5 ms·

Normal rush hour traffic means an hour each way between PA and Newark, plus the bridge toll.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fossuser 6y ago
In addition to the long commute, those areas are still expensive, not as nice, schools aren't as good, etc. It's like telling someone who lives and works in Santa Monica to live in Anaheim 'because it's all technically LA'. Yeah you can always have massive sprawl, horrible commutes, and really inefficient infrastructure. Which leads to a worse outcome for everyone except the people that already own in Palo Alto that bought decades ago, pay no property tax, and restrict supply to protect their 3M dollar house valuation and 1000% return on that. We should build more housing in all of these locations, but Palo Alto is one of the worst offenders for blocking new housing and keeping people out.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  isnt it counter intuitive to want a 'nicer' place for cheap? people of PA pay property tax and huge amounts of parcel taxes. they pay massive amounts as parcel tax and bonds to run their schools. you dont know because you dont own property there. they also built infrastructure, the roads and schools and have public utilities that is run by the city of PA itself. a rarity in the bay area. and that makes them sustainable and greener than most bay area cities. and they did this before silicon valley moved in and new residents want to change the city they built. palo alto existed before start up boom began. people who live there are invested. people who rent have no vested interest in the cities. one day, they'd work here and pick up and move to nyc or austin or utah the next year. you dont demolish and rebuild your home everytime a guest drops by, do you? you set up a couch and make them comfortable. it's still your home and not the guests', right? same thing. the new tech crowd did nothing to build PA. it is rich of people who own no property, havent set roots, havent raised their families and built infrastructure to demand that those who have been doing that for decades pay more taxes. renters dont pay tax. property owners do. if they pay more taxes, dont you think it will be passed down as higher rent making the whole area more and more unaffordable? why does anyone think they can walk into the obviously most desirable zipcode and deserve to own a home there when people who have been living there for decades are asked to pay more to accomodate the newbies? sounds like colonisation/gentrification. if it happens in oakland, people wouldn back off. because it's palo alto, the residents are villains?
  - fossuser 6y ago
    > "isnt it counter intuitive to want a 'nicer' place for cheap?" Not "cheap", but not $4M. 500k? $1M? Whatever price you paid when you bought in? > "people of PA pay property tax" The issue I have is that they don't - not really. If they paid property tax on their house's market value then I'd actually have a lot less of an issue with it. They want to set local policy and they're willing to pay the market rate tax on it, fine. As it stands most are paying next to nothing compared to their new neighbors. > "one day, they'd work here and pick up and move to nyc or austin or utah the next year." Because terrible housing policy is making it impossible to set down roots here. I'd like to stay. > "the new tech crowd did nothing to build PA. it is rich of people who own no property, havent set roots, havent raised their families and built infrastructure to demand that those who have been doing that for decades pay more taxes." Again, because the housing costs prevent us from buying in and the refusal to build new housing keeps the price astronomically high. Also the 'new tech crowd' has been here for decades at this point and does represent a large part of the community. > "if they pay more taxes, dont you think it will be passed down as higher rent making the whole area more and more unaffordable?" If they have to pay the insane tax they're forcing on everyone else, then maybe they'd be a little less resistant to increasing housing supply. > "why does anyone think they can walk into the obviously most desirable zipcode and deserve to own a home there when people who have been living there for decades are asked to pay more to accomodate the newbies? sounds like colonisation/gentrification. if it happens in oakland, people wouldn back off. because it's palo alto, the residents are villains?" People in Palo Alto have a black lives matter signs outside of their house while at the same time leverage local control to block any new supply and prevent anyone who isn't super rich from buying in. When they themselves have benefited from insane monetary return on their own property, could never have bought in today, and pay relatively nothing compared to their new neighbors in financial support for their own community. They basically won the housing lottery (where the zoning laws were explicitly racially skewed historically). The residents are villains because they've skewed the entire thing in their own favor. They've gotten massive returns on their house value, they prevent new housing to keep prices high for other people, they pay relatively no property tax on that value. The entire economy has been built from people starting companies that have driven that value for them and the people that have done that have to pay rent to the people that just happened to be here. Also in Oakland it's the opposite, people that have lived there are getting priced out of their own community. In Palo Alto it's people that live there keeping prices high to price new people out. Both issues are solved by building more housing. It's the hypocrisy that gets to me, I'd rather the people just said "we don't care about anyone else, but ourselves and the people already here - we don't want anyone else to join unless they're extremely rich and we have skewed all local policy in our favor to guarantee that outcome" and stop with the self-righteous political nonsense.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

