15 ms·

Tensions Flare in Silicon Valley Over Growth

90 points by caseyf7 10y ago

scharfstevenm 10y ago
It's only fair for the state to require housing to offset new office space. In Silicon Valley, the issue is that there is no more land in cities like Palo Alto or Cupertino for more housing, more school, or more roads, and the transit agency is grossly incompetent so there is no new mass transit. Developers care only about short term profit and never look at the big picture.
jacobolus 10y ago
The lack of any substantial quantity of residential development other than large single-family detached homes on large lots in cities like Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, etc. is absolutely destroying the Bay Area. It forces people to commute from further away, increasing traffic, sprawl, and radically distorting the housing market. We don’t need to turn these towns into Hong Kong or Tokyo, but just build a few blocks radius of 4–6 story mixed-use low-rise apartment buildings around each transit stop, with relaxed parking requirements. The response of the cities, which is basically to put their fingers in their ears and shout "La la la la we can’t hear you” is a farce. They keep pretending that they can keep indefinitely building office space without anywhere for the workers to live, while maintaining the same small town feel from when these suburbs were first built over the top of agricultural land in the middle of the last century.
- jdavis703 10y ago
  People aren't concerned their cute neighborhood is going to look like Hong Kong. They're concerned they won't see the rapid appreciaton of their assets and don't make forcing the negative effects on anyone else. It makes me think you should be able to vote in both the place you live and work. I pay taxes to Palo Alto and spend the majority of my waking hours there, yet have no say in what rules and regulations the government makes (or doesn't) while I'm there.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    In the short term at least, I would expect re-zoning some low density residential neighborhoods to medium density mixed-use zones would substantially increase property values for those areas, because developers would want to buy out single family houses and replace them with larger buildings. From listening to anti-development folks, most of their arguments seem to be vague concerns about “neighborhood character” etc., rather than property values.
    - mahyarm 10y ago
      Some segments know they can't be naked about their greed, so they use vague emotional terms. They usually mention it in offhand sentences. The built in incentives make sure they naturally arise wherever you go.
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      "From listening to anti-development folks, most of their arguments seem to be vague concerns about “neighborhood character” etc., rather than property values." I guess of the hundreds of thousands of people in multiple cities, counties, etc, who have voted for various types of development measures for many years (30+), literally none of them have any valid points that are worth discussing, and any concern about neighborhood character, etc, any of these folks make is really about property values. Sure seems likely there is only one true and right side on this!
      - jacobolus 10y ago
        What you’re claiming I think is exactly the opposite of what I wrote. I take people at their word that they’re concerned about neighborhood character. I never said such concerns were invalid or that there was only one right side. Sorry if the word “vague” comes across as dismissive. My primary point was that these cities are happy to add huge amounts of office space but are not willing to build housing at the same pace, and this is upending the housing market in the whole region and leading to massive problems with traffic and sprawl. Do you disagree?
  - pmiller2 10y ago
- twblalock 10y ago
  > The lack of any substantial quantity of residential development other than large single-family detached homes on large lots in cities like Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, etc. is absolutely destroying the Bay Area. My Caltrain commute takes me from Santa Clara to Redwood City every day. I see quite a few new apartment buildings nearing completion along the line from Santa Clara through Sunnyvale, and again in Redwood City. Driving around Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, I can see even more. Most of them are between three and five stories tall. A lot of new construction is going into multi-unit housing around here, in some cities but not others.
  - jdavis703 10y ago
    That's true, but those places aren't employment hotbeds. We need housing by the jobs. It should be easy to walk or bike to work. Caltrain is overloaded as it stands already.
    - ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
      Electrification with a much more frequent schedule and shorter trips will help alleviate that.
    - chetanahuja 10y ago
      Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Redwood city etc. are employment hotbeds. Lots and lots of companies, especially startups but also more established firms, are based in these areas
    - tajen 10y ago
      There's one more reason why we need housing by the jobs. Global warming. As long as people live >20 minutes from work, there will be many reasons to take the car, and own a car. In Sydney, most of my colleagues didn't own a car. Cars mean parking lots, hence lower density, hence long distances to travel, hence cars are required. America won't reduce their dependency on carbon emissions as long as everything relies on cars.
