If Mountain View residents "now go out for experiences and community", why are there so may vacant storefronts on Castro Street?

“With new open office configurations and tremendous growth of our major employers over the past decade, Mountain View has experienced eight times more job growth than housing growth. In reaction, housing costs have escalated, our lower-income residents have been displaced and homelessness has risen.”

Do we have any information about which employers have had the most job growth? Sounds like such employers bear great responsibility for escalating housing costs and displacement of lower-income residents. I think one of them might be Google.

Mayor Hicks, are you aware that “Google has ended an agreement with a developer to build 15,000 homes in the San Francisco Bay Area, including affordable housing, as it continues a string of cost-cutting moves to reduce real estate costs”? - Web Link

Google itself is now “blocking the supply” of new housing, including affordable housing.

“"The decision to end these agreements followed a comprehensive review by Google of its real estate investments, and a determination by both organizations that the existing agreements are no longer mutually beneficial given current market conditions.”

So it’s not NIMBY advocacy standing in the way of new housing; no, it’s the actions of a fantastically rich corporation who has determined that it is no longer profitable for them to create it. And that, friends, is the TRUE reason why we have a housing crisis. For-profit developers will only build if they can make sufficient profit. If they can’t the building stops. It is a fantasy to believe that developers are lemmings who will continue to build even if they lose money when they do so.

NIMBYs do exist, but no evidence has been provided that they are the PRIMARY cause of high housing costs. For-profit developers provide most housing, and they prefer to build expensive housing for one very simply reason: they make more $$$ that way.

One sad truth about Shoreline's legally diverted property tax revenues: they will continue forever and forever Increase. This is because the City was able to get its legislative sponsors to skirt the Redevelopment Agency standard formation legislation and get a special act.
County of Santa Clara (social services), MV City (regular services), schools (MVWSD, MVLA), SCV Water District (watersheds), public Hospital District, etc. all yearly loose revenue to Shoreline!

SUNSET ON SHORELINE - limit that old albatross to no more than 20% of the general Property Tax that the multi-billions of dollars of Assessed Valuation out there produce. The State gov can give away, the State gov can take back (and redistribute fairly).

The biggest thing that is overlooked by those who have their eye on the park district tax revenue is that this diversion is the main reason development has taken place up there. Google really enjoys having its own regional park near the workplace. The building up there would not be so much without the flow of tax dollars to the park district.

The city already allocates a portion of the revenue to the school districts to help them out. The school districts area already tax rich, among the largest revenues per student for any district in the state. The main impact is to deny the county some tax revenue that would otherwise flow there. Not a big problem at all.

@steven nelson

Like your idea of capping the amount the Shoreline Tax District can divert, cap at what it is now with a modest yearly increase (2% like our Property Taxes)?

Then other time, agencies (Water District, County, Schools....)'s share will grow. Mountain View's general fund would also grow which would also benefit most of us not living in the Shoreline Tax District.