When Scotty Whaley, 59, looks out the window of his recreational vehicle in Mountain View, he sees apartments. They look cozy, like the ones he used to rent out for more than $2,000 to tech workers when he was a property manager. But after he lost his job, he moved to an RV, which he parks on residential streets — often just a few miles from from the headquarters of Google.

“Simple math adds up,” Whaley said. Apartments cost “a lot of money.”

Ad hoc RV parks have burgeoned on Mountain View’s streets, accommodating residents like Whaley. But they bother some residents, who say they are irksome and should be removed. It’s the latest iteration of the Bay Area’s housing wars, with Mountain View being a classic example of the region’s problem: an inability to build housing coupled with the demands of a fast-growing technology workforce. And so homelessness is taking a new form across the region: Even people working regular jobs have sometimes been forced to live in cars because they can’t afford an apartment. RVs, at least, have showers.

“We’re seeing a real hollowing out of the middle class,” said Matt Regan of the Bay Area Council, a business-sponsored public policy advocacy group. Steep housing prices, he said, have driven people to extreme solutions. Some live in RVs; others have moved to the Central Valley and endure long commutes.

In Mountain View, people living in the estimated 126 vehicles — including both RVs and cars — represent a tiny percentage of the city’s 81,000 residents. But neighbors say the numbers have escalated over the last three years, and the RVs — which must move every 72 hours to abide by city law — are becoming difficult to bear.

“These mobile homes have got to go,” said Mountain View resident Chris Keller at a City Council meeting last week. Keller, who lives near the main cluster of RVs beside a city park, said the large Winnebagos make it difficult for drivers to spot bicyclists and leave few spaces for residents to park.

The City Council is trying to ease tensions. At the recent meeting, it allocated roughly $196,000 for services that will help RV dwellers, including providing portable bathrooms and bringing in a vehicle once a week to provide showers. (Many RVs, like Whaley’s, have showers, but the added services will allow them to spend less time refilling water.) The city also plans to schedule street cleanings for RV areas.

“Everybody recognizes that the problem is skyrocketing rents,” said Councilman Lenny Siegel. “In the long run, the solution isn’t expanding the showers and the kitchens, which we are doing, but figuring out how to solve the housing crisis.”

But Mountain View, like many cities in the region, has taken only slow steps to solve the housing crisis. From 2012 to 2015, the city, home to fast-growing employers like Google and LinkedIn, has added 17,921 jobs. But it has added only 779 housing units, according to census data. Many Google workers commute from elsewhere in the Bay Area, but even that has stirred tensions: Bowing to residents’ concerns, the City Council approved a program last week that allows neighborhoods to choose whether they want to start paying for parking permits. It’s a way to block out-of-town technology workers from parking near stops for company shuttle buses.

“At the end of the day, it is the city’s responsibility to issue the permits for housing,” said Regan, speaking about cities across the region. Blame for lack of affordable housing, he added, rests on local officials. Cities aim to expand businesses before they add housing because they have more to financially gain through business taxes, owing to the nature of property taxes in California. Adding more houses or apartments means that cities will need to spend more on services for residents, and there aren’t enough financial incentives for cities to make that choice, Regan added.

“Generally, housing gets the short end of the stick,” he said.

Though its housing additions pale relative to its job growth, Mountain View was one of seven Santa Clara County cities that exceeded regional recommendations for adding housing over the 2007 to 2014 time frame, according to the Association of Bay Area Governments. Many cities, including Palo Alto and Cupertino, fell short. The cities were judged on housing permits issued, not on actual units built.

Just 127 affordable housing units have been built in Mountain View in the past three years, according to the city, and another 233 are in the pipeline. The city has roughly 35,000 housing units and says that about 3,000 more are in development. The council has advocated for more units to be built in North Bayshore, an area in the northern part of the city.

“The problem is, it takes a long time to do that,” Siegel said. “Not everybody can wait.”

Meanwhile, rents in Mountain View have risen to $2,672 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in the second quarter, up 12 percent from the same time in 2014, according to Real Answers, which tracks rental trends.

That’s too much money for Kevin Powell and Laura Hunter. They live on a combined $1,800 a month of government financial aid; much of it goes toward maintaining their 1998 Rexhall Aerbus.

“Nobody can afford that,” the 55-year-old Hunter said. “We need assistance.”

The two spend money on insurance and gas to make the appliances in their RV work, and they travel weekly to Redwood City to dump the waste from their tanks, for a fee.

They live in Mountain View because it’s one of the few places more lenient toward people camping out in RVs, Powell said. Cities like San Mateo have stricter policies, where even homeowners aren’t allowed to park their RVs near their houses on a residential street for more than 24 hours. Powell said he looked into living in an RV park, but places wouldn’t accept older RVs on their lots, plus it can cost $1,000 to $1,700 a month — not within his budget.

Most of Mountain View’s RV dwellers are single males, although there are 10 children living in vehicles, according to a survey conducted by nonprofit LifeMoves on behalf of the City Council. Fifty-five percent of the people surveyed said they are working, serving in jobs at places like fast-food restaurants, grocery stores or working as day laborers. Nineteen percent of those surveyed were seniors, according to LifeMoves’ report. There is also a landlord who is renting out RVs to people in Mountain View, according to the city.

At its recent meeting, the council expressed support for working with faith-based organizations like churches that are willing to provide spaces in their parking lots for the RVs. Brian Leong, a pastor at Lord’s Grace Christian Church, said his church could take in one to three RVs.

“Everyone sees the problem, we understand it and that’s something that we can definitely do,” he said.

As part of its $196,000 allocation to the problem, the city is planning to offer grants to organizations that accept RVs to offset the cost of liability insurance as part of the services it plans to offer. But city leaders said the problem of RVs and homelessness is complex and will require more research and community cooperation.

At least one resident was left unsatisfied by the council’s moves last Tuesday night.

“It’s nice that this is a very homeless-oriented proposal, but for those of us who are homeowners who have invested our entire savings into our homes onto that block, it’s insufficient,” Keller said.

As for Whaley, who has lived in his RV since March and before that in a van, he takes pride in the growing community near the park. Noise from nearby Caltrain can be loud, but RV neighbors look out for one another. He cheered the council’s approval of mobile showers and portable toilets for RV dwellers, which will allow him to save water.

“That will absolutely be a blessing for so many people on this street,” Whaley said. “I’m just very happy for us all.”