Thank you for your work to make housing more available and affordable!

Thank you very much for a 'layman's simple' explanation of this important tightening of the state's housing element laws, and their repercussions for our city. In particular, your explaining the dichotomy;
"site inventory" and
"programs" (major component, which escaped the attention of many).

[IMO] Thanks for MV YIMBY being involved in some of the state-level legal processes helping 'regenerate' the collective will of the citizens of California, through our elective legislature and Governor, in providing more affordable housing throughout our state, and more consistent with mid 20th century "affordable" housing (middle class / median income could afford some type of ownership housing when they saved and scrimped).

bought my own first 'ownership housing' in the form of a duplex in 1982. 20% down, no PMI

"Mountain View finished its housing element update process, creating a path to add 11,135 new homes over the next eight years.”

TRUE.

“A majority of these homes are targeted to be affordable to lower-income households."

This is a HIGHLY MISLEADING statement. Casual readers might assume they mean that MV is ON TRACK to create "a majority" of new homes that will be affordable to lower-income households. BUT THAT SIMPLY IS NOT TRUE.

There is a big difference between “targets”, and “what is actually built”. Bragging about targets is like counting chickens before they hatch. Voters deserve to know the TRUTH: MV has a dismal record when it comes to meeting the RHNA targets handed down by the state.

Look at what happened in the last cycle. See “Housing units, built and planned, for 2015 through 2023 in Mountain View", published by the Voice in August 2021: Web Link

The data clearly shows that ABSOLUTELY NONE of the targets for “affordable housing” were met. NONE of them. On the other hand, the targets for expensive, market-rate units were wildly exceeded. Here is info for various income levels:

VERY-LOW
Target: 814 units Permits Issued: 371 Target Achieved? NO

LOW
Target: 492 units Permits Issued: 372 Target Achieved? NO

MODERATE
Target: 527 units Permits Issued: 253 Target Achieved? NO

ABOVE-MODERATE
Target: 1,093 units Permits Issued: 7,082 Target Achieved? YES! YES! YES!

TOTAL
Target: 2,926 units Permits Issued: 8,078

Do you see? The ONLY target that was achieved was the target for the HIGHEST WAGE EARNERS.

NOTHING has been done to change these outcomes in the next RHNA cycle. There is no reason to believe that the outcomes will be different. MV lacks both plans and FUNDING to create 6,225 affordable units. Furthermore, many people cheer when housing projects that consist almost entirely of market rate units are brought before the city council.

If housing advocates were truly rational they would advocate better transportation to go with their housing. The housing element plan leverages 1950s infrastructure to drop in 2020s housing growth. It’s cheaper for poor people to live outside of Mountain View with good transportation in, rather than assume the optimal place is the most expensive land in the US. (See: every other large city)

Without naming names, I can clearly tell who read the whole article and who didn't.

Housing advocates do advocate for better transportation! It just tends to come up less often.

PLAN vs Reality. Thanks for hitting that TRUTH right on the nail head Leslie B. (construction pun intended). I was so disappointed with our 'progressive' council members over the last decade who Never seemed to get the math (simple ratios) correct! And then the others! They seemed not even interested in trying!

Peace and Love and some housing for all

As usual, Leslie Bain shows us what’s really happening—beyond the YIMBY platitudes.

@Steven Nelson, @Local News Junkie, thank you for validating the truth of my words.

“A majority of these homes are targeted to be affordable to lower-income households."

It truly amazes me that these words were written as if this factoid is GOOD NEWS. Here is more truth: state politicians are playing a wicked game with RHNA targets. MV and its residents are considered RESPONSIBLE if and when we fail to meet the RHNA affordable housing targets that ABAG has set for us. We are accused of being elitists, and even racists, who want to keep out undesirable lower income people from our community. What the heck? What is a resident who wants MORE affordable housing for low-income and average workers supposed to do? How does one object to the LACK of affordable housing being built in project Web Link after project Web Link after project Web Link brought before and APPROVED by the City Council?

The state created a rigorous process in order to ensure that our Housing Element met with their approval. But the RIGOR COMPLETELY STOPS when it comes to ensuring that sufficient housing units are created for low-income and average workers. Which makes the process a sham when it comes to "affordable housing". MV lacks a plan to build the 6,225 affordable units that the state “requires”. Very important question: Why did the state approve our Housing Element without such a plan?

The TRUTH is: it is not possible to create that many units without MASSIVE SUBSIDIES. So, this “requirement” is actually an “unfunded mandate”. Mr. Gurin left that information out of his essay.

