10 ms·

The Fight to Save a Silicon Valley Trailer Park

28 points by Bud 11y ago

TheBiv 11y ago
Non-paywalled https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIwAGoVChMIpojssIOpxwIVSpmACh1z4gg_&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fthe-fight-to-save-a-silicon-valley-trailer-park-1439566484&ei=shvOVabnCMqyggTzxKP4Aw&usg=AFQjCNEzIxupUlCIIKVyKfJQsDycL0l7tw&sig2=GMWS5VfFl-dVWTJ9wyKC-g&bvm=bv.99804247,d.eXY https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- stephengillie 11y ago
  Sorry but that link is also paywalled for me. I'm starting to feel like we should crowdfund a WSJ subscription for HN, or something similar. How much traffic does WSJ get directly from here?
  - TheBiv 11y ago
    Interesting, are you in the US?
    - stephengillie 11y ago
      Yes, in the US. Using Chrome with cookies and Javascript disabled. (It's a corporate locked-down Chrome on a corporate network without plugins installed)
  - Loughla 11y ago
    Is that a thing? Like a corporate subscription cost for aggregation and social sites?
    - stephengillie 11y ago
      I don't think it is but I'm starting to wish it were. A large number of articles on HN come from WSJ, NYT, Medium, and Bloomberg. 2 solutions come to mind: 1. Have a "site subscription" where links referred from your site are not paywalled. And you would pay a subscription fee to be referrer-whitelisted on the paywall; the subscription rate could be highly debated. 2. Have a "multi-subscription package" where I pay one organization, and they take my payment, slice it up, and distribute it to several dozen news companies. The administrative fee for doing this would come into question. I agree that writers, webhosts, and other employees of these news companies should get paid; this isn't a product that's made for free. I don't really want to have to track a handful of inexpensive subscriptions. And the subscription path for NYT and WSJ is unclear - I haven't found the page where I can simply buy a 1-year subscription; only the "12 weeks for $12" deal.
      - seanp2k2 11y ago
        Alternative suggestion: don't post links to sites with silly business models which make their content annoying to access.
        Loughla 11y ago
        You know, I hear this all the time. And honestly, this isn't meant to be snarky, but I don't understand how wanting to be paid for your work is a silly business model. Or am I missing something?
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    Did you by any chance click on the "real" link first? That could have set a "not really from Google" cookie.
  - toothbrush 11y ago
    I have the same problem, but i suspect this is because i told my Firefox to lie about Referrer: headers (by fiddling with about:config). I'll see if messing around with those settings helps.
- gshubert17 11y ago
  A similar and apparently non-paywalled article is at: http://kalw.org/post/affordable-design-fight-save-one-silicon-valley-s-last-mobile-home-parks http://kalw.org/post/affordable-design-fight-save-one-silico...
fernandotakai 11y ago
wsj asks you to fully subscribe to read the full article (at least here) but if you google the url and click on it from google, it will show the full article.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
batbomb 11y ago
In San Francisco this would be the equivalent of buying a few SROs, which the city has banned. I think sales like this (and SROs) should be permitted so long as only higher density with enough units set aside to replace the displaced previous residents on-premises. That would be a win-win, I think, but it would mean that the residents would need to be displaced for some amount of time, which is hard to do when you don't have any available units to absorb them. This particular location is relatively well served by public transit. It's not terribly close to caltrain (~1 mile) and it's right off of El Camino. The alternative it seems is to let these residences languish and decompose while people live in them. I suppose this isn't quite as big of a problem in a trailer park as residents can attempt to get a new trailer, but I suspect their land rental will go up so much that even that becomes impossible. I think that sucks.
beachstartup 11y ago
same thing happened in santa monica. spoiler alert: the trailer park is getting replaced by a huge commercial development. there was a long court battle and a settlement but it's basically going. can't stop progress! http://la.curbed.com/tags/village-trailer-park http://la.curbed.com/tags/village-trailer-park there's one in malibu as well, but malibu is basically anti-development so that one will probably stay for a while. units also regularly are up for sale so if you want ocean view property in malibu, it can be yours for only slightly less than than $insane.
rhino369 11y ago
If the city was smart they'd cut a deal in which the whole site is replaced with 40 story high rise apartment buildings. And the city can purchase one and let these people live there with affordable rent.
