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Alta Housing’s latest project, which proposes to build 108 fully affordable housing units on Terra Bella Avenue, was enthusiastically approved by the Mountain View City Council Tuesday night.
The project represents a unique moment of cross-company collaboration: Public Storage, which owns a site that neighbors Alta Housing’s 1020 Terra Bella Ave. property, will donate half an acre of land to the affordable housing nonprofit. The land swap will allow double the number of affordable units to be built on the site, which will be fully buffered from U.S. Highway 101 by a new, multi-story Public Storage facility at 1040 Terra Bella Ave.
“It happened that Alta Housing just recently purchased the land next to us, and it opened the door to have a creative idea to give back to the city, to give back to the community, more residential units that are affordable,” said Andres Friedman, head of development for Public Storage, at the March 14 meeting.
The Alta Housing project includes a new, six-story residential building and a two-level parking garage. The 108 units would include 49 one-bedroom, 29 two-bedroom and 28 three-bedroom apartments, along with two manager units. The project is funded in part by a $13.5 million loan from the city’s Housing Impact fund, which the council supported back in September 2022.
The high proportion of two- and three-bedroom apartments means more families can live here, which made the proposal especially attractive to the council. The project will serve extremely low-income households earning between 30 to 60% of the area median income.
Alta Housing CEO Randy Tsuda said that children who live at the property will attend Theuerkauf Elementary School and Crittenden Middle School in the Mountain View Whisman School District.
“I think one of the blessings about the location of this site is that it’s actually on the city’s designated safe routes to school,” Tsuda added.
The council also supported the redevelopment plans for the neighboring Public Storage site, which include replacing 18 single-story storage buildings with two, multi-story public storage buildings. One of the proposed buildings is six stories tall, and the other is four.
“I think that this land swap, essentially, that you are working on is creating a much better project for both of you,” Vice Mayor Pat Showalter said during the meeting. “And certainly that means we’re getting a much better project for the city of Mountain View.”
The only part of the project that gave some council members pause was the plan for utilities. Alta Housing’s proposal already included putting utilities along San Rafael Avenue underground, but council member Lisa Matichak said she’d like to see the utilities along the Terra Bella Avenue side of the project go underground, too.
The developer estimated that undergrounding utilities along the project’s Terra Bella Avenue frontage would cost around $1 million, and would stop the project from being financially feasible. So Matichak proposed that the city find a way to cover the cost.
“If the city wanted to pay for the undergrounding, the odds are the best approach would be for the applicant to do the undergrounding with a reimbursement agreement from the city,” said Public Works Director Dawn Cameron at the meeting.
Matichak proposed that the council consider adding the project to the city’s draft Capital Improvement Program (CIP), which the majority of council supported. Whether the project makes it onto the final CIP will be determined at the council’s March 28 meeting, during which the council is slated to decide on what projects will make the cut.
Kudos to all who made the Alta Housing project happen.
re: undergrounding utilities, it’s certainly a benefit for all (more reliable power, better esthetics, more room for trees to grow…) but… if the City pays for it it’ll come at the expense of other capital projects. Since Alta Housing building will be all electric, maybe City and Alta Housing should contact SVCE to finance undegrounding for 100% affordable housing?
Just an Observation,
I wonder if these units are in effect old replacements of earlier ones taken down. I suspect the City had no choice but to approve this project to reconcile SB330.
Remember there were about 300+ affordable units destroyed after the passage of the CSFRA?
That forced the state to pass SB330 to prevent loss of affordable units in the entire state.
Just a question?
If you say your post is both “just an observation” and “just a question”, we know it’s neither.
Thanks to everyone who made this project happen.
This is such a creative win-win, I’m happy to see this kind of collaboration work out for all parties. There are probably tax and business reasons for the storage company to do it – they’re likely taking a loss on paper while buying goodwill for their next development project – but that doesn’t make it any less positive for the community.
Looks like an excellent project.
Congrats on making it happen
Just an Observation,
I am sorry but until we can document that we reach the ABAG RHNA numbers, there is nothing to celebrate here.
We are hundreds if not thousands of units behind. And there is nothing good about it.
The City has been not using the tools to accomplish the task. So until they reach those numbers, I cannot see why there is anything to establish good performance upon the city.
In fact the Housing element report has yet to have been submitted to the state, AND it has not yet been approved. The City cannot claim it will be approved given many submissions have been rejected from Santa Clara County.
Lets keep working on it, but do not celebrate anything yet.
@Steven, thank you so much for your comment:
“I am sorry but until we can document that we reach the ABAG RHNA numbers, there is nothing to celebrate here.
We are hundreds if not thousands of units behind. And there is nothing good about it.”
