8 ms·

Finally, some good news about the Silicon Valley housing crisis

43 points by Futurebot 11y ago

jasondc 11y ago
With 3 miles between Google <-> Caltrain, maybe a light-rail project could also help push a project like this forward (connecting the new densely populated Google housing with the rest of the area).
- ihaveajob 11y ago
  This so much. Public transit doesn't stand a chance if it's not accompanied with sensible zoning that favors high density near the stations. Very often I was the only rider in my VTA lightrail on my commute to Intel, passing by block after block of office parking lots.
  - nradov 11y ago
    We'll never get significant ridership on VTA light rail unless they find a way to speed it up. It's just so slow. That would require buried or elevated tracks separated from cars and pedestrians so that it can safely run at higher speeds. But building grade separated light rail tracks would take years and cost tens of billions, so politically it's a non-starter.
  - bitshiffed 11y ago
    I do agree with your point; but traffic must very quite a bit along the line. My VTA commutes are almost always full up, to standing room only, unless I go outside of the to/from-Caltrain schedule (and even then, it's almost never empty south of Convention Center).
oppositelock 11y ago
I live in Mountain View and follow some of the city council discussions here. While the city council approved high density housing, many residents are doing their best to stifle any development up there. This city's home owners, especially the older ones, are very active politically and also very anti-development. There's this attitude, which I consider to be very selfish, that "I bought into Mountain View for how it currently looks, and I don't want it to change", all the while, these same residents bemoan the high prices of housing and everyone except techies being priced out. As of today, we're probably going to see a decade of environmental review challenges before a single unit gets built, since this is the most effective way to block development with red tape in California.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > There's this attitude, which I consider to be very selfish, that "I bought into Mountain View for how it currently looks, and I don't want it to change", all the while, these same residents bemoan the high prices of housing and everyone except techies being priced out. Selfish is in the eye of the beholder. I have no dog in the SFBA prop value fight, but I've definitely seen people who have lived in communities for decades decide to forgo change. And if they're the majority of the community, that's their prerogative.
  - hueving 11y ago
    The issue is that blocking projects via red tape doesn't require a majority at all. It only requires a very small vocal minority.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      That's how democracy works, to prevent the tyranny of the majority.
      - hueving 11y ago
        No it's not. Democracy doesn't mean everyone can block anything they don't like.
  - FussyZeus 11y ago
    If they were thinking of the community they wouldn't be fighting the development of more housing to address the expensive housing they publicly moan about. I don't think it's a coincidence that as long as the housing prices stay sky high they're all sitting on incredibly valuable land. Selfish seems about the right word.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      No more selfish than tech workers making $100K-200K/year who believe they have a right to the bay area more than those non-tech workers being pushed out.
hellofunk 11y ago
>The city approved a new planning document for its North Bayshore district that envisions the creation of up to 10,250 units of high-density housing. Mountain View only has about 32,000 households total, so that would be a substantial 32 percent increase. It's a little disappointing when the only solution to housing prices is to cram thousands of new dwellings together in a pile. My experience has been that quality of life suffers in such "developments" but maybe it will surprise us all to the contrary.
- FussyZeus 11y ago
  This is the first instance though (that I know of) where such housing is being prepared for mid to high income individuals and not stuff like the Projects in the large cities that were subsidized housing for the economically challenged. Let's be real here, it's not cruel to say people with less disposable income make for less attractive homes.
- davidw 11y ago
  If the population increases in an area, how else are you going to deal with it besides density, or simply telling them 'GO AWAY', which most economists agree is a terrible idea, given that adding people in highly productive areas is such a win. Population density is generally very low in most of the US. It can go higher without too many problems.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Modulo the load on transportation and infrastructure--which seems likely to be substantial--to the degree that you're going to add that much housing, this seems a pretty sensible way to do it. It's generally impractical to bulldoze a large tract of low-rise housing to build slightly higher housing. So just about the only solution is to put high-rise housing somewhere that it has a minimal [EDIT: the least] impact. That said, I wonder how well it will work to build a bunch of high-rise suburban housing while making it difficult for residents to have cars and without great transportation options.
    - 11y ago
Shivetya 11y ago
It is good they are going to support the building of more housing. However the requirement to sell twenty percent at below market value is simply going to pass that cost on to everyone else who cannot qualify for the lower priced housing. As in, everyone else pays more. It might be better to work otherwise as those moving into the new housing would surely be vacating other housing. Yes there will be people totally new to the area moving into the new housing but the majority should be local movers. Before some throw out the idea that its needed to have the developers sell below market it will push some out of the market as well as the cost of the market value homes have to increase to pay for the subsidized homes. In other words, politicians do this to gain votes all the while hoping those who are adversely affected are not annoyed enough to vote against them
- Aeolos 11y ago
  > However the requirement to sell twenty percent at below market value is simply going to pass that cost on to everyone else who cannot qualify for the lower priced housing. As in, everyone else pays more. You say this as if it's a bad thing. It's not.
- wpietri 11y ago
