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It's great that Google wants to increase housing, but is this really going to work? The housing shortage in the Bay Area is not a money problem. If it were poss

It's great that Google wants to increase housing, but is this really going to work? The housing shortage in the Bay Area is not a money problem. If it were possible to build 20,000 houses in the next 20 years, it would absolutely happen without Google's help. The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism. SF doesn't want to allow taller buildings and denser housing complexes. It's vastly worse in the Valley. Towns like Mountain View and Palo Alto ought to be vastly denser, with apartment buildings, duplexes, and other multi-tenant dwellings. The people living there don't want that, though, so the laws prohibit it. I don't blame people for wanting to keep their quiet neighborhoods and single-unit homes, or low-rises in SF, but until those objections are overcome, the problem is only going to get worse. So while I say that there's a simple cause, there's no simple solution. The only solution is changing the zoning laws, and that requires changing peoples' minds. Once that's done, the money will flow in directly from tenants, and will ease pressure all around. If Google wants to build more housing, they need to spend that billion dollars on political efforts.

tartuffe78 7y ago
FTA: "In Mountain View, we’ve already worked with the city to change zoning in the North Bayshore area to free up land for housing, and we’re currently in productive conversations with Sunnyvale and San Jose."
- ac29 7y ago
  It should be noted these are the three cities that come to mind where Google has bought multiple billions of dollars worth of real estate just in the last 5-10 years. When you spend that kind of money, in additional to otherwise having a large economic presence in a city, the Government tends to listen. Moreso than to individual developers.
rconti 7y ago
Have you seen the absolute explosion of skyscrapers/mid-rise condo buildings in San Jose, Redwood City.. Hell, even San Carlos and Menlo Park have quite a few higher density units going in. I'm glad there's more density, and it's near transit, for the most part. Of course, it will still increase traffic, but by going with density and near transit, it'll reduce the impact vs building more single family homes.
- chaostheory 7y ago
  South San Francisco and Brisbane are also pushing higher density residential housing, with most new residential development in South SF near BART. If places like Palo Alto and Belmont did their part as well, housing inventory would be better. Palo Alto went as far as taking steps to proactively limit their local economy in order to preserve the status quo, and even forcing Stanford to expand into Redwood City instead of at home. These little steps help, but NIMBYism is still holding back potential housing inventory.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  There's no more space for more single family homes anyway there, so that's not even an option. What IS an option is changing mandatory single family home areas to allow for "missing middle" housing, thereby reducing economic segregation currently present on most of the residential land. A lot of people prefer the current level of segregation, though, so it's a hard sell.
- kens 7y ago
  An interesting article on why the mid-rise apartment style is so popular now: "Why America's New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same": https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-america-s-new-apartment-buildings-all-look-the-same https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-ameri... The quick summary is that the 2000 Building Code allowed inexpensive construction of 5-floor wood buildings over a concrete base. This "5 over 1" construction gives "near-high-rise densities at a wood-frame price", so it has become very popular in the US.
  - PascLeRasc 7y ago
    There's something about that style of construction that feels like "Amazon Basics", like what you get when you don't care about craftmanship or longevity and just want the least expensive option. Those 5-story apartment buildings just have such a soulless cheap feeling to them, like they're made to have the illusion of being taller than they are. I really don't understand why they're so popular.
summerlight 7y ago
One of my faint hope in this project is in the fact that most of the development will happen in Google's real estate (if I understand correctly), which is proposed to be combinations of (relatively more) dense residential and commercial area with a more "urban" style planning. Of course, the zoning law is clearly the root of all housing evil in the Bay area. But in order to fight against it, we need a clear demonstration which can rebut their FUD against a more dense zoning law. I guess Google is trying take that role here.
- wbl 7y ago
  Uh Manhattan? Chicago?
cbhl 7y ago
I would argue that the causes in SF are more complex than you portray. For example, race relations and racism are a factor, which is why NIMBYism is so strong in the Mission. There's even a "no-fault eviction map" that is depicted on a mural there: http://www.antievictionmappingproject.net/combined.html http://www.antievictionmappingproject.net/combined.html https://www.antievictionmap.com/mural-in-clarion-alley https://www.antievictionmap.com/mural-in-clarion-alley I'd also recommend looking at Janet Delaney's photos of SoMa from when it was a predominantly black neighbourhood. 3rd, 4th and 5th Streets have been rebuilt, but at the expense of pushing out the people of color that used to call that neighbourhood home. Delaney's work has been on exhibit at the SFMOMA, and studying local art in SF can help one understand the factors that lead to local opposition to housing development. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cam-sfmoma-south-of-market-san-francisco-20160601-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cam-sfmoma-... https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/janet_delaney/ https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/janet_delaney/ This announcement isn't going to affect the overall narrative around housing in SF. It's just "let's build some houses next to one of our south bay campuses", which Facebook already did a few years back. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/08/facebook-unveils-new-vision-for-big-willow-village-complex-in-menlo-park/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/08/facebook-unveils-new-... Google's has also previously submitted plans to the city of mountain view that include houses on its land (not sure if any of these count towards the 20k number): https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/09/google-mountain-view-development-plans/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/09/google-mountain-view-dev... https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/comdev/planning/activeprojects/northbayshore_/nbppbonusfar.asp https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/comdev/planning/activepro...
malnourish 7y ago
Honest question - how much (if any) of those laws were made with respect to earthquakes? Perhaps they are from a time when resistant high rises weren't tenable.
- timgilbert 7y ago
  While I don't have specific knowledge about earthquakes effecting zoning laws, there was a very real cultural resistance to building dense housing in the 60's and 70's, when the the term of art in the Bay Area was "Manhattanization," and which was almost certainly more of a factor than earthquake-proofing the buildings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanization
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Imagine if the Bay Area had a subway system to rival Manhattan and actual dense housing? How many fewer gigatons of CO2 would be in the atmosphere if everybody didn't have to drive in all the way from the suburbs? Imagine if it wasn't necessary to own a car? Rents would still be high, but maybe not impossibly so.
nostrademons 7y ago
That's one of the accomplishments of this program: they got Mountain View to change the zoning for North Bayshore (where the Google campus is) to support highrises with up to 10,000 housing units.
- shereadsthenews 7y ago
  Very little of the Bayshore plan permits "high rise" building. I believe there is exactly one 15-story building in the plan. Everything else is 5 or less (sticks over garage style construction). The vast majority of the _land_ in the Bayshore plan is dedicated to open space.
linuxftw 7y ago
I'm generally against zoning restrictions. But, there's only so much a city's infrastructure can take. Let's say they build another 100k 3 bedroom units, where is all the waste going to go? Is there a good reason for all of these people to live in one little area? No, I don't think there's a really good reason. Everyone wants to take advantage of what the city has to offer, but nobody actually wants to pay fair market value.
- pertymcpert 7y ago
  Where did those people live before? How did the Bay Area grow to its current size if people kept saying the same thing? "We only have one bus route and a school, how can we grow this place? It's too crowded". Complete BS.
  - linuxftw 7y ago
    How many is too many then? Clearly any given area has a maximum support capacity for humans. Is it good for the environment or quality of life to keep packing people into mega-cities?
    - smus 7y ago
      I would suppose that packing people into high density housing is great for efficient distribution of goods, and seeing as dense megacities support great public transit I would wager that this is clearly better for the environment than the alternative.
    - Johnny555 7y ago
      It's much better for the environment to pack the people into a dense urban area where they area easily served by transit (or can walk to where they want to go), goods delivery, etc than to have people commuting 60 miles from Tracy where they live in a 3000 sq foot house on a half acre of land.