      - 10y ago
- warlox 10y ago
  Cupertino is the worst of these, as there isn't any mass transit there besides VTA buses.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  You blame the homeowners, but the root cause is the industry fetishization of the Bay Area. The United States is one of the largest nations on earth. If the Bay Area is full, businesses can and should go somewhere else! That why the valley and LA exist in their present form anyway -- dealing with the drama associated with NYC, Mass, etc was a drag.
- pascalxus 10y ago
  Sadly, the political climate isn't going to change anytime soon. Politicians are bragging about how they're going to keep things the same, in their voting pamphlets - this should tell you something about the vast majority of voters. It's time we accepted this and moved on. Let's all leave the bay area, to another tech hub that has space for expansion. If everyone did that, companies would eventually have to follow suit, unless they wanted to pay even higher salaries. Sacramento, anyone?
- scharfstevenm 10y ago
  Actually there are movements in these cities to stop building so much commercial office space, simply because there is no land on which to build housing to offset the office, or schools to accommodate the students from the new housing, or roads on which to accommodate the vehicles, or funds with which to build mass transit. You also have corrupt school boards whose employees profit handsomely from the boards just putting portables onto existing school sites rather than re-opening leased out school sites. The solution requires a systems approach of higher development fees, corporate funding of transit, higher fuel taxes, a change in property and parcel tax assessment, real EIRs, and eliminating the ability of developers to bypass city planning departments by abusing the initiative process. Unfortunately, the people benefiting from not solving these issues have all the money with which to influence legislators to do nothing. Oil companies, vehicle manufacturers, large apartment complex owners, and commercial property owners. The proposed MTC/ABAG merger seems to be going nowhere. Not sure if that would have helped or not, but it was worth a try. http://www.mtcabagmergerstudy.com/ http://www.mtcabagmergerstudy.com/
- scharfstevenm 10y ago
  It’s not sufficient to just build massive amounts of high-density housing in a never-ending race to keep up with more commercial office space. You have to think about where you’re going to put new schools, new parks, new retail, and new transportation, both road expansion and mass transit. Naturally, developers are in it only to maximize their short term profit so they make all sorts of promises that they don’t fulfill, and are able to get away with it because these smaller cities lack the legal expertise to craft bullet-proof agreements. In Palo Alto, Sand Hill Property is being fined a measly $1000 per day for failing to provide the legally mandated grocery store at Edgewood Plaza. Palo Alto’s response: writing the developer a letter—Peter Pau must be terribly scared—not. In Cupertino, when there was a temporary dip in school-age children, the two school districts rushed out and sold or leased schools. They’ve been gradually taking back the leased-out properties, though there are still two elementary schools and one high school that need to be reclaimed. But the sold-off properties became housing, with a small park. When the housing stock finally began to turn over number of school-age children skyrocketed they were in serious trouble. Insufficient money to build new permanent classroom buildings, roads that were never intended to handle the amount of traffic, auditoriums, gymnasiums, cafeterias, playgrounds, and fields that were inadequate. The beneficiaries of this short-sightedness were developers and the manufacturers of portable classrooms. Then high-density housing began to be constructed on former commercial property and school enrollment skyrocketed again, and more portables were added. No money for permanent buildings, though a few were finally built. Every summer you see trucks hauling more portables to the schools. "What did one portable say to the other portable? See you on the playground." Developer fees are set artificially low by state law, laws which the developers lobbied for. Proposition 13 loopholes ensure that commercial property is not reassessed when sold. Parcel taxes are assessed per parcel, not per housing unit, so there is a big incentive to build rental housing, not for-sale housing, which screws over the schools and any other parcel tax beneficiary. The root cause needs to be addressed. It’s money in politics where developers get laws passed that benefit themselves at the expense of residents. So there’s no money for mass transit, schools, parks, roads, etc.. Prop 13, the third rail of California politics desperately needs to be changed so it applies solely to owner-occupied residential housing, and not to commercial property or rental housing. In Cupertino you can see some older condo complexes that are more than 50% rental properties now. The owners pay miniscule property taxes, and rent the units out to families with two or three children. $2000 in yearly property taxes doesn’t pay for even ¼ of one child’s public school expenses, yet the owner is raking in $3500-4000 a month in rent. If you look at major cities throughout the world, they build transit systems that allow residents to commute quickly from outlying areas. The LIRR and PATH in the NYC area. Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Munich, Frankfurt, Paris, etc.. BART did this, but they stopped too soon. It needs to go through Livermore and continue out to Tracy and Stockton, as well as going north to Santa Rosa. CalTrain needs to continue to Salinas. But in the U.S. we are unwilling to fund mass transit through higher vehicle fees and fuel taxes.
