City of Mountain View*

In-lieu fees, when offered as an option, are too low to produce the needed number of BMR units and delay their creation. Cities to respond are Campbell, Cupertino, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. City Response: The City of Mountain View partially agrees with this finding. Mountain View is working on alternate mitigations for some developments that address the delay in affordable-unit development, such as prepaying fees. Currently, the City is reserving funding for affordable developments based on projected revenue and not collected revenue which also times the development of affordable units closer to the development of the paying market-rate development. It is also important to note that the Mountain View in-lieu fees for its current rental BMR (inclusionary) program are intended to be at a level to generate an equivalent number of units as the inclusionary requirement. Finally, Mountain View's current BMR (inclusionary) policy limits when developers can pay fees in-lieu of development. In the case of the City's ownership BMR program, the in-lieu fees could generate more units than inclusionary requirements since the money is often leveraged with other funding sources. For example, in a development with 10 market-rate units selling for $2 million each, the in-lieu fee, 3 percent of the sale price, generates $600,000, which could be leveraged with other funding sources to develop three affordable units, three times more than the 10 percent inclusionary requirement of one unit. The City is also in the process of reevaluating the BMR ownership program fees and inclusionary requirements.

NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) opposition adversely affects the supply of BMR housing units. Agencies to respond are all 15 cities and the County. City Response: The City of Mountain View partially agrees with this finding. It is important to note that many Mountain View residents are very supportive of affordable housing development (often, market-rate housing receives more opposition). Overall, the number of residents in support of affordable housing development has outnumbered those speaking in opposition at City Council hearings for affordable developments. This support has generated political will to build more affordable housing in the City. NIMBY opposition may have an effect on whether mixed-income developments are proposed by market-rate developers; however, some developers may fear that new residents may not pay as high of a market rent if the development is mixed income.

It is unnecessarily difficult to confirm how many BMR units are constructed in a particular year or RHNA cycle because cities and the County only report permitted units. Agencies to respond are all 15 cities and the County. City Response: The City of Mountain View agrees with this finding. Housing reporting includes entitled units (to VTA as the Congestion Management Association), permitted (to the State Department of Housing and Community Development as a part of RHNA), and constructed (to the State Department of Finance), among others. Jurisdiction staffs would appreciate coordination among the different reporting requirements.