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To help address Mountain View’s rising homelessness, Google officials are willing to cut the city a generous check. But donating an empty lot to use as a safe parking site for people sleeping in cars? That is off the table, they say.
At its Tuesday, Oct. 1 meeting, the Mountain View City Council pressured the city’s resident tech giant to take a more hands-on approach toward the growing number of residents who lack stable housing. These pleas came when Google’s development team sought the city’s support for its so-called Landings project, a new office campus and parking garage development in the heart of the company’s North Bayshore headquarters, located near the 2000 block of Landings Drive.
That office project is expected to provide $44.6 million in community benefits, which includes wetlands protections and upgrades for the city’s bike trails and parks. While those perks were appreciated, city officials described the housing crisis as a much more urgent need.
Among the ideas, Councilwoman Margaret Abe-Koga suggested Google could repurpose the shuttered Gold’s Gym on Shoreline Boulevard that it purchased. The site already has showers and facilities that would make it perfect for use as a temporary shelter.
Councilman John McAlister suggested the city could cover insurance and liability if Google allowed one of its vacant sites to be used as a temporary safe parking site for people living in vehicles.
“You have a large area that won’t be developed for five years. Maybe we can address this issue and come to an agreement?” he said. “For you to contribute land would be a much better benefit than giving us dollars.”
The Google’s delegation did not mince words in its response.
“Google will not be participating in the safe parking program,” said Michael Tymoff, Google real estate director. “We’re open to discussion, but I’ll reiterate that we won’t be participating in the safe parking program.”
Tymoff did not detail why, except to say that Google officials had “safety, security and liability” concerns.
Perhaps in anticipation of this request, Google officials were ready to present a package of other initiatives the company is taking to aid the homeless, including $4 million in grants the company has contributed to local nonprofits since 2016.
In a new announcement, Google officials say the company’s $1 billion housing initiative would provide funding to two affordable housing projects in Mountain View. Additionally, the company’s representatives say they are providing a $5 million advance to the Housing Trust Silicon Valley to help secure an unspecified property for a housing project in the city. Tymoff also suggested that $2.5 million of the community benefit funds could be directed toward a “homeless navigation center.”
Left unsaid, the company could soon become the largest housing developer in Mountain View with its plans to eventually build 6,000 housing units near its corporate campus.
Regardless of Google’s efforts, the visible signs of homelessness is spreading to the company’s doorstep. Like other neighborhoods of Mountain View, the North Bayshore tech district shows evidence of people living out of their vehicles.
A city count from last month found nearly 50 inhabited vehicles along North Bayshore streets. This includes seven vehicles parked along Pear Avenue, where a 231,000 square-foot office is being built for Google, and 15 more lived-in cars are located on Landings Drive, where the company is constructing a new 800,000 square-foot workplace.
More homeless individuals will likely be setting up in the area in the future. Last week, City Council members approved the first reading of a parking ban on oversized vehicles on narrow streets, which is expected to push people living in RVs and trailers out of the city’s suburban neighborhoods. These oversized vehicles will likely relocate to the city’s industrial areas, including North Bayshore.
Mountain View officials are planning next month to launch the city’s largest safe parking site right near Google’s headquarters. Under that plan, one of the city-owned parking lots at Shoreline Amphitheatre will be repurposed to take in as many as 40 inhabited vehicles.
The homelessness issue was an impassioned, but tangential discussion at the Oct. 1 meeting. The main topic of the night was the community benefits that Google would provide as part of its so-called Landings project, an 800,000 square foot office that would be the second showpiece campus for the company. The Landings project has been a long time coming: city officials originally granted Google the building rights back in 2015.
Google offered a package of amenities in the North Bayshore area, including $15 million in habitat protections for Permanente Creek and improvements to the Stevens Creek Trail.
Council members were less appreciative of other benefits proposed by Google that they criticized for being self-serving. They asked for some amenities, such as for irrigation, to be considered requirements, not public benefits.
In the end, the council preferred to have discretion in allocating most of the community benefit funding.
Update: made revisions to clarify city actions and Google’s housing proposals.