simonw 10y ago
Any time I have to ride the Caltrain I play a game of "spot places you could fit an apartment block". It's stunning how many Caltrain stations are surrounded by empty land, parking lots or single story buildings. Public transport hubs should have housing near them!
- CodeWriter23 10y ago
  In Los Angeles many transit stops are well developed with residential and retail nearby. The result has been the property values near the stations is so high that people who use public transit as their primary mode of transit can't afford to live there, and the bulk of people who do live there typically drive and use transit occasionally.
  - dba7dba 10y ago
    It's not just the property value of the neighborhood that's absurdly high. The rent/cost of the units in the newly built dense housing buildings is absurdly high too. I mean living in LA, who would want to pay ton of money for a box of living space with no yard, and yet share subway with the less desirables (not my view of course). And the public transportation systems in LA doesn't really have the reach either.
    - melling 10y ago
      Simple solution to both problems: build a lot more mass transit.
      - Tempest1981 10y ago
        How much will that cost? Measure B will help a bit, but brings our sales tax to 9%. Property tax is limited by prop 13. Should developers kick in more? Is 10-12% sales tax ok?
        melling 10y ago
        It's going to cost a lot more than 50 years ago when it should have done. Stupidity has a price. Of course, the problem could just be ignored for another 50. Maybe people will simply leave LA.
idlewords 10y ago
We really need a regional planning authority for the Bay Area, with the power to override local zoning boards, exercise eminent domain, and with an enormous budget for building mass transit. Politically, I think the only way to get there is to wait for the Big One. Plate tectonics has become the best hope for urbanism in northern California.
- zeroer 10y ago
  Eminent domain is unfair. If you want the land, pay for it.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Note that eminent domain requires just compensation. Land seized does get paid for.
    - sverige 10y ago
      And it's really the only way to overcome NIMBYism. Don't want a power line running through your land? Don't want light rail a half block away? Too bad, here it comes.
      - DannyBee 10y ago
        and who decides exactly what is right here? Don't want new jobs in a new mall running through your land? Too bad, here it comes.
        idlewords 10y ago
        Some kind of democratically elected board of soulless government bureaucrats. Basically the same configuration as makes the decisions now, except on a regional rather than community scale. The point is not to remove accountability, but to prevent small municipalities from having veto power on things that would vastly improve people's quality of life regionwide (like a BART line to Marin, for example).
WalterBright 10y ago
I'm actually a bit surprised that offices and apartments aren't in the same building. Wouldn't it be convenient to work in the same building you live in? Getting a job at a company could come with a 'perq' of getting an apartment in the same building. It could be a very attractive recruiting tool.
- atroyn 10y ago
  I urge you to look into the history of company towns. What happens when they fire you and kick you out of company housing? What happens when unpaid overtime is the norm because you're not really 'at work' despite being in the same building? Campuses like Facebook's already creep me out with the whole potemkin village vibe.
  - gaius 10y ago
    And what happens when they pay you in scrip that can only be spent in the company store? They did it back in the day but now it is more subtle: company food, company laundry/dry cleaning, company healthcare, all the other company perks are both carrot and stick.
    - atroyn 10y ago
      Not to mention the lengths companies go to to make sure your whole social life is with people you work with.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    > What happens when they fire you and kick you out of company housing? That would depend on what your contract with the landlord says. Anyway, consider that universities offer student housing. Nobody makes students live in that housing, and students don't expect to continue living in it when they are no longer enrolled. Nobody seems to think that is a problem.
    - CardenB 10y ago
      That's vastly different. 1. You aren't living with authority figures. The RA's that you live with are also students. So minimal conflict of interest in living your life. 2. You don't expect to live there indefinitely 3. You aren't relying on the school to provide means for living. You're paying the school for the privilege to be there. That means you aren't screwed if they fire you.
Tempest1981 10y ago
We're seeing a lot of poor planning by cities. And they are being pushed hard by developers, and probably want the revenue. People would be less NIMBY if they saw better planning. As it is, quality of life is suffering as we fail to balance commercial development with residential -- and address traffic/transit, schools, parks, bike routes, etc.
Hondor 10y ago
