Mountain View city staff is confident that the city’s housing element – a once-every-eight years process where jurisdictions must prove how they’ll meet state-mandated housing obligations – is going to meet state standards. But Mayor Lucas Ramirez isn’t so optimistic.
“I don’t disagree with the sentiment that we should strive for compliance,” Ramirez said during a Dec. 13 meeting where the council discussed the latest housing element draft.
But, he continued, “I think it’s important to recognize that many cities are struggling to achieve compliance.”
Jurisdictions in Southern California are about a year ahead in the housing element update process, Ramirez said, and yet 45% of their housing elements are still out of compliance. Given these statistics, “I don’t share the optimism that staff has,” Ramirez said.
The city submitted its second draft of the housing element to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), the state agency leading the housing element approval process, on Nov. 18. City Senior Planner Ellen Yau said staff met with HCD on Dec. 12 to receive some initial comments on that draft, which mainly focused on adding detail to existing sections of the element.
“We believe we can make these revisions by Dec. 21, and then the third draft could be out for public review by Dec. 22,” Yau said. “Then we can resubmit to HCD Jan. 3, at the beginning of the year.”
Yau said that HCD did not provide any new comments on the draft housing element’s sites inventory, the list of sites that could be reasonably redeveloped with housing in the next eight years. Mountain View is required by the state to plan for 11,135 additional units in the next eight years, and the latest draft puts the city’s total sites inventory at 17,609, meaning the city is well above its requirements.
The state also requires that cities “affirmatively further fair housing,” or AFFH, meaning that cities commit to getting affordable housing built, and that this housing isn’t condensed in low-resourced areas of the city.
City staff said that in their latest meeting with the state, HCD didn’t provide any new comments about how the draft element addresses affordable housing. But Ramirez was still uneasy about how the current draft distributes potential affordable units throughout the city.
“I have a concern that 95% of our affordable housing will be located in areas where 55% or more of the residents are non-white, which is in conflict with the AFFH goals that are established by the state,” he said. “... Sometimes HCD, despite positive and productive conversations, will nevertheless surprise a jurisdiction with a pretty robust comment letter at the end of the review period.”
Ramirez proposed that the council consider adding some city-owned sites to its inventory, in the event that HCD identifies an issue with the city’s plan for affordable housing. City owned sites are often in high-resource areas, Ramirez said, and it’s easier for the city to control the type of projects and the timing, making it easier to assure it will be developed with affordable housing in the next eight years. The majority of the council supported this idea in the event that HCD has an issue with the draft element’s affordable housing plans.
The council also supported adding a program to the housing element draft that would eliminate parking requirements for 100% affordable housing projects, which makes projects more financially feasible to build.
Finally, the council supported reducing the number of units the city expects to get built on a property located at 1500 N. Shoreline Boulevard, the only property on the sites inventory that’s larger than 10 acres. The city's inventory originally estimated that the location could have around 2,000 new units, which Ramirez said he believes is too lofty a goal. With the council’s recommendation, staff will reduce the number of units expected to come out of this site to a more likely number.
Comments
Registered user
another community
on Dec 16, 2022 at 11:40 am
Registered user
on Dec 16, 2022 at 11:40 am
It's an interesting question to consider as to just how you divide the city up to classify areas as having over 55% non-white residents. The granularity of the segmenting can pre-dispose issues or eliminate them. The city is only 12 square miles in size or less than 1% of the land in Santa Clara County.
So suppose you make many squares out of the city and you then find that the squares representing 10% of the total number area all that have fewer than 55% non white residents. (I would really rather consider affluence level rather than none white ness, but whatever). Or maybe it's 20%. So then, are there really city owned properties in these areas?
For example, using large groupings, advocates often say that south of El Camino real is ap ortion of the city needing to home more affordable housing. But it's only 20% of the city, because they also say don't count areas too close to El Camino Real because you do have affordable housing (and transportation services) there. It seems to me that the only city owned parcels there are at Cuesta Park. It does't make sense to me to argue for reducing open space by using it for affordable housing. Already it appears that a vast majority of the users of Cuesta Park are what could be called the non affluent segment of the population. The place doesn't seem to be that far out of their home territory. Kiind of like cutting off services to the non affluent in order to help them. Having that open space to go to is a big benefit to living in Mountain View for a lot of non affluent residents.
I'd say that there are more smaller less used city properties actually located n the areas with a majority of non affluent residents already. Such properties are more suitable for housing than is Cuesta Park becuase you aren't taking away any services from non affluent people. It's not the rich people who benefit from Cuesta Park. The case could be made more easily for the golf course being more utilized by well off people.
Registered user
another community
on Dec 16, 2022 at 1:36 pm
Registered user
on Dec 16, 2022 at 1:36 pm
Street parking only for thousands of MV residents? Really?
Registered user
Old Mountain View
on Dec 16, 2022 at 1:50 pm
Registered user
on Dec 16, 2022 at 1:50 pm
Just an Observation,
There is good reason to be skeptical. Of all things trying to reduce parking spaces per housing units is a disaster waiting to happen. In cities like Boston, you have people actually trying to kill each other for a parking space.
The reality is that in some cases, not just a "lot" but an entire section of a city needs to be redesigned, meaning roads, parking and other aspects. But we have not done that here, one of the SMARTEST cities in the U.S.
Especially when the high cost housing getting completed in 2023 is likely going to have much higher rates of vacancy or much lower revenues. The crazy idea of build it and they will come is over here.
There is a dramatic change in the profile of housing demand occurring, and no one is adjusting to it.