    - pertymcpert 7y ago
      Yes. Urbanisation into massive cities is vastly more efficient in terms of environmental impact than sprawl. Those people still need to live somewhere, but bringing everyone closer together increases efficiencies by enormous amounts. Cities are the thing helping to save the environment.
scarface74 7y ago
The only solution is changing the zoning laws, and that requires changing peoples' minds. There is another solution - don’t locate on the west coast or build out satellite offices that aren’t on the west coast.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
beambot 7y ago
> The only solution is changing the zoning laws What about pulling a HongKong / Singapore: Create a special economic zone that is a stand-alone municipality with extremely lax zoning laws to spur housing & transportation growth? Google is kinda-sorta doing this. To avoid Mountain View NIMBYism, just carve out the Google land for this purpose.
- pwinnski 7y ago
  Extremely lax zoning alone isn't enough. Houston is a large city with no zoning at all, and it's still not population-dense.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Off-Street-Parking-Ordinance.html https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Off-Street-Parking-Ordina...
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    Houston still has minimum parking requirements, plus local/state road development patterns incentivized car-friendly buildings. It's harder to build denser if you have very little good public transit (or walk/bike infra) to speak of. Density doesn't exist in a vacuum. I mean, Houston is the principal city of a metro area of 7 million people, and has no subway, no mass transit that's separated grade whatsoever. That's not a setup that's going to easily support higher population densities. Meanwhile, you look at a city like Munich that's in a smaller metro area, and it has several subway lines, plus several hybrid commuter/mass transit lines that are separated-grade at least within the city proper. They're steadily building yet more, and Munich residents don't even consider their transit to be all that great! (lots of complaints about the S-Bahn, for sure)
    - ikiris 7y ago
      You don't get public transit until things are dense. :)
hunter23 7y ago
If they use part of the money to lobby local governments to remove these regulations, it might work.
charlesju 7y ago
I also believe another option, where we can throw massive amounts of money at the problem, is to completely fix our transportation system. If you have been to any major city in Asia, they have WAYYY more people and are able to commute from much further distances because the public transportation is clean, safe, fast, reliable. We have tons of land under utilized in the bay area, especially in the east bay, if we were to allow those people to reach their offices under 1 hour, then I think a lot of issues are going to be solved. I also believe we should build more taller buildings, but that's happening already. I grew up in Cupertino and everywhere you go there are apartment buildings going up right now. Likewise with Mountain View where my parents work.
- alexhutcheson 7y ago
  You need much more density around the train stations than currently exists for it to be sustainable to operate those trains on a frequent schedule. So yes, you're correct that better transportation is needed, but greater density is needed to make that transportation system possible.
  - shados 7y ago
    The order of: announce train station, wait a bit, start building project and change zoning (with that "wait a bit" gap being critical) makes things work a lot better. Property value skyrockets for a while, and people who arent happy with it can sell and go live somewhere else with the money if they don't like it. The worse situations is when a zoning change happens and goes into effects quickly and construction projects start without people having had time to get the hell out. Selling near those projects is hard (no one wants to deal with it), and the people who live there are stuck. I bought a place near a construction project that was almost done, and right around the time it ended, the city issued special permits for other big projects across the street that no one really expected, and now we're a bit stuck (People in our building cant find buyers without losing large amounts of money, and until they do, have to deal with the unexpected construction).
    - jonas21 7y ago
trhway 7y ago
>The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism. when people don't want to give away (for free or below market price) their share of GOOG nobody calls that NIMBYism. When people don't want to give away their share in a city (drastically increasing density/population does in many ways take away from existing residents without any just compensation) - that is suddenly becomes NIMBYism. The issue can practically be solved simply - city is to be like a corporation with stock, and any new resident/development has to buy the stock on the secondary market. Density/population increase (i.e. zoning changes) is by issueing new stock to be distributed proportionally like dividends to existing shareholders(residents). That way NIMBYism would just disappear the same way like it doesn't exist when it comes to GOOG. That also would make gentrification into a buyout where people who create a city desirable to live in would materially benefit from it instead of being just kicked out being as poor as when they moved in.
- achenatx 7y ago
  That is because in the case of a goog share you arent telling someone else what they can do with their share. No one is telling a SFH owner that they have to do anything. Instead, SFH are being allowed to have more options for what to do with their property. In fact giving more options for property actually increases the value of that property.
  - compiler-guy 7y ago
    Actually, this does tell a SFH owner that they have to do something: Live in a place substantially different than when they bought there. This may be worth it broadly, but it absolutely enforces our preferences onto the SFH owner.
    - sxates 7y ago
      The SFH has domain over their property - and that's where it should reasonably end. Giving them domain over what gets built on everyone else's property is where we get into trouble.
shados 7y ago
> and that requires changing peoples' minds Yup, and that is straightforward, if time and money consuming. Changing zoning isn't enough: making an area denser without appropriate matching infrastructure investment isn't going to go well. If you want the next Tokyo or Paris (or even something significantly smaller), you need Tokyo or Paris' infra. Then the next problem is that people can't stand each other. People don't want neighbors because neighbors are a pain. It's a problem everywhere, but in the west, the US has it particularly bad. I don't know about Cali, but in a lot of cities the building code is a total joke, and Americans are known to be LOUD. City rules are rarely enforced properly, either. So the only option you have is to prevent neighbors from moving in in the first place. That's easily fixed: better construction quality and clearer, enforced rules that make coexisting easier and nicer, alongside investments to keep the area from going down the shitter. Do that for a while, and people just won't mind. Having moved from a dense city in another country to a medium sized American metro made me "appreciate" why NIMBYs are such a problem here. Living near people can become a nightmare real quick if you're not lucky.
- aiisjustanif 7y ago
  Interesting, I haven't had this issue really in a dense US city, even near enough to an airport to also hear every plane. Neighbors aren't bad, guess it just depends on the city.
  - shados 7y ago
    It will depend on what you're used to, but AFAIK, virtually every city in the US has a noise complain/non-emergency police number/311/whatever where these type of complains are some of the most reported issues.
- mjevans 7y ago
  I cannot agree with this enough. The building code is wildly out of whack with reality. Noise: All of my neighbors should be able to have active, stomping, marching band in each of their units, and I not hear a single peep. Contrast with reality: In every apartment I've ever lived in normal /quiet/ walking, sink use, and even bathroom fans were audible in other units. Air quality: Smokers, "Marry Jane" users I think all who don't smoke can agree with; but I also dislike vaping, perfumes, and dryer scents. They make it hard for me to breath and irritate me (I think in both the medical and psychological sense). Scrubbed, negative draw exhausts are required for all of those things. Have a designated smoking room. Also have designated clean air intakes that supply positive pressure to the hallways and units (in that order) and proper door seals. Also, yes, build a TOKYO grade subway that connects to parking silos in the outskirts. Then go ahead and ban (most) cars from the city. But ONLY in that order. Don't ban the cars first.
SkyBelow 7y ago
>The only solution is changing the zoning laws, and that requires changing peoples' minds. For the people who own property, they are choosing laws that best help their finances. You can appeal to some sense of greater good but history would show such a plan unlikely to work.
- mars4rp 7y ago
  no they are not, if we have denser zoning, the land on this houses would be extremely more valuable.
- sidlls 7y ago
  There is always eminent domain, but that requires politicians who actually have their constituents' interests and well-being in mind, and who aren't corrupted by kick-back schemes and the other ills of local government.
- waynecochran 7y ago
  Yes. This is the tricky part. Good luck w that: In the coming months, we’ll continue to work with local municipalities to support plans that allow residential developers to build quickly and economically. What is Google going to say that is new?
