8 ms·

Mountain View moves forward with 9,100-unit housing option next to Google

113 points by apsec112 11y ago

kiba 11y ago
Finally! Somebody did the sensible move of adding more housings in urban areas.
ojbyrne 11y ago
The article isn't quite as positive as the headline makes it sound - it includes the statement that "it's not all going to be built." But it's still good.
bobsky 11y ago
Local elections matter. You can make real impact. 'A quick backstory: More than a year ago, a previous city council approved a plan for the North Bayshore that allowed up to 3.4 million square feet of net-new office space, but no housing. That stirred passions from housing advocates who said approving such massive job growth without adding nearby housing aggravated the Bay Area's commute patterns and encouraged suburban sprawl... Voters agreed, and a pro-housing council majority was voted into office last November' http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/11/06/mountain-view-council-election-results-could-mean.html?page=all http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/11/06/mountain-...
- mc32 11y ago
  It's a start but bay area cities and towns need to realize that as industry and jobs and income grow they will have to grow too (or face increasing housing shortages). This is not the 50s and 60's leafy suburbs anymore. It's an agglomeration and needs to build up --at least along the Camino Real. Allow high density housing and build rapid transit. Allow mixed use development.
  - Johnny555 11y ago
    True, they need to more than just build housing -- if they want people to get out of their cars and on transit and bikes, they need to build first-class Bike and Pedestrian facilities. Too often think that all they need to do is build housing and collect property taxes and their job is done, and they ignore the fact that most of the residents are continuing to drive everywhere.
    - _delirium 11y ago
      I agree, but I think some densification will help increase demand for that, especially for biking/pedestrian infrastructure. Even in famously bike-friendly cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, biking is mostly a medium-distance thing: the vast majority of bike commuters live in the range of 1-5 miles from work, not 15. So getting a lot of people living within 5 miles of their office is a precondition for having a significant portion of people even interested in the existence of bicycle infrastructure. One way to do that given the current Valley layout is to really densify the axis from Mountain View to Palo Alto. (Unfortunately, I suspect Palo Alto is not going to be at all on board with that.)
      - Johnny555 11y ago
        I thought so too when I moved to a "transit oriented development" area near Caltrain. 2 years later there have been zero bike and pedestrian improvements, and things have gotten even worse when construction has closed one sidewalk and blocked a bike lane and new construction has blocked the safest path to the nearby Caltrain station -- plus, construction workers have placed their "No Parking" signs in the middle of the sidewalk, and calls to the city have not changed that.
    - mc32 11y ago
      It'd be great if they even did the build housing stage but they don't even allow housing development for fear it will bring congestion to the streets... for which they can't build mass transit because there isn't a dense enough pop... because they won't build more housing. The Camino has the width to allow an underground subway as well as dedicated bike lanes (barriers between car and bike traffic) in both directions. A subway would take enough cars off the road that eliminating two car lanes for bikes would result in no impact to car congestion. Given its width they could do open trench construction to reduce building costs --the widths also means there are no nearby building they need to support and prop up during construction --only the roaddeck.
- runamok 11y ago
  Yup. I'm a mountain view resident and the city council election was essentially a proxy vote on housing. It is true that you will not be able to please everyone but allowing only office space to be built is clearly a mistake. http://mv-voice.com/news/2014/11/04/showalter-rosenberg-and-siegel-lead-in-early-council-election-results http://mv-voice.com/news/2014/11/04/showalter-rosenberg-and-...
- capkutay 11y ago
  This. We need the same level of public support for housing in San Francisco too. You would be surprised by how bad they are zoning transportation rich areas like SoMa and the mission. Heights are for the most part restricted to 40ft around Caltrain and BART stops.
kevan 11y ago
One of the biggest reasons I'm hesitant to move to the valley is the housing situation, things like this are great to hear.
- j_h_s 11y ago
  This is not going to make a dent in prices. It would take developments of similar scale in every municipality in the region to begin to address the problem.
forrestthewoods 11y ago
Once upon a tech TechCrunch did an amazing write-up on San Fran housing issues. One of my favorite points was the following cascaded issue caused my rent control. 1) Rent control keeps rent prices down 2) This leads to matching controlled property tax 3) This incentivizes small cities to prefer uncontrolled commercial zoning over controlled residential. 4) Which means smaller cities have way too much commercial space and not nearly enough residental. Oh what a tangled web we weave when we practice to artificially constrain rents. Wait. I think I did that wrong. Ah well. Close enough!
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  I think this is the piece you're referring to: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/
- simoncion 11y ago
  You have #1 and #2 inverted. Prop 13 happened first. After rents failed to stabilize [0], Rent Stabilization ordinances were enacted. [0] One of the several arguments for Prop 13 was "Prop 13's enactment would keep rents in check, because increases in property valuations (and -thus- property taxes) are a significant contributor to spiralling rents.". Turns out that that argument was fabricated. :P
  - forrestthewoods 11y ago
    Oh wow. You're totally right. I feel quite silly now!
    - simoncion 11y ago
      No worries. If you're still within the edit window, it might be nice if you'd reorder the list in your second 'graph.
  - ghshephard 11y ago
    The fascinating thing about Prop 13 [1] is that the Property Taxes can only increase by 2%/year unless the property is sold, or there is a change of ownership of the entity that owns the property. But, if the property is purchased by a group, and no member of that group owns more than 50%, then members of the group can change, and the property tax is never reset to market rates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...
raldi 11y ago