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I think the homeless issue is devastating. I’m a retired recruiter and all I see are high-paid technologist taking over Silicon Valley and squishing the hourly rate minimum wage person on the street because they can’t afford their rents anymore because of the greed of the landlord’s because they can get top dollar where is our Humanity. Google is an international company with its founders who are billionaires, they have created this problem and they should be offering Solutions that cover several hundred they shouldn’t be skimping, what needs to happen is they need to be homeless for a few days and sleep in a car and have to beg for food then they would turn around quickly, God says we are supposed to love thy neighbor as thyself, Google you know you can do much much better the problem is people in the Silicon Valley are selfish when they need to be selfless. God bless you
I don’t think you can hold just Google accountable. The city’s council has given Google free reign for years with no consideration of the negative impacts its had on its residents.
What are the chances the “temporary solution” proposed for the former Gold’s Gym would be TEMPORARY? At the end of 5 years Google would come under serious fire for (and possivly prevented form) evicting the homeless and there would likely be no other solution in sight. I totally understand their position. There’s no way that would turn out well. Google is not a social service agency.
I do hold Google responsible because it has had a free reign on the city council and buying up propriety and Google is not a social service agency but remember it has billions of dollars and it has been helped in large part to its users and the city of Mountain View and they are just not doing enough coming up short for the thousands of techies they hire at Google Plex which pays high salaries compared to the minimum wage backbone people who are being pushed out buy high rents having to live in trailers or cars not because they want to but because the rents have doubled and or tripled and that is because of the large companies like Google, Facebook, Uber, twitter, Oracle, Cisco, Intel, Netflix and Apple just to name a few……When are we as a society going to stand up for our neighbors for what is right is right and what is wrong is clearly wrong for there is a huge imbalance in our silicon valley and its only getting worse if left unchecked, Blessings john~
Mountain View was a better town before Google.All the wealth influx has turned things upside down. Sure my house doubled but so what?
Two½ part problem. One available space. Two cleanliness. So you find locations and turn space into temporary mobil home parks with few things included trash water and health and well ness along with job training so these people can become those high wage earners if work (visas are good enough to hire then good old American blue colarworkers should be too)and relocation services.seams easy and controlled. But the second part of the cleanliness is the out right ugly and dirt dirty appearance of the Rv itself
If your gonna take these programs as a way of life and transition then take a professional stance and up keep the vehicle and mobility of the vehicle. Really what Google should be doing is helping people with employment first and foremost and with that relocation will follow.
If google hires me with no experience and put me through a payed apprenticeship And asked me to relocate to another location why not. What needs to happen is what’s right. Dont deal with a problem improve upon what makes it. All of us can stand together and weed out bad growth by planting good growth. Oh and that ½ thing is permitting this will be a yearlong permit with vehicle and employment checks that are directly funded by the program users. You are no longer paying rent electric and water garbage so you can afford this $2000 a year program and if you dont want to then we gotta move on.
@Daniel, Google sucks in the most qualified talents in the Valley.
A lot of workers in mid tier companies would like to be hired by Google.
And here you are, asking them to hire some random people from the street.
Perhaps if the city was not expending so much on the healthcare and pensions of safety officers and public employees, they’d have sufficient funds to help the homeless. The city needs a wake up call to get their expenses in line. It should NOT be requesting private industry to perform the city’s tasks.
Not a fan of the Goog, but the council really asked them to donate a lot? Pathetic
Yes, lets spend more money on it.
San Francisco has been spending $37,000 per homeless person for years now. Has their homeless problem improved?
What no one is willing to discuss is how many of the homeless are drug addicts. First make it illegal to possess drugs, then they can be arrested and put into drug rehab.
Also, change the law so shoplifters are subject to arrest instead of tying the hands of the shop owners and the police when the drug addicts walk out of the stores with merchandise to sell to support their habit.
As long as it is easy to be a drug addict with all your needs taken care of, why improve yourself?
As to housing being too high, the bay area has some of the highest housing costs in the country, so why are the homeless here?
California has 1/2 of all the homeless in the country, because there is a very lucrative “Homeless Industry” that is filling the pockets of many entrepreneurs that are doing everything they can to INCREASE the homeless population, which results in a bigger budget for them.
Google is not a charity, they should not be held responsible to solve homelessness in Mountain View. Our city council should work with charity, NGO, community services to address it, more important, enforce law to protect residents’ interests firSt.
You report that “Google is not a charity” True. It is a government-created profit-seeking entity operated for the advancement its top managers and board members. The corporate bigwigs at Google do not care about anyone in the community – except its employees. And even its employees can be easily replaced.