- jonursenbach 11y ago
  And where are those people going to live during the year or two it'll take to build that?
  - rhino369 11y ago
    Good point. They could do the first building for the community, only displacing a few families. Then once they move in, go full blast on the rest. That would delay the project.
  - rhaps0dy 11y ago
    They could hire this company: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/30/chinese-construction-firm-erects-57-storey-skyscraper-in-19-days http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/30/chinese-constru... It was here in HN a while ago.
    - zatkin 11y ago
      This seems risky from a safety perspective. According to Wikipedia, the status is "On Hold, Suspended until the Project passes relevant safety examinations and gains building permits."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_City_(Changsha) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_City_(Changsha)
- x0054 11y ago
  You are of course assuming that these people are willing to live in a 40 story high rise apartment. I am not saying they are entitled to live where they are currently living, or making any other claim like that. But you are making an assumption that just because someone enjoys living in a trailer house, they must also be ok with living in an apartment. That may not be the case, at lease that's not the case for me. Also, I am not familiar with the area in question, but isn't it quite susceptible to earthquakes? I am not saying don't build a multistory building, but 40 stories?
stvswn 11y ago
To oppose housing subsidies is to always be considered heartless, siding with the rich, etc. But you cannot create prosperity by destroying wealth. The broken windows fallacy applies here. It's easy to see the cost of allowing the property value to rise to market rates: people will have to find new homes. I'm not blind to the fact that this would be a terrible upheaval in their lives. The places where they might afford to live might be much worse than their current situation. But -- there are costs to subsidizing their rent (and it is a subsidy -- if the law prevents market pricing, someone is paying for it). These costs are hard to estimate, but they are the cost of rising property prices elsewhere due to artificially low supplies, the cost to property owners who cannot realize the full potential of their assets, and the costs to the construction industry which cannot improve the land. There is also the cost, maybe most importantly, of all of the money that is artificially tied up in the rent being paid by others that cannot be spent elsewhere. That infusion of spending would mean a lot of new wealth for workers in the service industry, for example. Destroying wealth so that a lucky group of (perfectly decent) people can live cheaply in one of the most expensive ZIP codes in the nation may sound compassionate, but there is a cost, and there are unlucky people who suffer. Those people aren't all rich. It's impossible to measure the marginal gain in wages and new jobs created if the real estate prices in the Bay Area were deregulated and allowed to float to the market rates. But the gains would be real, and real people would benefit, and there are real people throughout the rest of the Bay Area who do not get to live in Palo Alto and who are really suffering.
- resu_nimda 11y ago
  but they are the cost of rising property prices elsewhere due to artificially low supplies, Is this an actual problem? Isn't this a desired effect, balancing out the prices, so that the subsidized area doesn't become a prohibitively expensive anomaly? the cost to property owners who cannot realize the full potential of their assets, I imagine the property owners in question are doing just fine (just being in the class "property owners" means they are better off than most in the area), again I don't think this is an actual problem. I appreciate your comment, but it seems to be a lot of handwaving about a vague "destruction of wealth." What number and what type of people would benefit from deregulation/removing subsidies? Would it really be the people that are suffering and struggling? I'm not seeing it.
jseliger 11y ago
Seeing comments like this appear in the WSJ is disappointing: Years ago, “anyone could live in Palo Alto,” says Saul Bracamontes, 30, Ms. Escalante’s boyfriend and the produce leader at the local Whole Foods market. “Now people are getting separated because some make less than others.” People aren't really "getting separated because some make less than others" in this instance—they're "getting separated" because the entire Bay Area makes it incredibly hard to increase housing supply: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/07/whats-the-matter-with-san-francisco/399506/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/07/whats-the-matter-with.... The Bay Area has an entirely self-inflicted housing crisis that primarily benefits existing owners. Matt Yglesias describes more in "The Rent is Too Damn High" (http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0...). Housing affordability is primarily a political / legal problem. It can be solved relatively easily, if and when voters (and by extension politicians) want it to be solved.
