The City of Mountain View City Council just voted to remove parking minimums in ~all of the densest parts of the city. This was a Housing Element program that got added to the Housing Element specifically due to advocacy from Mountain View YIMBY

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The City of Milpitas adopted its Housing Element Update on January 24, 2023, and HCD found the adopted Housing Element Update in substantial compliance on May 17, 2023. Therefore, the City of Milpitas has 3 years from the adoption date, January 24, 2026, to complete its rezoning.

The City plans to implement this rezoning through two projects:

1. Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance Update: We’ve completed Phase 1 of the project, which focused on bringing the Zoning Ordinance into compliance with the General Plan and rezoning sites identified in the recent Housing Element Update.
2. Housing Opportunity Districts: While Phase 1 of the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance Update has already implemented most of the required rezonings, there are few sites in the City’s proposed Housing Opportunity Districts (HODs), which have yet to be rezoned. The HODs proposes to rezone and upzone the City’s aging shopping centers to facilitate mixed-use redevelopment, which is a key policy outlined in the City’s General Plan. This project is still in progress and we anticipate adoption by early 2025. However, we have run into significant community opposition along the way despite the City’s attempts to educate the public on the importance and necessity of completing this project. The community is generally concerned with the potential impacts of high-density multifamily development on their single-family residential neighborhoods nearby (privacy, property value, etc.) and the City’s services overall (traffic, utilities, etc.). Please feel free to review the change.org petition for more information on their concerns. I’ve also attached the City’s response to the petition.

We welcome YIMBY’s support for the HODs, which is critical to the City completing the required rezoning for Housing Element compliance. A community workshop is scheduled for 12/9 at the Milpitas Senior Center (40 N Milpitas Blvd, Milpitas, CA 95035). You’re welcome to attend this workshop, although the discussion will be focused on the specifics of the zoning strategy rather than the project as a whole this time around. You may also draft a letter to the City, which we can share with decision makers, or participate in any adoption hearings early next year.

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There are no housing related items in the agenda

Main Discussion: 84 participants (Milpitas, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara)

-Led by Paul Peninger, Baird & Driskell

-Basic overview of Housing Element process, timeline, goals, etc.

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Mountain View Breakout Room:

-21 participants

-Led by Ellen Yau, Senior Planner & Brandi Campbell Wood (Baird & Driskell)

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MV 2023-2031 Housing Element Goals:

-Accommodate MV’s RHNA of ~11,000 units

-Development capacity from recent Precise Plans, ongoing R3 zoning update

-Affirmatively Further Fair Housing (AFFH)

-Provide access to opportunity

-Address fair housing issues and constraints

-Coordinate with other key City housing initiatives

-Displacement strategy, R3 zoning update, federal assessment of fair housing

-Address local goals and needs

-Use data on local conditions

-Requires input from the public

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Discussion Questions:

*What’s working in our city/town?

     -new row houses and mixed use developments       

     -Mountain View is very supportive of affordable housing 

     -The city has been getting better about funding and approving non-profit affordable housing

*What are some of our key housing needs or challenges?

     -All the recent developments have been too short and had too much parking. 

     -Restrictive Zoning and community opposition to increased density

*What ideas, policies, programs, suggestions do you have to meet our housing needs?

     -1) Follow the Los Angeles model and have data driven calculations for the likelihood of development on inventory sites. 2) Upzone Old MV to AFFH

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Timeline:

March 2021 – March 2022: Community Outreach

March-Spring 2022: Work on Studies and Draft update

Spring 2022: Draft for Review

Fall 2022: Public Hearings with EPC and City Council

January 2023: Housing Element Adoption

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NIMBY comments:

“Neighborhoods are being forced to accept developments on the basis of .5 mile distance to transit. But transit is really barely existent or effective. Is the East Whisman precise plan no longer in effect?”

“We are running out of open space in Mtn. View. Seeing more and more exceptions were super high condos are in planning stage. These high rise condos are invading our modest neighborhood. I'm afraid with open spaces being developed, does the city looking at using eminent domain to buy up needed land to development?”

