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Every year, it becomes more difficult to find affordable housing, particularly near the mega-employers like Google. The year over year increase in rent in Mount

Every year, it becomes more difficult to find affordable housing, particularly near the mega-employers like Google. The year over year increase in rent in Mountain View is in excess of 10%. Only the privileged amongst the youth can afford the slim pickings that are available, as the rent is enough to crush the savings of more modestly salaried engineers. One thing that NYC has going for it that SV could benefit from: more stabilized rent control. No, not all of NYC is under rent control and not all of Silicon Valley needs to be subject to rent control, but it is probably one of the only things that will allow SV to continue to be a hub for new startups. Burn rate. Even the best startup ideas will die when the biggest portion of their seed funding is going toward the trash can of residential rent. I've been here since 2006, and cannot forsee any more air getting pumped into the tires, so to speak. I don't know how popular this idea might be, but part of me wonders if Silicon Valley should be just a breeding ground for new companies. Mature companies (eBay, for example) don't belong here. There could be some incentive for them to move to other more needy parts of the country where people are struggling. Office space and salaries would be cheaper, cities would be all over giving huge tax breaks to them. From a shareholder perspective, I'd want the management of a company I hold stock in to minimize expenses (presuming they were returning to me my due share of the savings via dividends). I guess the problem is that successful companies get established and in a comfort zone and stop living "lean".

rdl 14y ago
Rent control does NOT help new migrants to an area, or the young in general. Those are the people most likely to start new tech companies, or to go to work for rapidly growing companies. Affordable rent does help both of those groups. That's distinct from rent control. Actually, most big tech companies set up offices outside Silicon Valley for back office functions (where cheap labor is important -- like the phone call centers and CSRs in India and Omaha), and just to recruit engineers (SV has more engineers but also more competition for them; Ann Arbor has fewer, but fewer local companies). The only organizations which need to only be in one location, and need to be in silicon valley, are early/mid stage tech startups.
- shawnee_ 14y ago
  Affordable rent is a relative concept. What's affordable to Silicon Valley software engineers is not affordable to the people who clean the bathrooms in the corporate offices that employ those engineers, or who work at Subway, or who provide them with their morning mocha. True life example: I live in East Palo Alto (EPA), and have lived there a little over a year. After my landlord in [city near EPA] started raising my rent by $100 every other month circa 2008 - 2009, I could not afford to live there any more. I moved to the least expensive place I could find, which was a garage on California St. in Mountain View that someone had converted to a rent dwelling. After moving in, I discovered that it was literally infested with black widow spiders and other creepy crawlies -- nightmarish. I couldn't live there. I drifted for a bit, and eventually ended up renting a room in a shared apartment, from a lady with a condo and a mortgage in Mountain View. After a short while, she figured out with just a little bit more money from me, she wouldn't have to work full time, and therefore decided it was me who should be paying the bulk of her mortgage. So she raised my rent little by little, and when I protested because I didn't have the cash (I was working at a coffee shop at the time), she said "Why don't you just get another job at Carl's Jr?". Most landlords have a similar attitude: modern day slavery. When our room rental price negotiations fell apart, she called the police who literally escorted me onto the street. Thank goodness for the kindness of a few HackerDojo people, or I would have had to go to a homeless shelter. Mind you, this all happened while I was employed, working as many hours as they'd give me, in the city where I lived. I don't see any basis for the argument that I should've moved where it would be "cheaper" to live. (I walked to work at the coffee shop because I had no vehicle at the time). Cuban's education explosion article yesterday hit home -- yes, a fully competent person with a master's degree -- working at a coffee shop for just a smidgen more than minimum wage. In early 2011 I moved to EPA, which does have rent control. A studio apartment was all I needed, and got into it for less than I'd been paying for the spider-infested garage in Mountain View circa 2009. The price was just a tiny bit more than I had been paying for the shared apartment in Mountain View and the studio was 10X nicer (and private). At the end of 2011, I got a bunch of mail / notices that the company which had a monopoly on all the apartments in EPA had been bought out by a _bigger_, more ferocious anti rent-control monster known as Residential Equity. And the first thing they did was raise my rent by as much as they possibly could. Lucky me, the rent control laws in EPA mean that they can't raise my rent by as much as they want, (which I am sure they would LOVE to do with Facebook moving next door) as a means to kick me out and make room for the Facebookers with bulging bank accounts. Without the rent control law, there would be nothing stopping the same thing that happened to me in [city near EPA] from happening all over again. Or to my friendly (albeit not the best at English) neighbors who tend to be employed in the hospitality and service industries. With the takeover, my rent did go up by more than I'd like, but it didn't go up by more than I could afford. So that, my friend, is the definition of "affordable" rent. It's not as distinct from rent control as people would like to think.
rayiner 14y ago
Rent control dramatically increases the price of housing and reduces the quality of housing. Rent control is basically just an inter-generational transfer of wealth. People who have cheap, rent-controlled housing (usually older people who became tenants long ago) are subsidized by new renters who cannot get the limited supply and rent-controlled housing, but pay higher housing prices as a result of supply constraints.