What are the motives of people who want to stop this development?: "In July, San Jose sued to stop the project, saying it would create 25,000 jobs but provide 1,350 apartments at most. That would shift “the environmental burden and expense to support that economic development onto neighboring cities and counties” If you own property, it'll increase it's value. If you live there, you'll have more jobs. If you have to pay for roads - well that bill probably goes to the property owners and developers who can build more houses to serve those people. If you want to help the economy, more jobs is good. Who loses out with growth like that? The view of the skyline? Are there really that many luddites in San Jose? Surely someone must stand to lose money, but who?
- Naritai 10y ago
  The 23,650 people who get jobs in that development but have nowhere to live. These people end up having to live a 2hr drive or 2.5hr mass transit ride away - or, maybe they can save up for 15 years so they can afford a 1bdm nearby. Intentionally building dense commercial areas but restricting residential is a deliberate scheme (as you point out!) to drive real estate prices up for existing owners. Well, the city of San Jose has stood up and said 'no more'.
golergka 10y ago
Hey, this may be an unrelated question, but how come real estate developers are always villains in american TV shows and movies? All the comments here are about how there's not enough development, and people tend to agree that NIMBY attitude is bad, and yet, every time a real estate developer is portrayed on screen he's an evil scoundrel who's trying to throw people out on the street. Am I the only one who's seeing the contradiction here?
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Rich people are always bad in movies, except maybe Larry Ellison\Tony Stark. Poor people are usually good. Just how the movies go.
- Agathos 10y ago
  They're throwbacks to classic Westerns where big ranchers try to force out small homesteaders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_County_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_County_War
LeanderK 10y ago
i don't get it. they are not solving anything, they are just making the housing situation worse. by not providing adequate housing- and office-space the pressure on every individual will just rise and rise.
kinofcain 10y ago
One of the reasons that cities build office space while ignoring residential is Prop 13 which fixes residential property taxes. Taxes on equivalent office space and the business it generates are a better source of revenue over time for cities than the fixed taxes from housing. This disincentivizes balanced planning. One thing that also should be mentioned: while it's perfectly ok to want your city to stay the same, it's not practical to put the burden of growth on other cities. And it's also not legal. California law actually requires municipalities to plan for and support their share of new housing[1]. Something many cities are not doing. [1] http://wwwww.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_203PLR.pdf http://wwwww.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_203PLR.pdf
- rsync 10y ago
  "Taxes on equivalent office space and the business it generates are a better source of revenue over time for cities than the fixed taxes from housing. This disincentivizes balanced planning." I am not sure either of your conjectures are true... First, "over time" the tax returns from residential and commercial property, even under the prop 13 regime, should even out - since eventually everyone dies or moves out ... eventually all of the residential property changes hands (and resets to current taxation levels). Second, brand new residential property gets immediately taxed at the current tax rate. So in the very short term that doesn't seem to be (relatively) disincentivized. I'm oversimplifying, but it would seem that only in the medium term does prop 13 affected residential housing (relatively) underperform commercial property - in terms of (relative) tax receipts.
  - kinofcain 10y ago
    Sure but it's always "medium term": Taxes weren't fixed once, they are fixed at time of house purchase (and some other events). It would only be revenue neutral if they had raised the absolute rates to make up for the fact that an increasing number of people are paying under the current rate.
  - runamok 10y ago
    Anecdotally I have heard that there are various machinations like shell/holding companies and partnerships which let you functionally prevent the commercial property tax from changing and is very common because the incentives are so large.
nopinsight 10y ago
The East Bay should get more attention from investors and the startup community. The area includes a world-class university with huge student population (UC Berkeley), a less NIMBY atmosphere, beautiful natural settings, and proximity to San Francisco, for significantly more affordable costs. Why is that still not the case? I am not sure about the NIMBYism though. It certainly exists but I feel it's less intense than in Silicon Valley proper. Could someone with more knowledge of the issues share your opinions?
- sAuronas 10y ago
  There is no such less NIMBYism in Oakland. The stakeholders are just different. There is also a racism problem: I sat at a round table forum where the most successful developer in the city (he's building that Brooklyn Basin project) said banks don't want to lend in Oakland when they can just lend to Developers in SF (500/sf is not good enough to deal with minorities, etc). But you're right, East Bay cities ought to get more attention. The person above is right though - Prop 13, as well as CA ballot system is killing the cities and making them museums to car-centric suburbs of the past.

