Winter Class Guide
1st Place
PAGE 14
GENERAL EXCELLENCE
California Newspaper Publishers Association
DECEMBER 2, 2016 VOLUME 24, NO. 45
www.MountainViewOnline.com
650.964.6300
MOVIES | 19
Waverly Park could house the homeless NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTS UNHAPPY WITH PLANS FOR WATER DISTRICT-OWNED HOUSES By Kevin Forestieri
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MICHELLE LE
Larry Ferguson settles into the new Sunnyvale Cold Weather Shelter on Tuesday, Nov. 29. The 125-bed facility opened Monday and will stay open through March 31.
A respite from the cold NEW NORTH COUNTY HOMELESS SHELTER OPENS ITS DOORS IN SUNNYVALE By Kevin Forestieri
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ore than a hundred homeless people in the northern end of Santa Clara County now have a warm, reliable place to sleep
each night, after the Sunnyvale Cold Weather Shelter opened its doors for the first time Monday. Sandwiched between Highway 101 and 237, and several tech offices, the shelter at 999
Hamlin Court is the only large shelter space in the county north of San Jose. The shelter effectively replaces the Sunnyvale Armory, which used to See SHELTER, page 10
omeless encampments are a common sight along Stevens Creek in Mountain View. In the southern end of the city near Waverly Park, one such encampment sits across the creek from homes worth more than $2 million, representing the major gulf between the haves and the have-nots in Silicon Valley. But in a move that appears likely to win support from board members, the Santa Clara Valley Water District could be bridging that divide by opening the doors of those multi-million-dollar properties to the homeless. Many of these single-family houses Mountain View along the creek are owned by the water district and leased out to tenants, and board members argue that offering these homes to the homeless as they become vacant is a small but meaningful way to help address the countywide homelessness problem.
The plan is meeting strong resistance from some Waverly Park residents, who say their neighborhood lacks services needed by the homeless and generally is an inappropriate for housing homeless people. Others say not enough details have been provided, and that the district didn’t notify nearby residents of the unusual plan. A regional water agency may seem like an unlikely ally in the fight to end homelessness and bring more affordable housing to Santa Clara County, but the Santa Clara Valley Water District is focused on several new efforts aimed at doing both. At their Nov. 22 meeting, water district board members agreed to declare five district-owned sites throughout the county as “excess land,” which cities and the county will be able to buy for permanent housing. Another proposal, which board members praised as a great See HOMELESS, page 12
Google veers from city’s vision for North Bayshore COUNCIL MAY YIELD ON AFFORDABLE HOUSING REQUIREMENTS, PARKING LIMITS By Mark Noack
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or the last two years, North Bayshore has represented Mountain View’s testing ground for creating an idyllic neighborhood for tomorrow. City leaders envisioned a diverse community where tech engineers and kitchen staff could live and work next to one another in the same high-density neighborhood. They spoke of creating European-style promenades, thousands of micro-apartments
INSIDE
and a people-mover that would help eliminate the need for vehicles. And to fund that grand vision, the city looked largely to one company — Google — which had long expressed interest in creating a mixed-use neighborhood as part of its showpiece headquarters. But a review of the city’s precise plan on Tuesday, Nov. 29, left some council members secondguessing this vision and wondering if they were asking too much of one of the world’s wealthiest
companies. Could their ambitious road-map for North Bayshore wind up as a lovely dream without any help from private developers, asked Councilman Mike Kasperzak. “From an economic perspective, what I’m hearing is this plan is great, but no one will do anything,” he said. “Yes, Google wants employees to live out there, but they’re not going to subsidize it. Any development has to be economically viable in a market setting.”
The Nov. 30 meeting to review the North Bayshore precise plan threw a wet blanket on some aspects of the city’s latest vision. That master plan now calls for creating three new mini-neighborhoods totaling 9,850 homes centered around Joaquin Road, Shorebird Way and Pear Avenue. During their review, council members signaled that they may need to loosen some aggressive goals for affordable housing and parking. Google’s team was conspicuously absent from the study
VIEWPOINT 16 | WEEKEND 17 | GOINGS ON 20 | MARKETPLACE 21 | REAL ESTATE 23
session meeting, but the company sent a lengthy letter just hours beforehand that fueled some frustration among council members. John Igoe, Google’s real estate director, said in the letter that the city’s affordable housing goals for North Bayshore may not pencil out. For the maximum density bonus for offices, Mountain View planners wanted Google and other developers to See GOOGLE, page 7