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
> The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism. I'm not a fan of the idea of living & working for a corporate overlord in a company town, but I suppose one option to break the back of entrenched NIMBYism is to own all the backyards. Buy up all the things, flatten them, and go vertical.
dwild 7y ago
> If it were possible to build 20,000 houses in the next 20 years, it would absolutely happen without Google's help. I only took a quick glance at the article, but seems like Google help may do quite a bit. > First, over the next 10 years, we’ll repurpose at least $750 million of Google’s land, most of which is currently zoned for office or commercial space, as residential housing. This will enable us to support the development of at least 15,000 new homes They are going to repurpose their own lands, which means there will be more space to build housing. They make it possible. I don't know where are theses $750 millions of land, but that's still more space.
rubicon33 7y ago
Agreed. 20,000 homes isn't going to budge the needle even 1% when it comes to housing affordability in the state, let alone in the bay area. Not sure why they feel like this is a good billion well spent...
- michaelt 7y ago
  So that next time someone says "down with tech bros gentrifying the bay area" or they get hauled up in front of the local government who sat the same thing, Google can say "we invested a billion dollars and built more homes than San Francisco added in the last seven years, we're doing our part." And it sounds like they're 'investing' rather than 'spending' the $1 billion - if you take $750m of land and build flats and sell most of them at market rate, presumably you recoup a fair portion of your $750m - they might even make a profit.
  - rubicon33 7y ago
    Sure, so they're solving THEIR problem, not the housing crisis problem. That's all I'm saying. Just like the OP said, more private companies building on their lots isn't really going to budge the needle.
  - wyclif 7y ago
    Indeed, it's at least partially a "Checkmate, SJW's!" move.
hangonhn 7y ago
Lumping Mountain View in there with Palo Alto and others is really unfair. MV is doing the best it can but it can't carry all the weight of Bay Area growth. 1/5 housing starts in Santa Clara county was in MV. MV issued more permits than ALL its neighboring cities COMBINED. MV issued more permits than even San Jose. https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2018/09/28/mountain-view-leads-the-way-on-housing-growth https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2018/09/28/mountain-view-leads... Unless the whole of Santa Clara county and San Mateo county work together instead of playing chicken with each other, we will make no progress on this problem. MV has been willing to do more but it would be unfair for MV to carry the weight while all the other cities limit housing to maintain the "character" of their towns. The tech boom is a huge blessing that any city, state, or even country would be lucky to have. However, people wanting it all and NIMBYism are turning an opportunity into a problem.
- AceJohnny2 7y ago
  That's weird. I was driving around MV and Sunnyvale this weekend and was surprised by how much more residential (apartment complexes/townhoses) building seemed to be happening in Sunnyvale (along Evelyn Ave) than MV. Could it be that these Sunnyvale developments were just issued permits earlier (2016 or 2017), and we're just seeing it further down the pipeline?
  - hangonhn 7y ago
    MV is issuing permits mostly for townhouses, IIRC. In my neighborhood alone a number of townhouse communities have gone up. One single family home is being replaced by a 4 unit townhouse. So I wonder if that explains the difference. I also think that higher density housing is where we need to go. We don't need to go to high rises just yet but townhouses is much more efficient use of the limit space.
    - 2tab 7y ago
      It probably doesn't matter long term. Any growing city serious about affordable housing long term need to figure out how to develop new areas essentially indefinitely. Whether you look like Boston, Vancouver or Hong Kong is in reality less of an issue.
dgzl 7y ago
Here's a solution: have tech companies settle in other regions. I know the benefits for being in the bay are substantial, but this problem is entirely brought about by tech companies, not the resident. Employers need to setup shop in less populated places and grow there.
- robbyking 7y ago
  The problem is it's scary to live in a city that only has one employer offering jobs in your field. My wife and I moved to a new city last year, and while we considered a lot of smaller cities, it ultimately wasn't worth the risk to live someplace that only had a couple prospective employers.
  - dgzl 7y ago
    You make a really great point, and I myself have been victim of losing a tech job that brought me two-thousand miles from home. Thankfully my company gave me a large enough severance to move myself and my belongings back to my home state.
  - flukus 7y ago
    That sounds more like a rural town, what kind of city only has a single employer? I grew up and lived in one of ~400,000 (there are 47 US cities over this size) people which is small for a city and there were many potential employers. Not as many as larger cities of course and many were on the more boutique side of the spectrum, but there were enough opportunities and the lower pay was a better deal when adjusted for cost of living.
    - dgzl 7y ago
      Not single employer in general, single employer in a person's field. That's not an unreasonable concern when a person's field is tech related, and we're talking about less populated areas.
- andromeduck 7y ago
  tech companies didn't block housing
rsync 7y ago
"The people living there don't want that, though, so the laws prohibit it." ... which is the definition of democracy.
- epistasis 7y ago
  Democracy for whomst? If it's just for long-term landowners, that's a form of democracy, but we tend to not view it very favorably these days.
- elgenie 7y ago
  In this case, a representative demos would need to include the people who’d like to live there as well.
  - NonEUCitizen 7y ago
    And people who already work there.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  Just because the current residents don't want it doesn't make their opinion right. If the current residents said "well we don't want anyone of [race]", we wouldn't just go, "oh well it's their neighborhood, guess they get to decide!" There's a housing crisis, and yes, many residents are using democracy to stand in the way of fixing the problem. That's bad!
- deepakhj 7y ago
  Current landowners are not the only demographic in your democracy. Minorities were banned from owning in many areas due to redlining.
thrownaway954 7y ago
Have you visited South Florida lately? It sucks here now cause of the amount of people that keep moving into this area. The traffic is horrible, the stores are crowded and people's attitude in general is becoming increasing hostile. The world doesn't need to be denser, we need some elbow room, we need SPACE. Thanos was right.
- colpabar 7y ago
  Why didn't he just create more resources though
- tomatotomato37 7y ago
  The only applies for the 50 or so miles next to the Everglades conservation area, everything north of that is sprawl; I think Jacksonville literally ranks #1 as the largest US city by land area
  - thrownaway954 7y ago
    "50 or so miles next to the Everglades conservation area, everything north of that is sprawl" - which is what the area of SOUTH Florida is.
- deepakhj 7y ago
  South Florida is no where close to dense. Dense = Paris/Barcelona. Florida is sprawl with huge landscaping and empty space.
Shivetya 7y ago
Will not matter if zoning laws do change, though I to agree they need to and posted something similar. What will happen is in many of these same areas they will force rent control upon builders and existing landlords which will do the same work that zoning and political games did before. California will require a state wide referendum to fix their government created housing problem.
- elgenie 7y ago
  A statewide referendum (Prop 13) underlies the housing problems and is a huge enabler of Bay Area NIMBYism. Multi-decade homeowners can bask in a $5M house values and agitate for inefficient land use while paying taxes off a $30K purchase price.
smsm42 7y ago
> If it were possible to build 20,000 houses in the next 20 years, it would absolutely happen without Google's help. Depends on definition of "possible". There is space, physically. But getting all the paperwork, lining up the money, placating all the NIMBYs and the special interests and politicians may be non-trivial. For Google it may be easier than for other developers, and Google may be more motivated to do it, since galloping housing prices means more salary expenses from Google. > The people living there don't want that, though, so the laws prohibit it. In San Jose, there are many multi-tenant developments. Prices are still crazy (compared to any other place outside Silicon Valley). And there's also a question of infrastructure. Did you ever drive on 101, 85, 87 or 280 in traffic hours? Did you ever drive on adjacent connecting streets? Now imagine there's 3x or 5x people living in the same space. You'd have to start you commute previous day to get to the office by the morning.
- smus 7y ago
  >You'd have to start you commute previous day to get to the office by the morning. Or, you know, build actual public transit
  - smsm42 7y ago
    So far they couldn't even pull off something as obvious as getting BART (or something like it) down to San Jose. Imagining that they can figure out full proper coverage of Silicon Valley with public transit adequate for getting so many people at least to work and back (not counting all other needs) is pretty much hopeless.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Let me point out what apparently isn't obvious to everyone: The more housing is built near jobs in Silicon Valley, the LESS traffic there should be there, as people get shorter commutes!