90 points by caseyf7 10y ago

It's only fair for the state to require housing to offset new office space. In Silicon Valley, the issue is that there is no more land in cities like Palo Alto or Cupertino for more housing, more school, or more roads, and the transit agency is grossly incompetent so there is no new mass transit. Developers care only about short term profit and never look at the big picture.

jacobolus 10y ago

The lack of any substantial quantity of residential development other than large single-family detached homes on large lots in cities like Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, etc. is absolutely destroying the Bay Area. It forces people to commute from further away, increasing traffic, sprawl, and radically distorting the housing market. We don’t need to turn these towns into Hong Kong or Tokyo, but just build a few blocks radius of 4–6 story mixed-use low-rise apartment buildings around each transit stop, with relaxed parking requirements. The response of the cities, which is basically to put their fingers in their ears and shout "La la la la we can’t hear you” is a farce. They keep pretending that they can keep indefinitely building office space without anywhere for the workers to live, while maintaining the same small town feel from when these suburbs were first built over the top of agricultural land in the middle of the last century.

jdavis703 10y ago
People aren't concerned their cute neighborhood is going to look like Hong Kong. They're concerned they won't see the rapid appreciaton of their assets and don't make forcing the negative effects on anyone else. It makes me think you should be able to vote in both the place you live and work. I pay taxes to Palo Alto and spend the majority of my waking hours there, yet have no say in what rules and regulations the government makes (or doesn't) while I'm there.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  In the short term at least, I would expect re-zoning some low density residential neighborhoods to medium density mixed-use zones would substantially increase property values for those areas, because developers would want to buy out single family houses and replace them with larger buildings. From listening to anti-development folks, most of their arguments seem to be vague concerns about “neighborhood character” etc., rather than property values.
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    Some segments know they can't be naked about their greed, so they use vague emotional terms. They usually mention it in offhand sentences. The built in incentives make sure they naturally arise wherever you go.
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    "From listening to anti-development folks, most of their arguments seem to be vague concerns about “neighborhood character” etc., rather than property values." I guess of the hundreds of thousands of people in multiple cities, counties, etc, who have voted for various types of development measures for many years (30+), literally none of them have any valid points that are worth discussing, and any concern about neighborhood character, etc, any of these folks make is really about property values. Sure seems likely there is only one true and right side on this!
    - jacobolus 10y ago
      What you’re claiming I think is exactly the opposite of what I wrote. I take people at their word that they’re concerned about neighborhood character. I never said such concerns were invalid or that there was only one right side. Sorry if the word “vague” comes across as dismissive. My primary point was that these cities are happy to add huge amounts of office space but are not willing to build housing at the same pace, and this is upending the housing market in the whole region and leading to massive problems with traffic and sprawl. Do you disagree?
- pmiller2 10y ago
twblalock 10y ago
> The lack of any substantial quantity of residential development other than large single-family detached homes on large lots in cities like Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, etc. is absolutely destroying the Bay Area. My Caltrain commute takes me from Santa Clara to Redwood City every day. I see quite a few new apartment buildings nearing completion along the line from Santa Clara through Sunnyvale, and again in Redwood City. Driving around Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, I can see even more. Most of them are between three and five stories tall. A lot of new construction is going into multi-unit housing around here, in some cities but not others.
- jdavis703 10y ago
  That's true, but those places aren't employment hotbeds. We need housing by the jobs. It should be easy to walk or bike to work. Caltrain is overloaded as it stands already.
  - ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
    Electrification with a much more frequent schedule and shorter trips will help alleviate that.
  - chetanahuja 10y ago
    Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Redwood city etc. are employment hotbeds. Lots and lots of companies, especially startups but also more established firms, are based in these areas
  - tajen 10y ago
    There's one more reason why we need housing by the jobs. Global warming. As long as people live >20 minutes from work, there will be many reasons to take the car, and own a car. In Sydney, most of my colleagues didn't own a car. Cars mean parking lots, hence lower density, hence long distances to travel, hence cars are required. America won't reduce their dependency on carbon emissions as long as everything relies on cars.
    - 10y ago
warlox 10y ago
Cupertino is the worst of these, as there isn't any mass transit there besides VTA buses.
Spooky23 10y ago