Handing an unfunded mandate to MV is a means to help developers, not residents. Remember that MV is at the mercy of for-profit developers when it comes to building affordable housing: if developers don’t bring projects to the table, the city cannot approve them. However, when we fail to meet our RHNA targets, developers become eligible to use bills like SB 35 / SB 423 (authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, approved by Marc Berman and Gov. Newsom), which are marketed to the public as bills to “boost affordability, help tenants,” Web Link What the heck? These bills actually REWARD developers for not bringing projects with sufficient affordable housing to the city council in the first place.

We don't lack affordable housing because so-called "NIMBYs" are blocking supply. We lack affordable housing because for-profit builders are not building it.

Exactly my point IVG. Transportation is easier, cheaper and more scalable to address than addressing housing units one at a time. It should be the priority for housing advocates, not “less often.

Run a bus every 10 minutes from the Caltrain stop to across Mountain View to major employment centers, and people will find lots of great housing elsewhere that is affordable. My favorite example is the El Camino hospital. A large employer. If it had a fast direct bus to Caltrain during shift changes, life would be dramatically different.

Every place that Caltrain travels to is already unaffordable and doesn't want to house thousands more of commuters from Mountain View.

“This planned growth represents a major achievement compared to the pace of building homes in recent decades ...”

I respectfully disagree. This “planned growth” is an unpopular mandate handed down by state politicians. The precedent that it sets is horrific.

“In political philosophy, the phrase consent of the governed refers to the idea that a government's legitimacy and moral right to use state power is justified and lawful only when consented to by the people or society over which that political power is exercised.” - Web Link

“The main reason for galloping home prices is that the supply of homes has not kept up with either population growth (which was robust until the mid-2010s) or job growth.”

This is nothing but an assertion, albeit an assertion repeated frequently by state politicians who depend on campaign contributions. The truth is that in project after project proposed by for-profit developers, the majority of units are expensive, market rate units. We don’t have a shortage of homes, we have a shortage of AFFORDABLE homes. And the main reason that shortage exists is because for-profit builders avoid building them.

[Portion removed due to excessive length]

The housing element is like the stone in this fable:

Give me a piece of paper’ (said the traveler) ‘and I’ll write it down for you,’ which he did as follows:—A receipt to-make Stone Soup. ‘ Take a large stone, put it into a sufficient quantity of boiling water; properly season it with pepper and salt; add three or four pounds of good beef, a handful of pot-herbs, some onions, a cabbage, and three or four carrots. When the soup is made the stone may be thrown away.’ Published in The American magazine of wit, 1808.

They key requirement to produce housing is the capital investment to build the housing. That's what was different back in the 1950's--plenty of capital was available for housing construction. The question now is, does much capital exist to fund growth in say Mountain View compared to all the other places such capital could instead be invested. This is applicable in different ways between subsidized "affordable" housing and that meant to sell at a market rate.

The past performance in Mountain View has been abysmal at seeing a good share of that capital go to the subsidized housing. The STATE is who requires that Mountain View's Housing Element and those of all the other cities in the Bay Area plan for 55-60% of new housing to be subsidized affordable housing. The truth though is that the share will be determined by their differing funding sources. YIMBY just don't appreciate that. Some of the things that they have advocated tend to bias funding toward the higher income folks, such as the idea of requiring zoning to permit high priced land in shopping centers to be available for housing construction. Such homes constructed in such places are bound to be among the most expensive, if they do get built.

The big flaw in the state mandate of housing across all cities is that nothing ensures that any particular city will be favored for investment over its neighbors. Sunnyvale has a higher mandate than does Mountain View. Both cities have concentrated their proposed subsidized housing in certain oddball areas. Mountain View assumes loads will go up by Google above 101. Sunnyvale assumes loads will go up in Google's target office area in the triangle between 101 and 237. In fact, Sunnyvale had virtually ALL of its subsidized housing growth in that triangle in the first version of the element sent to HCD. This is a new form of segregation of have any city put more of its low income growth in one small area of that city. This propensity seems to dovetail with difficulties in funding the low income housing in the first place. The areas are off the beaten path and not near workable public transit. Sunnyvale only got is housing element approved last month after some changes to spread some more of the BMR units away from the old Lockheed industrial area now taken over by Google. Will the funding flow?

Maybe El Camino Hospital District should be diverting some of its capital to help spark creation of some of these all-BMR housing complexes. The district covers a good part of Sunnyvale as well as Mountain View and other cities. Market rate apartments are already noticeably cheaper in Sunnyvale than Mountain View. Workers at ECH need access to BMR unit housing too, and the funding requires many sources for each project. ECH ought to pitch in!

“The key requirement to produce housing is the capital investment to build the housing.”

