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Re-read the comment. There's a lot of truth to it: raise their wages, and in a heartbeat, those workers will see their rents rise.
by ocschwar 9y ago
Re-read the comment.
There's a lot of truth to it: raise their wages, and in a heartbeat, those workers will see their rents rise.
- humanrebar 9y ago...and more development projects will make financial sense, so there will be more investment in housing. Rising rents are a short term problem, but they do provide long-term solutions. Of course, communities in the Bay Area (and elsewhere) can make it less expensive to build affordable, denser housing. That should have similar long term benefits.
- SilasX 9y ago>...and more development projects will make financial sense, so there will be more investment in housing. Not with the current policies that the G/GGP were criticizing! Numerous projects already make sense, in spades, but are being blocked by planning commissions.
- prostoalex 9y ago> and more development projects will make financial sense, so there will be more investment in housing Maybe. The price of land and the price of construction labor reflect the new realities as well.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago>There's a lot of truth to it: raise their wages, and in a heartbeat, those workers will see their rents rise. This offers a brilliant solution, just in the other direction. Let's lower the wages of programmers in the area. As their wages decrease the price of real estate will go down!
- Johnny555 9y agoThat's true, housing prices will go down as techies move to other areas with better wages like Seattle, Austin, Boston, etc. But then the low paid techie cafeteria workers will be out of a job. So I'm not sure that's a net win.
- DannyBee 9y agoIt sounds like you think you are being sarcastic, but this is actually what will happen. See: Any area where this has occurred due to plant closings, etc.
- eli_gottlieb 9y agoThat is more-or-less exactly what anti-gentrification activists are trying to accomplish: push tech out, reduce the average wage, rent goes down.
- cscurmudgeon 9y agoWhy not get rid of political NIMBYism? Aritficially reducing housing supply to increase demand is morally wrong.
- ocschwar 9y agoThe fact is Apple, Facebook and Google have not been able to do that already, despite all three companies and their employees showing interest in doing precisely that. Turns out our democratic processes have not yet been entirely subverted, for better and for worse.
- greglindahl 9y agoBoth Palo Alto and Mountain View have recently elected pro-growth majorities to their city councils.