Making some tradeoffs to get more homes built, Mountain View backed an affordable housing development that will support lower-income residents, but will have very few parking spaces for them.
CRP Affordable Housing is proposing to build an eight-story apartment complex at 334 San Antonio Road, replacing a Valero gas station and auto repair shop.
The City Council unanimously approved the affordable housing development on Tuesday evening, despite expressing some concern about the dearth of vehicle parking spots – 16 to be exact.
“This isn’t the perfect project. I don’t think any of them are, but I will support it,” said Council member Lisa Matichak at the Dec. 17 meeting.
The project has a lot of upsides. CRP Affordable Housing plans to build 100-apartment units, with 99 of the units for lower-income households. The apartments are a mix of unit sizes, with about 60% designated as two and three-bedrooms to accommodate larger families.
CRP Affordable Housing also is not seeking city funding. Instead, it plans to rely on federal, state and private funding sources, a proposition that the council viewed favorably. If built, it would be the first affordable housing developer to not apply for city subsidies.
“The fact that you are going to be able to deliver this without city money is just terrific,” said Mayor Pat Showalter, directing her comments to the developer. “We really hope that … you can tutor other people about how to do it because we do have a pipeline and we have funding, but they don’t match,” she said.
There are some tradeoffs to make the project pencil out, however. A recent state law, AB 2097, allows developers to bypass parking requirements if projects are located within half a mile of major public transit. CRP Affordable Housing is using the provision to provide just 16 vehicle parking spaces.
The developer has built other projects with low parking ratios, according to Shellan Rodriguez, representing CRP Affordable Housing. People who are car dependent sometimes choose not to rent with them, or downsize their number of vehicles, she said.
“It’s really important to us that we are creating communities where people move into and then live there for as long as they need,” Rodriguez said. “Oftentimes, if they do have multiple cars, they’ll choose not to have one, or sell one, or not need one, or do other things so that they can have the housing,” she said.
The developer plans to offer new residents a $50 transit subsidy for the first three years after the project is constructed. There will also be 100 long-term bicycle spaces and 14 short-term spaces, according to the council report.
Council member Lucas Ramirez acknowledged that the lack of parking would be challenging for residents but said the need for affordable housing outweighed some of the project’s downsides.
“I would imagine folks move into a development like this eyes wide open. They know that they may not have access to a parking space and that’s the tradeoff that they make as well, benefiting from the stability of affordable housing,” he said.
This story originally appeared in the Mountain View Voice. Emily Margaretten joined the Mountain View Voice in 2023 as a reporter covering City Hall.
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