- gozo 11y ago
  The problem is that housing demand is very elastic while housing supply isn't. The solution is only easy if you ignore all the problems. It's not really unexpected that people won't magically agree to things that will affect them negatively. The far easier solution rather than increasing supply is to shift demand to other areas.
  - kjksf 11y ago
    And what is your far easier fix (compared to building a few skyscrapers) for shifting demand to other areas? Call in army, put a gun to Larry Page's head and say "relocate to Ohio, or else"? There's a very simple reason all the programmers come here: because this is where all the jobs are. There's a very simple reason all the companies come here: because this is where all the potential employees are.
    - gozo 11y ago
      "compared to building a few skyscrapers" You build a few skyscrapers on very valuable land and then what? The area gets even more popular, congestion gets worse further decreasing the viable area in terms of commuting, some of those people would want to start companies close to where they live and now there's even more demand for that area. No, it's not about relocating to Ohio. It's about doing what a lot of growing cities have done with success. Promote other areas. Paris, New York, London etc. all went through phases where one area was after another was gentrified. Those are of course not cheap cities, but they are also much bigger. Locate the central business district somewhere else. London built it's business district in the former dock area, Paris business district is outside the city etc. Increasing public/semi-public transportation. Good transport takes some time, but that a multitude of companies already did this (just not in a very helpful way in terms of housing) shows that fairly quick change is possible. Most of this is just money problems. Promotion, incentives, transport, image. You said it yourself, people go there for the opportunities, it doesn't matter to them if those opportunities start to show up in a wider area.
michaelkeenan 11y ago
It sounds like they're choosing between selling to the highest bidder, or keeping it as a trailer park for the benefit of the residents. There's a third option. If the land is more valuable as a vacant lot than as a trailer park, I hope they consider selling it as a vacant lot and distributing a portion of the difference to the residents as compensation for moving out. Using these numbers as an example: > his appraiser had valued the property in 2013 at $14.5 million with the mobile homes and at $29.2 million as a vacant lot. He might sell for $29 million and distribute $8 million equally among the 400 tenants. That's $20,000 per person, which could be more-than-decent compensation for having to move, and the seller still keeps a large portion of the difference in value: 29 - 8 - 14.5 = $6.5 (million).
- mikeash 11y ago
  Would $20,000 actually be decent compensation for having to move in this case? They'd either have to start paying huge rents locally, or move pretty far away. In the former case, the $20,000 won't last too long, and in the latter case they're being uprooted from their community, they might have to find new jobs. (Or be unable to!) Certainly it would be a nice thing to do and would ease the blow. And I wouldn't fault the owner for selling. But I don't know if distributing that amount would really make it up to the tenants.
  - kjksf 11y ago
    When I lived in Seattle, I once was late paying my rent (by mistake I put the check in the wrong box). The landlord put a note on my door saying, I paraphrase, that I either pay or get kicked out in a few days. Do you think that before kicking me out they should have given me $20k to ease the pain and suffering I would endure due to not having a place to live? Are the rules for those people different?
    - mikeash 11y ago
      I'm not saying these people deserve anything here. That's a complex question whose answer I don't know and which I haven't given nearly enough thought to. I'm merely saying, if you evict these people (which may be an entirely reasonable and justified action) then $20,000 isn't necessarily going to go very far in making it up to them. As to whether they deserve more, or less, or anything, I don't know. You'll probably want to take that up with the parent comment.
x0054 11y ago