  - smsm42 7y ago
    I don't think it's as obvious as you think. If you know where major employer campuses are located (Google, Apple, etc.) you can see it's not likely there would be a lot of housing within walking distance of it. And public transit... best not to speak about it, it's too sad.
drugme 7y ago
The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism It's definitely simple-sounding, as a single cause -- but unfortunately that doesn't make it so. Any sober analysis of the current housing crisis points to a convergence of multiple, and in some cases highly nuanced factors -- ranging from shifting crime rates and the collapse of urban industrial base; to shifts in government policy (including the near-abandonment of federal support for new public housing initiatives); and a whole bunch of others. And yes there's something known as "zoning" which plays a part also. But the idea that NIMBYism is the sole important factor - or even the most important factor - just doesn't hold water. If you're skeptical of this, just ask yourself: "What causes NIMBYism?"
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  There's various reasons for why people are NIMBYs, sure. But that's still the single biggest proximate cause of the housing crisis, by far. I mean, you could also say, "those tech companies created too many high-paying jobs!!" but last I checked, that's generally what we wanted companies to do, so getting mad at them for it seems pretty weird.
  - drugme 7y ago
    That's generally what we wanted companies to do, Maybe so -- but as a response it completely dodges the question of whether or it has been a contributing factor or not.
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      It doesn't dodge the question at all. Of course it's a proximate contributing factor, in the same way that voting was a proximate contributing factor to Trump being the chief executive of the United States. That doesn't mean voting is a bad general idea. I'm pointing out that even though lots of high paying jobs is obviously an input into the housing crisis, 'blaming' companies for that is clearly stupid, because we want and encourage them to do exactly that, and higher housing prices is a predictable side effect of housing supply being constrained, not some out of nowhere surprise that the tech sector foisted onto an unsuspecting public. We have met the enemy, and they are us.
ethanwillis 7y ago
That's not the only solution. The other solution is don't live in the valley, don't live in these places where there's no affordable housing. Should we make cities denser? Should we force people shoulder to shoulder? I don't know if we should and I never see the "wisdom" of the denser city questioned. Instead Google and other groups should give money to residents who would be amenable to living elsewhere. $1 billion for freedom of choice instead of perpetuating that everyone must live in the same few square miles.
yeahitslikethat 7y ago
Or simply stop allowing people to over-consume real estate in the bay area, what with 10x as many vacant apartments as there are for sale, to the tune of roughly 100,000 homes that could have families in them.
reaperducer 7y ago
The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism ... The only solution In the real world, nothing has one simple cause or one "only" solution. The housing problem in California, and elsewhere is complex. This is akin to people who say, "The problem with homelessness there has one simple cause..." and then insert their favorite boogeyman. There are many factors involved, other than NIMBYs, and BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). There is corporate greed, geographic restrictions, land use issues, transportation issues, tax issues, and the list goes on and on... The loudest among those on HN seem to be BEASTs (Build Everything to Achieve Skyscraper Town). That's not healthy, either. † Amusing field guide to various types of NIMBYs: https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2015/08/19/a-field-guide-to-chicago-nimbys/ https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2015/08/19/a-field-guide...
- ummonk 7y ago
  BEAST seems to work though. NYC is amazingly affordable given its population size and economic success. By building skyscrapers everywhere in Manhattan they seem to have made nearby places like New Jersey eminently affordable.
  - TheCoelacanth 7y ago
    Even Manhattan does not have skyscrapers everywhere. There's a cluster in downtown and a cluster in midtown, but the other three-quarters of the island has relatively short (but still high-density) buildings. Skyscrapers should be built where they are economically viable, i.e. where the cost of land is extraordinarily high to offset the much higher per-unit cost of construction. They shouldn't be pursued in places where they don't make sense.
- closeparen 7y ago
  Skyscraper town is immensely popular. There should be more of it.
- netheril96 7y ago
  Nothing has one simple cause, but many have a single dominant cause. It is probably the case here.
Reedx 7y ago
> SF doesn't want to allow taller buildings and denser housing complexes. Pretty much. When I lived in SF I received fliers in the mail urging residents to oppose new apartment construction literally on the basis that it was too tall. If you want to see how difficult it is to build there, check out this story[1] of a laundromat owner who spent almost 5 years and $1.4 million attempting to convert to an apartment building. This is even though it was already zoned for housing, didn't have any units above it (wouldn't displace anyone) and eligible for streamlined approval since it was close to public transit. And yet... 1. https://youtu.be/ExgxwKnH8y4?t=90 https://youtu.be/ExgxwKnH8y4?t=90
techslave 7y ago
the key part is they are getting the zoning changed for the land they are contributing. presumably from light industrial / office to residential.
bcheung 7y ago
What about traffic? Adding this many new homes without an increase in transportation infrastructure is going to make things much worse for people already living in the bay area.
lisper 7y ago
> The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism. It's true that there is one simple cause, but it's not NIMBYism, it's overpopulation, and it's a planet-wide problem. There are just too many people. They can't all live in the nice places because if they do, the nice places won't be nice places any more.
- crowbahr 7y ago
  >There are too many people There really aren't. The fact of the matter is that NYC is a nice place to live (typing this from Brooklyn) and it's 1000x SF's density. The world produces a caloric surplus (based on a 2k calorie diet) per capita. We're not overpopulated. What you're saying is that you want your in demand area to remain exclusive and separate. It's not overpopulation: it's self interest. Preservation of something you cherish. Which is the textbook definition of NIMBY ideals. It's selfish to stand in the way of progress simply because you like the unfair status quo.
  - foobiekr 7y ago
    The current caloric surplus and population is largely supported by a truly outstanding amounts of petrochemicals being used since the start of the "green" revolution.
    - pas 7y ago
      It's not like zero-carbon agriculture (hydroponics or not) is impossible.
      - foobiekr 7y ago
        At the current level of productivity I think that’s not true. And human population is set to consume the current surplus.
  - Johnny555 7y ago
    It's not 1000X. NYC's population density is 27,000 people per sq mile, SF is 18,000. The entire NY MSA has a density of 1700/sq mi, compared to 1100 for the SF MSA. If you look only at Brooklyn, it has a density of 36,000/sq mi. Worldwide, Manila has the highest density, at 100,000/sq mi
burlesona 7y ago
I’m struggling to find a citation for this, so I’ll caveat that this is from memory, but I’m pretty sure SF had had about as many housing starts as the rest of the Bay Area over the last ten years. It’s not nearly enough units, and it’s basically all in SoMa and Mission Bay, but nevertheless the city is doing more than most of the bay. Interesting to note that Mountain View is also trying to pull its weight, per a sibling comment. I think the easiest solution here would be at the state, rather than local level. Start tying state budgets to housing supply: ie. figure out approximately how much housing need there is in the region and require each city to permit a proportional share of that per year or lose state funding for roads, schools, etc.
- deepakhj 7y ago
  The western half of San Francisco isn't doing anything. It's a small sliver of SOMA/Downtown which is not enough.
  - burlesona 7y ago
    I agree on that point.
zephyrnh 7y ago
It sound like they're using land that Google already owns for this: "First, over the next 10 years, we’ll repurpose at least $750 million of Google’s land, most of which is currently zoned for office or commercial space, as residential housing. This will enable us to support the development of at least 15,000 new homes at all income levels in the Bay Area, including housing options for middle and low-income families. (By way of comparison, 3,000 total homes were built in the South Bay in 2018)."
SubiculumCode 7y ago
Sounds like a call to build a new town out among the hills somewhere.
IloveHN84 7y ago
A simple solution would be: remote work. Work from anywhere in the world, the housing problem will not be anymore a problem due to it.
deepakhj 7y ago
SB50 would have been a good first step. Or doing something similar to Minneapolis. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/us/minneapolis-single-family-zoning.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/us/minneapolis-single-fam...
gkfasdfasdf 7y ago
Maybe they need to build down, not up - subterranean apartment complexes; or a cave system carved into a mountain.