  > However the requirement to sell twenty percent at below market value is simply going to pass that cost on to everyone else who cannot qualify for the lower priced housing. That's not necessarily true. Future purchasers are one source of money, but others include builders, investors, and landowners. If the 20% requirement is typical and historically consistent, then presumably that has already been priced in by the property market. In other words, the parcel value may already be discounted from your alternate-universe value to reflect the below-market requirement. In that case nobody really pays more; it's just that whoever held the parcel when the requirement was created wasn't able to sell it for as much as they might have. Even if it were 100% true, I don't think anybody involved would be shocked to hear it. If you have a limited commodity that you sell at auction, the richest people will get the commodity. With housing, that means you may in effect create a community of only rich people. Presumably the citizens of Mountain View want a different outcome. If you just don't like the mechanism, you should suggest a different one. But if you're disagreeing with their goal, then the mechanism's mostly irrelevant.
benzofuran 11y ago
What're the legal requirements if Google chooses to make a "company town" - ie all the other benefits are included already, perhaps they'll start throwing in a 1BR apartment within spitting distance of the campus and a tram / peoplemover connection between the two. Would they still be required to meet the Section 8 / Affordable provisions if the units were only available to employees?
- cbhl 11y ago
  I imagine the city would pick who gets to stay in the affordable units through a lottery or similar; IIRC, Facebook has a similar development next to their "1 Facebook Way" building. 10k housing units might be enough to give one or two years' worth of Google new hires an apartment; there's no way that it's sustainable to just throw it in as a benefit (plus the tens of thousands of existing employees would be outraged). I imagine they'd use it for temporary new-hire housing and/or intern housing.
wpietri 11y ago
As a San Franciscan, I heartily approve. A lot of the conflict in San Francisco is driven not by people who work in the city, but by people who reluctantly commute to places like Mountain View. One study of corporate bus commuters said about half would rather live closer to work. I think the next step is to create more urban life down there. I frequently hear of people who hate the commute but think the areas near their office might as well be in a desert.
nwah1 11y ago
Those who understand the Law of Rent know that artificially increasing supply is not a real solution to the problem. Rent is set by the differential between the locational value over and above the best available rent-free land. The most effective policy for housing affordability is to exempt improvements from taxation and heavily tax the value of the land, thus encouraging idle speculators to sell it off cheap.
baron816 11y ago
Looks like bus rapid transit (BRT) could be a great solution for SV. If they could get dedicated bus lanes (which is probably politically impossible) you could really clear up a lot of traffic and establish a way for people to forgo owning a car.
- cbhl 11y ago
  The problem with BRT is that according to California's definitions, it has an unavoidable negative environmental impact. It took six years to do the environmental assessment for the Van Ness BRT in SF. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/07/transit-projects-are-about-to-get-much-much-easier-in-california/374049/ http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/07/transit-projects-are-...
  - r00fus 11y ago
    So essentially this 2013 environmental report says that it'd make traffic tougher - assuming the same number of cars and no decrease due to bus ridership. Note: "The encouraging news is that this law is about to change. California will soon reform traffic analysis under CEQA by replacing "level of service" with another metric more in line with its environmental and urban mobility goals. " Does anyone know if this has indeed changed?
trhway 11y ago
i only wish the federals followed the suit and let 100M (1/3 of the US population, about the same as MV new allowed units ratio to existing) new immigrants into the country
davidw 11y ago
I think in some ways that this is one of the issues facing the US right now. Economists generally suggest that easing the shift from low productivity areas to high productivity areas is very beneficial, but NIMBY housing policies stand in the way. And these things have repercussions all throughout the country. Here in Oregon, there is a steady stream of people who are bailing out of California in part because of the housing prices. This causes resentment here, because it is pricing locals out of certain markets (Portland and Bend, likely others). Ultimately, without dealing with the root causes of the issue, the process will just keep repeating itself elsewhere. My view is that there should be a wider range of densities, and more walkable, bikeable neighborhoods. Ultimately, it is a supply issue - you cannot keep that steady and increase demand without forcing people out. Granted, maybe not everyone can have a ranch house with a large yard and a two car garage, but... not everyone needs that, either. Here are some sites I'm fond of: http://marketurbanism.com/ http://marketurbanism.com/ http://missingmiddlehousing.com/ http://missingmiddlehousing.com/ https://clubnimbyblog.wordpress.com/ https://clubnimbyblog.wordpress.com/ and of course Matt Yglesias' book: http://amzn.to/21hwbb6 http://amzn.to/21hwbb6
- mmanfrin 11y ago
  Portland, Bend, Boulder, Austin. People are looking for the same young, urban, progressive environment that the Bay Area has provided since the Gold Rush, it seems. There is something innate the Bay Area that has nothing to do with tech, but tech is in the middle of it and has become the boogeyman of ails to those currently living in SF. It's a misdirection for NIMBYs to focus the agitation towards because the more they deny, the more valuable and scare the homes in this special market become. I think fighting NIMBYism is a sisyphean obligation for the Bay Area. People will always want to live here -- tech jobs or not.
vram22 11y ago
The "city" of Magarpatta outside Pune, India, seems to have worked out a good option of "walk to shop, walk to work" (though vehicles are still allowed). I've been there a bit. Google the name and check the first few results. I'm not saying that their model can be a solution for the SV issue, just mentioning it as an interesting related story. What makes it more interesting is that the people behind it are from a farming family (but educated), not city types.
lostmsu 11y ago
That's not a real solution, because its not scalable. They should literally be scaling horizontally rather than vertically. There's a lot of less densely populated space around.
lostmsu 11y ago
That's not a real solution, because its not scalable. They should literally be scaling horizontally rather than vertically. There's a lot of less densely populated space around.
ArtDev 11y ago
There is a whole country full of beautiful affordable places to live. Silicon Valley? Yuck. I will never live there again (thank goodness).

