"Under the proposal, the project's required low-income housing units would be isolated on one part of the property and leased out to the school district in exchange for $56 million. With the district in full control of the 144 affordable units for at least the next 55 years". First, I applaud the City Council's creative and unique use of the affordable housing mandate to favor people of critical importance to Mountain View. Second, $56 million seems awfully cheap for a 55 year lease. Will MV kick in any money for this too? Third, this won't be the last challenge to the open space at Cooper Park. Just as with the Questa Park Annex "Dog Park", open public spaces (actually quasi-public in this case) are magnets that draw all sorts of unsavory attention from developers.

Or another idea is we could just pay teachers the market rate, so they can afford the housing and to pay off their student loans too.

The superintendent and school board deserve praise for this innovative solution to the single greatest compensation concern for MVWSD teachers, housing. The 700 unit development will no doubt make a big dent in the teacher housing/turnover crisis, though one should recognize the specific costs, in that 200+ existing residents will be displaced. This is a bitter victory in that light, but one that is better for Mountain View as a whole, in that Mountain View will be able to attract and retain high-quality teachers, and the entire city benefits from a strong school district!

Oh, no, not again. Yet another rental housing project given the rubber stamp of approval.

How about affordable housing projects that residents can OWN? That's how you get a vibrant community, with residents who actually have an ownership stake, not by bloating the rental population.

I'd like to see all MV council candidates issue statements on whether they will approve new housing projects based on ownership rather than rentals. That is one point on which all candidates have been silent.

@Alex M:

I agree with you in principle, but there's no way I can afford $900K for a one-bedroom condo, even if they built it.

I'm glad there are rentals available; because at least that I can afford, just as I have for over 25 years now. And not without difficulty sometimes...

We're hovering between $3.60 and $4.40 per square foot in rentals now, per Zillow's current available listings. I can only imagine how much that goes up if we don't build rentals to keep apace.

It maybe cheaper to use the funds to pay the teachers a living wage and forget about all of these complexities. The school district should not be in the residential rental real estate business. Probably not part of their charter! The devil is in the details!

A lot of landlords here are really upset that they won't get to get rich off the teachers, hence why they'd prefer the school employees get cash that'd be handed right over to them.

While paying teachers a wage that would allow them to rent/buy in Mountain View _seems_ like a reasonable proposal.... remember that if you were to do that, then the “School Administrators” would demand raises as well so as to maintain their current Teacher/Admin wage ratio.

This all depends on the fine print... What happens if the teacher moves out or retires or is laid off or their spouse later makes more money? Are they able to keep living off our money?

Just pay them a bit more and also please stop coming back to the voters each election to ask for yet another special property tax.... We're sick of being told how cruddy our schools are each time there's an election and how we're 49 out of 50 or whatever... Give us the bill just once to fix it and put it up for a vote! No more special property taxes each election... Once and done! Come up with an honest bill for once...

Rentals at $1,409 for a studio to $1,811 for a 2 bedroom may be high for teachers, but that's doable for an educator in a working family, add the benefit of being in the community you teach, it becomes quite reasonable. Add that teachers would then be sending their kids to MVWSD schools, add that students would be able to return to visit familiar faces and school would have a feel of stability. Teacher housing is a needed policy for the Silicon Valley.

There is no salary a K-8 district can ever pay that could make it reasonable for teachers to pay market rate rent or ever buy in Mountain View. So to say income alone is the solution would operationally mean the status quo, drained teachers that leave our schools at record rates, leaving schools in an endless cycle of re-training and new faces.

The superintendent and school board was 100% wrong to dismiss four principals in one year, and this teacher housing policy may not be right for many other regions, but it is 100% right for circumstances in Mountain View.