tartuffe78 7y ago

FTA: "In Mountain View, we’ve already worked with the city to change zoning in the North Bayshore area to free up land for housing, and we’re currently in productive conversations with Sunnyvale and San Jose."

ac29 7y ago
It should be noted these are the three cities that come to mind where Google has bought multiple billions of dollars worth of real estate just in the last 5-10 years. When you spend that kind of money, in additional to otherwise having a large economic presence in a city, the Government tends to listen. Moreso than to individual developers.

rconti 7y ago

Have you seen the absolute explosion of skyscrapers/mid-rise condo buildings in San Jose, Redwood City.. Hell, even San Carlos and Menlo Park have quite a few higher density units going in. I'm glad there's more density, and it's near transit, for the most part. Of course, it will still increase traffic, but by going with density and near transit, it'll reduce the impact vs building more single family homes.

chaostheory 7y ago
South San Francisco and Brisbane are also pushing higher density residential housing, with most new residential development in South SF near BART. If places like Palo Alto and Belmont did their part as well, housing inventory would be better. Palo Alto went as far as taking steps to proactively limit their local economy in order to preserve the status quo, and even forcing Stanford to expand into Redwood City instead of at home. These little steps help, but NIMBYism is still holding back potential housing inventory.
TulliusCicero 7y ago
There's no more space for more single family homes anyway there, so that's not even an option. What IS an option is changing mandatory single family home areas to allow for "missing middle" housing, thereby reducing economic segregation currently present on most of the residential land. A lot of people prefer the current level of segregation, though, so it's a hard sell.
kens 7y ago
An interesting article on why the mid-rise apartment style is so popular now: "Why America's New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same": https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-america-s-new-apartment-buildings-all-look-the-same https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-ameri... The quick summary is that the 2000 Building Code allowed inexpensive construction of 5-floor wood buildings over a concrete base. This "5 over 1" construction gives "near-high-rise densities at a wood-frame price", so it has become very popular in the US.
- PascLeRasc 7y ago
  There's something about that style of construction that feels like "Amazon Basics", like what you get when you don't care about craftmanship or longevity and just want the least expensive option. Those 5-story apartment buildings just have such a soulless cheap feeling to them, like they're made to have the illusion of being taller than they are. I really don't understand why they're so popular.

summerlight 7y ago

One of my faint hope in this project is in the fact that most of the development will happen in Google's real estate (if I understand correctly), which is proposed to be combinations of (relatively more) dense residential and commercial area with a more "urban" style planning. Of course, the zoning law is clearly the root of all housing evil in the Bay area. But in order to fight against it, we need a clear demonstration which can rebut their FUD against a more dense zoning law. I guess Google is trying take that role here.

wbl 7y ago
Uh Manhattan? Chicago?

cbhl 7y ago

I would argue that the causes in SF are more complex than you portray. For example, race relations and racism are a factor, which is why NIMBYism is so strong in the Mission. There's even a "no-fault eviction map" that is depicted on a mural there: http://www.antievictionmappingproject.net/combined.html http://www.antievictionmappingproject.net/combined.html https://www.antievictionmap.com/mural-in-clarion-alley https://www.antievictionmap.com/mural-in-clarion-alley I'd also recommend looking at Janet Delaney's photos of SoMa from when it was a predominantly black neighbourhood. 3rd, 4th and 5th Streets have been rebuilt, but at the expense of pushing out the people of color that used to call that neighbourhood home. Delaney's work has been on exhibit at the SFMOMA, and studying local art in SF can help one understand the factors that lead to local opposition to housing development. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cam-sfmoma-south-of-market-san-francisco-20160601-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cam-sfmoma-... https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/janet_delaney/ https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/janet_delaney/ This announcement isn't going to affect the overall narrative around housing in SF. It's just "let's build some houses next to one of our south bay campuses", which Facebook already did a few years back. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/08/facebook-unveils-new-vision-for-big-willow-village-complex-in-menlo-park/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/08/facebook-unveils-new-... Google's has also previously submitted plans to the city of mountain view that include houses on its land (not sure if any of these count towards the 20k number): https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/09/google-mountain-view-development-plans/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/09/google-mountain-view-dev... https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/comdev/planning/activeprojects/northbayshore_/nbppbonusfar.asp https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/comdev/planning/activepro...

malnourish 7y ago

Honest question - how much (if any) of those laws were made with respect to earthquakes? Perhaps they are from a time when resistant high rises weren't tenable.

timgilbert 7y ago
While I don't have specific knowledge about earthquakes effecting zoning laws, there was a very real cultural resistance to building dense housing in the 60's and 70's, when the the term of art in the Bay Area was "Manhattanization," and which was almost certainly more of a factor than earthquake-proofing the buildings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanization
- jandrese 7y ago
  Imagine if the Bay Area had a subway system to rival Manhattan and actual dense housing? How many fewer gigatons of CO2 would be in the atmosphere if everybody didn't have to drive in all the way from the suburbs? Imagine if it wasn't necessary to own a car? Rents would still be high, but maybe not impossibly so.

nostrademons 7y ago

That's one of the accomplishments of this program: they got Mountain View to change the zoning for North Bayshore (where the Google campus is) to support highrises with up to 10,000 housing units.

shereadsthenews 7y ago
Very little of the Bayshore plan permits "high rise" building. I believe there is exactly one 15-story building in the plan. Everything else is 5 or less (sticks over garage style construction). The vast majority of the _land_ in the Bayshore plan is dedicated to open space.

linuxftw 7y ago

I'm generally against zoning restrictions. But, there's only so much a city's infrastructure can take. Let's say they build another 100k 3 bedroom units, where is all the waste going to go? Is there a good reason for all of these people to live in one little area? No, I don't think there's a really good reason. Everyone wants to take advantage of what the city has to offer, but nobody actually wants to pay fair market value.

pertymcpert 7y ago
Where did those people live before? How did the Bay Area grow to its current size if people kept saying the same thing? "We only have one bus route and a school, how can we grow this place? It's too crowded". Complete BS.
- linuxftw 7y ago
  How many is too many then? Clearly any given area has a maximum support capacity for humans. Is it good for the environment or quality of life to keep packing people into mega-cities?
  - smus 7y ago
    I would suppose that packing people into high density housing is great for efficient distribution of goods, and seeing as dense megacities support great public transit I would wager that this is clearly better for the environment than the alternative.
  - Johnny555 7y ago
    It's much better for the environment to pack the people into a dense urban area where they area easily served by transit (or can walk to where they want to go), goods delivery, etc than to have people commuting 60 miles from Tracy where they live in a 3000 sq foot house on a half acre of land.
  - pertymcpert 7y ago
    Yes. Urbanisation into massive cities is vastly more efficient in terms of environmental impact than sprawl. Those people still need to live somewhere, but bringing everyone closer together increases efficiencies by enormous amounts. Cities are the thing helping to save the environment.

scarface74 7y ago

The only solution is changing the zoning laws, and that requires changing peoples' minds. There is another solution - don’t locate on the west coast or build out satellite offices that aren’t on the west coast.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

beambot 7y ago

> The only solution is changing the zoning laws What about pulling a HongKong / Singapore: Create a special economic zone that is a stand-alone municipality with extremely lax zoning laws to spur housing & transportation growth? Google is kinda-sorta doing this. To avoid Mountain View NIMBYism, just carve out the Google land for this purpose.

