From: David Shren
Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2026 9:30 PM
To: City Council
Subject: Your upcoming BMR housing policy change
CAUTION: EXTERNAL EMAIL - Ensure you trust this email before clicking on any links or attachments.
As you know, if a topic doesn't involve pickleball, my Cuesta Park neighbors and I are generally disinterested.
However, I accidentally came across your agenda this week and was surprised to see a policy proposal that seems destined to shoot the City in the foot.
Your proposed BMR policy changes are problematic because it removes the financial flexibility that actually gets housing built in high-cost areas. By eliminating the in-lieu fee, the City is taking away the only functional "safety valve" for developers when a project's math stops working.
Without a fee option, developers are forced into land dedication or off-site construction. If a project is on a tight lot and the developer cannot secure a separate 0.75-acre parcel for dedication, the project risks becoming "un-bankable." Lenders require a specific profit margin to issue construction loans. If the costs of building BMR units or retrofitting old buildings for "Acquisition/Preservation" eat that margin, the project simply will not happen.
While the graduated fee helps the smallest projects, the new rules create a massive burden for mid-sized developments. These projects often lack the scale to manage off-site units or handle the complex seismic retrofits required by the new preservation options. When you add the requirement to grant off-site residents access to shared amenities within 750 feet, you introduce legal and operational headaches that further discourage investment.
Here's the local reality: you're competing with Sunnyvale and Santa Clara for developer money.
If a developer looks at a site near a transit hub but realizes the "Alternative Compliance" options are too restrictive, they may shift their capital to a neighboring city with more predictable costs.
The result of all your adjustments is a stalemate where the City demands "real units" but creates a environment so rigid that neither market-rate nor affordable units are actually constructed.
Or as Mr Ramirez likes to say "not in the community interest". You think you're not getting enough units now? Hold your breath!
I urge the Council to reconsider removing the in-lieu fee option and to ensure that "alternative compliance" remains a functional pathway rather than a series of insurmountable hurdles. 1 David
2 From: David Watson
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2026 10:46 PM
To: City Council
Cc: MV YIMBY
Subject: [MV Yimby] Item 6.2: BMR Program Amendments
Attachments: 2026.05.12 Council Item 6.2 BMR Amendments.pdf CAUTION: EXTERNAL EMAIL - Ensure you trust this email before clicking on any links or attachments.
Re: Agenda item 6.2
Dear Mayor Ramos and Members of the City Council,
We support the changes that align the BMR program with current economic conditions and past project experiences, specifically Amendments 4 (addressing "exactly 100% AMI"') and 5 (removing obsolete HOA reserve fund).
On Amendment 6, we continue to support a graduated fee schedule, given anecdotes of how much the fees have impacted small unit development. However, we will reiterate our request that the schedule extend to projects up to 10 units, as directed by council. Subdivision projects are already penalized by the city via the park land dedication requirement; some form of fee relief is necessary to facilitate small- scale, local-developer homeownership projects, especially as the economic climate worsens. Deferring to the Low/Middle-Income Homeownership Strategy or the 2028 BMR Review delays the ability to measure actual outcomes and increases future scope of work for not a lot of benefit.
Thank you for your consideration.
David Watson, on behalf of Mountain View YIMBY
Mountain View
YIMBY
1 Mountain View
YIMBY
• T
Re: Agenda item 6.2
Dear Mayor Ramos and Members of the City Council,
We support the changes that align the BMR program with current economic conditions and past project experiences, specifically Amendments 4 (addressing "exactly 100% AMI") and 5 (removing obsolete HOA reserve fund)
On Amendment 6, we continue to support a graduated fee schedule, given anecdotes of how much the fees have impacted small unit development. However, we will reiterate our request that the schedule extend to projects up to 10 units, as directed by council. Subdivision projects are already penalized by the city via the park land dedication requirement; some form of fee relief is necessary to facilitate small-scale, local-developer homeownership projects, especially as the economic climate worsens. Deferring to the Low/Middle-Income Homeownership Strategy or the 2028 BMR Review delays the ability to measure actual outcomes and increases future scope of work for not a lot of benefit.
Thank you for your consideration.
David Watson, on behalf of Mountain View YIMBY