The issues here isn't just around teacher pay. Having our teachers drive an hour and sometimes two hours both ways to get to our schools doesn't make for teachers who want to stay in this community for years. We benefit from teachers who can stay in our district for 10, 15, 20+ years. We benefit from them taking an interest in the community, volunteering in city interests, coaching youth teams, attending community events. When teachers have to live so far away in order to have affordable living, we miss out on their contributions to the rest of the community, not to mention the quality of life the teachers themselves miss. I think this is a fabulous idea and I hope that more teacher housing can be made available if this works well.

@ Christopher Chiang

I think it's a bit presumptuous for you or anyone to say the district was "100% wrong to dismiss four principals in one year". It's unclear to me why anyone would keep an administrator in place if they believed they were not properly managing the school entrusted to their care to the desire of the district. Principals pretty much have to hang around a whole school year. Sometimes, if you gotta clean house, you gotta clean house. Allowing substandard performance to settle for yet another school year is not what makes a good administrator or a good board. You should know this.

Teachers absolutely need to be paid more, but that isn't a solution to the problem of making it easier for teachers to live here. As long as the supply of housing is constrained, competition for units will push rents up. Pay them more AND keep adding new units to the housing supply.

@Alex M - We have been encouraging ownership housing too. We have two projects moving forward in East Whisman, as well as one at Terra Bella, that include substantial numbers of ownership units, but setting aside affordable units in ownership projects targets large subsidies to a relatively small number of households. That's why some of us have been promoting the community land trust model, in which people are able to buy below market, but then they have to sell below market. But it's still good for entry-level ownership because people get to keep their "rent" as equity. - Mayor Lenny Siegel

The Greenhouse One and Two Condominium developments on San Antonio Road were built with 10% of the units as affordable housing. Below Market Rate (BMR) programs are an excellent way to provide housing for teachers.
The requirement now is for 15% of new construction be affordable BMR units. City of Pao Alto maintains the list of those eligible. When a unit is to be sold it is offered to the next person on the list.

Like rent control below market housing sounds good. In economics we look at the results of such good sounding solutions. That's right, econ 101 which about two thirds of people end up forgetting. Virtually all government solutions in California end up damaging the construction of housing. Partial ownership schemes, inclusionry zoning all at expense to the free market production of housing. There is one simple step to providing an explosion of housing in Mt. View. I'll be discussing this after the election. Mayor Siegel should go buy an economics 101 text and read it cover to cover. Inks, hopefully will be able to lecture the rest of the city council about basic economics or bring in Dr. Means.
George Drysdale the tireless social studies teacher

As someone who has also taught economics and social studies for over ten years, supply and demand work well unregulated when both supply and demand are elastic, and when there are not highly negative social externalities as a result of each transaction.

In the case of Silicon Valley housing, there is highly inelastic supply as a result of local government housing restrictions. There are so many kinds of housing that by law are not allowed, even if the market would support them.

So to say that supply should remain inelastic, but in the same breathe tout that demand and prices should be elastic is not faithful to true economic principles.

Want a free market, fine, build away, and prices can be what the market determines them to be. But then there's the other key economic concept of externalities, uncontrolled housing leads to social costs like traffic, parking, and stretched public resources.

If Mr. Inks, Mr. Means, or "Mr. Drysdale" really support a free market (And I recognize Mr. Drysdale does not speak for Mr. Inks and Mr. Means), they should allow new housing to be built unrestricted. Or if they don't support more housing, and just support unregulated rent, then they are not supporting any true free market principles, they are just supporting a subsidy for landlords masquerading as economics.

Rent control is a subsidy, so are housing regulations, each regulation aims to achieve a social outcome (regulations=quality of life, rent control=diversity).

@Cleave, I respect the care, time, and viewpoint you bring to MVWSD.

However, 15 years working in education, I can say 100% that removing half the district's principals in one year creates unnecessary adult-oriented frenetic energy and instability. Such moves can always be done over several years, with a patience to do a principal searches carefully. No district can do a quality search for that many leaders in such a few months.