pwinnski 7y ago
Extremely lax zoning alone isn't enough. Houston is a large city with no zoning at all, and it's still not population-dense.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Off-Street-Parking-Ordinance.html https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Off-Street-Parking-Ordina...
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  Houston still has minimum parking requirements, plus local/state road development patterns incentivized car-friendly buildings. It's harder to build denser if you have very little good public transit (or walk/bike infra) to speak of. Density doesn't exist in a vacuum. I mean, Houston is the principal city of a metro area of 7 million people, and has no subway, no mass transit that's separated grade whatsoever. That's not a setup that's going to easily support higher population densities. Meanwhile, you look at a city like Munich that's in a smaller metro area, and it has several subway lines, plus several hybrid commuter/mass transit lines that are separated-grade at least within the city proper. They're steadily building yet more, and Munich residents don't even consider their transit to be all that great! (lots of complaints about the S-Bahn, for sure)
  - ikiris 7y ago
    You don't get public transit until things are dense. :)

hunter23 7y ago

If they use part of the money to lobby local governments to remove these regulations, it might work.

charlesju 7y ago

I also believe another option, where we can throw massive amounts of money at the problem, is to completely fix our transportation system. If you have been to any major city in Asia, they have WAYYY more people and are able to commute from much further distances because the public transportation is clean, safe, fast, reliable. We have tons of land under utilized in the bay area, especially in the east bay, if we were to allow those people to reach their offices under 1 hour, then I think a lot of issues are going to be solved. I also believe we should build more taller buildings, but that's happening already. I grew up in Cupertino and everywhere you go there are apartment buildings going up right now. Likewise with Mountain View where my parents work.

alexhutcheson 7y ago
You need much more density around the train stations than currently exists for it to be sustainable to operate those trains on a frequent schedule. So yes, you're correct that better transportation is needed, but greater density is needed to make that transportation system possible.
- shados 7y ago
  The order of: announce train station, wait a bit, start building project and change zoning (with that "wait a bit" gap being critical) makes things work a lot better. Property value skyrockets for a while, and people who arent happy with it can sell and go live somewhere else with the money if they don't like it. The worse situations is when a zoning change happens and goes into effects quickly and construction projects start without people having had time to get the hell out. Selling near those projects is hard (no one wants to deal with it), and the people who live there are stuck. I bought a place near a construction project that was almost done, and right around the time it ended, the city issued special permits for other big projects across the street that no one really expected, and now we're a bit stuck (People in our building cant find buyers without losing large amounts of money, and until they do, have to deal with the unexpected construction).
  - jonas21 7y ago

trhway 7y ago

>The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism. when people don't want to give away (for free or below market price) their share of GOOG nobody calls that NIMBYism. When people don't want to give away their share in a city (drastically increasing density/population does in many ways take away from existing residents without any just compensation) - that is suddenly becomes NIMBYism. The issue can practically be solved simply - city is to be like a corporation with stock, and any new resident/development has to buy the stock on the secondary market. Density/population increase (i.e. zoning changes) is by issueing new stock to be distributed proportionally like dividends to existing shareholders(residents). That way NIMBYism would just disappear the same way like it doesn't exist when it comes to GOOG. That also would make gentrification into a buyout where people who create a city desirable to live in would materially benefit from it instead of being just kicked out being as poor as when they moved in.

achenatx 7y ago
That is because in the case of a goog share you arent telling someone else what they can do with their share. No one is telling a SFH owner that they have to do anything. Instead, SFH are being allowed to have more options for what to do with their property. In fact giving more options for property actually increases the value of that property.
- compiler-guy 7y ago
  Actually, this does tell a SFH owner that they have to do something: Live in a place substantially different than when they bought there. This may be worth it broadly, but it absolutely enforces our preferences onto the SFH owner.
  - sxates 7y ago
    The SFH has domain over their property - and that's where it should reasonably end. Giving them domain over what gets built on everyone else's property is where we get into trouble.

shados 7y ago

> and that requires changing peoples' minds Yup, and that is straightforward, if time and money consuming. Changing zoning isn't enough: making an area denser without appropriate matching infrastructure investment isn't going to go well. If you want the next Tokyo or Paris (or even something significantly smaller), you need Tokyo or Paris' infra. Then the next problem is that people can't stand each other. People don't want neighbors because neighbors are a pain. It's a problem everywhere, but in the west, the US has it particularly bad. I don't know about Cali, but in a lot of cities the building code is a total joke, and Americans are known to be LOUD. City rules are rarely enforced properly, either. So the only option you have is to prevent neighbors from moving in in the first place. That's easily fixed: better construction quality and clearer, enforced rules that make coexisting easier and nicer, alongside investments to keep the area from going down the shitter. Do that for a while, and people just won't mind. Having moved from a dense city in another country to a medium sized American metro made me "appreciate" why NIMBYs are such a problem here. Living near people can become a nightmare real quick if you're not lucky.

aiisjustanif 7y ago
Interesting, I haven't had this issue really in a dense US city, even near enough to an airport to also hear every plane. Neighbors aren't bad, guess it just depends on the city.
- shados 7y ago
  It will depend on what you're used to, but AFAIK, virtually every city in the US has a noise complain/non-emergency police number/311/whatever where these type of complains are some of the most reported issues.
mjevans 7y ago
I cannot agree with this enough. The building code is wildly out of whack with reality. Noise: All of my neighbors should be able to have active, stomping, marching band in each of their units, and I not hear a single peep. Contrast with reality: In every apartment I've ever lived in normal /quiet/ walking, sink use, and even bathroom fans were audible in other units. Air quality: Smokers, "Marry Jane" users I think all who don't smoke can agree with; but I also dislike vaping, perfumes, and dryer scents. They make it hard for me to breath and irritate me (I think in both the medical and psychological sense). Scrubbed, negative draw exhausts are required for all of those things. Have a designated smoking room. Also have designated clean air intakes that supply positive pressure to the hallways and units (in that order) and proper door seals. Also, yes, build a TOKYO grade subway that connects to parking silos in the outskirts. Then go ahead and ban (most) cars from the city. But ONLY in that order. Don't ban the cars first.

SkyBelow 7y ago

>The only solution is changing the zoning laws, and that requires changing peoples' minds. For the people who own property, they are choosing laws that best help their finances. You can appeal to some sense of greater good but history would show such a plan unlikely to work.

mars4rp 7y ago
no they are not, if we have denser zoning, the land on this houses would be extremely more valuable.
sidlls 7y ago
There is always eminent domain, but that requires politicians who actually have their constituents' interests and well-being in mind, and who aren't corrupted by kick-back schemes and the other ills of local government.
waynecochran 7y ago
Yes. This is the tricky part. Good luck w that: In the coming months, we’ll continue to work with local municipalities to support plans that allow residential developers to build quickly and economically. What is Google going to say that is new?