43 points by Futurebot 11y ago

With 3 miles between Google <-> Caltrain, maybe a light-rail project could also help push a project like this forward (connecting the new densely populated Google housing with the rest of the area).

ihaveajob 11y ago
This so much. Public transit doesn't stand a chance if it's not accompanied with sensible zoning that favors high density near the stations. Very often I was the only rider in my VTA lightrail on my commute to Intel, passing by block after block of office parking lots.
- nradov 11y ago
  We'll never get significant ridership on VTA light rail unless they find a way to speed it up. It's just so slow. That would require buried or elevated tracks separated from cars and pedestrians so that it can safely run at higher speeds. But building grade separated light rail tracks would take years and cost tens of billions, so politically it's a non-starter.
- bitshiffed 11y ago
  I do agree with your point; but traffic must very quite a bit along the line. My VTA commutes are almost always full up, to standing room only, unless I go outside of the to/from-Caltrain schedule (and even then, it's almost never empty south of Convention Center).

oppositelock 11y ago

I live in Mountain View and follow some of the city council discussions here. While the city council approved high density housing, many residents are doing their best to stifle any development up there. This city's home owners, especially the older ones, are very active politically and also very anti-development. There's this attitude, which I consider to be very selfish, that "I bought into Mountain View for how it currently looks, and I don't want it to change", all the while, these same residents bemoan the high prices of housing and everyone except techies being priced out. As of today, we're probably going to see a decade of environmental review challenges before a single unit gets built, since this is the most effective way to block development with red tape in California.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> There's this attitude, which I consider to be very selfish, that "I bought into Mountain View for how it currently looks, and I don't want it to change", all the while, these same residents bemoan the high prices of housing and everyone except techies being priced out. Selfish is in the eye of the beholder. I have no dog in the SFBA prop value fight, but I've definitely seen people who have lived in communities for decades decide to forgo change. And if they're the majority of the community, that's their prerogative.
- hueving 11y ago
  The issue is that blocking projects via red tape doesn't require a majority at all. It only requires a very small vocal minority.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    That's how democracy works, to prevent the tyranny of the majority.
    - hueving 11y ago
      No it's not. Democracy doesn't mean everyone can block anything they don't like.
- FussyZeus 11y ago
  If they were thinking of the community they wouldn't be fighting the development of more housing to address the expensive housing they publicly moan about. I don't think it's a coincidence that as long as the housing prices stay sky high they're all sitting on incredibly valuable land. Selfish seems about the right word.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    No more selfish than tech workers making $100K-200K/year who believe they have a right to the bay area more than those non-tech workers being pushed out.