Mountain View currently has 75,000 residents. It will be interesting to see if all these new voters kick off a pro-housing virtuous cycle. Something similar happened in Loudoun County, VA circa 2000-2007.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  I've thought for a while that the most likely long-term solution to the "Millenials want to live in the city but work for all these South Bay tech companies" reverse-commute problem is that Mountain View will densify until its residents live in the city.
  - chipsy 11y ago
    I'm a bit concerned about building up SV since it has a largely unresolved legacy of buried toxic waste...an irony standing in direct contradiction to the extreme desirability and real estate prices of today. I mean, it's not that we aren't facing that problem already, but adding population may make it harder to resolve.
- md_exile 11y ago
  ... and it's in many ways been an unmitigated disaster. I'm pro-housing but this is a poor comparison. The difference is that apart from a few large employers most people in Loudoun, VA commute to the larger employment centers of Fairfax and DC.
  - raldi 11y ago
    Why do you say it was a disaster? I used to live there, and I've been back a few times since, and the place has always seemed to be thriving to me. Yes, people there drive too much, but that's true across 99% of the United States. Edited to add some Wikipedia quotes: Since 2008 the county has been ranked first in the United States in median household income among jurisdictions with a population of 65,000 or more ... Having undergone heavy suburbanization since 1990, Loudoun has a full-fledged service economy. It is home to world headquarters for several Internet-related and high tech companies, including Verizon Business, Telos Corporation, Orbital Sciences Corporation, and Paxfire. Like Fairfax County's Dulles Corridor, Loudoun County has economically benefited from the existence of Washington Dulles International Airport, the majority of which is located in the county along its border with Fairfax ... [MCI] announced that it would move its headquarters to Ashburn in 2003.
TulliusCicero 11y ago
This is great news, but they really need more than 9k units up there, especially as they'll continue to add more office space. Now that there's a pro-housing city council, I wonder if some of the existing low-density office buildings could be redeveloped to be taller and mixed-use.
zavi 11y ago
How are they going to build on Google's land? Will Google own the housing?
- umeshunni 11y ago
  I don't think this is a Google's land. This (better) article has a map which shows it being along Shoreline blvd: http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2015/11/11/city-opts-to-max-out-housing-in-north-bayshore-study http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2015/11/11/city-opts-to-max-out...
  - dgacmu 11y ago
    Most of that main pink area is existing Google buildings. Regardless - housing in that area will be awesome. (There are quite a few other companies with buildings in the same area, dotted in with the google buildings.) Add some nearby grocery and shopping capabilities, and the planned improvements for biking in the area, ... huge improvement to the traffic and automotive pollution situation.
tobico 11y ago
Good. Building up is the way to go. Here in Melbourne, >30-story apartment towers have become the norm, and it's succeeded in slowing the rise of housing prices in the inner city quite a bit. I also think it's helping to delay our transportation crisis.
- matt4711 11y ago
  Too bad there are no minimum size restrictions and all apartments in those 30-story towers are essentially shoe boxes.
  - prawn 11y ago
    If people are buying them, then they're obviously OK with that trade-off.
    - Tsagadai 11y ago
      Many are bought without inspection and are not lived in. Some of the large apartment buildings in the north of the CBD and Docklands are largely empty while being completely sold.
- zik 11y ago
  Melbourne's possibly a bad example. Instead of keeping housing prices down Melbourne has some of the highest housing costs in the world. The new apartments are poorly made and often don't even meet building regulations. The lack of social infrastructure such as shops etc. is so bad that it's cited worldwide as an example of how to do it wrong. And half of the apartments are empty, sold to overseas investors who bought them for capital increase and who have left them unoccupied. Basically it's a complete planning disaster. Let's hope the Mountain View development is better planned than that.
FullyFunctional 11y ago
As a Mnt View resident myself, I strongly applaud this, but am disappointed that families got the short end. I get that the media age at Google is low, but I bet that a short commute is disproportionately important to parents.
- jfim 11y ago
  How have families received the short end? Having more units for singles/couples will lower the pressure on 3BR+ apartments; I know a few people staying in large apartments in SF as it's the most rational decision to minimize rent on a per-tenant basis.
  - FullyFunctional 11y ago
    That is certainly true, but it's not clear to me if that effect is better than just creating [some] 3BR+ apartments as part of this. Regardless, there's no debate that this development is a good thing overall.
Animats 11y ago
Dorms next to the trailer park. Figures. Maybe they could also take over the Microsoft buildings next to the bus yard. Microsoft cut staff at that location a few years ago.
intrasight 11y ago
What does "pro-housing" mean? Isn't everyone who lives in a house pro-housing?
- jdminhbg 11y ago
  It means "pro-new-housing" generally. So someone who lives in a house they own in a desirable neighborhood that other people would like to build in would not be "pro-housing" by that colloquial definition.
SCAQTony 11y ago
That is incomprehensibly dense. 500-acres is .78-square-miles and to drop 9,000 people in there would be like living in Tokyo. The largest cities in the world by land area, population and density: http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-...
- psyklic 11y ago
  Not necessarily. For individuals who want to live close to work and rent condos/apartments it could work out well (e.g. young professionals just out of college). For example, West Hollywood is ranked as the most walkable city in California (by Walkscore), has a population density of ~19000 people/sqmi, is ~60% individual households, and ~80% of the housing is rented.
- khuey 11y ago
  Brooklyn's population density is ~37k ppl/sq mi. This is not incomprehensibly dense.
- et2o 11y ago
  Manhattan's population density is around 70,000/square mile. This is pretty low, comparably.
beambot 11y ago
Given Google's audacious projects, I expect housing designs similar to classic SimCity arcologies: http://imgur.com/4k7csZg http://imgur.com/4k7csZg
rajacombinator 11y ago
Sounds like a huge win for the Bay Area. Now just rinse and repeat about 100 times ...
kushti 11y ago
"Access To Website Blocked" Maybe because I'm using an ads blocker?