You blame the homeowners, but the root cause is the industry fetishization of the Bay Area. The United States is one of the largest nations on earth. If the Bay Area is full, businesses can and should go somewhere else! That why the valley and LA exist in their present form anyway -- dealing with the drama associated with NYC, Mass, etc was a drag.
pascalxus 10y ago
Sadly, the political climate isn't going to change anytime soon. Politicians are bragging about how they're going to keep things the same, in their voting pamphlets - this should tell you something about the vast majority of voters. It's time we accepted this and moved on. Let's all leave the bay area, to another tech hub that has space for expansion. If everyone did that, companies would eventually have to follow suit, unless they wanted to pay even higher salaries. Sacramento, anyone?
scharfstevenm 10y ago
Actually there are movements in these cities to stop building so much commercial office space, simply because there is no land on which to build housing to offset the office, or schools to accommodate the students from the new housing, or roads on which to accommodate the vehicles, or funds with which to build mass transit. You also have corrupt school boards whose employees profit handsomely from the boards just putting portables onto existing school sites rather than re-opening leased out school sites. The solution requires a systems approach of higher development fees, corporate funding of transit, higher fuel taxes, a change in property and parcel tax assessment, real EIRs, and eliminating the ability of developers to bypass city planning departments by abusing the initiative process. Unfortunately, the people benefiting from not solving these issues have all the money with which to influence legislators to do nothing. Oil companies, vehicle manufacturers, large apartment complex owners, and commercial property owners. The proposed MTC/ABAG merger seems to be going nowhere. Not sure if that would have helped or not, but it was worth a try. http://www.mtcabagmergerstudy.com/ http://www.mtcabagmergerstudy.com/
scharfstevenm 10y ago
It’s not sufficient to just build massive amounts of high-density housing in a never-ending race to keep up with more commercial office space. You have to think about where you’re going to put new schools, new parks, new retail, and new transportation, both road expansion and mass transit. Naturally, developers are in it only to maximize their short term profit so they make all sorts of promises that they don’t fulfill, and are able to get away with it because these smaller cities lack the legal expertise to craft bullet-proof agreements. In Palo Alto, Sand Hill Property is being fined a measly $1000 per day for failing to provide the legally mandated grocery store at Edgewood Plaza. Palo Alto’s response: writing the developer a letter—Peter Pau must be terribly scared—not. In Cupertino, when there was a temporary dip in school-age children, the two school districts rushed out and sold or leased schools. They’ve been gradually taking back the leased-out properties, though there are still two elementary schools and one high school that need to be reclaimed. But the sold-off properties became housing, with a small park. When the housing stock finally began to turn over number of school-age children skyrocketed they were in serious trouble. Insufficient money to build new permanent classroom buildings, roads that were never intended to handle the amount of traffic, auditoriums, gymnasiums, cafeterias, playgrounds, and fields that were inadequate. The beneficiaries of this short-sightedness were developers and the manufacturers of portable classrooms. Then high-density housing began to be constructed on former commercial property and school enrollment skyrocketed again, and more portables were added. No money for permanent buildings, though a few were finally built. Every summer you see trucks hauling more portables to the schools. "What did one portable say to the other portable? See you on the playground." Developer fees are set artificially low by state law, laws which the developers lobbied for. Proposition 13 loopholes ensure that commercial property is not reassessed when sold. Parcel taxes are assessed per parcel, not per housing unit, so there is a big incentive to build rental housing, not for-sale housing, which screws over the schools and any other parcel tax beneficiary. The root cause needs to be addressed. It’s money in politics where developers get laws passed that benefit themselves at the expense of residents. So there’s no money for mass transit, schools, parks, roads, etc.. Prop 13, the third rail of California politics desperately needs to be changed so it applies solely to owner-occupied residential housing, and not to commercial property or rental housing. In Cupertino you can see some older condo complexes that are more than 50% rental properties now. The owners pay miniscule property taxes, and rent the units out to families with two or three children. $2000 in yearly property taxes doesn’t pay for even ¼ of one child’s public school expenses, yet the owner is raking in $3500-4000 a month in rent. If you look at major cities throughout the world, they build transit systems that allow residents to commute quickly from outlying areas. The LIRR and PATH in the NYC area. Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Munich, Frankfurt, Paris, etc.. BART did this, but they stopped too soon. It needs to go through Livermore and continue out to Tracy and Stockton, as well as going north to Santa Rosa. CalTrain needs to continue to Salinas. But in the U.S. we are unwilling to fund mass transit through higher vehicle fees and fuel taxes.

simonw 10y ago

Any time I have to ride the Caltrain I play a game of "spot places you could fit an apartment block". It's stunning how many Caltrain stations are surrounded by empty land, parking lots or single story buildings. Public transport hubs should have housing near them!

