The movement to raise the minimum wage is spreading, and as a city council member in Mountain View, I’m proud to say our city is caught up in the wave. When a group called Coalition to Raise the Minimum Wage in Mountain View held a rally and the press covered it, the responses I received were overwhelmingly supportive. Close to 100 people showed up at our Council Meeting last week to speak and show their support for a higher minimum wage. Thanks to the organizing and mobilization of these residents, the majority of my colleagues were convinced to agendize the issue for this year. I’m convinced it’s going to pass because I know my colleagues want to do the right thing for our citizens.
Back in 1998, when my husband and I were able to save up and buy a home, we chose to buy in Mountain View in large part, for its affordability and diversity. Today in 2014, though ethnically still relatively diverse, economic diversity is being threatened, as Mountain View has become not so affordable anymore.
We scraped together a meager down payment for the 1200 square foot “fixer upper” we bought for $300,000. Now I see homes in the same neighborhood and similar in size going for $1.2M. As tech workers flow into the city bidding up housing prices and purchasing them with cash acquired from cashed in stock options, the outcry for affordable housing has also heightened. Lower income residents – and Mountain View has many of them as 50% of the kids in our public schools qualify for free and reduced lunches – have had to huddle up, with multiple families in one bedroom apartments, to survive.
Our City Council has grappled with ways to provide more affordability and made some headway with new and higher impact fees on development to provide for affordable housing funds which became more scarce with the State’s takeaway of Redevelopment Agencies. Yet a number of factors make it difficult to provide affordable housing quickly to satisfy the growing demand.
Meanwhile, I watched in San Jose, the mobilization and eventual success of raising the minimum wage and mulled over whether we could initiate a similar effort in Mountain View. Why not provide more affordability by giving hard working people a higher wage?
Going back to 1998, the minimum wage in California was $5.00. Today, it is $8.00 and will rise to $9.00 in July. Some may say that’s not bad – an 80% increase. But when housing prices have more than tripled, and rents are averaging $2100 for a one bedroom apartment, it’s simply not enough. Given that San Jose has passed a higher minimum wage with indexing and it has half the population of our County, it makes sense to follow suit and make the wage regional.
There’s still a ways to go in getting something passed inMountain View, but I’m proud that we are moving forward. I hear Sunnyvale is looking to do the same. Hopefully, we will be able to spread this movement countywide providing a little more opportunity for hard working people to make a better living in our community.
Margaret Abe-Koga is a Mountain View City Council Member and community activist.
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