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With no easy answers on the table, the Mountain View City Council will discuss on Monday how to respond to a hot rental market that many fault for displacing scores of tenants. The meeting has huge stakes for a city where 58 percent of residents live in rental units, and new housing can’t seem to be built fast enough to meet demand.
The council will consider a delicate political question of whether the rental market should be forcibly regulated or if landlords can be encouraged to control themselves.
The meeting, set for 6 p.m. on Oct. 19, comes amid plenty of controversy. For weeks, council meetings have been dominated by large, organized crowds of residents who complain that the situation for renters has reached a crisis level.
A range of tenants and housing advocates have called for the city to enact an emergency moratorium on rent increases along with some type of permanent cap on annual rent hikes.
What city staff produced for Monday’s meeting might seem overwhelming for anyone in a decision-making role. The staff report details more than a dozen different options to address rental costs, most of which have been tested by other cities in the area.
Much of the discussion on Monday is likely to center on the idea of some kind of regulation on rents. Rent stabilization measures have been enacted in six Bay Area cities, Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, San Francisco, Hayward and East Palo Alto. In general, those programs allow rent increases of around 2 percent per year, and provide some exceptions for landlords who are making improvements to their properties.
Some rental housing would be immune from such measures. As part of the Costa-Hawkins Act, California cities cannot legally impose rent-control measures on any apartments built after 1995. Mountain View city staff reported that about 90 percent of the apartment units in town were built prior to 1995.
The Mountain View staff report notes that enacting a rent stabilization measure likely wouldn’t be cheap, but its cost could be balanced by fees on landlords. No explicit recommendation is given by city staff on whether a rent stabilization program should be implemented.
The city will also examine a variety of other protections for tenants, including what is known as a just-cause eviction ordinance. Such laws prohibit evictions except under specific causes, such as failure to pay rent or breaking the terms of a lease. City officials could force landlords to offer yearly lease renewals rather than keeping tenants on uncertain month-to-month agreements.
An idea barely mentioned in previous meetings, Mountain View leaders could also decide to have the city subsidize low-income tenants by providing some type of financial aid. This assistance could be one-time money or it could take the form of an ongoing program. Other nearby cities, including Cupertino, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale, have designed programs to provide rent subsidies for lower-income households.
Another idea, proposed by Councilman Mike Kasperzak, would be to encourage landlords to adopt a voluntary set of compassionate practices. The notion received support from landlords’ groups.
Perhaps the most radical of all options, the council could enact an emergency ordinance to temporarily halt all rent increases. Tenants’ advocates have promoted this idea as the only way to prevent what they describe as a sudden round of evictions in recent weeks.
City staff members explained that they did not have much time to research solutions and their list of ideas should be considered preliminary. City Council members are not expected to take action at the study session, but should provide direction to staff on which options they want to pursue.
The meeting will include presentations from three experts in the field: Martin Eicher, former Project Sentinel director, Melissa Morris, an attorney with the Fair Housing Law Project, and Joshua Howard, senior vice president with the California Apartment Association.
The housing study session is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Oct. 19 at the Senior Center at 266 Escuela Ave.
Six of the 7 members of the Mountain View City Council were screened and endorsed as candidates by fictitiously named landlord groups such as the “Housing Council” and the “Tri-County Apartment Association.” They are not going to support any form of rent control. I forwarded the Council information about the rental mediation program in Campbell.
Better if they rent weight control.
“The Mountain View staff report notes that enacting a rent stabilization measure likely wouldn’t be cheap, but its cost could be balanced by fees on landlords.” So, the city is contemplating enacting a measure that limits property-owner rights, but then it intends to charge the property-owner fees for that pleasure. That doesn’t feel right.
Rent control increases rental prices over time, by reducing supply and also by making wasteful uses of space more affordable. I hope it doesn’t pass. We need lots more housing, not legislative band aids on a housing crisis.
Apartments build after 1995 are exempt?! So most of the new luxury apartments that Prometheus and others built recently would be exempt? They can continue to charge $5,000 a month for a two bedroom, yet a smaller landlord with a more modest property has to follow all these rules? That’s insane! City council, bad deal. Just say no.
If the laws of supply and demand hold true then the plethora of new apartments being built in Mountain View and Palo Alto should drive rents down. This should be the case UNLESS owners decide they’d rather have empty units (and write off the loss) instead of providing housing at (somewhat) reasonable costs.
In the interim the City of Mountain View could discuss providing secure parking for the increasing number of people living in their automobiles / motor homes / trailers. I’ve watched as more and more sections of roadway are marked “No Parking between the hours of 8:00 pm and 7:00 am.” This was done on streets adjacent to bathroom facilities making the situation worse and worse for those unfortunate enough to be left out of the increasing salaries being paid to our tech squadron.
Incidentally, current rents don’t account for tech salaries either. In my neighborhood the houses that rent house three or four unrelated people sharing the (large) rent. The result? Cars are everywhere and the traffic continues to worsen. I wish the City Council the best of luck on this tumultuous issue.