So much back-thumping happens over such tiny amounts of progress. Meanwhile, it is clear that MV is going to FAIL once again to meet the targets for lower-income and average workers in the current RHNA cycle, just as we FAILED to meet those targets in the last one. We are on track to FAIL because we don’t have a PLAN in place to meet these targets, and nobody seems to want to talk about that. The dirty little secret: the problem is NOT zoning, the problem is funding.
Case in point: this project only came about because of massive funding help from the city: “The project is funded in part by a $13.5 million loan from the city’s Housing Impact fund.”
The TRUTH is that MV is building 9 expensive, market rate units for every 1 affordable unit. That ratio needs to change if the City Council wants to TRULY help the majority of residents who live in MV. Projects such as this one on Terra Bella are far too rare, we need to be talking about that much MORE often.
Lust an Observation,
In any event the Fed has said by the end of the year it will raise rates by .5%. No cuts until at least 2024
BUT
It also warned that credit tightening has to occur in order to prevent more rate hikes. This is going to force a lot of businesses to pay what they earn, and not rely on credit.
You all should watch PBS Frontline “Age of Easy Money”, it validates most of what I have been saying for years. Especially the use of free loans to buy back stocks to inflate the stock markets.
No innovation, no real product growth, and fake overvaluation of existing properties and services is going to continue to force the market down.
And you can complain and insult me all you want it won’t change reality.
The systemic dropping of values and the job cuts in the area is going to feed a nightmare scenario in managerial accounting it is called the Cost Cutting Death Spiral.
What is a Cost-Cutting Death Spiral?
A company that does not continuously seek to improve processes is a likely candidate for falling into a cost-cutting death spiral.
This is not to be confused with the accounting death spiral that involves incorrect data leading to businesses cutting products they think are performing poorly but are actually doing well. Or the death spiral that happens when a business no longer has a sustainable model, such as what has happened to most traditional print media after the internet took off in the late 1990s/early 2000s.
A cost-cutting death spiral begins when a company experiences a reduction in profits or when leaders set a profit target that the business does not hit. In response, management institutes a series of cost-cutting measures such as salary freezes and hiring freezes. Unfilled vacancies can lead to more work for existing staff. Talented people also often leave companies in this situation, putting even more work on those who remain.
This is what is happening today
Here is some real data
Mountain View has been a bad investment regarding apartments rin the last 8 years
Now Zumper states that in 2014 a studio was $2,119, a one bedroom was $2,300, and a two bedroom was $2,895.
We need to adjust those to today’s inflation baselines which the CPI went from 246.055 to 319.224 a factor of 1.29.
So, we need to multiply those original rents to take into account todays value. Which would result in Studio was $2,733, a one bedroom was $2,967 and a two bedroom was $3,734
The Current rent for a studio in San Jose is $3,038, one bedroom is $3,515 and two bedroom is $4,469. That means s studio apartment earned over 8 years $38, a ROI of only 1% annually, a one bedroom earned $68 a ROI of only 2% annually, and a two bedroom earned $92 a ROI of only 2% annually.
Boy this market is doing terrible even with the luxury housing skewing the numbers. And the majority of the apartments are NOT subject to CSFRA, which means it cannot explain what is going on here.
This is funny.
Affordable housing is needed.
No way around it.
Just an Observation,
I am NOT paying rent until my unit is repaired. And WHEN the zoning situation makes it legal for any rental contract to be valid in this building. So I AM the boss.
I have succeeded in forcing my landlord to quit. The Owners name is David Avny and the property is at 184 Centre Street in Mountain View. He is trying to sell the building even though it is still illegal to operate an apartment due to the WRONG land zone designation, it is a R3.1 and NOT an R4 residential zone.
He confirmed this with a court argument seen here
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17eUzHhdvymTrW9Ar0y9wZSa1S5sVJHQA/view?usp=share_link
His listing is here
I just saw that my building is listed for sale.
https://www.redfin.com/CA/Mountain-View/184-Centre-St-94041/home/1022123
And
https://www.mlslistings.com/property/ml81921600/184-centre-st-mountain-view-ca-94041/15904271
Also, he is currently listing the price for $4.65M when he bought it for $4.95M. about 7% less then what he paid for it. However the market history of the building was it was listed in 2014 for $7.9M, It was discounted on 9/2015 to $5.9M, then 10/2015 for $5.3M and finally sold in 2/2016 for $4.95M.
But the last time this building was sold it was initially priced at $7.8M eventually selling for $4.9M a 38% price drop. If history proves correct with the current price of $4.65M the landlord will only get $2.9M for it. A loss of $1.97M. Given that history it is likely this property will not be bought for 2 years,
The real fact is the apartment cannot be sold as is until either the zone is revised to R4 or the new owner will need to wait for any rents until the land is rezoned to R4, or demolish the building and put in to residences in the buildings place.
That will take as much as 4 years. In any event. I won my war with my landlord.