|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Incumbent Ellen Kamei was a fresh face on the Mountain View City Council when she was elected in 2018, but it wasn’t the first time she’d cast her vote on major city decisions. Prior to her first term on council, Kamei served six years on the Environmental Planning Commission, the city body that makes planning-related recommendations to the council and helps shape how new development takes form in Mountain View.
“In the last four years, but in particular the last 10, I’ve supported every housing development project that’s come forward related to affordable housing,” 38-year-old Kamei said of her voting record. “We have been able to pipeline hundreds of new units.”
As Kamei now seeks her second term on the City Council, she said housing continues to be her No. 1 priority if reelected. In particular, she wants to see through the city’s displacement and middle-income housing strategies – work that, like so much else, was waylaid by the pandemic.
“It’s been extremely difficult, and sometimes frustrating, to be on the council and see form-compliant projects that will displace residents in their redevelopment,” Kamei said. “As a council member, what I’ve tried to do is support our expanded Tenant Relocation Assistance (Ordinance).”
Kamei said this can look like asking developers to contribute more public benefits (or money in lieu of providing benefits), or simply asking them to give tenants more time to find their next home when their current rentals are set to be demolished.
“People are allowed to do what they want with their land, but we can try as much as possible to fight and advocate for residents to be able to stay, come back or move to somewhere else in Mountain View,” Kamei said.
While some Mountain View residents continue to be displaced from their homes due to development, others are having to find a new place to park their homes now that enforcement of the city’s oversized vehicle ordinance has begun.
Though the city’s Narrow Streets and Bike Lanes ordinances passed back in 2019, enforcement was stalled due to the 2020 Measure C voter referendum that affirmed the laws, and the now-settled class action lawsuit that challenged them. Kamei voted in support of the Narrow Streets Ordinance in 2019, while fellow incumbent opponents Lucas Ramirez and Alison Hicks did not support it.
“I have received a lot of feedback, particularly recently and in the pandemic, about the dangers in terms of sightline, trash and debris, just general public health and safety,” Kamei said of RVs parked on city streets. “I think there’s a nuanced balance, and for me at the end of the day, I want opportunities where people can be housed.”
Kamei said she and her fellow council members have tried to tackle homelessness with a two-pronged approach, the first of which is keeping people housed.
“We did a very robust rent relief program,” Kamei said of her time on council so far. “We adopted an eviction moratorium, following the state, and people were able to stay in their homes.”
The second piece to her approach to homelessness, Kamei said, is creating pathways to housing for those who are already houseless.
“We have worked hard to augment the (safe parking) program to meet people where they are,” Kamei said. “At first, I think council thought it was just recreation and oversized vehicles (that needed a place to park). What we found is that those are people’s homes, and they (also) need parking for their accessory vehicles: the car that maybe gets them to school or to work. We’ve pivoted (on) that.”
Beyond safe parking, Kamei said the city needs to help connect unhoused people with the services they need to become stabilized and find permanent housing.
“I’m hopeful that as we’re seeing more affordable housing projects, we can tap into more Santa Clara County Measure A funding,” she added.
While the city staff says Mountain View will have no trouble meeting the state-required Regional Housing Needs Allocation – more than 11,000 units of housing – over the next eight years, the city is still falling short of its affordable housing goals. Kamei said she’s worked to bring more affordable units to Mountain View by beefing up the city’s below market rate (BMR) program.
“We’ve increased (the inclusionary units required) to 20% in these new master plan sites like North Bayshore,” Kamei said. “We’ve also been able to expand that below market rate program to townhomes, where we have increased that to 20%. I have supported moving the needle in terms of being creative on how we’re actually getting those units.”
As the city keeps growing, Kamei said another top priority for her is ensuring that public amenities – transportation infrastructure, parks and open space – keep in pace with that growth. She sees the R3 Zoning Update as a good opportunity to address some of the transit issues facing the city.
“I want to see more related to the transit-oriented development opportunities that could be possible as part of R3,” Kamei said. “A lot of the R3 was in 94043, which is great, that’s where I live, but there are multiple other ZIP codes in our city that we need to look at as well.”
Kamei’s key endorsements include the Santa Clara County Democratic Party, Mountain View YIMBY, the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, State Assemblymember Marc Berman and State Senator Josh Becker.
Forgive me, but do these words really even mean anything?
““We’ve increased (the inclusionary units required) to 20% in these new master plan sites like North Bayshore,” Kamei said. “We’ve also been able to expand that below market rate program to townhomes, where we have increased that to 20%. I have supported moving the needle in terms of being creative on how we’re actually getting those units.””
Project after project gets “reluctantly” approved by the City Council without having EVEN 15% BMR units. In this one https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2022/10/26/mountain-view-city-council-approves-san-antonio-road-housing-development-despite-major-frustrations-over-applicants-last-minute-change the developer pulled 3 BMR units off the table AT THE LAST MINUTE, and the project STILL got approved.
Over the last 8-year RHNA cycle, only 12% of housing units https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2021/08/16/mountain-view-seeks-to-update-housing-plans-following-new-requirement-to-allow-11k-new-homes (NOT EVEN 15%) were created for households who earn <$188K (per 2020 census data); these households are 56% of the population. No legislation has been passed to change that number going forward. As far as I can see, local city "requirements" are more like "guidelines" which are RARELY upheld. And now, Google says nevermind to whatever was said before, they just don't wanna build affordable housing at Middlefield Park. https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2022/10/24/planning-commission-supports-huge-middlefield-park-mixed-use-project-despite-concerns-over-googles-affordable-housing-proposal They are willing to donate a bit of land, but one of the richest companies on earth doesn’t want to pay for affordable units, despite their HUGE impact on housing inflation in MV. Shame on them!
The entire community of MV is being played, by the likes of developers and Google. But it never would have happened without leaders in the CA YIMBY movement cleverly working to pass state legislation to “tie the hands” of local city councils. CA YIMBY wants “more housing of any kind” as long as it’s expensive and market-rate, and it very much looks like they are getting it in abundance while over half the population here gets the short end of the stick.
It breaks my heart to watch this play out, all under a banner of “affordable housing”, that’s the worst part. The rich get richer while they pretend to be advocates for “teachers, service workers, and our kids who don’t code”.
I am proudly voting for the candidate who is NOT ENDORSED by Mountain View YIMBY: Li Zhang https://www.liformountainview.org/priorities
Just an observation,
There are MANY resources describing that another major price decline in rentals will hit very soon. In fact the reality is that the rental market is just as endangered as home owners given that the property depreciation will be viral and impact all properties in the next 12 months.
Now if many rental businesses fail because of inflation and interest rate increases, the best solution might be for the private mortgage companies to offer them for free to the public housing sector for tax credits. Since these companies need them to keep from going bankrupt.
This does not need legislation, but it would be nice to have a statute to make it easier. It simply looks like the housing market did not learn from 2008 and made the same mistakes as they did before. Trying to maximize profit on a short term basis without correcting for values that were simply manipulated and worse not even substantiated.
For example no property is examined prior to sale with GPR scanning to determine how sound the construction is. This is an accepted Non Destructive Methode of detecting defects and damage BEFORE a catastrophic event. In fact no one even scans the wood or materials before construction allowing for defectives materials to be used. In effect Garbage Construction Materials are used in a building with no attempts to prevent it.
Thus construction calls these DEFECTS checks instead of telling the truth. They are defective materials and construction. They CLAIM they are harmless when NO SCIENTIFIC PROOF can be proved to substantiate it. And Building Inspections allow for not using best methods to detect these defects intentionally because these detections would devastate the property values.
Especially City Inspections, which don’t appear to follow the building code requirements anyway.