I haven't finished reading all the comments, but here's my take on the article: Great for mentioning the prop13-rentcontrol duality, a lot of people convenient

I haven't finished reading all the comments, but here's my take on the article: Great for mentioning the prop13-rentcontrol duality, a lot of people conveniently forget one side or the other. Great for delving into the politics of it all, including the neighborhood associations. Not-so-great: it was touched on but not really elaborated: why the peninsula (Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, the heart of SV) are not densifying to provide housing for the corporations they have. Some of the downtowns are very desireable, but still full of single-family homes. Some of the commercial space could be built up with housing over the businesses, and then these towns would develop even more character. I think the tech industry got a free-ride (heh) in building huge campuses in towns that have little residential growth (and even the towns' resistance to growth is mentioned). Google, Apple, etc, should be pushing on Mountain View to build 10,000 residential unites in the area. It's happening a tiny bit, but not nearly as fast as the companies are expanding. Most people don't choose 1-hour 40-mile commutes if they can avoid them. But the corporate buses make that commute feasible. I actually wonder if bus transport is reported by the employees as income for taxation purposes, and if not why? Finally, this issue really seems to stem from regional politics. SF has to compete with suburbs on tax breaks to companies, yet the suburbs can offload all the residential problems to the city. Seems like there should be state-wide rules that make this fairer.