In a unanimous vote last Tuesday, Mountain View's City Council signed off on a new Community Ownership Action Plan aimed at keeping rent‑controlled apartments in the hands of mission‑driven groups. The move adds fresh city dollars and capacity support to the effort and sets a goal of preserving roughly 50 units over the next five years.
What the COAP Will Do
The Community Ownership Action Plan, or COAP, creates a flexible funding program built around loans with adaptable terms and a technical‑assistance grant. The idea is to help nonprofits and community land trusts buy older, rent‑stabilized buildings and operate them under shared‑governance models.
City staff recommended loan terms that can be low or no interest and allow repayment to be deferred or even forgiven in some cases. Consultant work pushed the overall funding target to about $25 million to cover acquisition, rehabilitation and ongoing operations. Those details and the broader COAP vision are laid out in the City of Mountain View staff report.
Council Moves and the New Money
To get the plan off the ground, the council approved several funding shifts at last Tuesday's meeting. According to the meeting agenda, the council signed off on a $1,000,000 transfer from the Below‑Market‑Rate Housing Fund into an Acquisition and Preservation subfund and a $425,000 appropriation from the General Housing Fund for capacity building. Taken together with earlier commitments, those actions bring the city's total COAP commitment to about $5 million and expand the technical‑assistance pool to roughly $500,000, per the City agenda packet.
The agenda also authorizes the City Manager to set up application and evaluation processes so projects can be selected and funded without returning to the council for each individual award.
Reaction From Tenants and Advocates
Tenants and housing advocates largely welcomed the new plan, even as some pushed for more direct help with acquisitions. "Knowing that we have the support of the city is huge. It helps people feel much more secure," Rental Housing Committee member Alex Brown told the Mountain View Voice.
Local housing organizations called the COAP a meaningful first step but urged the city to offer more flexible grants so emerging community land trusts can better cover acquisition costs, according to SV@Home.
Why It Matters
The COAP is one piece of Mountain View's broader strategy to prevent displacement and carry out its Housing Element commitments, especially for tenants at risk from demolition or market‑rate redevelopment. It works alongside recently bolstered tenant protections and other affordable‑housing investments.
The city's Displacement Response Strategy traces years of work on acquisition and preservation and shows how the COAP grew out of a multi‑year advisory process focused on centering tenants and building local capacity, according to the City of Mountain View Displacement Response Strategy.
Next, staff will finalize program rules, release a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) and start soliciting proposals from mission‑driven groups. How many buildings ultimately get preserved will depend heavily on whether matching grants and philanthropic partners step up. For now, the council's vote gives local buyers and tenants a clearer path to community ownership, even as advocates keep pressing for more public and private dollars to follow.
