Mountain View YIMBY

Dear Mayor Kamei and members of the council:

Mountain View YIMBY, a local volunteer advocacy group, expresses enthusiastic support for the following potential projects to achieve the strategic priorities from the workplan in the staff report:

1.1 Hold a Study Session on a displacement response strategy and net loss; develop a work plan for any desired follow up actions.
We support developing strategies and ordinances to help stem displacement in our community. There should never be incentives for a net loss development. Options should include: Replacement requirements for demolished rent controlled units, Tenant Opportunity to Purchase (TOPA) or Community Opportunity to Purchase (COPA) ordinances and Tenant right of return options. We believe that this project should be in conjunction with project 2.1: Revise R3 Zoning standards.

2.1 Review and propose revisions to the R3 Zone standards that consider form-based zoning, incentivizing stacked flats, and updated row house guidelines and Family Design Handbook.
We commend the R3 up-zoning effort to increase housing capacity by 12,000 units over the next 40 years and the City’s commitment to implementing tools that would allow these housing units to be built. We encourage the council to broaden its approach from simply incentivizing stacked flats and rowhouses to making a broad range of apartments and missing middle housing types more feasible. We applaud the upzoning of Mountain View’s medium density residential and believe the City must allow at least 3 stories to be built through the zone. As we upzone these areas, we should be careful of displacement impacts, which is why we believe this project should be implemented in tandem with project 1.1: displacement response strategy and net loss.

2.2 Work with MVLA to explore the possibility of the District acquiring the Shenandoah property and the opportunity for shared uses and affordable housing on the site.
We support exploring opportunities to build affordable housing.

2.4 Develop strategies for middle-income persons to afford different housing types.
Like many cities around the Bay Area, it is time for Mountain View to explore eliminating exclusionary zoning and enable multi-unit housing on all properties zoned for housing. Opportunity Housing may be a solution that cost-effectively expands housing options for Mountain View residents while maximizing land and infrastructure with duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, five-plexes and more.

2.5 Develop a City mobile home ordinance modeled on the CSFRA and administered by the RHC.
Mountain View YIMBY supports the protection of our vulnerable neighbors. We urge the council to grant rent stabilization and eviction protections to all mobile home residents as quickly, effectively and efficiently as possible.