Perhaps another way to look at this problem: Isn't it strange, and not very efficient for such a large number of very prosperous companies to be located all in one area. Apple, for instance, is building yet another campus in the valley. Couldn't they build a facility some place else, spread the wealth a little, so to speak. There are lot's of towns north of SF and south of Monterey that could use the influx of capital. I am not saying we should force companies to move headquarters, I am just pointing out that Silicon Valley has huge, one might claim unreasonable, concentration of wealth. This concentration of wealth really shifts perceptions. For instance, 4 years ago or so I visited a friend in SF. We were to meet in a restaurant. An Uber car pulled out and he got out. I asked him about how it worked. His reply: "It's awesome, I order it on my phone, it picked me up and dropped me off here (~3 miles away) for ONLY $40! Isn't that awesome!" I am sorry, but for me at the time $40 was a lot of money, I would have walked the damn 3 miles for that money. My point is, sometimes I think the entire Silicon Vally is in the bubble of affluence, and might be slightly delusional about what other people, outside the bubble, might think is or is not reasonable. The solution isn't giving the poor people free money, the solution might be to grow (geographically) and spread the bubble around, making lot's of people better off by reducing housing strain in the valley, and economically improving other communities throughout CA or even the grater USA. Just an idea, I might be wrong.
- kjksf 11y ago
  It is not strange at all. The best companies are here because this is where the greatest number of good programmers is. Good programmers come here because this is where all the best companies are. It's a virtual cycle for the industry but vicious cycle for housing, especially when confronted with SV's housing politics (Seattle is also experiencing a boom but is dealing better with it by building more tall buildings). This is almost a power law in play. It's not about SV having 2x more programmers than elsewhere. It literally has hundreds (if not thousands) times more than, say, the entire state of Ohio. For that reason Apple can't just move to Ohio because they won't be able to hire good programmers at scale. Moving elsewhere might work for small companies that never intend to grow a lot because you can find one or two good programmers that haven't yet moved to SV but that won't move the needle. And even small companies start here because this is where all the VC money is to give you a start and this is where all the programmers are when you start growing.
Animats 11y ago
Belle Vista trailer park was one of the very few low-income areas from which students could get into the Palo Alto school system. Palo Alto is very strict about that - they even have an online form for reporting out-of-area students.[2] For poor people, there's the crappy Ravenswood school district. On the other hand, the trailer park is mostly retirees. There are trailer parks all along the coastal area of the bay on the SF peninsula, dating from when that area was used as trash dumps. Google HQ is next to a former trash dump; Shoreline Park is a landfill, and in its early days had methane fires. Because no one wanted to develop that property, it came with a permanent tax exemption, which SGI exploited when they built there. Menlo Park had a dump too; that's now a park. Palo Alto recently closed the last section of their coastside dump and turning it into a park. (All the local trash is being sent to a huge canyon east of San Jose.) Here's the trailer park nearest to Google HQ: [1] That big square thing in the background is the air intake for NASA's wind tunnel. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4172537,-122.0736559,3a,75y,92.09h,78.63t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sa1zmAwtbhaCA0JSARFpIcg!2e0!7i3328!8i1664 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4172537,-122.0736559,3a,75y,... [2] http://www.pausd.org/registration/proof-residence-requirements http://www.pausd.org/registration/proof-residence-requiremen...
- ktothemc 11y ago
  Again, what's important to remember is that the Ravenswood School District and East Palo Alto were created by racialized housing practices that confined African Americans moving to Silicon Valley the 1940s through 1960s to a subpar, excluded neighboring suburb across the highway. African Americans were not allowed to own property in Palo Alto and other parts of the region because of racialized restrictive covenants that existed until the 1968 Fair Housing Law, and this set in place a permanent set of wealth and home valuation differentials that persists to this day. http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/10/east-of-palo-altos-eden/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/10/east-of-palo-altos-eden/
- chiph 11y ago
  You'll probably start to see people stealth camping in the area, with a USPS box as their official domicile so they can get in the schools they want. Keep your eyes open for campers parked alongside the road (this is just down the road from your first link): https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4170873,-122.0747489,3a,75y,343.27h,73.4t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9KXeW82vsPwvy-lGzjUNKw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4170873,-122.0747489,3a,75y,...

