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Despite months of protests and push back from community members, dozens of rent-controlled apartments in Mountain View will soon be razed and replaced with townhouses, each with an estimated price tag of $1.5 million.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, the Mountain View City Council voted 6-0 to allow the Morgan Hill-based developer Dividend Homes to tear down 59 rent-controlled apartments at 2310 Rock Street for 55 market-rate townhouses. Council member Ellen Kamei abstained.
It was the third time in less than four months that the council sided with Dividend Homes.
In December, city council approved an initial plan from the developer to demolish 20 rent-controlled units at the Royal Viking Apartments — about a half of a mile down the road from 2310 Rock Street — to build 15 for-sale townhouses expected to cost about $1.3 million.
Then just last month, council approved another plan from the developer to demolish 34 apartment units at 1950 Montecito Ave. in order to build 33 townhouses, each with an estimate $1.4 million price tag.
For Mountain View, which maintains goals of “promoting strategies to protect vulnerable populations” and “improving the quantity, diversity and affordability of housing”, both Rock Street developments — which will displace more than 100 residents combined — put city officials in a precarious situation.
Not only do the projects reduce the number of affordable housing units in Mountain View, they also eliminate some of the existing housing stock overall.
Residents at 2310 Rock Street pay about $1,100 a month in rent for a one-bedroom unit and $3,200 for a three bedroom unit.
The building’s demolition will mostly affect residents in the “solid middle class” — those who do not qualify for subsidized housing but also cannot afford to buy a $1.5 million home, according to Jackie Cashen, a resident of the apartment complex.
“Something needs to change,” Cashen said Tuesday. “We can’t keep displacing people into an unforgiving market without giving them alternatives.”
In the last year, Mountain View has updated its Tenant Relocation Assistance
Ordinance to assist residents facing displacement and increase the number of households eligible for assistance.
Households earning up to 120 percent of the city’s average median income are eligible to receive a full refund of their security deposit and three months worth of the median market-rate rent for a similar sized apartment, according to the city ordinance.
Josh Vrotsos, a representative for Dividend Homes, also informed council members Tuesday night of the various steps the developer is taking to assist displaced residents, including providing residents with on-site relocation consultants and extending the move out date to September 2019.
Even with those additional measures, residents of the 2310 Rock Street apartments say that staying in Mountain View, which has a median rental price of $3,235 according to RentCafe, will be nearly impossible.
Samuel Henry, a 70-year-old veteran, has been living in the complex with his wife Shirley for nearly 20 years. Now Henry says he’s not sure where they will call home.
“It seems like we would have to leave the bay area — Mountain View for sure,” Henry said Wednesday. “It’s really disheartening.
“I’d probably rather be in combat than have to face this kind of issue.”
Since the project fully complied with the city’s zoning code and met all the application requirements, City Attorney Jannie Quinn told council members Tuesday that it would be “very difficult” to “come up with a rationale to deny the project.”
Quinn also informed the council that placing a moratorium on the demolition of rent-controlled apartments could put the city in a legal predicament due to the state’s Ellis Act, which protects landlords who want to leave the rental market.
In an effort to address the region’s housing shortage, Mountain View officials have increasingly favored development projects that promise to build more for-sale homes — even if it means bulldozing existing rental units to make room for it. The number of apartments that received a notice to vacate because of plans to redevelop their building jumped from four in 2014 to 350 in 2017, according to the city.
Even so, multiple council members voiced their desire Tuesday night to improve the city ordinances and better protect tenants against displacement.
“I’m very upset about what’s going on here,” said Councilwoman Alison Hicks. “I hope that we can use this to have a real discussion about displacement and policy and about something that has real teeth in it.”