113 points by apsec112 11y ago

kiba 11y ago

Finally! Somebody did the sensible move of adding more housings in urban areas.

The article isn't quite as positive as the headline makes it sound - it includes the statement that "it's not all going to be built." But it's still good.

bobsky 11y ago

Local elections matter. You can make real impact. 'A quick backstory: More than a year ago, a previous city council approved a plan for the North Bayshore that allowed up to 3.4 million square feet of net-new office space, but no housing. That stirred passions from housing advocates who said approving such massive job growth without adding nearby housing aggravated the Bay Area's commute patterns and encouraged suburban sprawl... Voters agreed, and a pro-housing council majority was voted into office last November' http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/11/06/mountain-view-council-election-results-could-mean.html?page=all http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/11/06/mountain-...

mc32 11y ago
It's a start but bay area cities and towns need to realize that as industry and jobs and income grow they will have to grow too (or face increasing housing shortages). This is not the 50s and 60's leafy suburbs anymore. It's an agglomeration and needs to build up --at least along the Camino Real. Allow high density housing and build rapid transit. Allow mixed use development.
- Johnny555 11y ago
  True, they need to more than just build housing -- if they want people to get out of their cars and on transit and bikes, they need to build first-class Bike and Pedestrian facilities. Too often think that all they need to do is build housing and collect property taxes and their job is done, and they ignore the fact that most of the residents are continuing to drive everywhere.
  - _delirium 11y ago
    I agree, but I think some densification will help increase demand for that, especially for biking/pedestrian infrastructure. Even in famously bike-friendly cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, biking is mostly a medium-distance thing: the vast majority of bike commuters live in the range of 1-5 miles from work, not 15. So getting a lot of people living within 5 miles of their office is a precondition for having a significant portion of people even interested in the existence of bicycle infrastructure. One way to do that given the current Valley layout is to really densify the axis from Mountain View to Palo Alto. (Unfortunately, I suspect Palo Alto is not going to be at all on board with that.)
    - Johnny555 11y ago
      I thought so too when I moved to a "transit oriented development" area near Caltrain. 2 years later there have been zero bike and pedestrian improvements, and things have gotten even worse when construction has closed one sidewalk and blocked a bike lane and new construction has blocked the safest path to the nearby Caltrain station -- plus, construction workers have placed their "No Parking" signs in the middle of the sidewalk, and calls to the city have not changed that.
  - mc32 11y ago
    It'd be great if they even did the build housing stage but they don't even allow housing development for fear it will bring congestion to the streets... for which they can't build mass transit because there isn't a dense enough pop... because they won't build more housing. The Camino has the width to allow an underground subway as well as dedicated bike lanes (barriers between car and bike traffic) in both directions. A subway would take enough cars off the road that eliminating two car lanes for bikes would result in no impact to car congestion. Given its width they could do open trench construction to reduce building costs --the widths also means there are no nearby building they need to support and prop up during construction --only the roaddeck.
runamok 11y ago
Yup. I'm a mountain view resident and the city council election was essentially a proxy vote on housing. It is true that you will not be able to please everyone but allowing only office space to be built is clearly a mistake. http://mv-voice.com/news/2014/11/04/showalter-rosenberg-and-siegel-lead-in-early-council-election-results http://mv-voice.com/news/2014/11/04/showalter-rosenberg-and-...
capkutay 11y ago
This. We need the same level of public support for housing in San Francisco too. You would be surprised by how bad they are zoning transportation rich areas like SoMa and the mission. Heights are for the most part restricted to 40ft around Caltrain and BART stops.

