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California Newspaper Publishers Association
AUGUST 19, 2016 VOLUME 24, NO. 30
www.MountainViewOnline.com
650.964.6300
MOVIES | 18
Landlords rattled by specter of rent control MOUNTAIN VIEW MARKET ‘FROZEN’ BY UNCERTAINTY SAY PROPERTY OWNERS By Mark Noack
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NATALIA NAZAROVA
New Huff Principal Geoff Chang, who was principal of Crittenden Middle School, gives a high-five to Kamya Patwardhan, 6, on the first day of school.
Mountain View heads back to school NEW FACES, NEW FACILITIES AND NEW ATTENDANCE BOUNDARIES AHEAD By Kevin Forestieri
A
s if on cue at 7:45 a.m., Huff Elementary School went from a ghost town to a bustling center of activity
Monday morning, as hundreds of children and their parents flooded onto the campus to start the new school year. Excitement and a little anxiety filled the air as the kids lined
up and headed into their new classrooms, while the parents broke off for a much-needed cup of coffee. See SCHOOL, page 11
Traffic accident data tough to get STRINGENT POLICE POLICY OFFERS SCANT DETAILS By Kevin Forestieri
L
ast year, Mountain View saw a spike in traffic fatalities with six people — bicyclists, pedestrians, motorists and motorcyclists — losing their lives in crosswalks, major intersections and even parking lots. But despite the rising number of incidents, the Mountain View Police Department has a policy that severely restricts access to traffic accident information, frustrating concerned residents, the media and even members of
INSIDE
the city’s own advisory committee that’s charged with making safety recommendations to the City Council. Only a sliver of information — the date, the time and the location of a collision — is released to the public. Any additional details for non-fatal accidents are released only to the parties involved — even basic information such as the direction the vehicles were heading and whether someone was taken to the hospital has been deemed confidential.
Police spokeswoman Katie Nelson said that the restrictive policy is due to California Vehicle Code section 16005, which states that the accident reports are confidential and not available to the public. While accident reports are exempt from Public Records Act requests, California’s Government Code 6254 (f) clearly states that the public has a right to know not just the date, time and location of the accident, but See ACCIDENT DATa, page 1
VIEWPOINT 12 | GOINGS ON 20 | MARKETPLACE 21 | REAL ESTATE 23
ith favorable polling and two separate rent stabilization measures going before voters this November, the possibility that Mountain View will enact some form of rent control is causing angst among some apartment owners. For landlords, the specter of future price caps and new regulation has thrown a curveball into the local market for apartment properties, leaving owners searching for ways to protect their investments. Some owners say they have been investigating selling their properties and making an exit, but they say buyers who previously would have jumped at the opportunity are now wary of how Mountain View’s rent-control campaign will take shape. One apartment owner trying to pull out of Mountain View is Grant Huberty, a resident of Woodside where he serves as a town planning commissioner. Huberty owns the 56-unit Moffett Manor Apartments on Walker Drive. Like many older apartments in Mountain View, his complex was built with the help of the Federal Housing Administration during a construction boom in the 1960s. When it was complete, furnished units could be rented out for $95 a month, although residents had to contend with a downwind stench from the neighboring cow pasture, he said. Huberty and his sibling inherited the property from their parents, and they watched as the local tech economy carried real estate values into the stratosphere. Today, rent for a two-bedroom apartment at Moffett Manor ranges from $1,850 to
$2,400 a month, among the most affordable in the area, Huberty said. As talk of rent control began circulating in city meetings last year, Huberty says he began looking to sell Moffett Manor. He had a deal on the table with a New York investment firm, but their analysts wavered once they learned about Mountain View’s political climate. The sale fell through because the threat of rent control presented too much uncertainty, he said. The Moffett Manor apartments are today valued at $26 million, and thanks to Proposition 13, the site is locked into a relatively low property tax of about $20,000 a year. But Huberty says it seems unlikely any buyer would pay the full listed price for his apartments given the risk of future rent control. Now, he says he isn’t sure what his property is worth anymore. He thinks buyer interest to rebound after the November election results, and said he expects that rent control will “very likely” pass. If that happens, then he expects his apartment property value to drop by $3 million to $5 million, a number he admits is based on speculation. “Maybe the day after the election, we’ll have plenty of offers because we’ll know the (voter) outcome at that point,” he said. “But who knows at this point?” Like other apartments owners interviewed by the Voice, Huberty said he was searching for options. He expressed frustration that only older rental properties would be restricted under any rent-control measure. Under California’s CostaHawkins Rental Housing Act, See RENT CONTROL, page 10