PopeDotNinja 7y ago

> The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism. I'm not a fan of the idea of living & working for a corporate overlord in a company town, but I suppose one option to break the back of entrenched NIMBYism is to own all the backyards. Buy up all the things, flatten them, and go vertical.

dwild 7y ago

> If it were possible to build 20,000 houses in the next 20 years, it would absolutely happen without Google's help. I only took a quick glance at the article, but seems like Google help may do quite a bit. > First, over the next 10 years, we’ll repurpose at least $750 million of Google’s land, most of which is currently zoned for office or commercial space, as residential housing. This will enable us to support the development of at least 15,000 new homes They are going to repurpose their own lands, which means there will be more space to build housing. They make it possible. I don't know where are theses $750 millions of land, but that's still more space.

rubicon33 7y ago

Agreed. 20,000 homes isn't going to budge the needle even 1% when it comes to housing affordability in the state, let alone in the bay area. Not sure why they feel like this is a good billion well spent...

michaelt 7y ago
So that next time someone says "down with tech bros gentrifying the bay area" or they get hauled up in front of the local government who sat the same thing, Google can say "we invested a billion dollars and built more homes than San Francisco added in the last seven years, we're doing our part." And it sounds like they're 'investing' rather than 'spending' the $1 billion - if you take $750m of land and build flats and sell most of them at market rate, presumably you recoup a fair portion of your $750m - they might even make a profit.
- rubicon33 7y ago
  Sure, so they're solving THEIR problem, not the housing crisis problem. That's all I'm saying. Just like the OP said, more private companies building on their lots isn't really going to budge the needle.
- wyclif 7y ago
  Indeed, it's at least partially a "Checkmate, SJW's!" move.

hangonhn 7y ago

Lumping Mountain View in there with Palo Alto and others is really unfair. MV is doing the best it can but it can't carry all the weight of Bay Area growth. 1/5 housing starts in Santa Clara county was in MV. MV issued more permits than ALL its neighboring cities COMBINED. MV issued more permits than even San Jose. https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2018/09/28/mountain-view-leads-the-way-on-housing-growth https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2018/09/28/mountain-view-leads... Unless the whole of Santa Clara county and San Mateo county work together instead of playing chicken with each other, we will make no progress on this problem. MV has been willing to do more but it would be unfair for MV to carry the weight while all the other cities limit housing to maintain the "character" of their towns. The tech boom is a huge blessing that any city, state, or even country would be lucky to have. However, people wanting it all and NIMBYism are turning an opportunity into a problem.

AceJohnny2 7y ago
That's weird. I was driving around MV and Sunnyvale this weekend and was surprised by how much more residential (apartment complexes/townhoses) building seemed to be happening in Sunnyvale (along Evelyn Ave) than MV. Could it be that these Sunnyvale developments were just issued permits earlier (2016 or 2017), and we're just seeing it further down the pipeline?
- hangonhn 7y ago
  MV is issuing permits mostly for townhouses, IIRC. In my neighborhood alone a number of townhouse communities have gone up. One single family home is being replaced by a 4 unit townhouse. So I wonder if that explains the difference. I also think that higher density housing is where we need to go. We don't need to go to high rises just yet but townhouses is much more efficient use of the limit space.
  - 2tab 7y ago
    It probably doesn't matter long term. Any growing city serious about affordable housing long term need to figure out how to develop new areas essentially indefinitely. Whether you look like Boston, Vancouver or Hong Kong is in reality less of an issue.

dgzl 7y ago

Here's a solution: have tech companies settle in other regions. I know the benefits for being in the bay are substantial, but this problem is entirely brought about by tech companies, not the resident. Employers need to setup shop in less populated places and grow there.

robbyking 7y ago
The problem is it's scary to live in a city that only has one employer offering jobs in your field. My wife and I moved to a new city last year, and while we considered a lot of smaller cities, it ultimately wasn't worth the risk to live someplace that only had a couple prospective employers.
- dgzl 7y ago
  You make a really great point, and I myself have been victim of losing a tech job that brought me two-thousand miles from home. Thankfully my company gave me a large enough severance to move myself and my belongings back to my home state.
- flukus 7y ago
  That sounds more like a rural town, what kind of city only has a single employer? I grew up and lived in one of ~400,000 (there are 47 US cities over this size) people which is small for a city and there were many potential employers. Not as many as larger cities of course and many were on the more boutique side of the spectrum, but there were enough opportunities and the lower pay was a better deal when adjusted for cost of living.
  - dgzl 7y ago
    Not single employer in general, single employer in a person's field. That's not an unreasonable concern when a person's field is tech related, and we're talking about less populated areas.
andromeduck 7y ago
tech companies didn't block housing

rsync 7y ago

"The people living there don't want that, though, so the laws prohibit it." ... which is the definition of democracy.

epistasis 7y ago
Democracy for whomst? If it's just for long-term landowners, that's a form of democracy, but we tend to not view it very favorably these days.
elgenie 7y ago
In this case, a representative demos would need to include the people who’d like to live there as well.
- NonEUCitizen 7y ago
  And people who already work there.
TulliusCicero 7y ago
Just because the current residents don't want it doesn't make their opinion right. If the current residents said "well we don't want anyone of [race]", we wouldn't just go, "oh well it's their neighborhood, guess they get to decide!" There's a housing crisis, and yes, many residents are using democracy to stand in the way of fixing the problem. That's bad!
deepakhj 7y ago
Current landowners are not the only demographic in your democracy. Minorities were banned from owning in many areas due to redlining.

thrownaway954 7y ago

Have you visited South Florida lately? It sucks here now cause of the amount of people that keep moving into this area. The traffic is horrible, the stores are crowded and people's attitude in general is becoming increasing hostile. The world doesn't need to be denser, we need some elbow room, we need SPACE. Thanos was right.

colpabar 7y ago
Why didn't he just create more resources though
tomatotomato37 7y ago
The only applies for the 50 or so miles next to the Everglades conservation area, everything north of that is sprawl; I think Jacksonville literally ranks #1 as the largest US city by land area
- thrownaway954 7y ago
  "50 or so miles next to the Everglades conservation area, everything north of that is sprawl" - which is what the area of SOUTH Florida is.
deepakhj 7y ago
South Florida is no where close to dense. Dense = Paris/Barcelona. Florida is sprawl with huge landscaping and empty space.

Shivetya 7y ago

Will not matter if zoning laws do change, though I to agree they need to and posted something similar. What will happen is in many of these same areas they will force rent control upon builders and existing landlords which will do the same work that zoning and political games did before. California will require a state wide referendum to fix their government created housing problem.

elgenie 7y ago
A statewide referendum (Prop 13) underlies the housing problems and is a huge enabler of Bay Area NIMBYism. Multi-decade homeowners can bask in a $5M house values and agitate for inefficient land use while paying taxes off a $30K purchase price.

smsm42 7y ago

> If it were possible to build 20,000 houses in the next 20 years, it would absolutely happen without Google's help. Depends on definition of "possible". There is space, physically. But getting all the paperwork, lining up the money, placating all the NIMBYs and the special interests and politicians may be non-trivial. For Google it may be easier than for other developers, and Google may be more motivated to do it, since galloping housing prices means more salary expenses from Google. > The people living there don't want that, though, so the laws prohibit it. In San Jose, there are many multi-tenant developments. Prices are still crazy (compared to any other place outside Silicon Valley). And there's also a question of infrastructure. Did you ever drive on 101, 85, 87 or 280 in traffic hours? Did you ever drive on adjacent connecting streets? Now imagine there's 3x or 5x people living in the same space. You'd have to start you commute previous day to get to the office by the morning.

smus 7y ago
>You'd have to start you commute previous day to get to the office by the morning. Or, you know, build actual public transit
- smsm42 7y ago
  So far they couldn't even pull off something as obvious as getting BART (or something like it) down to San Jose. Imagining that they can figure out full proper coverage of Silicon Valley with public transit adequate for getting so many people at least to work and back (not counting all other needs) is pretty much hopeless.
BurningFrog 7y ago
Let me point out what apparently isn't obvious to everyone: The more housing is built near jobs in Silicon Valley, the LESS traffic there should be there, as people get shorter commutes!
- smsm42 7y ago
  I don't think it's as obvious as you think. If you know where major employer campuses are located (Google, Apple, etc.) you can see it's not likely there would be a lot of housing within walking distance of it. And public transit... best not to speak about it, it's too sad.

drugme 7y ago

The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism It's definitely simple-sounding, as a single cause -- but unfortunately that doesn't make it so. Any sober analysis of the current housing crisis points to a convergence of multiple, and in some cases highly nuanced factors -- ranging from shifting crime rates and the collapse of urban industrial base; to shifts in government policy (including the near-abandonment of federal support for new public housing initiatives); and a whole bunch of others. And yes there's something known as "zoning" which plays a part also. But the idea that NIMBYism is the sole important factor - or even the most important factor - just doesn't hold water. If you're skeptical of this, just ask yourself: "What causes NIMBYism?"

