So let me get this straight. If the crystal ball that the city council is looking through TODAY turns out to be flawed, the state has a No Net Loss Law will end up forcing the city to "make up for that housing" LATER. Somehow. Someway. Some way that nobody has even thought of today. And we will be forced to do it by our benevolent state overlords.

The state is essentially asking the city to sign it's name in blood for whatever is on this list. Smart negotiation in this case should be to make the list as SMALL as possible. It should not have any "maybe" or "hopefully" or "possibly" items ... it should only have sites that the council is 100% sure about. It scares me that only SOME City Council members "are concerned about overcommitting." They ALL should be concerned, especially when they are essentially kicking the can down the road. Mayor Ramirez gets it.

""So while we might get away with it for a few years, down the road a different council’s going to have to make some tough decisions to address the no net loss requirement."" - Ramirez

Ramirez thinks that the list is "optimistic". This scares me. If so, that list needs to be revised ASAP. It needs to be REALISTIC.

“So we can make a hard decision now, or we can make a hard decision later, but at some point I think we’re going to have to contend with the site inventory that I personally think is a bit optimistic," Ramirez said.

More bad news:

""So I’m really concerned that we’re adding things to the Housing Element that are going to tie our hands for other projects."" - council member Lisa Matichak

""If we’re going to just fill up our staff capacity with Housing Element items I don’t see how we’re going to be able to do much at all elsewhere," - council member Margaret Abe-Koga

What on earth is going on here? Housing is an important issue, but not so important that the Council is 100% occupied with it alone and nothing else.

I'm struggling to figure out how to write words that younger persons might “hear”. As an older person, I have some memories of what life looks like as a younger person (the opposite is not true). I was primarily interested in my career, not the community where I lived. I was a workaholic. I rented, was indifferent to the quality of schools, all I primarily wanted to do was please my employer and enjoy my social life. My focus re housing was the cost and the distance from work. Period.

They say that those who rent think differently from those who own. When we bought our first place, a condo, we primarily considered commute and the quality of the housing. Still didn't care about the community too much, we didn't have kids. We made an effort to know our neighbors and be good to them.

When we bought a house, we did some deeper thinking. Where did we want to raise A FAMILY? We wanted good schools. We looked all over the peninsula. I wanted a sexier zipcode than MV, but in the end we decided that MV matched our values. We wanted to live in a place that had racial and economic diversity, to model for our children. MV was a sweet and progressive little community back then, although Castro was almost entirely a ghetto for Chinese restaurants.

Frankly, I don't think that young people at Google think so much about the COMMUNITY of Mountain View. Do they care about things like schools, and parks? When I was their age, I didn't. So I think I get it. They want cheaper rent, period. If the schools suffer, if greenspace suffers, too bad so sad. If it doesn't affect them, then they don't really care so much. And the Googleplex is awesome, right? THAT is where they spend most of their time, so who cares about the rest of the city?

I don't want the quality of life in MV to be sacrificed in order to help certain wealthy players to make more money. That pretty much sums up where I stand these days. These state housing mandates are not going to lower the rent, they will do the exact opposite. And in addition, the Council's ability to focus on other matters of importance to the community is being hampered.

What a sad time we are living in, when longtime residents who care about the entire community are demonized and outside agitators are considered “local stakeholders”.

JUST AN FYI IYAI

I just posted my first Youtube video demonstrating the current state of the rental market in Mountain View. I plan on doing a video regarding the SCC Tax history of my building shortly.

The video can be seen here (Web Link

It demonstrates that our property values are in no way in position to stay the way they are. And in fact due to the increasing Fed and Mortgage rates, MANY project will be stopped. Several already have in the recent news in the area.

The facts are that INVESTMENT expectations regarding housing were never going to be met consistently, the best rates of return in this market should be no more than 1.5% above CPI. Any history of higher has been met with property value corrections since 2007.

My video shows how VOLITILE the local market is. I am amazed at how rapidly values change in an market area that should be the most stable. It has NEVER been a reliable investment. And the City Council and this City better get used to this REALITY CHECK, or their CHECKS are going to BOUNCE.

The thing is that Mountain View is mainly behind in providing subsidized housing. Palo Alto has way more units of BMR housing built to date. Mountain View lags.

For the current RHNA cycle through 2022, MV has already exceeded its market rate targets. If you only consider market rate for profit housing, MV has a good case to believe that they will once again produce more such housing than the RHNA mandates. The critics are erring by leveling criticism toward that. HCD will look at the track record of what has been done in the past, not just the HE stand alone.

The MV rental market is harmed by the lack of BMR housing. PA has the BMR housing in place, but they need to add for profit housing. The difference is material. PA doesn't get a lower quota based on their existing BMR stockpile. That shows how wacky the state RHNA assessments are.