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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 the

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.
    - FussyZeus 11y ago
      I don't understand what point you're making.
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Its no more selfish for existing property owners to want to keep their community as-is any more than its selfish that highly compensated tech workers who are in the SFBA by choice want cheaper housing. My point was, selfish is simply an emotionally charged word for the issue. Everyone is self interested, as they should be, and as economics expects everyone to be.
- martythemaniak 11y ago
  > decide to forgo change That's not the exactly the issue. It's creating an environment where they reap all the benefits of change with none of the downsides, which is a common theme almost everywhere. For example, no one is against the change in their home prices or the change in tax revenue that comes from hosting lots of jobs. But they are vehemently against the change in landscape required to house those workers.
  - bittercynic 11y ago
    A few of us are against it. The value of my home in SV has roughly doubled since I bought it in 2010, but it brings no benefit to me, since I plan to stay put and don't need to borrow against it. The increased tax revenue has some benefit, but at the cost of pushing renters to the brink. I'd rather have a community where it's not so brutally hard to get by for renters who make a good living.
- narrator 11y ago
  Being one of the rare natives in Silicon Valley who reads HN, let me chime in here: The history of anti-development in the Bay Area really goes back to Marincello [1]. Back in the mid 60s they had a plan to turn the Marin Headlands into a suburb full of ranch houses and cul-de-sacs. >"Marincello was originally conceived to house up to 30,000 people in 50 apartment towers, as well as hundreds of homes and townhouses. There would also be a mall and a grand hotel at the highest point of the headlands. [2]" It got shot down through heroic community activism and now we have that wonderful open space instead of condos. Of course, open space makes people want to live here and then they complain about how it's so expensive because it's so nice and wouldn't it be nice if we built a lot more housing. Why does everybody have to squeeze into this tiny little area? You've got the whole rest of the country that's mostly empty to work with. There are plenty of alternative metropolitan areas that are far cheaper. Why bring everyone here? I think it's because the wealthy venture capitalists and executives who own the companies and like to be on-site managing and talking to people and such like living here, so everyone else has to live here too in whatever accommodation they can find. 1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marincello https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marincello
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    "Why does everybody have to squeeze into this tiny little area? You've got the whole rest of the country that's mostly empty to work with. There are plenty of alternative metropolitan areas that are far cheaper. Why bring everyone here? I think it's because the wealthy venture capitalists and executives who own the companies and like to be on-site managing and talking to people and such like living here, so everyone else has to live here too in whatever accommodation they can find." Knocked it out of the park. The problem isn't affordable housing. The problem is caused by VCs and tech companies who require labor to be on site.
  - moultano 11y ago
    Open space isn't what gets replaced by development. It's molding crumbling strip malls and lead covered, termite infested, low rise apartments. I think you'll find that every proponent of high density housing is also in favor of public green space.
- erispoe 11y ago
  The question is what do you define as a community. The housing market is the size of the whole Bay Area, yet local governments responsible for housing are very fragmented and very different. There is a vast difference between San Francisco (850,000+ habs) and its neighbor Brisbane (4,000 habs). Some communities try to reap the fruits of the economic growth of the Bay Area while making other support the cost.
dmitrygr 11y ago
To play devil's advocate, protecting one's (likely) most significant investment is not selfish - it is reasonable. The fact that you do not like their actions doe snot make them any less reasonable and sane.
- davidw 11y ago
  > protecting one's (likely) most significant investment Because some additional housing is going to completely crater house prices in the area? I don't buy it.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    You can get more out of a house than resale value, and thus "protecting" doesn't pertain only to resale value. If you buy a house because it has a nice view of the mountains, fighting billboards that obstruct your view is "protecting your investment".
    - davidw 11y ago
      I can understand protecting genuinely historic stuff, but Silicon Valley? The area is all about change. If there weren't constant change, the area would still be rural. I can understand wanting to channel it to some degree, too, but it's ultimately an iron triangle where something has to give. Right now, it's the less economically fortunate who are getting turfed out and losing access to an area that generates a phenomenal amount of wealth.
- jonknee 11y ago
  Their property would be worth even more than it already is if more dense development was allowed.
- fixermark 11y ago
  It's reasonably selfish. People by homes expecting their value to be retained; housing density increase tends to have the opposite effect. To the extent they can protect their investments, you'd expect people to do so.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
So true, its interesting when you look at the political landscape. Mountain View wants to stay relevant, and they want their share of sales tax and other revenues. The building of new apartment complexes in Sunnyvale's re-done downtown has people moving closer to the action that way, and the population numbers have reflected it. A lot of people remember the difference between San Jose and San Francisco. San Jose has been trying to shake off (for at least a decade) of the city with a downtown that dies at 5PM when everyone goes home. Contrast that with cities like Denver or Austin where downtown is a night time destination and has a lot of foot traffic (and the revenue associated with 18 hours of human activity a day, vs 8) Cities seem to understand they either have to embrace the "bedroom community" aspect of things, or re-make themselves into something where millenials will choose to live. I don't think the older residents have all gotten the memo yet :-)