TulliusCicero 7y ago
There's various reasons for why people are NIMBYs, sure. But that's still the single biggest proximate cause of the housing crisis, by far. I mean, you could also say, "those tech companies created too many high-paying jobs!!" but last I checked, that's generally what we wanted companies to do, so getting mad at them for it seems pretty weird.
- drugme 7y ago
  That's generally what we wanted companies to do, Maybe so -- but as a response it completely dodges the question of whether or it has been a contributing factor or not.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    It doesn't dodge the question at all. Of course it's a proximate contributing factor, in the same way that voting was a proximate contributing factor to Trump being the chief executive of the United States. That doesn't mean voting is a bad general idea. I'm pointing out that even though lots of high paying jobs is obviously an input into the housing crisis, 'blaming' companies for that is clearly stupid, because we want and encourage them to do exactly that, and higher housing prices is a predictable side effect of housing supply being constrained, not some out of nowhere surprise that the tech sector foisted onto an unsuspecting public. We have met the enemy, and they are us.

ethanwillis 7y ago

That's not the only solution. The other solution is don't live in the valley, don't live in these places where there's no affordable housing. Should we make cities denser? Should we force people shoulder to shoulder? I don't know if we should and I never see the "wisdom" of the denser city questioned. Instead Google and other groups should give money to residents who would be amenable to living elsewhere. $1 billion for freedom of choice instead of perpetuating that everyone must live in the same few square miles.

yeahitslikethat 7y ago

Or simply stop allowing people to over-consume real estate in the bay area, what with 10x as many vacant apartments as there are for sale, to the tune of roughly 100,000 homes that could have families in them.

reaperducer 7y ago

The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism ... The only solution In the real world, nothing has one simple cause or one "only" solution. The housing problem in California, and elsewhere is complex. This is akin to people who say, "The problem with homelessness there has one simple cause..." and then insert their favorite boogeyman. There are many factors involved, other than NIMBYs, and BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). There is corporate greed, geographic restrictions, land use issues, transportation issues, tax issues, and the list goes on and on... The loudest among those on HN seem to be BEASTs (Build Everything to Achieve Skyscraper Town). That's not healthy, either. † Amusing field guide to various types of NIMBYs: https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2015/08/19/a-field-guide-to-chicago-nimbys/ https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2015/08/19/a-field-guide...

ummonk 7y ago
BEAST seems to work though. NYC is amazingly affordable given its population size and economic success. By building skyscrapers everywhere in Manhattan they seem to have made nearby places like New Jersey eminently affordable.
- TheCoelacanth 7y ago
  Even Manhattan does not have skyscrapers everywhere. There's a cluster in downtown and a cluster in midtown, but the other three-quarters of the island has relatively short (but still high-density) buildings. Skyscrapers should be built where they are economically viable, i.e. where the cost of land is extraordinarily high to offset the much higher per-unit cost of construction. They shouldn't be pursued in places where they don't make sense.
closeparen 7y ago
Skyscraper town is immensely popular. There should be more of it.
netheril96 7y ago
Nothing has one simple cause, but many have a single dominant cause. It is probably the case here.

Reedx 7y ago

> SF doesn't want to allow taller buildings and denser housing complexes. Pretty much. When I lived in SF I received fliers in the mail urging residents to oppose new apartment construction literally on the basis that it was too tall. If you want to see how difficult it is to build there, check out this story[1] of a laundromat owner who spent almost 5 years and $1.4 million attempting to convert to an apartment building. This is even though it was already zoned for housing, didn't have any units above it (wouldn't displace anyone) and eligible for streamlined approval since it was close to public transit. And yet... 1. https://youtu.be/ExgxwKnH8y4?t=90 https://youtu.be/ExgxwKnH8y4?t=90

techslave 7y ago

the key part is they are getting the zoning changed for the land they are contributing. presumably from light industrial / office to residential.

bcheung 7y ago

What about traffic? Adding this many new homes without an increase in transportation infrastructure is going to make things much worse for people already living in the bay area.

lisper 7y ago

> The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism. It's true that there is one simple cause, but it's not NIMBYism, it's overpopulation, and it's a planet-wide problem. There are just too many people. They can't all live in the nice places because if they do, the nice places won't be nice places any more.

crowbahr 7y ago
>There are too many people There really aren't. The fact of the matter is that NYC is a nice place to live (typing this from Brooklyn) and it's 1000x SF's density. The world produces a caloric surplus (based on a 2k calorie diet) per capita. We're not overpopulated. What you're saying is that you want your in demand area to remain exclusive and separate. It's not overpopulation: it's self interest. Preservation of something you cherish. Which is the textbook definition of NIMBY ideals. It's selfish to stand in the way of progress simply because you like the unfair status quo.
- foobiekr 7y ago
  The current caloric surplus and population is largely supported by a truly outstanding amounts of petrochemicals being used since the start of the "green" revolution.
  - pas 7y ago
    It's not like zero-carbon agriculture (hydroponics or not) is impossible.
    - foobiekr 7y ago
      At the current level of productivity I think that’s not true. And human population is set to consume the current surplus.
- Johnny555 7y ago
  It's not 1000X. NYC's population density is 27,000 people per sq mile, SF is 18,000. The entire NY MSA has a density of 1700/sq mi, compared to 1100 for the SF MSA. If you look only at Brooklyn, it has a density of 36,000/sq mi. Worldwide, Manila has the highest density, at 100,000/sq mi

burlesona 7y ago

I’m struggling to find a citation for this, so I’ll caveat that this is from memory, but I’m pretty sure SF had had about as many housing starts as the rest of the Bay Area over the last ten years. It’s not nearly enough units, and it’s basically all in SoMa and Mission Bay, but nevertheless the city is doing more than most of the bay. Interesting to note that Mountain View is also trying to pull its weight, per a sibling comment. I think the easiest solution here would be at the state, rather than local level. Start tying state budgets to housing supply: ie. figure out approximately how much housing need there is in the region and require each city to permit a proportional share of that per year or lose state funding for roads, schools, etc.

deepakhj 7y ago
The western half of San Francisco isn't doing anything. It's a small sliver of SOMA/Downtown which is not enough.
- burlesona 7y ago
  I agree on that point.

zephyrnh 7y ago

It sound like they're using land that Google already owns for this: "First, over the next 10 years, we’ll repurpose at least $750 million of Google’s land, most of which is currently zoned for office or commercial space, as residential housing. This will enable us to support the development of at least 15,000 new homes at all income levels in the Bay Area, including housing options for middle and low-income families. (By way of comparison, 3,000 total homes were built in the South Bay in 2018)."

SubiculumCode 7y ago

Sounds like a call to build a new town out among the hills somewhere.

IloveHN84 7y ago

A simple solution would be: remote work. Work from anywhere in the world, the housing problem will not be anymore a problem due to it.

deepakhj 7y ago

SB50 would have been a good first step. Or doing something similar to Minneapolis. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/us/minneapolis-single-family-zoning.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/us/minneapolis-single-fam...

gkfasdfasdf 7y ago

Maybe they need to build down, not up - subterranean apartment complexes; or a cave system carved into a mountain.