Teaching is busy enough without outside changes, and changes in principals create a stream of new initiatives, ways of doing things, and training needs that disrupt what would otherwise be a natural child-focused rhythm that drives healthy elementary schools.

Teacher turn over and fatigue over housing demands urgent action, so I applaud quick action in that front. A school board doesn't have to intuit when to speed up or go slow, all they have to do is listens to teachers and parents to know when to speed up and when to slow down. This housing initiative is a positive sign that the district is taking seriously the concerns of its educators.

Come on. Cleave is just a Stevenson drone that'll cheerlead the district no matter what. He needs to curry favor with the administration, so wouldn't dare criticize.

@Christopher Chiang

Again, as a manager, I reject the idea of allowing substandard performance to persist for “years” simply to avoid appearance. I know of no management team in this area that would swttl4 for that kind of complacency simply because it might be challenging to find good people. In fact, the implication is ridiculous. If you don’t have the right people in place, you find good people and ,are replacements. We owe it to our kids to have the right people running our schools and since I still have a kid in our schools, it matters to me how this s done and I agree wholeheartedly with the action that was taken as it was for the good of the community.

In fact, I would argue that the way teachers “do things” was likely one of the most important reasons to make such a move. If the teachers don’t have the leadership they needed to accomplish the tasks that the district found necessary, this also creates a stress that creates unrest among teachers. So allowing the apathy to persist in half our schools seems a bit inappropriate. We can agree to disagree on this. I’m good with that. If I was in the same boat with my staff, I’d have done the same thing. Keep it movin.

Ok, now we've gotten that out of the way, how do we approach taking care of those people living in their RV's? It's disheartening to see these folks living in a box on wheels. You can see a whole entire caravan next to Rengstorff Park, Shoreline and even in Sunnyvale in some roads off of Mathilda Dr.

These RV's need to be off the roads and parked inside a dedicated KOA-like campground where they properly need to be. If these folks can afford to buy a beaten-up RV, then I'm sure they can afford to pay for space rent at a dedicated RV park. Why not convert the corner of Calderon/El Camino into an RV park? Is that corner lot still being used by the "BMW" dealership as outflow of their precious inventory? I think that land can be put to better use instead of the playground for the fortunate and their precious luxury cars. It's time to get these RV's off the road period!!

Mountain View teachers should be among the highest paid teachers in the world given the income level, now, of Mountain View. There is all sorts of land to develop in Mountain View which should provide steep increases in taxes to be had. Teacher housing should be only a temporary solution. Homo sapiens sapiens specializes in his learning ability. History teaches that even governments can learn. After the election. Ideas will overcome any vested interest.

George Drysdale social studies teacher and land economist

If a rookie MVPD cop can make 100k plus benefits plus OT, why not pay teachers the same?? Take this money and allocate it to teachers!!! Wouldn’t they prefer that? School District should NOT be in the real estate business!!!

<i>"The dearth of moderate-income housing is consistent across all cities in the nine county Bay Area, fueled largely by the lack of tax credits and subsidies."</i>

No, the lack of naturally-affordable housing is due to 40+ years of entirely self-inflicted, NIMBY-driven policies that have consistently thwarted the creation of adequate amounts of housing -- which has led inexorably to the present crisis and skyrocketing housing costs.

<i>"The dearth of moderate-income housing is consistent across all cities in the nine county Bay Area, fueled largely by the lack of tax credits and subsidies."</i>

There is no way to add land. We were greatly heart by recessions in 2000 and in 2008 in efforts to recover from shortfall in housing stock. At those points, there was plenty of land available but no capital to use for construction. This is where the subsidies could have come in.

Meanwhile the crime ridden areas had low cost land but still another deterrent to investing there. Now we get gentrification which wipes out huge swaths of low income housing that arguably could need wiping out. But it's all done in a very rough way that causes displacement and other problems.

The real problem is an unreasonable fad-like fascination on the part of companies like Google to chiefly expand in this one area that isn't as well equipped to deal with office growth as other cities would be.

