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Rents are rising at 5-10% a year in the south bay, and if you don't live in mountain view you don't have renters protections. There is no end in sight for cost
by tmh79 9y ago
Rents are rising at 5-10% a year in the south bay, and if you don't live in mountain view you don't have renters protections. There is no end in sight for cost of living stabilization for the bottom end of the market without large supply growth and/or rent control policies being enacted. Facebook could solve the problem this year by issuing a broad based 10% raise for all of their contract workers, but they would need to do the same thing next year, and the year after that etc etc etc. At the end of the day, all of this money takes a winding route through the valley and ends up in the pockets of people who own land, which is the most scare resource out here.
Due to the land use policies of the SFBA (huge swaths of Single family zoning), land itself has become a proxy for access to opportunity, and the land value is derived from both its scarcity and its proximity to high paying jobs. Single family zoning in essence creates a minimum amount of land you need to occupy through rents or investment to have access to the opportunity in the area. While we cannot create more land, we can minimize the amount of land one must occupy to have access to opportunity through up-zoning single family districts to multi family districts (more families occupying the same plot of land in multi family housing compared to single family housing).
If we want more people to have more access, then we need to reduce the amount of land they must occupy for that access, through sensible land use reforms. As far as I know, there is no other solution (other than full communism) that does not involve the equivalent of vast subsidies to existing land owners
- sologoub 9y agoYou can also invest in improving public transit and shoring up what you already have - for example, BART and systems like it could be used to link areas more effectively/reliably. In talking with some friends in the Bay Area, all feel that East Bay is just too risky with problems BART has been facing in reliability, but all love the less congested feel of say Moraga or Walnut Creek. The article focuses on the fact that the family cannot afford Menlo Park. There are surrounding communities that would allow them at least a 2br for what they earn, yet I suspect they cannot do this because of commute difficulties and schools for kids. Both parents can't really be expected to endure 2 hour commutes, as things come up with kids and you need to be there for them quickly. Schools deserve a separate discussion though. Menlo Park is great and super expensive, but I don't think it's fair to demand that everyone be able to afford it. I can't and that's ok with me. However, the cost of not being able to afford it should not be not seeing your kids grow up. That's a solvable problem and not a class struggle.
- tannhauser23 9y agoYup, those outlying areas are great. But they're getting expensive too - you're looking at $700k plus for a townhouse in Walnut Creek, and homes are over a million. And you're already looking at a 45+ minute commute to the city via BART. There's simply no affordable place within an hour of the city. That's not just because of bad public transportation - that's because of poor housing policy.
- sologoub 9y agoFor sure - these investments need to be made together, otherwise it won't work. Say we build more housing but it's across the bay. Those bridges and BART can only transport so many people. That said, I do think that transportation investment is lacking and should be increased.
- shados 9y agoLet's build some businesses across there too. So not everyone want/need to all live at the same place, so we don't need everywhere to be NYC.
- tmh79 9y agodenser housing and better transit go hand in hand. Its hard to have a good mass transit system when everyone lives on their own 1/3 acre plot of land in a single family home.
- sologoub 9y agoBay Area has natural choke points because of bridges and terrain. Because of this you can still have fairly efficient setup with some driving and park'n'rides at the hubs. This is a lot harder to do with LA sprawl.