28 points by Bud 11y ago

Non-paywalled https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIwAGoVChMIpojssIOpxwIVSpmACh1z4gg_&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fthe-fight-to-save-a-silicon-valley-trailer-park-1439566484&ei=shvOVabnCMqyggTzxKP4Aw&usg=AFQjCNEzIxupUlCIIKVyKfJQsDycL0l7tw&sig2=GMWS5VfFl-dVWTJ9wyKC-g&bvm=bv.99804247,d.eXY https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

stephengillie 11y ago
Sorry but that link is also paywalled for me. I'm starting to feel like we should crowdfund a WSJ subscription for HN, or something similar. How much traffic does WSJ get directly from here?
- TheBiv 11y ago
  Interesting, are you in the US?
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    Yes, in the US. Using Chrome with cookies and Javascript disabled. (It's a corporate locked-down Chrome on a corporate network without plugins installed)
- Loughla 11y ago
  Is that a thing? Like a corporate subscription cost for aggregation and social sites?
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    I don't think it is but I'm starting to wish it were. A large number of articles on HN come from WSJ, NYT, Medium, and Bloomberg. 2 solutions come to mind: 1. Have a "site subscription" where links referred from your site are not paywalled. And you would pay a subscription fee to be referrer-whitelisted on the paywall; the subscription rate could be highly debated. 2. Have a "multi-subscription package" where I pay one organization, and they take my payment, slice it up, and distribute it to several dozen news companies. The administrative fee for doing this would come into question. I agree that writers, webhosts, and other employees of these news companies should get paid; this isn't a product that's made for free. I don't really want to have to track a handful of inexpensive subscriptions. And the subscription path for NYT and WSJ is unclear - I haven't found the page where I can simply buy a 1-year subscription; only the "12 weeks for $12" deal.
    - seanp2k2 11y ago
      Alternative suggestion: don't post links to sites with silly business models which make their content annoying to access.
      - Loughla 11y ago
        You know, I hear this all the time. And honestly, this isn't meant to be snarky, but I don't understand how wanting to be paid for your work is a silly business model. Or am I missing something?
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
- jessaustin 11y ago
  Did you by any chance click on the "real" link first? That could have set a "not really from Google" cookie.
- toothbrush 11y ago
  I have the same problem, but i suspect this is because i told my Firefox to lie about Referrer: headers (by fiddling with about:config). I'll see if messing around with those settings helps.
gshubert17 11y ago
A similar and apparently non-paywalled article is at: http://kalw.org/post/affordable-design-fight-save-one-silicon-valley-s-last-mobile-home-parks http://kalw.org/post/affordable-design-fight-save-one-silico...

fernandotakai 11y ago

wsj asks you to fully subscribe to read the full article (at least here) but if you google the url and click on it from google, it will show the full article.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

batbomb 11y ago

In San Francisco this would be the equivalent of buying a few SROs, which the city has banned. I think sales like this (and SROs) should be permitted so long as only higher density with enough units set aside to replace the displaced previous residents on-premises. That would be a win-win, I think, but it would mean that the residents would need to be displaced for some amount of time, which is hard to do when you don't have any available units to absorb them. This particular location is relatively well served by public transit. It's not terribly close to caltrain (~1 mile) and it's right off of El Camino. The alternative it seems is to let these residences languish and decompose while people live in them. I suppose this isn't quite as big of a problem in a trailer park as residents can attempt to get a new trailer, but I suspect their land rental will go up so much that even that becomes impossible. I think that sucks.

beachstartup 11y ago

same thing happened in santa monica. spoiler alert: the trailer park is getting replaced by a huge commercial development. there was a long court battle and a settlement but it's basically going. can't stop progress! http://la.curbed.com/tags/village-trailer-park http://la.curbed.com/tags/village-trailer-park there's one in malibu as well, but malibu is basically anti-development so that one will probably stay for a while. units also regularly are up for sale so if you want ocean view property in malibu, it can be yours for only slightly less than than $insane.