You would have to be saying that every city in the country is in obstacle to housing growth to account for there still be a housing shortage nationwide. The government mounted a huge housing stimulus after World War II and that has gradually subsided over the decades since. It makes sense to resume such efforts because they deserve the credit for the initial success at creating expanded housing opportunities. The drop off has nothing to do with city planning policies.

@Housing. The previous posting of an economics teacher also needs to be remembered well - housing is not a free market/ Besides the post WWII housing government efforts there were a lot of hidden subsidies for suburban middle-class housing. Federally funded freeways, the federal MORTAGE INTEREST DEDUCTION, etc. This last hidden subsidy I believe is one of the two largest in the nation (the employer-paid health care write-off is another).

SO - should we invest so much of the nation's wealth in large expensive homes? Why is this happening? Peplos desires, over support, development company support, union construction worker support. Does it make economic sense, or just political sense? In Germany you get a tax deduction for SAVING FOR A HOME, in the USA you get a deduction for getting a HOMEBUYING LOAN.

The Trumpian Limit on Mortage Tax Deduction (new Federal tax changes). There may be some value in damping down excess 'investment' (speculation) in million dollar homes. As a multi-million dollar homeowner I'm sad, as someone who has been disturbed over the last few decades in over-investment in non productive giant homes, maybe this would be good for the economy (although painful in how rapidly it was introduced).

**** TO MAYOR SIEGEL - THE CITY's RESIDENTIAL PARKING PROGRAM-RPP IS A JOKE, A CUMBERSOME PROCESS SET UP TO DISCOURAGE RESIDENTS FROM USING IT, WITH PETITIONS, VOTING, FEES ETC. AS FAR AS I KNOW, NOT A SINGLE NEIGHBORHOOD HAS SUCCESSFULLY IMPLEMENTED RPP. PLEASE DO NOT ALLUDE TO SOLUTIONS THAT ARE NOT FEASIBLE. "Mayor Lenny Siegel said the solution will come, in part, from the city's residential permit parking system, which could provide relief to current residents as the city clears the way for housing growth along Middlefield Road and the Terra Bella area."

AND WHERE ARE THE SPILLOVER PARKING AREAS??? THIS IS NOT A CAR LITE AREA, WE ARE NOT URBAN, PUBLIC TRANSPORT AROUND HERE IS TERRIBLE, TRY TAKING A TRAIN AFTER 7:30PM "There will be many parts of town where there is a chance for spillover parking if we don't include residential parking as part of our transit demand management," Siegel said. "If we're going to become more of a car-light city over time, this is a good place to begin."


Mountain View cannot survive four more years of this.

@Neighbor - Building a KOA campground on Mountain View land is not feasible, land is too expensve. Econ 101. Not going to happen. A more reasonable option would be to look outside of Mountain View for a place to live how about San Jose? I would like to live in Atherton, but I cannot afford it. End of story.

Money for public education does not grow on trees, and in the economics of Mountain View:

The economics of the Google district (Shoreline quasi-redevelopment agency 1969):
The public schools are not guaranteed any new general property tax revenue generated from new property sales or buildings. TAX INCREMENT financing is what SHORELINE district depends upon. Public education gets a fraction of the GENERAL PROPERTY TAX revenue that it should (a bit is 'shared' by a Joint Powers Authority).

So: a Billion Dollar sale of property to Google, reported recently, will not result in even one cent of guaranteed general revenue to the local schools*. The new assessed value increment, about 2/3 of a billion dollars, is all legally assigned to Shoreline district to generate new general property tax revenue - completely under control of the MV City Council members.

= SUNSET ON SHORELINE, after 50 years it is overdue. =

[students of this 'Shoreline effect', study the North Bayshore finances of the City, the JPA involving contracts between MV and MVWSD & MVLA, and the Santa Clara County yearly property Tax Report - Appendix H] [or just read past articles from Kevin of The Voice :] * special bond repayments not included