kevan 11y ago

One of the biggest reasons I'm hesitant to move to the valley is the housing situation, things like this are great to hear.

j_h_s 11y ago
This is not going to make a dent in prices. It would take developments of similar scale in every municipality in the region to begin to address the problem.

forrestthewoods 11y ago

Once upon a tech TechCrunch did an amazing write-up on San Fran housing issues. One of my favorite points was the following cascaded issue caused my rent control. 1) Rent control keeps rent prices down 2) This leads to matching controlled property tax 3) This incentivizes small cities to prefer uncontrolled commercial zoning over controlled residential. 4) Which means smaller cities have way too much commercial space and not nearly enough residental. Oh what a tangled web we weave when we practice to artificially constrain rents. Wait. I think I did that wrong. Ah well. Close enough!

w1ntermute 11y ago
I think this is the piece you're referring to: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/
simoncion 11y ago
You have #1 and #2 inverted. Prop 13 happened first. After rents failed to stabilize [0], Rent Stabilization ordinances were enacted. [0] One of the several arguments for Prop 13 was "Prop 13's enactment would keep rents in check, because increases in property valuations (and -thus- property taxes) are a significant contributor to spiralling rents.". Turns out that that argument was fabricated. :P
- forrestthewoods 11y ago
  Oh wow. You're totally right. I feel quite silly now!
  - simoncion 11y ago
    No worries. If you're still within the edit window, it might be nice if you'd reorder the list in your second 'graph.
- ghshephard 11y ago
  The fascinating thing about Prop 13 [1] is that the Property Taxes can only increase by 2%/year unless the property is sold, or there is a change of ownership of the entity that owns the property. But, if the property is purchased by a group, and no member of that group owns more than 50%, then members of the group can change, and the property tax is never reset to market rates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...

raldi 11y ago

Mountain View currently has 75,000 residents. It will be interesting to see if all these new voters kick off a pro-housing virtuous cycle. Something similar happened in Loudoun County, VA circa 2000-2007.

nostrademons 11y ago
I've thought for a while that the most likely long-term solution to the "Millenials want to live in the city but work for all these South Bay tech companies" reverse-commute problem is that Mountain View will densify until its residents live in the city.
- chipsy 11y ago
  I'm a bit concerned about building up SV since it has a largely unresolved legacy of buried toxic waste...an irony standing in direct contradiction to the extreme desirability and real estate prices of today. I mean, it's not that we aren't facing that problem already, but adding population may make it harder to resolve.
md_exile 11y ago
... and it's in many ways been an unmitigated disaster. I'm pro-housing but this is a poor comparison. The difference is that apart from a few large employers most people in Loudoun, VA commute to the larger employment centers of Fairfax and DC.
- raldi 11y ago
  Why do you say it was a disaster? I used to live there, and I've been back a few times since, and the place has always seemed to be thriving to me. Yes, people there drive too much, but that's true across 99% of the United States. Edited to add some Wikipedia quotes: Since 2008 the county has been ranked first in the United States in median household income among jurisdictions with a population of 65,000 or more ... Having undergone heavy suburbanization since 1990, Loudoun has a full-fledged service economy. It is home to world headquarters for several Internet-related and high tech companies, including Verizon Business, Telos Corporation, Orbital Sciences Corporation, and Paxfire. Like Fairfax County's Dulles Corridor, Loudoun County has economically benefited from the existence of Washington Dulles International Airport, the majority of which is located in the county along its border with Fairfax ... [MCI] announced that it would move its headquarters to Ashburn in 2003.

