Comment on Legislative Program Priority Issues
February 9, 2026
Dear Mayor Ramos and Council Members, Mountain View YIMBY appreciates the opportunity to comment on Mountain View’s Legislative Program. There is a consistent theme that Mountain View advocates for maximum local control, especially on land use and housing. We urge the Council to ensure its positions on these issues are unambiguous and to avoid assisting “bad actor” jurisdictions that abuse their powers to kill housing projects arbitrarily. Supported Items We appreciate the inclusion of items on increased funding opportunities and displacement protections, including defending our local rent control ordinance, and the items that generally support increased access to housing, jobs, and services (Items C.8, C.10. C.25). We do appreciate the addition of Item 32, and encourage the City to actively advocate whenever it finds inconsistencies or ambiguities in state law which create uncertainty for both the City and developers.
Dear Mayor Ramos and Council Members,
Mountain View YIMBY appreciates the opportunity to comment on Mountain View’s Legislative Program. There is a consistent theme that Mountain View advocates for maximum local control, especially on land use and housing. We urge the Council to ensure its positions on these issues are unambiguous and to avoid assisting “bad actor” jurisdictions that abuse their powers to kill housing projects arbitrarily.
Supported Items
We appreciate the inclusion of items on increased funding opportunities and displacement protections, including defending our local rent control ordinance, and the items that generally support increased access to housing, jobs, and services (Items C.8, C.10. C.25). We do appreciate the addition of Item 32, and encourage the City to actively advocate whenever it finds inconsistencies or ambiguities in state law which create uncertainty for both the City and developers.
Requested Revisions
We would encourage revision of the following items:
- C.13 (“additional time and resources to improve the Housing Element processes”): While Mountain View YIMBY agrees that the Housing Element process could do with significant improvement, we believe time was not the bottleneck.
- C.19 and C.31: Both reference incentives to “local governments that show good-faith commitments to advancing housing solutions.” We would encourage making this wording stronger to specify local governments which have demonstrated advanced housing solutions; given the state of the housing crisis, we must measure governments on their outcomes, not their intent.
- C.33 (“demonstrable reductions”; “development proformas”): We recognize these requests as ways to deny density bonus concessions and demand money from developers prior to project completion (CoO). As the city is off-track to meet its RHNA, we believe it is too early for the city to justify additional constraints on development.
Additional Recommendations
Additionally, we would encourage the City to consider advocating for specific changes that could meaningfully improve the quality and quantity of future housing production, such as:
- Condominium Construction Defect Liability Reform
- Single-Stair Reform
- Credit enhancement for housing loans
Other ideas can come out of the Low- and Middle-Income Homeownership Strategy as well as other planning work.
James Kuszmaul on behalf of Mountain View YIMBY
