‘Place life over wealth’: Mountain View tenants rise up to save vanishing rental units

They’ve shared meals over their dinner tables, enjoyed spirited conversations in their front yards and celebrated quinceaneras on their street — Gamel Way, a cul de sac in Mountain View that many of them have called home for years.

But on one recent night, two dozen or so of these neighbors who have become more like a family gathered in the backyard of one of their outdated apartment complexes for a much more sobering purpose — to form a tenants union.

After learning about a proposal to raze their 29 rent-controlled apartments to make room for a condominium building with 118 for-sale units, the Gamel Way tenants hired an attorney in a desperate bid to save their homes or find a way to continue living in the city even if their homes are demolished.

“I’m a fighter,” said Gaël Sisich, a Bay Area native who has been living in his studio apartment on Gamel Way for the past eight years, as he and others huddled in a circle, under dim lights, brainstorming about their next move.

“I’ve fought a lot of things in my life — both emotionally and physically. I’m not going anywhere, ” added Sisich, who moved there to be close to his specialists at Stanford after suffering from cancer years ago.

Less than three miles away from Google’s giant Mountain View headquarters, the plight of tenants on Gamel Way illustrates just how the flood of Silicon Valley tech workers continues to fuel the relentless Bay Area housing crisis, pushing working-class and low-income individuals and families to the fringes.

So the proposal submitted by developer Kevin Denardi and his partner Tod Spieker comes as little surprise to residents in Mountain View. As the city’s apartment stock has aged, more and more landlords are taking their units off the market, demolishing them and replacing them with condos and townhouses priced close to $1 million or more.

Over the past four years, tenants living in approximately 1,040 apartments in Mountain View have received notices to vacate due to plans to develop their properties, according to the city’s data.

And although the city approved the construction of thousands of apartment units during those years, the rents are nearly double or triple the price of the rent-controlled units being removed from the housing stock.

In a city where nearly 60 percent of the population are renters, that means low-income residents are increasingly being replaced by those who can afford premium rents for luxury units.

Among them are Thomas Garcia and his wife, Irma, who for the past 17 years have lived in their apartment on Gamel Street, right next door to a couple of apartments where their two children, spouses and six grandchildren also live.

Garcia, a janitor at Stanford University, helps watch his grandchildren during the day, picks up his wife from her housekeeping job in the afternoon and then goes to work until 2 a.m. each day. But now the Garcia’s are not only facing the loss of their home but also may be forced to move to a more affordable city, changing jobs and breaking up their close-knit family

“Our family is very important to us and now we might to have to separate,” Garcia said through a translator. “It’s very, very sad.”

The Garcia’s and their neighbors on Gamel Way are not the first to take a stand against being forced out of their homes. In December 2018, another tenants union went before the City Council asking it to reject a plan to raze 20 rent-controlled apartments at 2005 Rock St. in order to build 15 luxury townhouses.

Although the tenants failed to stop that project, they were given more time to move out of their homes and more money than what is typically offered under the city’s tenant relocation assistance ordinance, which guarantees households a cash payment equivalent to at least three months of rent.

What makes the redevelopment proposal on Gamel Way unique is that the developers have asked the city to sell them the rights to the cul de sac.

Although Mountain View has sold public streets to for-profit developers before, this would be the first time in recent years it has done so knowing the decision would displace nearly 50 tenants.

In March 2017, Lennar Homes of California bought industrial buildings on either side of dead-end Mora Drive and purchased the street from the city for $2.88 million. The purchase gave Lennar Homes 1.4 additional acres that could be developed into 10 more housing units sold for more than $1.3 million each.

Dennis Drennan, Mountain View’s real property program administrator, said the city is “not in the business of arbitrarily closing a street” and needs “a compelling reason” to do it.

In the cases of Mora Drive and Gamel Way, Drennan said the compelling reason is that the roads would only serve the immediate developers once the project is complete.

Nazanin Salehi, an attorney with Community Legal Services of East Palo Alto, says the developers’ request to buy Gamel Way gives the city a leg up for negotiations.

“If the council is serious about their goals of reducing or eliminating displacement in Mountain View and if the sale of this street is essential to the project, then it means that they have an opportunity to stand by those values and get the best outcome for these tenants that they possibly can,” Salehi said.

The city and developers are currently working with private appraisers to negotiate a selling price for the street.

Denardi, who was born and raised in Mountain View, said he understands this is a difficult situation for the current tenants. But, he added, the project will increase the city’s housing stock and open up less expensive ownership options. The condos are expected to sell for just under $1 million as opposed to the city’s staggering median home price of about $1.5 million, according to Denardi.

In the next couple of months, Denardi said he plans to meet with the tenants to ask them how he can make their relocation smoother.

“I feel strongly about working with each individual tenant that is going to be displaced by our project and opening dialogue and creating a solution that can help each one of them out,” he said.

In the meantime, the City Council on Nov. 18 is expected to discuss various initiatives to try and curb the displacement of low-income residents.

The council is considering loosening the city’s rent control ordinance, which has been cited by some community members and city officials as a possible reason why landlords are exiting the business.

In 2016, city voters approved a rent control act that prohibits landlords of apartment complexes with three or more units and built before 1995 from raising the annual rent of a unit more than the consumer price index, which has stayed around 3.5 percent the past three years.

At a meeting last month, the council considered posing a March 2020 ballot measure that would increase the rent a landlord could legally raise each year from the annual consumer price index to a 5 percent flat rate. No final decision was made.

“Ultimately I feel like we’re entertaining all of this because we do want to address the situations where housing providers are choosing to sell and we have incredibly painful decisions to make about new developments,” Mayor Lisa Matichak said during the meeting.

Salehi, however, said the notion that rent control has spurred landlords to stop renting is “extremely disingenuous,” pointing out that nearly 270 units were taken off the market during the two years before the ordinance passed.

The Gamel Way project is currently under review by city staff and has yet to go before the council in open session, although the street sale has been discussed in a closed-door session.

Uncertain what the coming months will bring, Gamel Way tenants went before the council this past week pleading for help.

“The acquisition of wealth, while important, if it becomes the sole driving focus, sucks the livelihood and community out of a city,” Joseph Ewald, a veteran and tenant of Gamel Way, told the council. “Please place life over wealth and please protect this vibrant community.”