San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Lenny Siegel: Mountain View builds housing near offices
Everyone seems to agree that the Bay Area is suffering through a protracted housing emergency, and many housing advocates suggest that taking away local control is the way to get housing built. Yet Mountain View is able to build lots of housing, with community support, because the city itself decides how and where to build new housing.
State legislation favors transit-oriented development, and we’ve done a lot of that. But Mountain View, similar to many suburban communities, doesn’t have a lot of transit. So we’re emphasizing residential development amid our centers of tech employment, such as the North Bayshore area where Google’s headquarters is located. Residents will be able to walk or bike to work, and we’re planning to build new public transit.
Mountain View’s primary strategy is to convert suburban office parks and shopping centers into mixed-use, medium-density neighborhoods complete with parks, schools, retail, jobs and transit. By giving more people the opportunity to live near where they work, we expect to limit regional commute traffic. By creating complete neighborhoods, we expect to limit local traffic.
By shortening commutes and improving public transit, we will reduce the vehicle miles traveled per person and thus reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. That is, building homes near employment won’t just help fix the housing crisis. It helps to save the planet.
Mountain View has built thousands of new housing units since 2010, and we are planning to increase our housing supply by as much as 85 percent over our 2010 count.
Mountain View, of course, has its share of “drawbridge people” — homeowners who’ve achieved comfort and want to pull up the figurative drawbridge behind them. Yet some of the reasons people are skeptical of new development are valid.
They are worried about traffic and parking.
Or they are tired of the noise, dust, and lanes closed because of construction.
This is where local control comes in. Rather than having the state give developers a blank check to do whatever they want, our city government has the authority to direct development into areas that won’t undermine existing neighborhoods.
We have the ability to design new buildings to blend into existing development. We use new housing to create amenities to serve the folks who are already living here.
Unfortunately, most new housing is luxury priced. Still, increasing the housing supply to try to keep up with demand helps slow the increases in prices and rents. More important, since the state passed enabling legislation in late 2017, we have required that 15 percent of new housing units be affordable (subsidized), with a goal of 20 percent in growth areas.
Our plan to ensure that 20 percent of the homes in North Bayshore are subsidized should alone generate 2,000 affordable homes, more than the 1,600 built in Mountain View’s entire history. (And we’ve been approving and funding a steady stream of standalone affordable housing projects.)
Of course, Mountain View can’t make up for the Silicon Valley housing deficit on its own. I believe the best way to get housing built in places such as Palo Alto and Cupertino is to explain and show how Mountain View’s approach enhances the quality of life, as well as the economic vitality, of our community. If developers are exempted from local oversight, projects with undesirable side effects will create a backlash and make it difficult to build more housing in the long run.
That’s not to say there’s no role for the state or regional agencies. In particular, I support Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to provide transportation funding to cities that build housing (and deny it when they do not), as long as there is an appropriate metric of housing needs, and it doesn’t raid promised funding sources, such as allocations specified in state SB1, which voters defended in November by defeating Proposition 6.
Mountain View hasn’t solved all of the challenges created by the regional housing crisis. We’re struggling to find places and funding to build the schools that must accompany residential growth. We’re figuring out ways to subsidize housing for moderate-income people, such as teachers. Unfortunately, we have some new developments that are demolishing naturally affordable apartments. And there are rumors that our newly elected City Council will try to roll back the housing plans the city has made over the past four years.
Mountain View, with no state mandate but with the support of its people, is planning to squeeze tens of thousands of new homes into our 12 square miles. We will strengthen our economy by making it easier for employers to attract and retain workers. We will improve the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And we will improve our quality of life by creating 21st century, complete neighborhoods near our flourishing tech workplaces. As we succeed, we will serve as a model for other cities in our region.