rhino369 11y ago

If the city was smart they'd cut a deal in which the whole site is replaced with 40 story high rise apartment buildings. And the city can purchase one and let these people live there with affordable rent.

jonursenbach 11y ago
And where are those people going to live during the year or two it'll take to build that?
- rhino369 11y ago
  Good point. They could do the first building for the community, only displacing a few families. Then once they move in, go full blast on the rest. That would delay the project.
- rhaps0dy 11y ago
  They could hire this company: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/30/chinese-construction-firm-erects-57-storey-skyscraper-in-19-days http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/30/chinese-constru... It was here in HN a while ago.
  - zatkin 11y ago
    This seems risky from a safety perspective. According to Wikipedia, the status is "On Hold, Suspended until the Project passes relevant safety examinations and gains building permits."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_City_(Changsha) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_City_(Changsha)
x0054 11y ago
You are of course assuming that these people are willing to live in a 40 story high rise apartment. I am not saying they are entitled to live where they are currently living, or making any other claim like that. But you are making an assumption that just because someone enjoys living in a trailer house, they must also be ok with living in an apartment. That may not be the case, at lease that's not the case for me. Also, I am not familiar with the area in question, but isn't it quite susceptible to earthquakes? I am not saying don't build a multistory building, but 40 stories?

stvswn 11y ago

To oppose housing subsidies is to always be considered heartless, siding with the rich, etc. But you cannot create prosperity by destroying wealth. The broken windows fallacy applies here. It's easy to see the cost of allowing the property value to rise to market rates: people will have to find new homes. I'm not blind to the fact that this would be a terrible upheaval in their lives. The places where they might afford to live might be much worse than their current situation. But -- there are costs to subsidizing their rent (and it is a subsidy -- if the law prevents market pricing, someone is paying for it). These costs are hard to estimate, but they are the cost of rising property prices elsewhere due to artificially low supplies, the cost to property owners who cannot realize the full potential of their assets, and the costs to the construction industry which cannot improve the land. There is also the cost, maybe most importantly, of all of the money that is artificially tied up in the rent being paid by others that cannot be spent elsewhere. That infusion of spending would mean a lot of new wealth for workers in the service industry, for example. Destroying wealth so that a lucky group of (perfectly decent) people can live cheaply in one of the most expensive ZIP codes in the nation may sound compassionate, but there is a cost, and there are unlucky people who suffer. Those people aren't all rich. It's impossible to measure the marginal gain in wages and new jobs created if the real estate prices in the Bay Area were deregulated and allowed to float to the market rates. But the gains would be real, and real people would benefit, and there are real people throughout the rest of the Bay Area who do not get to live in Palo Alto and who are really suffering.

resu_nimda 11y ago
but they are the cost of rising property prices elsewhere due to artificially low supplies, Is this an actual problem? Isn't this a desired effect, balancing out the prices, so that the subsidized area doesn't become a prohibitively expensive anomaly? the cost to property owners who cannot realize the full potential of their assets, I imagine the property owners in question are doing just fine (just being in the class "property owners" means they are better off than most in the area), again I don't think this is an actual problem. I appreciate your comment, but it seems to be a lot of handwaving about a vague "destruction of wealth." What number and what type of people would benefit from deregulation/removing subsidies? Would it really be the people that are suffering and struggling? I'm not seeing it.

jseliger 11y ago

Seeing comments like this appear in the WSJ is disappointing: Years ago, “anyone could live in Palo Alto,” says Saul Bracamontes, 30, Ms. Escalante’s boyfriend and the produce leader at the local Whole Foods market. “Now people are getting separated because some make less than others.” People aren't really "getting separated because some make less than others" in this instance—they're "getting separated" because the entire Bay Area makes it incredibly hard to increase housing supply: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/07/whats-the-matter-with-san-francisco/399506/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/07/whats-the-matter-with.... The Bay Area has an entirely self-inflicted housing crisis that primarily benefits existing owners. Matt Yglesias describes more in "The Rent is Too Damn High" (http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0...). Housing affordability is primarily a political / legal problem. It can be solved relatively easily, if and when voters (and by extension politicians) want it to be solved.

