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

Opened with a poll. Most people in the meeting own their homes. Most live in Saratoga. Overwhelming majority are 50+ years old.

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Saratoga draft RHNA needs 1712 units, and is planning for a 10% buffer (1883). Currently have 164 units in pipeline: 9 low and 155 above-moderate. Ironically some units would count if there were not completely _too early_.

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51 parcels are vacant, expecting to yield 69 units. Expect 480 ADUs by extrapolating recent build rate. Claims 144 very low, 144 low, 144 moderate, and 48 above-moderate. Considering adding incentives, expecting 80 more units as a result.

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Removing 22 units to avoid building in WUI. Suggesting to increase minimum and maximum units on some sites. Unclear if that's a good thing because it's simultaneously more permissive and more restrictive. I asked if they're worried about the low end of the restrictions limiting possible projects and discouraging development. Said that developers only want bigger numbers, and the planners want to guarantee minimum numbers (and discourage lower-density projects).

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Residents asked about water availability. Others questions how it was possible to produce the required units on some of the parcels (implying crazy-high density). Came up that quite a few of the units would be restricted to seniors. Another resident asked that *all* units be low-income-only. Unclear if that's genuine interest or a desire to make building housing unappealing. Other residents are concerned about earthquake safety for taller buildings. Planners point out that all buildings have to meet building code requirements. Another resident points out that not all areas of the WUI are the same.

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Planners lament that they are being encouraged to zone for 30 units per acre rather than 20. The vice chair (Herman Zheng) of the planning commission actually seems to care about the nuts and bolts of meeting the RHNA targets. Saratoga is putting all their low- and very-low-income eggs in the ADU basket.

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Are primarily offering 3 story maximum heights, but sound vaguely willing to entertain taller. Despite all of the current units in the pipeline and opportunities, they're still 715 units short vs RHNA targets. Considering focusing on Sunnyvale-Saratoga road. I suggested matching Cupertino's recent developments on that corridor and zoning for 5-7 stories. Shortly thereafter a clearly-unhappy resident asked that other speakers identify if they are residents.

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Jojo Choi, the planning commissioner wants thoughts on requirements for mixed-use vs residential-only. There was resident support for mixed-use, but want higher height limits to make that workable.

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On the whole a generally-positive meeting for additional development. One confused resident thought that small businesses were being eminent-domain-ed, but was set straight by the planning commissioner. And the commissioner basically said that they're trying really hard to get off the SB-35 list since they didn't like another project which used SB-35 to sail through. Claims that they want to stop developers from just coming in and "choosing their ordinances".

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)

This is the third of three Housing Element intro meetings for Saratoga. I assume the other two were the same.

49 attendees, scheduled to be two hours but they answered every question and wrapped up in an hour and a half.

City Manager, Assistant City Manager, Community Development Director presenting.

They sent out postcards to everyone in Saratoga, alerting them about this series of meetings.

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Explaining Housing Element. They’ll give this presentation to small groups if requested. I don’t know if they’re using a script written by HCD, but it’s good and explanatory. The attitude presented is that the city has to do this, and everyone should work together to figure out how.

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This is an excellent, detailed description. I’m amazed that Saratoga is doing this. If I were writing this presentation, I couldn’t do a better job. They’re emphasizing that this has to be done and there are stiff penalties if it is not done.

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The next phase of their process will be identifying the Site Inventory, with citizen input. 

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They’re warning about SB 35. They had to approve an SB 35 project with 10% BMR, at Quito Village, because they hadn’t been building enough housing. 

After about 15-20 minutes, they moved to questions. Lots of questions. I wouldn’t call them hostile, mostly. Mostly they’re just genuine information questions. The city is very deferential to residents’ wants, while emphasizing that the RHNA must be met. A few:

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Has the city considered suing? City Manager says that other regions who are ahead of ABAG have sued, with no success.

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What can residents do if they’re unhappy? City Manager says residents can lobby their state representatives.

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What about water? Water District can stop development, but haven’t.

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“Have housing for appropriate people in appropriate areas” says commenter Dave. City swats this down. Dave also wants to know what happens if they don’t comply. City lists the bad things. What if the city incentivized ADUs and required new developments to include them, he says. 

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Dave again, wanting to slough off Saratoga’s RHNA to San Francisco. Planning Director says it’s possible to trade between regional groups, but both regions have to agree and so does HCD. (Yeah good luck with that.)

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The city plans to appeal. But they’re conveying the idea that they expect the appeal to fail.

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Will Saratoga allow plexes, like San Jose is considering? City manager says all options are on the table.

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Planning Director warns that if cities keep not making their RHNA, the state will keep taking away more and more local control. 

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Most of the questions were neither pro nor anti, merely genuine questions for information. A few were hostile. I said I did an email comment, but actually I commented several times in the Zoom Q&A. I congratulated them on the excellent presentation, and asked a couple of minor information questions. 

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