TulliusCicero 11y ago

This is great news, but they really need more than 9k units up there, especially as they'll continue to add more office space. Now that there's a pro-housing city council, I wonder if some of the existing low-density office buildings could be redeveloped to be taller and mixed-use.

zavi 11y ago

How are they going to build on Google's land? Will Google own the housing?

umeshunni 11y ago
I don't think this is a Google's land. This (better) article has a map which shows it being along Shoreline blvd: http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2015/11/11/city-opts-to-max-out-housing-in-north-bayshore-study http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2015/11/11/city-opts-to-max-out...
- dgacmu 11y ago
  Most of that main pink area is existing Google buildings. Regardless - housing in that area will be awesome. (There are quite a few other companies with buildings in the same area, dotted in with the google buildings.) Add some nearby grocery and shopping capabilities, and the planned improvements for biking in the area, ... huge improvement to the traffic and automotive pollution situation.

tobico 11y ago

Good. Building up is the way to go. Here in Melbourne, >30-story apartment towers have become the norm, and it's succeeded in slowing the rise of housing prices in the inner city quite a bit. I also think it's helping to delay our transportation crisis.

matt4711 11y ago
Too bad there are no minimum size restrictions and all apartments in those 30-story towers are essentially shoe boxes.
- prawn 11y ago
  If people are buying them, then they're obviously OK with that trade-off.
  - Tsagadai 11y ago
    Many are bought without inspection and are not lived in. Some of the large apartment buildings in the north of the CBD and Docklands are largely empty while being completely sold.
zik 11y ago
Melbourne's possibly a bad example. Instead of keeping housing prices down Melbourne has some of the highest housing costs in the world. The new apartments are poorly made and often don't even meet building regulations. The lack of social infrastructure such as shops etc. is so bad that it's cited worldwide as an example of how to do it wrong. And half of the apartments are empty, sold to overseas investors who bought them for capital increase and who have left them unoccupied. Basically it's a complete planning disaster. Let's hope the Mountain View development is better planned than that.

FullyFunctional 11y ago

As a Mnt View resident myself, I strongly applaud this, but am disappointed that families got the short end. I get that the media age at Google is low, but I bet that a short commute is disproportionately important to parents.

jfim 11y ago
How have families received the short end? Having more units for singles/couples will lower the pressure on 3BR+ apartments; I know a few people staying in large apartments in SF as it's the most rational decision to minimize rent on a per-tenant basis.
- FullyFunctional 11y ago
  That is certainly true, but it's not clear to me if that effect is better than just creating [some] 3BR+ apartments as part of this. Regardless, there's no debate that this development is a good thing overall.

Animats 11y ago

Dorms next to the trailer park. Figures. Maybe they could also take over the Microsoft buildings next to the bus yard. Microsoft cut staff at that location a few years ago.

intrasight 11y ago

What does "pro-housing" mean? Isn't everyone who lives in a house pro-housing?

jdminhbg 11y ago
It means "pro-new-housing" generally. So someone who lives in a house they own in a desirable neighborhood that other people would like to build in would not be "pro-housing" by that colloquial definition.

SCAQTony 11y ago

That is incomprehensibly dense. 500-acres is .78-square-miles and to drop 9,000 people in there would be like living in Tokyo. The largest cities in the world by land area, population and density: http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-...

psyklic 11y ago
Not necessarily. For individuals who want to live close to work and rent condos/apartments it could work out well (e.g. young professionals just out of college). For example, West Hollywood is ranked as the most walkable city in California (by Walkscore), has a population density of ~19000 people/sqmi, is ~60% individual households, and ~80% of the housing is rented.
khuey 11y ago
Brooklyn's population density is ~37k ppl/sq mi. This is not incomprehensibly dense.
et2o 11y ago
Manhattan's population density is around 70,000/square mile. This is pretty low, comparably.

beambot 11y ago

Given Google's audacious projects, I expect housing designs similar to classic SimCity arcologies: http://imgur.com/4k7csZg http://imgur.com/4k7csZg

rajacombinator 11y ago

Sounds like a huge win for the Bay Area. Now just rinse and repeat about 100 times ...

kushti 11y ago

"Access To Website Blocked" Maybe because I'm using an ads blocker?