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Mountain View City Council members now have a stack of new candidates for the city’s Rental Housing Committee to choose from, including a few more property owners with a stake in how rent control under Measure V is implemented.

As of the March 17 deadline, eight new candidates filed paperwork for appointment to a seat on the five-member committee that will administer the Measure V rent control law. This was the second time city officials put out a call for applications.

The new candidates are: Stanford University doctoral student Michael Hovish; Cisco Systems pricing analyst Steven Johnson; MPM Corporation property manager Vanessa Honey; ARA Newmark Real Estate agent Bryan Danforth; Greenberg Traurig LLP attorney Karen Willis, 23andMe software engineer Marcell Ortutay, Stanford University operations supervisor Keith Ellis and Izzie Tiffany, a 13-year resident of Mountain View.

In their applications, Hovish, Johnson and Tiffany describe themselves as renters while Willis identifies herself as a homeowner. Honey and Ellis both declined to specify their housing status, but each of them indicated that their jobs involve managing residential property on behalf of their employer. Danforth and Ortutay both identify themselves as owners of rental properties.

As the new candidates are screened in the coming days, some City Council members may give the landlords in the group a few extra points right off the bat. Last month, three council members warned that the rental housing committee needed more representation from property owners. That led the city to hastily open up a second round of applications for the committee.

Previously, the Mountain View council had interviewed 17 applicants for the rental committee. They voted for their six top picks from that group, but they held off on making a final appointments.

Those picks included: two renters, Emily Ramos and Evan Ortiz, an organizer with the Mountain View Tenants Coalition; James Leonard and Julian Pardo de Zela, a couple of homeowners in the political middle; and landlords Matthew Grunewald, the owner of a San Francisco rental property, and former Councilman Tom Means, who owns a home and publicly opposed rent control.

The City Council is prohibited from appointing more than two landlords, property managers or real estate agents on the rental committee, according to the language of Measure V.

Exactly when Mountain View will need to have its rental housing committee seated is a moving target. The voter-approved Measure V rent control law, which won in the November election, is currently blocked due to a lawsuit filed by the California Apartment Association. The judge in the case could lift the hold on enacting it as soon as early April, and city housing officials say they would need to have the committee ready to go once that happens.

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  1. Still in shock. Why would a human rights city turn against a certain class of their own. Citizen landlords that own and manage pre-Costa-Hawkins multi family housing are but a tiny subset of all multi family housing providers and are not the cause of unaffordable housing. Targeting this specific class of provider is discriminatory. Hiring employees to target a few old landlords is woeful.

  4. Are your sure?

    This appears to be a full-time planning position (one of three) for administering the BMR program for discriminating against property owners – not for the rent control board.

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