CodeWriter23 10y ago
In Los Angeles many transit stops are well developed with residential and retail nearby. The result has been the property values near the stations is so high that people who use public transit as their primary mode of transit can't afford to live there, and the bulk of people who do live there typically drive and use transit occasionally.
- dba7dba 10y ago
  It's not just the property value of the neighborhood that's absurdly high. The rent/cost of the units in the newly built dense housing buildings is absurdly high too. I mean living in LA, who would want to pay ton of money for a box of living space with no yard, and yet share subway with the less desirables (not my view of course). And the public transportation systems in LA doesn't really have the reach either.
  - melling 10y ago
    Simple solution to both problems: build a lot more mass transit.
    - Tempest1981 10y ago
      How much will that cost? Measure B will help a bit, but brings our sales tax to 9%. Property tax is limited by prop 13. Should developers kick in more? Is 10-12% sales tax ok?
      - melling 10y ago
        It's going to cost a lot more than 50 years ago when it should have done. Stupidity has a price. Of course, the problem could just be ignored for another 50. Maybe people will simply leave LA.

idlewords 10y ago

We really need a regional planning authority for the Bay Area, with the power to override local zoning boards, exercise eminent domain, and with an enormous budget for building mass transit. Politically, I think the only way to get there is to wait for the Big One. Plate tectonics has become the best hope for urbanism in northern California.

zeroer 10y ago
Eminent domain is unfair. If you want the land, pay for it.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  Note that eminent domain requires just compensation. Land seized does get paid for.
  - sverige 10y ago
    And it's really the only way to overcome NIMBYism. Don't want a power line running through your land? Don't want light rail a half block away? Too bad, here it comes.
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      and who decides exactly what is right here? Don't want new jobs in a new mall running through your land? Too bad, here it comes.
      - idlewords 10y ago
        Some kind of democratically elected board of soulless government bureaucrats. Basically the same configuration as makes the decisions now, except on a regional rather than community scale. The point is not to remove accountability, but to prevent small municipalities from having veto power on things that would vastly improve people's quality of life regionwide (like a BART line to Marin, for example).

WalterBright 10y ago

I'm actually a bit surprised that offices and apartments aren't in the same building. Wouldn't it be convenient to work in the same building you live in? Getting a job at a company could come with a 'perq' of getting an apartment in the same building. It could be a very attractive recruiting tool.

atroyn 10y ago
I urge you to look into the history of company towns. What happens when they fire you and kick you out of company housing? What happens when unpaid overtime is the norm because you're not really 'at work' despite being in the same building? Campuses like Facebook's already creep me out with the whole potemkin village vibe.
- gaius 10y ago
  And what happens when they pay you in scrip that can only be spent in the company store? They did it back in the day but now it is more subtle: company food, company laundry/dry cleaning, company healthcare, all the other company perks are both carrot and stick.
  - atroyn 10y ago
    Not to mention the lengths companies go to to make sure your whole social life is with people you work with.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  > What happens when they fire you and kick you out of company housing? That would depend on what your contract with the landlord says. Anyway, consider that universities offer student housing. Nobody makes students live in that housing, and students don't expect to continue living in it when they are no longer enrolled. Nobody seems to think that is a problem.
  - CardenB 10y ago
    That's vastly different. 1. You aren't living with authority figures. The RA's that you live with are also students. So minimal conflict of interest in living your life. 2. You don't expect to live there indefinitely 3. You aren't relying on the school to provide means for living. You're paying the school for the privilege to be there. That means you aren't screwed if they fire you.

Tempest1981 10y ago

We're seeing a lot of poor planning by cities. And they are being pushed hard by developers, and probably want the revenue. People would be less NIMBY if they saw better planning. As it is, quality of life is suffering as we fail to balance commercial development with residential -- and address traffic/transit, schools, parks, bike routes, etc.

