Doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to know that about Mtn View! Need to protect the seniors and low income residents or Mtn View will lose the most vulnerable.

For the most part, people agree that because the housing supply is so tight in MV it's hard to find a good rental. If we want a lot more apartments and homes, we have to make it much more attractive for people to provide those great places to rent. We can't solve it by creating a few subsidized homes for teachers and firefighters by throwing a few million $$ at the problem each year and patting each other on the back. The fix is just not proportional to the enormity of the demand. That means that for starters the city has to do more to reach out to potential landlords and understand what's holding them back. What keeps you from renting your mother in law unit, buying a property for renting, or building more rentals? What rules, regulations, and fees are the problem? It's not just the rent control, it's the totality of it all.

As someone who's lived in town for just shy of 30 years, I wanted to rent my beautiful home to a good tenant but it's not smart to do that. The current rent control laws do not affect me but everyone who is a small landlord is keenly aware those laws could change at any time. Essentially, there is a long list of things that make it unwise to become a landlord in MV (and more broadly in CA) and we need to have a frank and open conversation about some of this mess, and that means understanding that a lot of these well-intentioned laws ended up doing the opposite of their desired effect. That probably means less yelling at the town hall from the people who are angry about their rent hike and a bit more input from the people who could create more apartments but don't.

Typically California is ranked dead last in terms of good states to become a landlord and I'm not sure if we can become a more landlord-friendly place or even a landlord-neutral state. If we vilify each other and if people who rent can't understand it also kind of sucks to be a landlord here we're going to talk past each other.

Jay, I agree with you.

There have been a lot of new projects built in the city in the past few years. Prometheus and Greystar have built more than one each, and they are large projects with 250+ units each. Greystar has 700 new units nearing completion at San Antonio and Showers Drive. You have Equity Residential adding many units onto an existing older apartment build over by the Sunnyvale border. You have this plan to replace the water features and parking lots at 555 W. Middlefield Road and bring it from 400 to 720 units. There are massive new apartment blocks planned for the East Middlefield Area and NASA Ames is preparing to add 1900 apartments up on their property near the Ellis Street gate.

I just shake my head when the council talks about “affordable housing.”

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The best thing that could happen to housing in MV would be for the city to temporarily (say 2-3 years) dramatically reduce restrictions and costs for developers to build housing. It would be of minimal cost and effort to the city and would allow housing of all types to be built.

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I don't really understand 'the maths'. The City seems to talking about one metric (existing rentals) and the survey is about "active listings" - which is (???) entirely about the very small subset of rental units where landlords are looking to get new tenants.

This does not seem to be anything (really) about "median" vs. "average" (mean).

I dred the day I have to find a new place. I'll probably be one of those that throws in the towel and goes to TX or FLA.

What they don't mention is that in Palo Alto the new units rent for more and in Sunnyvale they rent for less. Rather than moving to Texas you could try Sunnyvale for a while. Just because it's a different zip code and area code doesn't really change the location that much.