James Thurber: “Incidentally, current rents don’t account for tech salaries either. In my neighborhood the houses that rent house three or four unrelated people sharing the (large) rent. The result? Cars are everywhere and the traffic continues to worsen.”
What? How can that possibly be true??? Clearly someone(s) is not with the program! Haven’t you heard…parking is terribly overrated and a poor use of perfectly good land, and certainly not needed for residents of this fair city. Mountain View’s new world order consists of all residents (and commuters alike) walking, biking and hopping on BRT as it zooms up and down El Camino Real, presumably while holding hands and singing kumbaya.
#socialengineering #assimilation #resistanceisfeudal #ifyoudontlikeitleave
This is a really tough problem to solve. I managed to buy a home here but the mortgage is outrageous, my family is strapped, and I really don’t think I can handle an large increase in taxes.
Not sure how we could pay for the costs associated with subsidized housing. Which I do support in theory but would be hard pressed to pay for in practice.
I know this might not be a view that gets much sympathy but not all of us homeowners are rolling in money. A lot of us put every penny into buying a house and don’t have a lot left over.
With all the rising values, the city has prop tax revenues up 12% this year after 8% last year. They sure would no need to raise tax rates in any way.
It will be quite amusing when owners of smaller pre 1995 properties start selling their properties to developers or do condo conversions themselves and sell the units. I know that’s what I would do asap.
The net result will be a diminishing supply of lower (relatively) priced rentals. Law of unintended consequences and simple economics
The city needs more housing so why not rezone some neighborhoods and allow homeowners to add-on in-law type housing? The city just spent 2 hours at the last meeting debating a homeowner who is trying to do just that while they had him in limbo on his reconstruction.
There are a lot of long time, even life long, residents in Mountain View who are living house poor in homes they’ve owned since the 50’s. Many struggle to stay because it is “home”. Why not revise zoning, lower the permit fees, and even offer these long time owners financing to add a rental unit onto their property? The fixed income long time resident will get a small boost in their monthly income and another available unit will be on the market taking a step closer to balancing the supply and demand that is driving up rents in the first place.
Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, San Francisco, Hayward and East Palo Alto?
These are now Mountain View’s role models? Stay out of the free market economy…you lack the expertise to fully understand the consequences.
@the_punnisher
NP…
at least the city hasn’t given up on your block in order for a developer to come in and build adjacent to it. That’s the issue my husband and I are facing. We’re retired, BTW, and that’s the rumor round here. Letting the homeless have an encampment here so our property values decrease for the potential developers. Coming to a neighborhood near you.
make more housing: “The city needs more housing so why not rezone some neighborhoods and allow homeowners to add-on in-law type housing? The city just spent 2 hours at the last meeting debating a homeowner who is trying to do just that while they had him in limbo on his reconstruction.”
No, that’s not what happened.
That property was ORIGINALLY built with TWO structures on it in 1935, which was not atypical for that neighborhood when it was developed back then. The homeowner was seeking to make repairs/remodel parts of both structures. The city apparently did not realize that there were two structures on this small lot when the homeowner requested the permits, nor on the THREE occasions the city inspectors came out to the property. What? When someone at the city finally realized that there were TWO structures on the property, the city issued the stop work order telling the homeowner that the 2nd structure was an illegal structure, and at one point going so far as accusing the homeowner of having illegally built it – which he did not. The homeowner was then forced to prove to the city that the 2nd structure – in fact – had existed on that lot since the lot was originally built in 1935 via county records and property tax records…even though the city had records demonstrating that the property was originally developed as TWO structures.
There is a LOT more to this convoluted story and why it wound up as a quasi-judicial hearing in front of city council.
You can read an article the kind of summarizes the 2+ hour hearing, here.
http://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2015/10/16/home-fix-up-sets-off-legal-quagmire
Or you can watch the hearing on the city’s website here:
http://mountainview.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=2028
Click item 7.2. The hearing starts at 1 hour and 58 minutes into the council meeting. It was VERY interesting to watch.
The basic problem is in housing demand/supply imbalance coupled with lack of efficient transportation. HW85 used to be at 45mph during rush hours, now it is at 15mhp at best. City council should look for ways to address these two major problems instead of putting solutions that are counter productive and unfair to one special subgroup of property owners.
Rent control or stablization imposes undue penalties on minority and creates incentives for underground subleases of sub-market rent units. Who is going to subsidize the mortgage of the owners? It also creates a regulatory organization that has conflict of interest – much like Berkeley rent control boards. Once created it will never go away.
My parents built out their corner lot for supporting my father’s racing hobby. They have chain link fencing and a tin storage shed for storing yard equipment.
I figure that by turning the garage into living space by using office cubicles, they could house 10 people easily. At $2,000/month per head, they could clear 20 grand/month, easy. That tin shed could house another person, easy. Another warm body @ $2,000/month
Such a deal, MV! [/sarcasm]