-PDBM/FXT N BAYSHORE
Balancing Mountain View’s jobs and housing growth through the years
Continued from page 1
offices. And despite significant community support for zoning for 1,100 North Bayshore homes in 2012, Abe-Koga and three other council members successfully opposed it. She said she still opposes the idea, as does fellow members Ronit Bryant and Jac Siegel, despite his stated concern about adequate housing. They have various alternatives: Councilman Siegel wants to limit office growth and Bryant and Abe-Koga suggested they may support that as well. Bryant says solving the city’s housing problem “depends to a great degree” on efforts to subsidize below-market-rate homes; the city has approved fewer than 150 in recent years. Regional problem Nearly every council member who spoke to the Voice suggested that other cities need to build more housing for all of Mountain View’s jobs. Calls for a “regional” solution were common, though the council cried foul when it was given an F grade years ago for failing to meet a housing quota set by the
12
1990
2000
2009
2013
2030 general plan projection
2030 estimate (based on recent office development plans)
Council-rejected 2030 “Increased housing” general plan alternative
Jobs
61,490
77,330
60,460
69,000 (estimated)
82,230
95,000*
83,896 (estimate based on an additional 500,000 square feet of office)
Household
27,823
32,432
33,270
34,136
41,129
41,129
50,870
2.21
2.38
1.99
2.02
1.99
2.3
1.64
Ratio of jobs to homes
SOURCES: ABAG, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU AND CITY OF MOUNTAIN VIEW
*Voice staff calculation
Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), while cities without so many jobs got higher marks. ABAG is the regional body that looks at big-picture planning issues such as housing and transportation, among other things. “We don’t have even close to having enough for everyone who works here,” Siegel said. “It’s certainly a good thing to do, but I don’t know how you do it.” He recalled being told that 10,000 homes were needed to solve the city’s housing problem. “You wouldn’t want to live here if we did that,” Siegel said. Bryant made controversial comments in 2012 comparing the proposed North Bayshore housing to Chinese factory dorms where workers “do not
■ Mountain View Voice ■ MountainViewOnline.com ■ March 14, 2014
live happily ever after.” She said in an email that part of the reason she opposed 1,100 units of North Bayshore housing was that it wasn’t enough to support a community there, causing many more car trips into the city’s center. “It is generally accepted that a neighborhood must have about 5,000 people to make a local grocery store viable,” Bryant said. “In other words, the limited number of units proposed would not create a neighborhood capable of supporting retail, a grocery store, a school, the kind of services that our residents expect.” Despite acknowledging that North Bayshore has 580 acres, not including streets, when it comes to finding a place for
housing there, Bryant said in an email, North Bayshore “is actually quite small.” Lenny Siegel, who has launched a “campaign for a balanced Mountain View,” has said exactly the opposite. No housing for North Bayshore In 2012 council members chose against an “increased housing alternative” for the city’s general plan that would have allowed its housing stock to grow to 50,870 units by 2030, including an unspecified number of new homes in North Bayshore. Instead, the council-approved plan allows Mountain View’s housing stock to grow to 41,129 homes, said planning director Randy Tsuda.
The number now sits just above 34,000, while the city’s current job count is estimated to be near 70,000, said city planner Martin Alkire. The environmental impact report for the general plan expiring in 2030 “concluded that the increased housing alternative was an environmentally superior alternative,” Tsuda said. Jac Siegel seemed to disagree with the EIR, citing impacts on traffic within city limits and on wildlife such as the rare burrowing owl at Shoreline Park, potentially hunted by house cats. “People have pets, like cats, which get out,” Siegel said. As a landlord himself, Siegel said making rules against having pets “doesn’t work, in my opinion.”