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The Mountain View City Council has allocated $1 million towards an affordable housing fund for low-income families in partnership with the Los Altos Mountain View Community Foundation, a nonprofit that supports community impact initiatives.
The fund is set up to attract donations to support affordable housing projects in Mountain View. While seeded with a city grant, the foundation will manage the fund and raise money from philanthropic donors, according to a LAMVCF press release.
“This is a way for ordinary people to contribute to the development of affordable housing,” Mountain View Council member Pat Showalter said at a Jan. 27 council meeting. “I’m really pleased to see this creative mechanism set up so that you, or I, or anybody could donate $10 or $10,000 or a million dollars to this fund, and help with what’s really one of the major crises of our time.”
The partnership drew praise from John Cowan, a LAMVCF board member, who said that he was excited to raise funds so that more people could afford to live in Mountain View.
The fund is intended to support affordable housing options for local workers, including essential workers like teachers, police officers and nurses.
“We have city workers who are having to commute. You have restaurants who are not able to hire staff,” LAMVCF CEO Crysta Krames said. “There’s a quality of life issue that you worry about.”
According to the council report, the city’s goal is to achieve a “one-to-one match” so that every dollar of the city grant is matched by $1 of donor money. The city will accept monetary contributions of any size.
Mountain View Housing Director Wayne Chen said the affordable housing fund is “intended to be flexible” so donations can go towards any of the six existing projects in development or any new efforts approved by the council.
Affordable housing has long been a high priority for the city. With this recent appropriation, $120 million will have been invested in affordable housing initiatives since 2014, according to the council report.
The city will have full control over how its grant and any philanthropic donations are spent, according to the council report. If the city finds LAMVCF has not brought in sufficient funding it can retract its $1 million contribution.
The fund has garnered just over $57,000 in philanthropic donations so far, according to Krames.
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The most effective way to increase affordable housing is to ban foreign ownership. US real estate in prime markets has been long been gamed, including money laundering, crippling the ability of young American-born families to compete bidding for their first home. Texas and Florida are both considering such laws, and California should at least have a thoughtful civic discussion.
Foreign owners are okay so long as they move here legally, occupy the home, and contribute to the community like we all should.