Great point. Wealth inequality is also greater today than back in the 1950s, so more people could afford market-rate homes back then. In other words, market-rate homes were once “more affordable”. That is not true today.

“As local residents celebrated the winter holidays with their families, we should remember those who work in our area but can’t afford a roof over their heads, as well as those who endure punishing commutes to get here.”

This lovely goal should hold true for workers in ALL INCOME CATEGORIES, not just those who earn high wages. We should also remember the lower-income residents who already live here, and are increasingly displaced by rising rents. The 2020 census shows that MORE THAN HALF of existing residents fall into the bottom three income categories defined by RHNA.

Let me tell a story which explains our current housing policies. 10 men are invited to a conference. The 4 highest wage earners sit on the right side of the room, the 6 lowest wage earners sit on the left. At lunch a pizza is ordered and cut into 10 slices: 9 slices are given to the 4 men on the right, 1 slice is given to the 6 men on the left to share. Is that fair or just?

YIMBYs say the solution is “more pizza for everyone!” So 2 more pizzas are ordered, and cut into 20 more slices. 18 of those slices are given to the 4 men on the right, 2 are given to the men on the left. Does this solve the problem for the men on the left? No. Technically everyone “benefits”, but the fact is that the lion’s share is given to the highest wage earners, who are a minority.

The new Housing Element is not a “major achievement”, it is an unpopular mandate handed down by politicians who seek to gain favor with Google, Facebook, and Amazon. The lion’s share of new housing units will be expensive, market rate units that are only “affordable” to the highest wage earners. I see no reason to celebrate.

Most of the real estate investing today is done by REIT's. REIT's have suffered in the general economy over the past 3 years, and that suffering is continuing. That's why I am pessimistic about all this imaginary capital actually turning real. Mountain View is hoping for over $5 Billion to appear just to fund the market rate housing development, and to me that seems highly unlikely. If there is some capital available it will have the choice of investing in Palo Alto, Los Altos, Sunnyvale or CUpertino in the very near vicinity. It will be tough to get as much as would allow filling the quotas in all these cities which have been forced to have high hopes.

Then you get oddball cases like these builders remedy projects or Vallco, which are starkly at odds with the local real estate markets. If they do manage to get capital (from odd sources perhaps like Russion Oligarchs in the case of Menlo Park), then that will dampen prospects for other projects that might be more reasonable.

Affordable housing funding is a different bucket, and if only 25% of that target is met, it will have a big effect. One could hope that the lack of capital for the market rate sepculative gouging type projects would help make it easier for builders of all affordable projects.... or at least I do.

I agree that funding is an important part of getting affordable housing built. Raising more money for that seems like a great idea, and I support anyone trying to achieve that.

Can we consider the other side of the balance sheet, how can we get more affordable homes out of the funding we have TODAY? I think a really great common-sense approach would be to provide by-right approval for any 100% affordable housing development at any density anywhere in the city. This would encourage more of the homes to get built and reduce cost and time for the nonprofit developers.

A slightly more clever but complicated approach could be to extend that to anything with an affordability profile like our RHNA for the next cycle. But let's start with the easier one!

Goggle fired 35% of its local offices in 2 years. VMware offices closed in Palo Alto. What is happening is a major drop in local workers, which will result in major drops in business and housing demand.

When Google settled on a policy that employees could work remotely for 2 of the 5 days in a week, that is what cut the office population of Google by 40% nationwide. No layoffs needed. Now that the ad revenue decline has apparently forced them to trim perks like childcare and shed some speculative or perfectionist peripheral development efforts, it's just a tweak.

I do suspect that the vacancy rate in existing apartments is why higher than is widely appreciated these days. It's not clear that much new development will be done. San Francisco has tons of room for more office jobs and tons of empty high end apartments. The biggest issue is that there was never really much of a shortage on apartments, but just jobs moved or people changed preferences to seek to live in a different city, freeing where they had lived before. Some of those empty apartments in San Francisco once housed people who now seek to live in Mountain View, for example.

Unbelievable, the local Google office lost 1700 jobs during the last year and people think everything is normal? This just sounds like trying to say the fireworks explosion is nothing to watch? Bayshore is dead it is permanently postponed. There is no report demonstrating that the demand for apartments or housing in Mountain View is stable. Yes asking rents listed are stable, but that is the MSRP, and everyone knows that free rents and temporary price cuts are negotiated in private. Time to wake up.

According to Zillow the median rent dropped 7% yoy. And given the new apartments coming online and the current interest rates it looks like a lot of apartments are distressed. I also saw a report that vacancies are about 10% in Mountain View. Time to drink the coffee