The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing
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The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing
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Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing
#2Relatedly: "More housing density keeps Seattle affordable for younger residents:" http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/more-housing-density-kee.... Seattle is doing better than SF or NYC: http://www.vox.com/2015/12/23/10657690/seattle-housing-crisi... but still not good enough. Tokyo should be its example: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3c....
Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing
#3It seems that we made a pact with the devil by positioning housing as an investment asset. By doing so, we've encouraged people to commit a very large fraction of their net worth into a rather illiquid asset, tying their financial fates to the future assessment of that asset. As a result, protecting the price and appreciation of this asset has come to overshadow the other crucial roles that housing plays in our society.
If I bought shares in AAPL at $50 (now $100+) and someone comes along asking that AAPL let them buy some shares for say, $65, I'm obviously not going to be happy since the value of my investment is under threat. This is the kind of reaction we've unfortunately promoted for ourselves. It didn't have to be this way, as other countries have shown us. But now that we're here, it's hard to imagine a way to turn back time.
Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing
#4"Downing and her husband, an attorney and programmer, respectively, say they simply could not afford to pay almost $150,000 per year for housing alone while starting a family in Palo Alto."
It's interesting the difference a couple of miles make. $150,000 per year is $12,500 a month. The most expensive house for rent in East Palo Alto (3 miles away) is $6,000 (half that) and there are many choices under $4,000 per month. They could live in Gilroy and ride the train for free[1] for around $3,000 a month. They could do even better if they decided to rent an apartment or a townhouse instead of a detached single family home.
Whining about not being able to afford to live in a neighborhood where multi-millionaires want to live is not very productive. Unlike San Francisco there are a lot of housing options up and down the peninsula, and since they work (or used to) in Palo Alto it is extremely close to the train station (so an easy "no drive") commute, which saves them even more because the City pays for their rail ticket and they don't have to buy gas.
[1] https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/40...
Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing
#5It seems that we made a pact with the devil by positioning housing as an investment asset. By doing so, we've encouraged people to commit a very large fraction of their net worth into a rather illiquid asset, tying their financial fates to the future assessment of that asset. As a result, protecting the price and appreciation of this asset has come to overshadow the other crucial roles that housing plays in our socie…
It's a double whammy when you also consider that property taxes are generally based on real estate value. City and local governments are dependent on that income and have little incentive to see real estate values (and thus tax) go down.
Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing
#6"Downing and her husband, an attorney and programmer, respectively, say they simply could not afford to pay almost $150,000 per year for housing alone while starting a family in Palo Alto." It's interesting the difference a couple of miles make. $150,000 per year is $12,500 a month. The most expensive house for rent in East Palo Alto (3 miles away) is $6,000 (half that) and there are many choices under $4,000 per mon…
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Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing
#7"Downing and her husband, an attorney and programmer, respectively, say they simply could not afford to pay almost $150,000 per year for housing alone while starting a family in Palo Alto." It's interesting the difference a couple of miles make. $150,000 per year is $12,500 a month. The most expensive house for rent in East Palo Alto (3 miles away) is $6,000 (half that) and there are many choices under $4,000 per mon…
The $150,000 number is the cost of the mortgage needed to buy a home the size of the one they rented in Palo Alto [1]. The breakdown was that they rented the home with another couple for $6200/mo. If they wanted to buy a similar home, it would cost ~ $2.7M, thus the $12.5k/mo mortgage. They were already renting a place in Palo Alto at ~ $3100/mo. Their problem was that they wanted to start a family and needed more space. Doing so in Palo Alto was prohibitively expensive.
I don't think that she was whining about not being able to live in a neighborhood where multi-millionaire lived. It was about being able to establish roots anywhere in the Palo Alto area. It's all but impossible and it will become harder and harder to run a city where all of the labor force needs to be imported (police, teachers, city gov't, etc).
I know this is already starting to become an issue with some departments at Stanford where it's very difficult to recruit/keep faculty and postdocs due to the cost of living in the immediate area.
[1] https://shift.newco.co/letter-of-resignation-from-the-palo-a...
Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing
#8"Downing and her husband, an attorney and programmer, respectively, say they simply could not afford to pay almost $150,000 per year for housing alone while starting a family in Palo Alto." It's interesting the difference a couple of miles make. $150,000 per year is $12,500 a month. The most expensive house for rent in East Palo Alto (3 miles away) is $6,000 (half that) and there are many choices under $4,000 per mon…
"They can move elsewhere" is not a reason to not build more housing - it is reasonable (and desirable) for people to live in the city that they work in. If your argument is that they can pay 3,000 a month for the privilege of living 50 (!) miles away from work in Gilroy then that still doesn't do anything for the "teachers, police officers, and other working and middle class people" - you know, the people who actually keep the city running.
Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing
#9It seems that we made a pact with the devil by positioning housing as an investment asset. By doing so, we've encouraged people to commit a very large fraction of their net worth into a rather illiquid asset, tying their financial fates to the future assessment of that asset. As a result, protecting the price and appreciation of this asset has come to overshadow the other crucial roles that housing plays in our socie…
It's a double whammy when you also consider that property taxes are generally based on real estate value. City and local governments are dependent on that income and have little incentive to see real estate values (and thus tax) go down.
That would depend on the price elasticity of the existing housing stock in response to each additional unit of housing that is supplied to the market. It's conceivable that the marginal decrease in tax revenue from the existing stock would be more than offset by the additional tax revenue from the one additional unit.
Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing
#10"Downing and her husband, an attorney and programmer, respectively, say they simply could not afford to pay almost $150,000 per year for housing alone while starting a family in Palo Alto." It's interesting the difference a couple of miles make. $150,000 per year is $12,500 a month. The most expensive house for rent in East Palo Alto (3 miles away) is $6,000 (half that) and there are many choices under $4,000 per mon…
"They can move elsewhere" is not a reason to not build more housing - it is reasonable (and desirable) for people to live in the city that they work in. If your argument is that they can pay 3,000 a month for the privilege of living 50 (!) miles away from work in Gilroy then that still doesn't do anything for the "teachers, police officers, and other working and middle class people" - you know, the people who actuall…
Indeed. but it's also unreasonable to expect that homeowners in a city should not be able to decide how much building they want to allow in their city. I mean, it's a Bay wide problem, why can't all the building be done right outside Palo Alto? why does Palo Alto have to shoulder the solution to this problem? I don't have a dog in this fight, but I certainly can understand current homeowners. They want to keep their city a certain way. Why can't they ?