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The Mountain View City Council is poised to extend the city’s safe parking programs for another year at its upcoming meeting, but questions loom about the long term viability of the program, given plans to develop two of the three existing sites into affordable housing.
The city’s three safe parking sites – Shoreline Lot B, Evelyn, and Terra Bella – give people experiencing homelessness and living out of their vehicles a place to safely park 24 hours a day, seven days a week. City staff recommends that the council take action to extend the program until June 30, 2023. The safe parking program lots have a capacity of up to 101 parking spaces, according to the staff report, and serve 130 to 150 individuals on average.
“The City has been instrumental in securing three lots for the provision of safe parking at Shoreline Amphitheatre Lot B, which is owned by the City but leased to Live Nation, during the concert season; Evelyn Avenue, which is leased from the Valley Transit Agency (Santa Clara Valley Transportation Agency); and Terra Bella Avenue, which is leased from Terra Bella II, LLC (an Alta Housing company),” the staff report states.
Mountain View Mayor Lucas Ramirez said while the council intends to extend these programs through June 2023, questions remain over what comes next.
The Evelyn Avenue safe parking site “will be redeveloped into affordable housing,… the intended use of that property,” Ramirez told the Voice ahead of the meeting. “So eventually we will have to find either a replacement lot or some other way of winding down safe parking there.”
Alta Housing, which owns the Terra Bella lot, also intends to eventually develop affordable housing, “so similarly, we will need to think about where the folks living there ultimately will go,” Ramirez added.
The mayor said there’s no intention of development for the Shoreline Amphitheatre lot, though the program there is contingent on the continued support of Live Nation, the entertainment company that owns the amphitheater.
During past discussions, council members have raised questions about if and how the parking program could be expanded.
According to the staff report, the city has exhausted the measures that “could be easily taken” to expand the program. But there are still some possibilities to consider, such as renegotiating contract terms with Live Nation for additional space at the Shoreline lot or considering a possible redesign of the Evelyn lot to increase capacity.
“If it is of interest to the Council, given the magnitude of staff and funding resources that would be required, a project to explore expansion of safe parking spaces could be considered as part of the next biannual Council work plan process, which will commence in February 2023,” the staff report states.
Despite the program’s success, there are still a number of individuals living out of vehicles parked on the street rather than in a safe parking lot. According to city counts taken in January 2022, there were 135 RVs, 18 passenger vehicles, and 63 other vehicles that showed signs of being lived in, for a total of 216 vehicles. Compared to previous counts, the proportion of “other” vehicles went up and “passenger” vehicles went down, “suggesting a rising trend in the use of such (other) vehicles (e.g. unhitched trailers, vans) for this purpose,” the January count report stated.
From 2017 to 2020, the count of vehicles in the public right-of-way ranged from 250 to 300 vehicles on average, with the highest count in July 2020 with 320 vehicles, city Chief Communications Officer Lenka Wright told the Voice.
“Overall, the trend for lived-in vehicles has remained fairly consistent although there has been a modest decrease in the number of vehicles,” Wright said.
If you subsidize (tolerate) something, you get more of it. SF’s homeless population is a real-world example of it. Mountain View should not be emulating that.
Someone who lives in an RV isn’t homeless. That is a lifestyle choice. Sorry, but they need to get jobs and rent apartments like everyone else. Homeless camps are eyesores.
Just another note regarding David Avny of 184 Centre Street building and ADOI LLC.
Last year he had to replace a broken refrigerator for my friend and neighbor. That refrigerator broke last week. And instead of arranging to get a new one installed, he told my neighbor to contact the company for a warranty repair.
And on top of that he claimed to drive to Pleasanton to “borrow” a friends minifridge to hold her till the situation was fixed.
But that one was broken too. the control knob does not work. He advised to put something on the door to prop it open to reduce the freezing. But that would increase electrical use, make the refrigerator heat up just when we have a heat wave?
The apartments here have no air conditioning unless installed by the tenant.
And oh by the way he decided to “take a trip” instead of solving the problem, is THIS professional LANDLORDING?
With regards to David Avny of 184 Centre Street AND ALL OTHER LANDLORDS
Please understand this, once any AGENCY of any State or County makes a declaration of a value of a property, and it is significantly LESS than the original value. For example the history of the building had it at one point worth $5M, now only $3.8M then all State, County and City governments cannot deviate from that determination.
With regards to property taxes “the local tax assessor is responsible for calculating the assessed value of properties in their municipality. While some aspects of the calculation can vary, they generally take the fair market value of a property and multiply it by the assessment ratio for where you live, then multiply that figure by the local “millage rate.” In property tax terms, a “mill” is one 1,000th of a dollar, equal to $1 of tax for each $1,000 of assessment.”
Since the rental contracts are based on the value of the property when signed or agreed upon, when determining whether the Landlord is in BREACH OF CONTRACT by covertly declaring the value officially with any agency regarding value is not what the contract was based on. This becomes a BREACH OF CONTRACT. In effect one can argue the entire rent collected under those conditions are not lawful.
This is what has happened here too. The idea is that the landlord is in breech of contract when they covertly intentionally reduce the value of their own property for tax benefit purposes. Since the CSFRA clearly states that the reduction of value is be default a reduction in housing services, because the rental value has been reduced by the landlord, there is a required reduction of rents for any rental controlled city that has that provision in its rental control laws. To those in these rent controlled units, you MUST check to see the property tax histories, and if your landlords did systemic appraisal downgrades, you are ENTITLED to rent reductions under CSFRA