“The city has already taken away the Hetch Hetchy trail for development. I do not see how you can create 8209 new housing units unless you build higher. Mtn View has always been a modest town. Business giants like Google have destroyed our modest town. Google transport their own employees with private buses. Our public transportation is expensive and ineffective. Addtionally, people whom live outside the area are "penalized" havinf to drive into the valley with more and more toll roads. The government tricked the voters into thinking the increased tax for infrastructure was to build and fix roads. Instead, they built more toll roads!”`

This is the "Let's Talk Housing" series that the county is doing. Including staff from Campbell, Los Gatos, and Los Altos Hills, there were 46 participants before the three breakout rooms opened. I noticed that Mike Krey from the Campbell Planning Commission and the Mayor of Campbell, Liz Gibbons, were both there. In the Q&A, someone asked a question about "Critical Race Theory", and the hosts thankfully dodged it.

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When asked what happens if a city doesn't have enough zoned capacity, the hosts said some very handwavey things about repurposing commercial space, and danced around the idea that a city would have to make more capacity. Disappointing. It's like they don't believe that HCD will actually bring the hammer down.

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We're also told that the county has built enough market-rate housing, but the lack of affordable housing has driven up rents. (This is not how housing works, aargh.) There is no mention of why market-rate housing isn't affordable to most people. Jobs don't pay enough to "let them compete in the housing market".

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When asked for one word to describe our vision of the future of our city, most people wrote "affordable", "inclusive", or "diverse", but two people wrote "non-dense" and "ban on parcel splitting", and Liz Gibbons wrote "non-political", which is a pleasant aspiration. We then went into our breakout rooms, by city. (I'm in the Campbell room.)

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The Campbell room had 11 people, of whom two were city staff (Rob Eastwood and Stephen Rose), three were city officials (myself, Mike Krey, and Liz Gibbons), and one a facilitator (Joshua Abrams), leaving five regular civilians. The City touted its updated ADU standards, the (incomplete) objective standards work, a program to educate homebuyers and getting REAP/LEAP grants. Not impressive. They point out that we should be at 75% of our RHNA 5 numbers, but we're at 4%/3%/11% for VLI/LI/MI. But 391 market-rate units is 118% of our allocation!

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Staff points out that our allocation is larger, will require larger densities, and will make site reuse harder. Showed us some visualizations of densities from 3.5 du/ac up to 28+, which is currently illegal in Campbell. By the time they finished presenting, it was 7.

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Things that people appreciate about housing the way it is: walkable, "family-friendly"/"safe", walkable, diverse. Gibbons: "a collection of diverse neighborhoods" with diverse housing types. Things that people don't like: expensive, hard to develop--long, arduous process to work with the city (Scott Cooley), not enough affordable housing, difficulty selling SFH homeowners on affordable housing. I actually heard someone saying that self-driving cars need less parking, so we should plan for less parking.

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I focused on removing discretionary rules which people have to beg around, like parking. The rules that make missing middle housing illegal. When someone complained about parking shortages, I suggested residential parking permits, since we already have those in at least one neighborhood, and they're popular. People are concerned about parking, and I don't know if they think that can be solved without keeping density low.

The consultants and respective city staff members participating in this "Let's Talk Housing" primarily provided an overview of the RHNA process, housing needs and issues specific to Santa Clara County (with particular focus on the scarcity of moderate to low (and lower) income housing options, as well as the impacts of this on the community).

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Breakout sessions were then done by city, with a surprisingly large amount of participants for Cupertino (~31 vs. what appeared to be 10 or less for some others).

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Breakout sessions gave contextual information, had lively and active ongoing chat in the background, and the opportunity for 3-5 spoken comments to raise specific issues or challenges speakers felt that the community faces. The main concerns raised seemed to be: lack of senior housing options, student housing options (esp. DeAnza students, particularly those currently commuting from neighboring areas like San Jose), the need for cars as a part of daily life (made by an older resident with a very specific need to commute to and from Santa Cruz for senior care-giving), and potential traffic concerns associated with more development (ironically this comment was made by someone who did not have a car and was very interested with the Via private shuttle service provided by the City pre-Covid).

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Word-cloud takeaways from answers to the initial meeting question (what does housing in your community look like today; and then, what word describes your vision for housing in 2030) were interesting: the top word for the former was "unaffordable", which some runner-ups being "scare", and "unavailable". For the latter, the top was "sustainable", accompanied by words like "affordable", "inclusive" and "diverse".  Following this, there were some chat comments suggesting that this meeting did not represent "both sides" of this issue and was "very pro-housing". 

General Meeting led by: Paul Peninger, Consultant of Baird & Driskell; 81 participants; Staff from Cupertino, Monte Sereno, Saratoga, Los Altos;

Los Altos Breakout Room led by: David Driskell, Baird & Driskell; 13 participants;

Guido Persicone (Planning Manager, Los Altos)