Mountain View needs housing in North Bayshore; it’s the right thing to do

That is true. It’s from a Facebook post tweeted out Thursday by Mountain View Mayor Ken Rosenberg. Count him among the legions of Silicon Valley residents and activists who would like to do something about it — and one of the few who can. ¶ Rosenberg and

While a final vote on the Bayshore plan won’t take place until November, important choices will be made at a study session by the Mountain View City Council at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall. Among them will be the total number of homes to include. The 9,850 figure is appropriate for the area, according to city staff, to provide critical mass for neighborhood services like a grocery.

The North Bayshore plan has been contentious for years. The big fear is traffic gridlock: The area east of Highway 101 is accessible by only Shoreline, Rengsdorff and San Antonio roads. There are now 28,000 jobs in the area, with another 11,000 planned by 2030. But some residents would prefer to plan little or no housing there.

That would be wrong. It would squander an opportunity not only to alleviate a regional housing shortage but also to shape a whole new neighborhood — a small town, really — with homes, retail and jobs all together, beautifully designed with parks and public spaces.

Not everyone who will live in North Bayshore will work there. (Those millennials: They change jobs like baby boomers used to change bellbottoms.) But their car commutes to, say, Cupertino, or to a Caltrain station, will be opposite the crush, relatively short and likely to be on a shuttle rather than alone.

At the Tuesday meeting — details are outlined in the staff memo with the agenda online — the main debate may be over whether the council should prescribe a phasing plan for the housing it approves.

Gathering information along the way about traffic and about where the new North Bayshore residents actually work is a good idea. Hard limits and timelines are not. Construction will slow when the market does; it’s best to take advantage of boom times.

Rosenberg, Siegel and Councilwoman Pat Showalter won election in 2014 on a platform of planning homes in North Bayshore after an earlier council rejected housing. We hope their ideas carry the day with the other four members this fall.

The region will be better for it, and Mountain View will thrive.