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A plan to preserve affordable homes sailed through the City Council last week, giving hope to low-income tenants who want to remain in Mountain View but struggle paying market-rate rents.
In a unanimous vote, the City Council backed a “community ownership action plan” that will loan local organizations money to buy and preserve older apartments. The council also approved a city staff recommendation to increase funding for the initiative from $4 million to $5 million, with the goal of attracting an additional $20 million from outside sources.
The $25 million would then go towards the purchase and preservation of 50 apartments covered under the city’s rent control laws. The plan is the first of its kind in Mountain View.
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“This work was motivated by the very painful experience happening in our community where we saw naturally affordable units getting demolished, our residents displaced and a real frustration [from] our council on what we could do to help,” Council member Ellen Kamei said at the June 23 meeting.
In the last few years, Mountain View has developed different strategies to help house low-income residents. The city has strengthened tenant protection laws, invested in affordable housing projects, supported expanding home ownership opportunities and updated its homelessness response plan.
But there are still large affordability gaps, according to the city staff report. Housing costs remain high in Mountain View and older rent-controlled apartments are susceptible to demolition and market-rate redevelopment.
To address some of these challenges, the community ownership action plan, or COAP, seeks to support “mission-oriented” organizations that prioritize affordability and stability over maximizing financial returns, according to the staff report. The COAP also promotes a shared governance structure with the goal of giving residents a greater say in how to meet their housing needs.
“It is really about starting with people first and figuring out the financing needed to make it sustainable over time,” Housing Director Wayne Chen said.
The COAP could support various kinds of housing models. In Mountain View, conversations have largely centered around having community land trusts buy buildings and then rent units to tenants, although there has been some talk about converting to ownership models over time, Chen said.
While the city is currently focused on converting 50 housing units over the next five years, the COAP lays the foundation to scale up, depending on funding availability, Chen said. He added that the funding also is meant to be flexible. According to the staff report, loans could be provided with low or no interest and repayment could be deferred or forgiven based on certain criteria.
To help projects get off the ground, the City Council supported a streamlined administrative approval process. They also backed a staff recommendation to increase funding from $75,000 to $500,000 to help organizations increase their capacity to take on these projects. The money could go towards things like retaining technical assistance or establishing learning partnerships with developers.
The initiative received strong support not only from the council but also the public.
“Knowing that we have the support of the city is huge,” said Alex Brown, a Mountain View mobile home park resident who serves on the Rental Housing Committee. “It helps people feel much more secure.”
I thought we were running out of money which is why we were trying to approve a $700million bond. But now we have $5 million?
Maybe they shouldn’t have passed rent control in the first place…..