scharfstevenm

6 ms·

1.
by scharfstevenm 10y ago
How do you force people to live near their jobs? San Francisco rents are higher than rents in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, or Cupertino, but younger workers at Apple, Google, Yahoo, etc., still choose to live in San Francisco because these sub
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by scharfstevenm 10y ago
That is the reason for the ABAG housing mandates. It's why Palo Alto capped commercial office space. It's why residents of Cupertino think that 2 million square feet of office space at Vallco is short-sighted. If you look at ABAGs
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by scharfstevenm 10y ago
Yes. But since they delivered the rent in cash, it was not possible to prove that the tenants had changed even though we knew they had. For us, it was not sustainable financially because we didn't have the resources or the will to chal
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by scharfstevenm 10y ago
It’s not sufficient to just build massive amounts of high-density housing in a never-ending race to keep up with more commercial office space. You have to think about where you’re going to put new schools, new parks, new retail, and new tra
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by scharfstevenm 10y ago
A lot of people like a house in the suburbs with a two car garage. Should the fact that more people want to live in their town force them to have their house torn down so high-density housing can be built?
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by scharfstevenm 10y ago
Yes, it's best to buy when rates are very high, then refinance when they fall. Our last refinance was at 2 5/8%. One big issue with Prop 13 is that people that would normally sell and move to a smaller place, or to another locatio
7.
by scharfstevenm 10y ago
Wow, why didn't anyone think of that before?! Seriously, look at some transit maps: 1920 Silicon Valley: http://www.sociecity.com//wp-content/uploads/silicon-valey-s... 2012 Silicon Valley: http:/&
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by scharfstevenm 10y ago
Maintenance and repairs were a lot when they had to pay someone to do everything. Then when I entered the family, suddenly I could repair appliances, replace plumbing fixtures, replace outlets and switches, install lighting, it never ends.
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by scharfstevenm 10y ago
Is anyone naive enough to believe that newly build dense housing is going to bring down the cost of housing? It doesn't work that way. One of the biggest contributors to high housing cost in San Francisco is rent control. It benefits s
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by scharfstevenm 10y ago
It's actually not baffling. Cities want more offices and less housing because housing requires costly services that aren't covered by property taxes, especially if it's high-density rental housing which rarely changes owners.
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by scharfstevenm 10y ago
Do you also look for places where you could fit schools, shopping, parks, etc.? Sensible and sustainable growth needs to avoid tunnel-vision. But cities are so controlled by developers that they rarely want to take a systems view when rezon
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by scharfstevenm 10y ago
The problem with housing and transit is that people change jobs, and companies change locations, so often that it's impractical to move every time a job location changes (and for couples, there are two people to deal with). When I have
13.
by scharfstevenm 10y ago
Personally, I ride a bicycle to Sunnyvale station from Cupertino then take the bicycle on the train, and the "last five mile" problem is solved. Except that the bicycle capacity on Caltrain isn't enough, and sometimes all the
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by scharfstevenm 10y ago
Measure B is mainly roads, with little for transit. Does anyone trust VTA to manage mass transit development? Funds for transit should come from fuel taxes, vehicle license fees, and development fees. Sales tax increases are very regressive
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by scharfstevenm 10y ago
It's only fair for the state to require housing to offset new office space. In Silicon Valley, the issue is that there is no more land in cities like Palo Alto or Cupertino for more housing, more school, or more roads, and the transit