What this article lacks is a context of the presence of BMR housing units in the residential portion of Sobrato's project. My understanding is that the Northern portion of the project originally required BMR units and that this requirement has been removed under the revised plan. It certainly matters that so many of the units cut from being built were actually BMR units.

Why are we building more office space in Mtn View with so many offices still empty that already exist. More people are working remotely now, thus businesses need LESS space than they used to. Every time we build more offices, it reduces our ability to rectify the housing & jobs imbalance.

Let me see. Is there a housing crisis? Was there a non-contractual deal (Memorandum of Understanding)?

- Time for the City Council to use their Power of Eminent Domain! -

Use it for the Public Good. Force Google to sell to the City, and have the City turn around and sell to Sobrato (with deed restrictions insuring the housing from the original MOU. (SCOTUS approved use of state power). [US June 23, 2005 in Kelo v. City of New London]

The article leaves out the fact that the whole reason Sobrato's project was reduced in size was they changed plans by Google to sell some of the land to Sobrato into Google planning to donate that same land to the city for affordable housing. The difference is that Sobrato won't have to pay to build the affordable units within their project. They would have had to pay property tax on the value of the affordable units as well even though to them they wouldn't bring in as much revenue as the other units. A non profit project can be exempt from property taxes which significantly reduces their operating costs for the same number of units.