Working at NASA's Ames Research Center, Marcia Christlieb has reached her "dream" salary.
But despite a good income, Christlieb and her husband, Dennis, are unable to afford rent in the city -- and live in an RV.
"People ask why we don't just move away, but I've worked my whole life to work for NASA," said Christlieb, an environmental specialist at the Moffett Field complex. "I don't want to give that up yet just because we can't afford rent."
The Christliebs aren't alone in their plight.
Hoping for some relief from the region's crushing rental crisis, residents in at least six Bay Area cities are calling for rent control in their communities.
Faith in Action Bay Area, a tenants' rights organization, on June 27 submitted more than 11,000 signatures to get a proposed rent-control amendment on the November ballot in San Mateo. If the initiative passes, San Mateo would enact rent control for the first time.
The Mountain View Tenants Coalition on June 14 submitted more than 7,300 signatures supporting a similar initiative. A successful drive for rent control would be the first for that city, as well.
Elections personnel are counting and validating the signatures, said Evan Ortiz, a volunteer with the Mountain View Tenants Coalition. "We feel very optimistic."
The Mountain View initiative, which asks voters to approve a charter amendment, aims to prevent the displacement of the residents who are the "heart and soul of the community," Ortiz said.
The San Mateo and Mountain View campaigns are far from the first in the Bay Area.
Several cities -- including San Francisco, East Palo Alto, Berkeley and Santa Monica -- adopted broad rent-control measures in the 1970s and '80s. But until this year, no rent-control legislation had been passed in California since 1985, when West Hollywood approved renter protections, said Tony Samara of Urban Habitat, an advocacy group for housing equality.
In May, Santa Rosa passed a controversial rent increase moratorium that will likely be challenged at the ballot box. And in March, Alameda adopted tenant protections that included limiting landlords to raising rents just once a year, though the ordinance didn't put a cap on the amount landlords can raise rent.
Now, groups in several Bay Area cities -- including Alameda -- are collecting signatures to put rent stabilization on the November ballot.
Advocates in Alameda and Richmond have submitted their respective rent control initiatives and are waiting for signatures to be validated.
Tenants' rights groups in Burlingame missed a deadline guaranteeing their petition appears on the November ballot, but they are racing the clock to make it in time for the election.
"But this is a presidential election year, so the county is extremely busy," said Burlingame City Clerk Meaghan Hassel-Shearer.
And as the rent crisis sweeps through Contra Costa County suburbs, residents in Concord also are calling for rent-control ordinances. Tenant rights groups there say renters are being pushed farther and farther east -- in some cases, into the Central Valley.
Nearly 60 percent of residents of Mountain View -- home to Google -- are renters, according to the 2014 American Community Survey. The median rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $3,495, according to Zillow.com, a website that provides data on housing markets.
But the city affords nearly no protections to its tenant population against arbitrary rent increases. Unlike San Francisco, there are no controls on rent hikes, no rental board to keep track of evictions, and few grounds for tenants to challenge evictions.
Left to the devices of the market, working-class tenants find themselves being priced out of a city they call their home, said Juliet Brodie, director of the Stanford Community Law Clinic, which advises tenants' rights advocates in the Bay Area.
"We've seen, in Mountain View, multiple rent increases of as much as 40 percent just out of the blue. And there's nothing illegal about it," Brodie said.
"This (initiative) is designed to restore some predictability and fairness in a rental housing market that is, right now, out of control," said Brodie, who helped draft it.
If voters approve the proposal, Mountain View would limit rent hikes to once a year and would link increases to the consumer price index. The initiative also would require that landlords provide valid reasons for evictions.
To spend 25 percent of pretax income on Mountain View's median rent price, a tenant would have to make nearly $170,000 a year. "Many tenants spend as much as half of their income on rent," Ortiz said.
The problem isn't limited to just low-income residents. Mountain View's teachers are the best paid in the state, according to the Department of Education, making on average $95,365. Teachers making that much would have to spend 44 percent of their income to pay the median rent in Mountain View.
Christlieb, the NASA environmental specialist, discovered that reaching her longtime financial goals simply wasn't enough.
"I dreamt about having my salary growing up. I was like, someday I'll make that much money," she said. "I had no idea that I would still be right above the poverty line considering where I'm living."