hellofunk 11y ago

>The city approved a new planning document for its North Bayshore district that envisions the creation of up to 10,250 units of high-density housing. Mountain View only has about 32,000 households total, so that would be a substantial 32 percent increase. It's a little disappointing when the only solution to housing prices is to cram thousands of new dwellings together in a pile. My experience has been that quality of life suffers in such "developments" but maybe it will surprise us all to the contrary.

FussyZeus 11y ago
This is the first instance though (that I know of) where such housing is being prepared for mid to high income individuals and not stuff like the Projects in the large cities that were subsidized housing for the economically challenged. Let's be real here, it's not cruel to say people with less disposable income make for less attractive homes.
davidw 11y ago
If the population increases in an area, how else are you going to deal with it besides density, or simply telling them 'GO AWAY', which most economists agree is a terrible idea, given that adding people in highly productive areas is such a win. Population density is generally very low in most of the US. It can go higher without too many problems.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Modulo the load on transportation and infrastructure--which seems likely to be substantial--to the degree that you're going to add that much housing, this seems a pretty sensible way to do it. It's generally impractical to bulldoze a large tract of low-rise housing to build slightly higher housing. So just about the only solution is to put high-rise housing somewhere that it has a minimal [EDIT: the least] impact. That said, I wonder how well it will work to build a bunch of high-rise suburban housing while making it difficult for residents to have cars and without great transportation options.
  - 11y ago

Shivetya 11y ago

It is good they are going to support the building of more housing. However the requirement to sell twenty percent at below market value is simply going to pass that cost on to everyone else who cannot qualify for the lower priced housing. As in, everyone else pays more. It might be better to work otherwise as those moving into the new housing would surely be vacating other housing. Yes there will be people totally new to the area moving into the new housing but the majority should be local movers. Before some throw out the idea that its needed to have the developers sell below market it will push some out of the market as well as the cost of the market value homes have to increase to pay for the subsidized homes. In other words, politicians do this to gain votes all the while hoping those who are adversely affected are not annoyed enough to vote against them

Aeolos 11y ago
> However the requirement to sell twenty percent at below market value is simply going to pass that cost on to everyone else who cannot qualify for the lower priced housing. As in, everyone else pays more. You say this as if it's a bad thing. It's not.
wpietri 11y ago
> However the requirement to sell twenty percent at below market value is simply going to pass that cost on to everyone else who cannot qualify for the lower priced housing. That's not necessarily true. Future purchasers are one source of money, but others include builders, investors, and landowners. If the 20% requirement is typical and historically consistent, then presumably that has already been priced in by the property market. In other words, the parcel value may already be discounted from your alternate-universe value to reflect the below-market requirement. In that case nobody really pays more; it's just that whoever held the parcel when the requirement was created wasn't able to sell it for as much as they might have. Even if it were 100% true, I don't think anybody involved would be shocked to hear it. If you have a limited commodity that you sell at auction, the richest people will get the commodity. With housing, that means you may in effect create a community of only rich people. Presumably the citizens of Mountain View want a different outcome. If you just don't like the mechanism, you should suggest a different one. But if you're disagreeing with their goal, then the mechanism's mostly irrelevant.

benzofuran 11y ago

What're the legal requirements if Google chooses to make a "company town" - ie all the other benefits are included already, perhaps they'll start throwing in a 1BR apartment within spitting distance of the campus and a tram / peoplemover connection between the two. Would they still be required to meet the Section 8 / Affordable provisions if the units were only available to employees?

cbhl 11y ago
I imagine the city would pick who gets to stay in the affordable units through a lottery or similar; IIRC, Facebook has a similar development next to their "1 Facebook Way" building. 10k housing units might be enough to give one or two years' worth of Google new hires an apartment; there's no way that it's sustainable to just throw it in as a benefit (plus the tens of thousands of existing employees would be outraged). I imagine they'd use it for temporary new-hire housing and/or intern housing.

