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CUPERTINO — While neighboring Mountain View plans for 10,000 new homes and politicians throughout the state prioritize what they call a full-fledged housing crisis, Cupertino Mayor Darcy Paul sees things a little differently: He says the housing shortage in his city isn’t dire and doesn’t require drastic action.

His comments are drawing fire from activists who argue Cupertino is on the front lines of a massive housing shortage that’s forcing people to flee the Bay Area for more affordable places.

“It’s not at a point where anyone can justifiably say that we’re at a critical level where drastic measures must be taken,” Paul said during his recent “state of the city” speech, “but the data is telling us that we should pay more attention to ensuring that our housing stock keeps in balance with our job growth.”

“The circumstances are not dire. We have good options,” he continued.

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Paul touted the city’s jobs-to-housing ratio — 1.29 jobs for every unit of housing in 2010, the last year of available census data, he said, quoting figures from the Association of Bay Area Governments. A ratio of 1.5 to 1, or less, is ideal, Paul said. By 2040, Cupertino predicts, it will have 1.66 jobs for every unit of housing.

But a lot has changed since 2010. For one, Apple has opened a new campus in the city that can hold up to 12,000 employees and up to 11,000 parked cars. As part of that plan, the company contributed $5.85 million to Cupertino’s affordable housing fund.

The median price of a Cupertino home is $2.2 million — a 21 percent increase from just a year ago, according to Zillow. That means even well-paid techies are struggling to live here. In 2015, Zillow says, a typical entry-level software engineer would have had to spend 55 percent of his or her monthly income to rent a home in Cupertino, or 69 percent to buy one.

That’s why Paul’s attitude is worrying, said Leslye Corsiglia, executive director of affordable housing advocacy organization SV@Home.

“His statement that there really isn’t a housing problem is out of sync with leaders from throughout the Bay Area — really from throughout the entire state — who acknowledge the depth of the housing crisis and its impact on our residents,” she wrote in an email.

Paul’s remarks came hours after California gubernatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigosa, speaking in San Jose on Wednesday, called the Bay Area’s housing shortage a “tsunami disaster” and promised to make it a top priority if he’s elected. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo frequently refers to the situation as a “crisis,” and recently proposed a plan to build 25,000 new homes in the next five years, 10,000 of which would be for low-income residents. Mountain View, led by Mayor Lenny Siegel, an outspoken advocate for housing development, recently approved a plan for 10,000 new homes — with a goal of reserving 20 percent for low-income residents — connected to Google’s new campus in North Bayshore.

But Paul, a lawyer who was sworn in as Cupertino’s mayor in December, is taking a more cautious approach. He says his residents worry that a massive influx of housing would increase traffic, make the city more congested, change the feel of local neighborhoods and lead to the overcrowding of Cupertino’s desirable schools.

“I would support the development of more housing stock at this point,” Paul said in an interview after his speech, “but I don’t want it to turn into a situation where we’re opening the floodgates and turning it into a free-for-all for anyone who wants to build anything.”

Between 2007 and 2014, Cupertino issued permits for 67 percent of the total number of housing units it was required to provide under state law — and just 12 percent of low-income units, according to the Association of Bay Area Governments, which tracks cities’ Regional Housing Need Allocation. Cupertino was hardly the only city to fall short. San Jose hit 46 percent of its target, and Palo Alto hit 38 percent.

Now Cupertino is on track to meet its current market-rate housing target, but once again is falling short on low-income housing, according to a state housing department report released Thursday. That means Cupertino will be subject to a new state law that fast-tracks development in under-performing cities. But Cupertino isn’t alone — nearly every city and county in California is failing to meet either its affordable or market-rate goals.

Cupertino does have several residential projects in the works, including the Hamptons, a 942-apartment development at the edge of Apple’s new campus. Thirty-four units would be reserved for low-income residents.

And from Bay Area housing advocates’ point of view, Cupertino also is sitting on a potential gold mine in the form of the nearly empty Vallco Mall, which is slated for redevelopment that could include new housing, as well as retail and office space. The city is hosting its first public meeting on this iteration of the project Monday.

Kevin Zwick, CEO of Housing Trust Silicon Valley, hopes the lack of urgency he heard in Paul’s speech Wednesday doesn’t lead to the city squandering the Vallco opportunity. Paul’s comments illustrate how the Bay Area got into this housing crisis in the first place — each city minimized its own housing obligations, while at the same time courting lucrative office and commercial expansion, Zwick said.

“I would hate to see the City Council say, ‘well, I guess we don’t have that big of a problem,'” he said, “‘therefore we don’t have to take advantage of the one opportunity we’ll have in Cupertino to meet our housing goals.'”

This article has been updated to correct the percentage of homes in the new North Bayshore development that will be reserved for low-income residents.