, Beijing, etc.

@Robyn

"If fully built out, as some suggest, Mountain View will not be recognizable to future generations. It will be a western version of Mumbai, Amsterdam, Accra, Mexico City, Beijing, etc."

I'd rather grow the city so future generations will actually be able to live here instead of freezing the city in time so future generations can only gaze in.