The City of Mountain View approved 84 unit apartment building for 88 million. This is absolutely outrageous by any standards. Could the city council think there might be other alternatives? For instance, incentivize the population into building casitas on their properties since we now have senate bills 9 and 10. Give the home owner a grant for 25K. I am sure you can find at least 100 homeowners to jump on the bandwagon. Here is an example of one such company and I am sure there are many more, building homes for 1/10th the cost.
Web Link

"Kat Wortham, a member of the Housing Action Coalition, pointed out that the city is already asking a lot of developers, with park fees that are already discouraging new housing development by making it too costly to build."
What a load of baloney - from the consultants and lobbyists paid by real estate developers and marketing companies! Building costs are huge because of the prices paid for land. The price of land would drop if there wasn't so much potential profit for developers.
The amount the city requires to be paid towards parks and schools pales in significance. It is parks and open spaces that make living in cities tolerable and without adequate schools, no young adults would entertain living here.

"Affordable housing" means affordable to Googlers. My neighbor works at the car wash. He deserves a nice place to live, too.

Apartment prices are up on Craigslist. They jumped up several hundred dollars over last year. Looks like when folks finally moved out, landlords jacked up the rent.

It seems that the State of California has a formal Population Policy by some other name. We are mandated to grow by 30%. The Bay Area and Mountain View will increase carbon footprints, water use, and pollution outputs by significant amounts. I recommend a Population Policy of next-to-zero growth.

Raymond,

It's amazing how badly you missed the point. If it was "mandated growth" it would include a jobs element. It does not. We are being asked to zone housing because we already voluntarily zoned the jobs, and pre-lockdown the city's population grew 50% during the workday with the number of people who commute in. (This is not an exaggeration.)

Everything you say will be increased, will actually decrease as a result of zoning more housing. All we are doing is letting people who already work here have a shorter commute.

@Tech, it seems like a lot of these objections to more homes usually stems from some weird misconception that people don't exist outside of Mountain View's borders. Once we build those homes, we've suddenly willed into existence a bunch of new people! Previously, as non-beings, they had zero carbon emissions.

12 square miles. That's it. Mountain View is 12 square miles. Build more...build "up".. but the infrastructure doesn't grow. More people/cars shoe-horned into 12 square miles. Good times.

Residents of MV "North of the Tracks". Please note that the MVWSD staff (led by Rudolph) has proposed ONLY TAXING RESIDENTS living North of The Tracks. No Commercial/Business taxes to support these new schools. No taxes for us richer folks down South of El Camino!

@Steven Nelson - Isn't the proposed tax similar to school impact fees? AFAIK those are paid only by residential developments. But a MVWSD wide taxing area would seem fairer and would likely result in far lower taxes per unit -and a smaller impact on new housing production-.

A quick search of RHNA resulted in this: Web Link . A similarly quick scan points at the lack of holistic thought in terms of whether the most populous state in the country should even plan for such absurd amounts of growth. With population growth planning as their reason to be, that commission has no interest in asking that question so we have to ask it ourselves. With California politics being driven by large population centers it's only going to get even more unbalanced with undesirable positive feedback forcing scarcity in power, water, transportation, any resource you can name other than warm bodies.

Closer to home: in my opinion at some point forced population growth is like a malignant tumor encroaching on the lives of those of us who chose not to live in San Francisco, Oakland, or downtown San Jose. Preeti Hehmeyer is missing the point: Mountain View is a nice place to live for a number of reasons, but chief among them is the relatively low population density compared to the population centers.

Four years ago I gave public comment at a city council meeting where I saluted Mountain View for being the first city in the region to seriously turn the corner on the systemic, devastating jobs-housing imbalance. I told council that regional and state solutions would inevitably be required to get all cities on the same page. And when that day comes, and cities begin to wail about having to actually plan responsibly for their growing populations, Mountain View would be in an enviable position, having already zoned for large amounts of housing in several key opportunity areas.

Well, now here we are!

Mountain View had better get credit for RHNA for zoned housing in North Bayshore and East Whisman!

@questioner on MVWSD / see the Community Facilities District plan concocted by a staff consulting firm for the 8/12/2021 school board meeting.
Web Link

Reporter Kevin F. - thanks for 'paying attention'.

The recommendations and Board sentiment were for North of Tracks only special district. Page 10 has the rates (every EXISTING residential unit/yearly) $12 to $99 (to me odd) annual schedule.
NEW UNITS $279 to $5734 PER NEW UNIT per year forever (annually)!

Read the rest of the report - for how the consulting firm breaks down "Voters in proposed development areas/North of Expressway..." for how to sell this new special taxing district.

This is why the City housing consultants wrote - May Be a Deal Breaker, with meeting state housing requirements. Very costly new taxes for Rudolph's $1 Billion vision.

This proposed tax on new housing could keep the housing from being built! Right now the new apartment units would cost over $750K and the property tax on them would be over $700 per month, which has to be covered by the rent. The new taxes are talking about upping the monthly taxes by $400 or so. It sounds quirky to me, to charge residents of new units an extra $400 per month when they are already likely paying more property taxes by far than most of the residents of the school district, as in more than double.

I would think a developer would give this serious thought in determining whether to go ahead with a plan for housing.

Let me guess, these 11,0000+ new units will be mostly high-density overpriced apartments east of El Camino Real. Just like the project known as The Flower Mart on 525 East Evelyn, a high density project that did not include nearby Sylvan Ave in their traffic analysis. And BTW, the parking allocated for these 450+ units (suitable for 'sardines) assumes that these residents won't need a car because they live 1.5 miles from the MV Transit Center. In addition, the Castro downtown area has deteriorated with an ever-increasing number of empty storefronts and sidewalks in need of steam cleaning. Downtown Mountain View is no longer the destination it used to be and the City is no longer a desirable place to live.