wpietri 11y ago

As a San Franciscan, I heartily approve. A lot of the conflict in San Francisco is driven not by people who work in the city, but by people who reluctantly commute to places like Mountain View. One study of corporate bus commuters said about half would rather live closer to work. I think the next step is to create more urban life down there. I frequently hear of people who hate the commute but think the areas near their office might as well be in a desert.

nwah1 11y ago

Those who understand the Law of Rent know that artificially increasing supply is not a real solution to the problem. Rent is set by the differential between the locational value over and above the best available rent-free land. The most effective policy for housing affordability is to exempt improvements from taxation and heavily tax the value of the land, thus encouraging idle speculators to sell it off cheap.

baron816 11y ago

Looks like bus rapid transit (BRT) could be a great solution for SV. If they could get dedicated bus lanes (which is probably politically impossible) you could really clear up a lot of traffic and establish a way for people to forgo owning a car.

cbhl 11y ago
The problem with BRT is that according to California's definitions, it has an unavoidable negative environmental impact. It took six years to do the environmental assessment for the Van Ness BRT in SF. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/07/transit-projects-are-about-to-get-much-much-easier-in-california/374049/ http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/07/transit-projects-are-...
- r00fus 11y ago
  So essentially this 2013 environmental report says that it'd make traffic tougher - assuming the same number of cars and no decrease due to bus ridership. Note: "The encouraging news is that this law is about to change. California will soon reform traffic analysis under CEQA by replacing "level of service" with another metric more in line with its environmental and urban mobility goals. " Does anyone know if this has indeed changed?

trhway 11y ago

i only wish the federals followed the suit and let 100M (1/3 of the US population, about the same as MV new allowed units ratio to existing) new immigrants into the country

davidw 11y ago

I think in some ways that this is one of the issues facing the US right now. Economists generally suggest that easing the shift from low productivity areas to high productivity areas is very beneficial, but NIMBY housing policies stand in the way. And these things have repercussions all throughout the country. Here in Oregon, there is a steady stream of people who are bailing out of California in part because of the housing prices. This causes resentment here, because it is pricing locals out of certain markets (Portland and Bend, likely others). Ultimately, without dealing with the root causes of the issue, the process will just keep repeating itself elsewhere. My view is that there should be a wider range of densities, and more walkable, bikeable neighborhoods. Ultimately, it is a supply issue - you cannot keep that steady and increase demand without forcing people out. Granted, maybe not everyone can have a ranch house with a large yard and a two car garage, but... not everyone needs that, either. Here are some sites I'm fond of: http://marketurbanism.com/ http://marketurbanism.com/ http://missingmiddlehousing.com/ http://missingmiddlehousing.com/ https://clubnimbyblog.wordpress.com/ https://clubnimbyblog.wordpress.com/ and of course Matt Yglesias' book: http://amzn.to/21hwbb6 http://amzn.to/21hwbb6

mmanfrin 11y ago
Portland, Bend, Boulder, Austin. People are looking for the same young, urban, progressive environment that the Bay Area has provided since the Gold Rush, it seems. There is something innate the Bay Area that has nothing to do with tech, but tech is in the middle of it and has become the boogeyman of ails to those currently living in SF. It's a misdirection for NIMBYs to focus the agitation towards because the more they deny, the more valuable and scare the homes in this special market become. I think fighting NIMBYism is a sisyphean obligation for the Bay Area. People will always want to live here -- tech jobs or not.

vram22 11y ago

The "city" of Magarpatta outside Pune, India, seems to have worked out a good option of "walk to shop, walk to work" (though vehicles are still allowed). I've been there a bit. Google the name and check the first few results. I'm not saying that their model can be a solution for the SV issue, just mentioning it as an interesting related story. What makes it more interesting is that the people behind it are from a farming family (but educated), not city types.

lostmsu 11y ago

That's not a real solution, because its not scalable. They should literally be scaling horizontally rather than vertically. There's a lot of less densely populated space around.

lostmsu 11y ago

That's not a real solution, because its not scalable. They should literally be scaling horizontally rather than vertically. There's a lot of less densely populated space around.

ArtDev 11y ago

There is a whole country full of beautiful affordable places to live. Silicon Valley? Yuck. I will never live there again (thank goodness).