gozo 11y ago
The problem is that housing demand is very elastic while housing supply isn't. The solution is only easy if you ignore all the problems. It's not really unexpected that people won't magically agree to things that will affect them negatively. The far easier solution rather than increasing supply is to shift demand to other areas.
- kjksf 11y ago
  And what is your far easier fix (compared to building a few skyscrapers) for shifting demand to other areas? Call in army, put a gun to Larry Page's head and say "relocate to Ohio, or else"? There's a very simple reason all the programmers come here: because this is where all the jobs are. There's a very simple reason all the companies come here: because this is where all the potential employees are.
  - gozo 11y ago
    "compared to building a few skyscrapers" You build a few skyscrapers on very valuable land and then what? The area gets even more popular, congestion gets worse further decreasing the viable area in terms of commuting, some of those people would want to start companies close to where they live and now there's even more demand for that area. No, it's not about relocating to Ohio. It's about doing what a lot of growing cities have done with success. Promote other areas. Paris, New York, London etc. all went through phases where one area was after another was gentrified. Those are of course not cheap cities, but they are also much bigger. Locate the central business district somewhere else. London built it's business district in the former dock area, Paris business district is outside the city etc. Increasing public/semi-public transportation. Good transport takes some time, but that a multitude of companies already did this (just not in a very helpful way in terms of housing) shows that fairly quick change is possible. Most of this is just money problems. Promotion, incentives, transport, image. You said it yourself, people go there for the opportunities, it doesn't matter to them if those opportunities start to show up in a wider area.

michaelkeenan 11y ago

It sounds like they're choosing between selling to the highest bidder, or keeping it as a trailer park for the benefit of the residents. There's a third option. If the land is more valuable as a vacant lot than as a trailer park, I hope they consider selling it as a vacant lot and distributing a portion of the difference to the residents as compensation for moving out. Using these numbers as an example: > his appraiser had valued the property in 2013 at $14.5 million with the mobile homes and at $29.2 million as a vacant lot. He might sell for $29 million and distribute $8 million equally among the 400 tenants. That's $20,000 per person, which could be more-than-decent compensation for having to move, and the seller still keeps a large portion of the difference in value: 29 - 8 - 14.5 = $6.5 (million).

mikeash 11y ago
Would $20,000 actually be decent compensation for having to move in this case? They'd either have to start paying huge rents locally, or move pretty far away. In the former case, the $20,000 won't last too long, and in the latter case they're being uprooted from their community, they might have to find new jobs. (Or be unable to!) Certainly it would be a nice thing to do and would ease the blow. And I wouldn't fault the owner for selling. But I don't know if distributing that amount would really make it up to the tenants.
- kjksf 11y ago
  When I lived in Seattle, I once was late paying my rent (by mistake I put the check in the wrong box). The landlord put a note on my door saying, I paraphrase, that I either pay or get kicked out in a few days. Do you think that before kicking me out they should have given me $20k to ease the pain and suffering I would endure due to not having a place to live? Are the rules for those people different?
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I'm not saying these people deserve anything here. That's a complex question whose answer I don't know and which I haven't given nearly enough thought to. I'm merely saying, if you evict these people (which may be an entirely reasonable and justified action) then $20,000 isn't necessarily going to go very far in making it up to them. As to whether they deserve more, or less, or anything, I don't know. You'll probably want to take that up with the parent comment.