Hondor 10y ago

What are the motives of people who want to stop this development?: "In July, San Jose sued to stop the project, saying it would create 25,000 jobs but provide 1,350 apartments at most. That would shift “the environmental burden and expense to support that economic development onto neighboring cities and counties” If you own property, it'll increase it's value. If you live there, you'll have more jobs. If you have to pay for roads - well that bill probably goes to the property owners and developers who can build more houses to serve those people. If you want to help the economy, more jobs is good. Who loses out with growth like that? The view of the skyline? Are there really that many luddites in San Jose? Surely someone must stand to lose money, but who?

Naritai 10y ago
The 23,650 people who get jobs in that development but have nowhere to live. These people end up having to live a 2hr drive or 2.5hr mass transit ride away - or, maybe they can save up for 15 years so they can afford a 1bdm nearby. Intentionally building dense commercial areas but restricting residential is a deliberate scheme (as you point out!) to drive real estate prices up for existing owners. Well, the city of San Jose has stood up and said 'no more'.

golergka 10y ago

Hey, this may be an unrelated question, but how come real estate developers are always villains in american TV shows and movies? All the comments here are about how there's not enough development, and people tend to agree that NIMBY attitude is bad, and yet, every time a real estate developer is portrayed on screen he's an evil scoundrel who's trying to throw people out on the street. Am I the only one who's seeing the contradiction here?

brianwawok 10y ago
Rich people are always bad in movies, except maybe Larry Ellison\Tony Stark. Poor people are usually good. Just how the movies go.
Agathos 10y ago
They're throwbacks to classic Westerns where big ranchers try to force out small homesteaders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_County_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_County_War

LeanderK 10y ago

i don't get it. they are not solving anything, they are just making the housing situation worse. by not providing adequate housing- and office-space the pressure on every individual will just rise and rise.

kinofcain 10y ago

One of the reasons that cities build office space while ignoring residential is Prop 13 which fixes residential property taxes. Taxes on equivalent office space and the business it generates are a better source of revenue over time for cities than the fixed taxes from housing. This disincentivizes balanced planning. One thing that also should be mentioned: while it's perfectly ok to want your city to stay the same, it's not practical to put the burden of growth on other cities. And it's also not legal. California law actually requires municipalities to plan for and support their share of new housing[1]. Something many cities are not doing. [1] http://wwwww.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_203PLR.pdf http://wwwww.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_203PLR.pdf

rsync 10y ago
"Taxes on equivalent office space and the business it generates are a better source of revenue over time for cities than the fixed taxes from housing. This disincentivizes balanced planning." I am not sure either of your conjectures are true... First, "over time" the tax returns from residential and commercial property, even under the prop 13 regime, should even out - since eventually everyone dies or moves out ... eventually all of the residential property changes hands (and resets to current taxation levels). Second, brand new residential property gets immediately taxed at the current tax rate. So in the very short term that doesn't seem to be (relatively) disincentivized. I'm oversimplifying, but it would seem that only in the medium term does prop 13 affected residential housing (relatively) underperform commercial property - in terms of (relative) tax receipts.
- kinofcain 10y ago
  Sure but it's always "medium term": Taxes weren't fixed once, they are fixed at time of house purchase (and some other events). It would only be revenue neutral if they had raised the absolute rates to make up for the fact that an increasing number of people are paying under the current rate.
- runamok 10y ago
  Anecdotally I have heard that there are various machinations like shell/holding companies and partnerships which let you functionally prevent the commercial property tax from changing and is very common because the incentives are so large.

nopinsight 10y ago

The East Bay should get more attention from investors and the startup community. The area includes a world-class university with huge student population (UC Berkeley), a less NIMBY atmosphere, beautiful natural settings, and proximity to San Francisco, for significantly more affordable costs. Why is that still not the case? I am not sure about the NIMBYism though. It certainly exists but I feel it's less intense than in Silicon Valley proper. Could someone with more knowledge of the issues share your opinions?

sAuronas 10y ago
There is no such less NIMBYism in Oakland. The stakeholders are just different. There is also a racism problem: I sat at a round table forum where the most successful developer in the city (he's building that Brooklyn Basin project) said banks don't want to lend in Oakland when they can just lend to Developers in SF (500/sf is not good enough to deal with minorities, etc). But you're right, East Bay cities ought to get more attention. The person above is right though - Prop 13, as well as CA ballot system is killing the cities and making them museums to car-centric suburbs of the past.