4 ms·

Do you live in Silicon Valley? Nice homes cannot be chosen close to work. All homes in the South Bay that aren’t literally falling down are multi-million-dollar

Do you live in Silicon Valley? Nice homes cannot be chosen close to work. All homes in the South Bay that aren’t literally falling down are multi-million-dollar. I personally know people who bought a $2.5m home with a rat infestation.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> Do you live in Silicon Valley? Nice homes cannot be chosen close to work. Nope. Largely for this reason. And when I'm in the Bay Area, I'm strategic about when I travel, to where and for whom. My point is that the hesitance to go back to the office is not something fundamental. It's rooted in a variety of personal and environmental factors that can and do change. Targeting those factors, directly or indirectly, personally or through policy, has not been a conversation I've heard of.
techsupporter 6y ago
> Do you live in Silicon Valley? Nice homes cannot be chosen close to work. And in large parts of the rest of the country, it's illegal to put homes close to work. Where I work is on the edge of an office campus on the edge of a suburb of Seattle. By city ordinance, virtually no housing is allowed anywhere near where I work. If you live in the same municipality as this office and work at it, your only choice to get there is a twenty-minute drive (with pre-pandemic traffic levels). There is no local bus service that goes from the rest of the town to the office park. Bus service from Seattle to this office park exists, however, so I live in Seattle. "Just live close to work" is a physical impossibility for so many people, and not solely because they want the stereotypical standalone house with a picket fence. My family has zero interest in that, yet there's no housing anywhere near where I work. What little exists is largely short-term corporate rentals and AirBnBs. When we've lived in other places, the dynamic is the same. Office parks in the suburbs or all clumped together in a large downtown, with housing as far as you can get from them. This is, in my opinion, one of the few things Amazon did right: plopping its office campus in the middle of a very mixed-use area with rental apartments and condominium units for ownership, shops, restaurants, parks, and so on. (Of course, after having run out of land there, now they're building traditional office towers in the suburban downtown with virtually no housing to speak of. And yes, it is sky-high expensive to live near Amazon because that's basically the only mixed-use office park in the whole county.)
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "By city ordinance, virtually no housing is allowed anywhere near where I work." Must be specific to your suburb. I can look out the window of my downtown Seattle office straight into the windows of the condo complex across the street. As for the suburbs, having passed by innumerable times, the north edge of Microsoft's main campus is directly across the street from apartments and rowhomes.
  - techsupporter 6y ago
    > Microsoft's main campus I was wondering if someone would mention Microsoft in a reply. Yes, there are apartments near there, but Redmond has the same failing as most other suburbs in the area: housing stock woefully inadequate for the number of people working there, and ordinances that artificially restrict building any more. Microsoft's campus is also adjacent to the Bellevue city limits, where residents on the other side of Bel-Red have fought vociferously against new housing for decades. Meanwhile, SR 520 is a mess all the way back to the 405 interchange (and beyond, some mornings). After the much-vaunted light rail arrives, that station will serve fewer residences than the one in Angle Lake. My point is that lots of people just throw out "well, live near where you work" as a panacea to life's commuting and office ills. Under our current idea of what counts as zoning and land use, it's not possible for any more than a small sliver of people to do that. So we have a choice: change how we do land use, change how we work with offices, or both.
- occz 6y ago
  Contemporary zoning laws really are the worst.
w0mbat 6y ago
The south bay has hordes of pretty nice apartment complexes for newly arrived renters, and newish condos and townhouses for entry level buyers. Eventually you trade up to a 3 bedroom house or whatever you need. I have worked at various tech companies since the 90s, am by no means rich but I've have always lived somewhere decent that's within 15 minutes drive of work.
- w0mbat 6y ago
  (Yes I know my bio says "Oakland" right now. I am working out of my partner's house during Covid. I still own a place in the South Bay).
  - bigcorp-slave 5y ago
    It sounds very nice to be a decamillionaire.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> Do you live in Silicon Valley? Nice homes cannot be chosen close to work. Nope. Largely for this reason. And when I'm in the Bay Area, I'm strategic about when I travel, to where and for whom. My point is that the hesitance to go back to the office is not something fundamental. It's rooted in a variety of personal and environmental factors that can and do change. Targeting those factors, directly or indirectly, personally or through policy, has not been a conversation I've heard of.

techsupporter 6y ago

> Do you live in Silicon Valley? Nice homes cannot be chosen close to work. And in large parts of the rest of the country, it's illegal to put homes close to work. Where I work is on the edge of an office campus on the edge of a suburb of Seattle. By city ordinance, virtually no housing is allowed anywhere near where I work. If you live in the same municipality as this office and work at it, your only choice to get there is a twenty-minute drive (with pre-pandemic traffic levels). There is no local bus service that goes from the rest of the town to the office park. Bus service from Seattle to this office park exists, however, so I live in Seattle. "Just live close to work" is a physical impossibility for so many people, and not solely because they want the stereotypical standalone house with a picket fence. My family has zero interest in that, yet there's no housing anywhere near where I work. What little exists is largely short-term corporate rentals and AirBnBs. When we've lived in other places, the dynamic is the same. Office parks in the suburbs or all clumped together in a large downtown, with housing as far as you can get from them. This is, in my opinion, one of the few things Amazon did right: plopping its office campus in the middle of a very mixed-use area with rental apartments and condominium units for ownership, shops, restaurants, parks, and so on. (Of course, after having run out of land there, now they're building traditional office towers in the suburban downtown with virtually no housing to speak of. And yes, it is sky-high expensive to live near Amazon because that's basically the only mixed-use office park in the whole county.)

ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "By city ordinance, virtually no housing is allowed anywhere near where I work." Must be specific to your suburb. I can look out the window of my downtown Seattle office straight into the windows of the condo complex across the street. As for the suburbs, having passed by innumerable times, the north edge of Microsoft's main campus is directly across the street from apartments and rowhomes.
- techsupporter 6y ago
  > Microsoft's main campus I was wondering if someone would mention Microsoft in a reply. Yes, there are apartments near there, but Redmond has the same failing as most other suburbs in the area: housing stock woefully inadequate for the number of people working there, and ordinances that artificially restrict building any more. Microsoft's campus is also adjacent to the Bellevue city limits, where residents on the other side of Bel-Red have fought vociferously against new housing for decades. Meanwhile, SR 520 is a mess all the way back to the 405 interchange (and beyond, some mornings). After the much-vaunted light rail arrives, that station will serve fewer residences than the one in Angle Lake. My point is that lots of people just throw out "well, live near where you work" as a panacea to life's commuting and office ills. Under our current idea of what counts as zoning and land use, it's not possible for any more than a small sliver of people to do that. So we have a choice: change how we do land use, change how we work with offices, or both.
occz 6y ago
Contemporary zoning laws really are the worst.

w0mbat 6y ago

The south bay has hordes of pretty nice apartment complexes for newly arrived renters, and newish condos and townhouses for entry level buyers. Eventually you trade up to a 3 bedroom house or whatever you need. I have worked at various tech companies since the 90s, am by no means rich but I've have always lived somewhere decent that's within 15 minutes drive of work.

w0mbat 6y ago
(Yes I know my bio says "Oakland" right now. I am working out of my partner's house during Covid. I still own a place in the South Bay).
- bigcorp-slave 5y ago
  It sounds very nice to be a decamillionaire.