In addition to the long commute, those areas are still expensive, not as nice, schools aren't as good, etc. It's like telling someone who lives and works in Santa Monica to live in Anaheim 'because it's all technically LA'. Yeah you can always have massive sprawl, horrible commutes, and really inefficient infrastructure. Which leads to a worse outcome for everyone except the people that already own in Palo Alto that bought decades ago, pay no property tax, and restrict supply to protect their 3M dollar house valuation and 1000% return on that. We should build more housing in all of these locations, but Palo Alto is one of the worst offenders for blocking new housing and keeping people out.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
isnt it counter intuitive to want a 'nicer' place for cheap? people of PA pay property tax and huge amounts of parcel taxes. they pay massive amounts as parcel tax and bonds to run their schools. you dont know because you dont own property there. they also built infrastructure, the roads and schools and have public utilities that is run by the city of PA itself. a rarity in the bay area. and that makes them sustainable and greener than most bay area cities. and they did this before silicon valley moved in and new residents want to change the city they built. palo alto existed before start up boom began. people who live there are invested. people who rent have no vested interest in the cities. one day, they'd work here and pick up and move to nyc or austin or utah the next year. you dont demolish and rebuild your home everytime a guest drops by, do you? you set up a couch and make them comfortable. it's still your home and not the guests', right? same thing. the new tech crowd did nothing to build PA. it is rich of people who own no property, havent set roots, havent raised their families and built infrastructure to demand that those who have been doing that for decades pay more taxes. renters dont pay tax. property owners do. if they pay more taxes, dont you think it will be passed down as higher rent making the whole area more and more unaffordable? why does anyone think they can walk into the obviously most desirable zipcode and deserve to own a home there when people who have been living there for decades are asked to pay more to accomodate the newbies? sounds like colonisation/gentrification. if it happens in oakland, people wouldn back off. because it's palo alto, the residents are villains?
- fossuser 6y ago
  > "isnt it counter intuitive to want a 'nicer' place for cheap?" Not "cheap", but not $4M. 500k? $1M? Whatever price you paid when you bought in? > "people of PA pay property tax" The issue I have is that they don't - not really. If they paid property tax on their house's market value then I'd actually have a lot less of an issue with it. They want to set local policy and they're willing to pay the market rate tax on it, fine. As it stands most are paying next to nothing compared to their new neighbors. > "one day, they'd work here and pick up and move to nyc or austin or utah the next year." Because terrible housing policy is making it impossible to set down roots here. I'd like to stay. > "the new tech crowd did nothing to build PA. it is rich of people who own no property, havent set roots, havent raised their families and built infrastructure to demand that those who have been doing that for decades pay more taxes." Again, because the housing costs prevent us from buying in and the refusal to build new housing keeps the price astronomically high. Also the 'new tech crowd' has been here for decades at this point and does represent a large part of the community. > "if they pay more taxes, dont you think it will be passed down as higher rent making the whole area more and more unaffordable?" If they have to pay the insane tax they're forcing on everyone else, then maybe they'd be a little less resistant to increasing housing supply. > "why does anyone think they can walk into the obviously most desirable zipcode and deserve to own a home there when people who have been living there for decades are asked to pay more to accomodate the newbies? sounds like colonisation/gentrification. if it happens in oakland, people wouldn back off. because it's palo alto, the residents are villains?" People in Palo Alto have a black lives matter signs outside of their house while at the same time leverage local control to block any new supply and prevent anyone who isn't super rich from buying in. When they themselves have benefited from insane monetary return on their own property, could never have bought in today, and pay relatively nothing compared to their new neighbors in financial support for their own community. They basically won the housing lottery (where the zoning laws were explicitly racially skewed historically). The residents are villains because they've skewed the entire thing in their own favor. They've gotten massive returns on their house value, they prevent new housing to keep prices high for other people, they pay relatively no property tax on that value. The entire economy has been built from people starting companies that have driven that value for them and the people that have done that have to pay rent to the people that just happened to be here. Also in Oakland it's the opposite, people that have lived there are getting priced out of their own community. In Palo Alto it's people that live there keeping prices high to price new people out. Both issues are solved by building more housing. It's the hypocrisy that gets to me, I'd rather the people just said "we don't care about anyone else, but ourselves and the people already here - we don't want anyone else to join unless they're extremely rich and we have skewed all local policy in our favor to guarantee that outcome" and stop with the self-righteous political nonsense.