x0054 11y ago

Perhaps another way to look at this problem: Isn't it strange, and not very efficient for such a large number of very prosperous companies to be located all in one area. Apple, for instance, is building yet another campus in the valley. Couldn't they build a facility some place else, spread the wealth a little, so to speak. There are lot's of towns north of SF and south of Monterey that could use the influx of capital. I am not saying we should force companies to move headquarters, I am just pointing out that Silicon Valley has huge, one might claim unreasonable, concentration of wealth. This concentration of wealth really shifts perceptions. For instance, 4 years ago or so I visited a friend in SF. We were to meet in a restaurant. An Uber car pulled out and he got out. I asked him about how it worked. His reply: "It's awesome, I order it on my phone, it picked me up and dropped me off here (~3 miles away) for ONLY $40! Isn't that awesome!" I am sorry, but for me at the time $40 was a lot of money, I would have walked the damn 3 miles for that money. My point is, sometimes I think the entire Silicon Vally is in the bubble of affluence, and might be slightly delusional about what other people, outside the bubble, might think is or is not reasonable. The solution isn't giving the poor people free money, the solution might be to grow (geographically) and spread the bubble around, making lot's of people better off by reducing housing strain in the valley, and economically improving other communities throughout CA or even the grater USA. Just an idea, I might be wrong.

kjksf 11y ago
It is not strange at all. The best companies are here because this is where the greatest number of good programmers is. Good programmers come here because this is where all the best companies are. It's a virtual cycle for the industry but vicious cycle for housing, especially when confronted with SV's housing politics (Seattle is also experiencing a boom but is dealing better with it by building more tall buildings). This is almost a power law in play. It's not about SV having 2x more programmers than elsewhere. It literally has hundreds (if not thousands) times more than, say, the entire state of Ohio. For that reason Apple can't just move to Ohio because they won't be able to hire good programmers at scale. Moving elsewhere might work for small companies that never intend to grow a lot because you can find one or two good programmers that haven't yet moved to SV but that won't move the needle. And even small companies start here because this is where all the VC money is to give you a start and this is where all the programmers are when you start growing.

Animats 11y ago

Belle Vista trailer park was one of the very few low-income areas from which students could get into the Palo Alto school system. Palo Alto is very strict about that - they even have an online form for reporting out-of-area students.[2] For poor people, there's the crappy Ravenswood school district. On the other hand, the trailer park is mostly retirees. There are trailer parks all along the coastal area of the bay on the SF peninsula, dating from when that area was used as trash dumps. Google HQ is next to a former trash dump; Shoreline Park is a landfill, and in its early days had methane fires. Because no one wanted to develop that property, it came with a permanent tax exemption, which SGI exploited when they built there. Menlo Park had a dump too; that's now a park. Palo Alto recently closed the last section of their coastside dump and turning it into a park. (All the local trash is being sent to a huge canyon east of San Jose.) Here's the trailer park nearest to Google HQ: [1] That big square thing in the background is the air intake for NASA's wind tunnel. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4172537,-122.0736559,3a,75y,92.09h,78.63t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sa1zmAwtbhaCA0JSARFpIcg!2e0!7i3328!8i1664 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4172537,-122.0736559,3a,75y,... [2] http://www.pausd.org/registration/proof-residence-requirements http://www.pausd.org/registration/proof-residence-requiremen...

ktothemc 11y ago
Again, what's important to remember is that the Ravenswood School District and East Palo Alto were created by racialized housing practices that confined African Americans moving to Silicon Valley the 1940s through 1960s to a subpar, excluded neighboring suburb across the highway. African Americans were not allowed to own property in Palo Alto and other parts of the region because of racialized restrictive covenants that existed until the 1968 Fair Housing Law, and this set in place a permanent set of wealth and home valuation differentials that persists to this day. http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/10/east-of-palo-altos-eden/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/10/east-of-palo-altos-eden/
chiph 11y ago
You'll probably start to see people stealth camping in the area, with a USPS box as their official domicile so they can get in the schools they want. Keep your eyes open for campers parked alongside the road (this is just down the road from your first link): https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4170873,-122.0747489,3a,75y,343.27h,73.4t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9KXeW82vsPwvy-lGzjUNKw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4170873,-122.0747489,3a,75y,...