rdl 14y ago

Rent control does NOT help new migrants to an area, or the young in general. Those are the people most likely to start new tech companies, or to go to work for rapidly growing companies. Affordable rent does help both of those groups. That's distinct from rent control. Actually, most big tech companies set up offices outside Silicon Valley for back office functions (where cheap labor is important -- like the phone call centers and CSRs in India and Omaha), and just to recruit engineers (SV has more engineers but also more competition for them; Ann Arbor has fewer, but fewer local companies). The only organizations which need to only be in one location, and need to be in silicon valley, are early/mid stage tech startups.

shawnee_ 14y ago
Affordable rent is a relative concept. What's affordable to Silicon Valley software engineers is not affordable to the people who clean the bathrooms in the corporate offices that employ those engineers, or who work at Subway, or who provide them with their morning mocha. True life example: I live in East Palo Alto (EPA), and have lived there a little over a year. After my landlord in [city near EPA] started raising my rent by $100 every other month circa 2008 - 2009, I could not afford to live there any more. I moved to the least expensive place I could find, which was a garage on California St. in Mountain View that someone had converted to a rent dwelling. After moving in, I discovered that it was literally infested with black widow spiders and other creepy crawlies -- nightmarish. I couldn't live there. I drifted for a bit, and eventually ended up renting a room in a shared apartment, from a lady with a condo and a mortgage in Mountain View. After a short while, she figured out with just a little bit more money from me, she wouldn't have to work full time, and therefore decided it was me who should be paying the bulk of her mortgage. So she raised my rent little by little, and when I protested because I didn't have the cash (I was working at a coffee shop at the time), she said "Why don't you just get another job at Carl's Jr?". Most landlords have a similar attitude: modern day slavery. When our room rental price negotiations fell apart, she called the police who literally escorted me onto the street. Thank goodness for the kindness of a few HackerDojo people, or I would have had to go to a homeless shelter. Mind you, this all happened while I was employed, working as many hours as they'd give me, in the city where I lived. I don't see any basis for the argument that I should've moved where it would be "cheaper" to live. (I walked to work at the coffee shop because I had no vehicle at the time). Cuban's education explosion article yesterday hit home -- yes, a fully competent person with a master's degree -- working at a coffee shop for just a smidgen more than minimum wage. In early 2011 I moved to EPA, which does have rent control. A studio apartment was all I needed, and got into it for less than I'd been paying for the spider-infested garage in Mountain View circa 2009. The price was just a tiny bit more than I had been paying for the shared apartment in Mountain View and the studio was 10X nicer (and private). At the end of 2011, I got a bunch of mail / notices that the company which had a monopoly on all the apartments in EPA had been bought out by a _bigger_, more ferocious anti rent-control monster known as Residential Equity. And the first thing they did was raise my rent by as much as they possibly could. Lucky me, the rent control laws in EPA mean that they can't raise my rent by as much as they want, (which I am sure they would LOVE to do with Facebook moving next door) as a means to kick me out and make room for the Facebookers with bulging bank accounts. Without the rent control law, there would be nothing stopping the same thing that happened to me in [city near EPA] from happening all over again. Or to my friendly (albeit not the best at English) neighbors who tend to be employed in the hospitality and service industries. With the takeover, my rent did go up by more than I'd like, but it didn't go up by more than I could afford. So that, my friend, is the definition of "affordable" rent. It's not as distinct from rent control as people would like to think.

rayiner 14y ago

Rent control dramatically increases the price of housing and reduces the quality of housing. Rent control is basically just an inter-generational transfer of wealth. People who have cheap, rent-controlled housing (usually older people who became tenants long ago) are subsidized by new renters who cannot get the limited supply and rent-controlled housing, but pay higher housing prices as a result of supply constraints.