Mountain View, CA Business Licensing & Operations: Pawnbrokers (2026)

Article II of Chapter 23 in the Mountain View City Code addresses pawnbrokers separately from the secondhand jewelry dealers regulated in Article I. Sec. 17 defines a "pawnbroker" broadly as any person engaged in the business of receiving goods in pledge as security for a loan. Sec. 18 then states flatly that it is unlawful for anyone to carry on that business within the city. Unlike secondhand jewelry dealers, who may operate under a license with recordkeeping, reporting, and hold-period conditions in Article I, pawnbrokers get no licensing path at all: the ordinance, adopted by Ord.

No. 63 on April 8, 1963, is a categorical ban rather than a regulated-use permit. A business that receives property and extends a loan against it as collateral, structured as a pawn transaction, cannot legally operate anywhere in Mountain View regardless of location, zoning district, or business license application, because Sec. 18 forecloses the use itself rather than conditioning it on compliance with standards. Anyone who wants to run a pawn-style lending business in the South Bay must locate in a neighboring jurisdiction that permits it, since Mountain View's code contains no variance, conditional-use, or exception provision for pawnbroking.

The two sections comprising Article II have not been amended since their 1963 adoption, meaning the prohibition has stood for more than six decades even as neighboring cities have adopted licensing schemes for the same type of business. Enforcement falls to the police department and city attorney under the general municipal-code violation provisions of Chapter 1, since Article II itself contains no separate penalty or licensing section to violate beyond the operating ban.