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.
  - FussyZeus 11y ago
    I don't understand what point you're making.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Its no more selfish for existing property owners to want to keep their community as-is any more than its selfish that highly compensated tech workers who are in the SFBA by choice want cheaper housing. My point was, selfish is simply an emotionally charged word for the issue. Everyone is self interested, as they should be, and as economics expects everyone to be.
martythemaniak 11y ago
> decide to forgo change That's not the exactly the issue. It's creating an environment where they reap all the benefits of change with none of the downsides, which is a common theme almost everywhere. For example, no one is against the change in their home prices or the change in tax revenue that comes from hosting lots of jobs. But they are vehemently against the change in landscape required to house those workers.
- bittercynic 11y ago
  A few of us are against it. The value of my home in SV has roughly doubled since I bought it in 2010, but it brings no benefit to me, since I plan to stay put and don't need to borrow against it. The increased tax revenue has some benefit, but at the cost of pushing renters to the brink. I'd rather have a community where it's not so brutally hard to get by for renters who make a good living.
narrator 11y ago
Being one of the rare natives in Silicon Valley who reads HN, let me chime in here: The history of anti-development in the Bay Area really goes back to Marincello [1]. Back in the mid 60s they had a plan to turn the Marin Headlands into a suburb full of ranch houses and cul-de-sacs. >"Marincello was originally conceived to house up to 30,000 people in 50 apartment towers, as well as hundreds of homes and townhouses. There would also be a mall and a grand hotel at the highest point of the headlands. [2]" It got shot down through heroic community activism and now we have that wonderful open space instead of condos. Of course, open space makes people want to live here and then they complain about how it's so expensive because it's so nice and wouldn't it be nice if we built a lot more housing. Why does everybody have to squeeze into this tiny little area? You've got the whole rest of the country that's mostly empty to work with. There are plenty of alternative metropolitan areas that are far cheaper. Why bring everyone here? I think it's because the wealthy venture capitalists and executives who own the companies and like to be on-site managing and talking to people and such like living here, so everyone else has to live here too in whatever accommodation they can find. 1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marincello https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marincello
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  "Why does everybody have to squeeze into this tiny little area? You've got the whole rest of the country that's mostly empty to work with. There are plenty of alternative metropolitan areas that are far cheaper. Why bring everyone here? I think it's because the wealthy venture capitalists and executives who own the companies and like to be on-site managing and talking to people and such like living here, so everyone else has to live here too in whatever accommodation they can find." Knocked it out of the park. The problem isn't affordable housing. The problem is caused by VCs and tech companies who require labor to be on site.
- moultano 11y ago
  Open space isn't what gets replaced by development. It's molding crumbling strip malls and lead covered, termite infested, low rise apartments. I think you'll find that every proponent of high density housing is also in favor of public green space.
erispoe 11y ago
The question is what do you define as a community. The housing market is the size of the whole Bay Area, yet local governments responsible for housing are very fragmented and very different. There is a vast difference between San Francisco (850,000+ habs) and its neighbor Brisbane (4,000 habs). Some communities try to reap the fruits of the economic growth of the Bay Area while making other support the cost.

dmitrygr 11y ago

To play devil's advocate, protecting one's (likely) most significant investment is not selfish - it is reasonable. The fact that you do not like their actions doe snot make them any less reasonable and sane.

davidw 11y ago
> protecting one's (likely) most significant investment Because some additional housing is going to completely crater house prices in the area? I don't buy it.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  You can get more out of a house than resale value, and thus "protecting" doesn't pertain only to resale value. If you buy a house because it has a nice view of the mountains, fighting billboards that obstruct your view is "protecting your investment".
  - davidw 11y ago
    I can understand protecting genuinely historic stuff, but Silicon Valley? The area is all about change. If there weren't constant change, the area would still be rural. I can understand wanting to channel it to some degree, too, but it's ultimately an iron triangle where something has to give. Right now, it's the less economically fortunate who are getting turfed out and losing access to an area that generates a phenomenal amount of wealth.
jonknee 11y ago
Their property would be worth even more than it already is if more dense development was allowed.
fixermark 11y ago
It's reasonably selfish. People by homes expecting their value to be retained; housing density increase tends to have the opposite effect. To the extent they can protect their investments, you'd expect people to do so.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

So true, its interesting when you look at the political landscape. Mountain View wants to stay relevant, and they want their share of sales tax and other revenues. The building of new apartment complexes in Sunnyvale's re-done downtown has people moving closer to the action that way, and the population numbers have reflected it. A lot of people remember the difference between San Jose and San Francisco. San Jose has been trying to shake off (for at least a decade) of the city with a downtown that dies at 5PM when everyone goes home. Contrast that with cities like Denver or Austin where downtown is a night time destination and has a lot of foot traffic (and the revenue associated with 18 hours of human activity a day, vs 8) Cities seem to understand they either have to embrace the "bedroom community" aspect of things, or re-make themselves into something where millenials will choose to live. I don't think the older residents have all gotten the memo yet :-)