I am pleased to write on behalf of Mountain View YIMBY that our organization strongly
**supports the March Draft **of the Housing Element with the additions in Exhibit E of the
resolution. We believe that, with those additions, the Draft fully complies with state law and
merits HCD’s prompt approval.
The March Draft is the product of two years of community outreach, extensive stakeholder engagement, and data-driven analysis. Ellen Yau, Eric Anderson, Aarti Shrivastava and other city staff should be applauded for the herculean effort and conscientious analysis that they’ve invested into this roadmap for the city’s future.
Our initial concerns for prior drafts fell into three buckets: AFFH, constraints, and the sites inventory. All three concerns have been resolved by changes in the March Draft and Exhibit E.
The March Draft is a major step forward on AFFH, with:
- A more robust religious-sites program, with a clear AFFH metric, as prescribed by HCD
- Additional land dedications for affordable housing in high-opportunity areas like downtown, a program suggested in HCD’s AFFH technical assistance memo
- A program for increasing housing choice in R2 areas, with an emphasis on AFFH
- A study to improve the Mobile Home Rent Stabilization Ordinance to reduce displacement
- A revamped Opportunity to Purchase Act program to preserve affordable housing
- Improved access to the high-resource area south of the El Camino Real Precise Plan, via several of the above programs
The March Draft is also a large step forward for reducing constraints, as it has:
- A commitment to evaluate the totality of fees on an ongoing basis, and a robust program specifically for park in-lieu fees
- A program to implement recommendations from the Matrix Study
- A return of the Gatekeeper process, with improvements
- Reduction in known R3 constraints
- A program to remove parking minima in transit-oriented precise plans
- A program to streamline code-compliant projects in precise plans
Further, we believe the city has adequately planned for its RHNA by the:
- Utilization of the backpocket sites
- R2 program
- Religious-sites program
- Return of the Gatekeeper process
- Land dedications for affordable housing
- Commercial sites rezoning
- El Camino Real rezoning
**Mountain View YIMBY believes that the March draft complies with the full spirit of housing element law and that the March Draft merits your approval, as well as HCD’s certification. **