Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

stanfordpolitics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 208 posts

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#11

Post by toomuchtodo »

arkadiyt wrote: post #8
ChuckMcM wrote: post #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 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…

Or move the jobs out of ridiculously high COL areas?

An area of land has a carrying capacity dictated by the will of the people who live there through their votes. Why fight it when you can simply move work elsewhere?

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#12

Post by twblalock »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #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 mon…

For those who aren't familiar with the Bay Area: East Palo Alto is a high-crime city. It is not the eastern part of the city of Palo Alto -- it is not even in the same county. It has such a high rate of crime that there were no grocery stores there for many years, because the shoplifting put them out of business. There are frequent gang-related shootings. And yet, it still costs more to live there than it does in most of the United States. That's pretty good evidence that we need more housing.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#13

Post by maerF0x0 »

Seems to be the same old story we've long known. Government interference in markets leads to distortions. Yet year after year we act surprised. And when it comes time to setting up a government, we vote for the person who promises to spend others' money on our pet project.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#14

Post by digi_owl »

hkmurakami wrote: post #3

It 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…

I ran into a claim some years ago saying that homeownership is policy because homeowners do not riot.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#15

Post by twblalock »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #10
arkadiyt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> 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

How far away does said land need to be before you think current homeowners shouldn't have a say anymore? Should someone who lives on the border of Palo Alto and another city be able to prevent housing being built in that other city, or just in Palo Alto? It's pretty arbitrary.

The people who are trying to prevent housing being built today are the same people who benefited from lots of new housing being built during the 1960s-1980s. Why should they have the right to prevent other people from doing what they themselves did? Should the Palo Alto residents in the 1960s-1980s have been able to prevent the newcomers at that time? I suspect very few current residents would agree with that, which is hypocritical.

I think there is a much simpler way to deal with this -- if land is zoned for housing, allow housing to be built. If some rich guy in Palo Alto wanted to control what happened on that land, he should have bought it. Why should anyone be able to veto the development of housing on land they don't own, if it is zoned for housing?

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#16

Post by thaumasiotes »

digi_owl wrote: post #14
hkmurakami wrote: post #3

It 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…

I ran into a claim some years ago saying that homeownership is policy because homeowners do not riot.

Homeowners don't riot. Neither do married people.

But while there is good evidence that marriage transforms rioters into non-rioters, giving houses away doesn't seem to have much effect on the recipients.

Logically, if you want to tamp down rioting and your metric is homeownership, you should be trying to oppress non-homeowners, not trying to get houses to the people that don't have them.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#17

Post by natrius »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #10
arkadiyt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

It is unreasonable for the government to limit housing. It directly causes economic segregation. Only the wealthiest get the homes allowed by law while everyone else gets pushed further out. The market does not do this. Our segregation laws do.

If it were legal to build fourplexes anywhere in Palo Alto, merely wealthy families would be able to outbid some of the insanely wealthy with their four rent payments combined. For the most part, single family homeowners can't actually afford single family homes in such desirable locations, but our laws make it illegal for middle class families to outbid the wealthy the way they always have: using less land.

This is an obvious injustice, and the people who insist on laws that exclude others will soon find themselves in our history books. Stop letting Dixiecrats call themselves progressives.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#18

Post by twblalock »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11
arkadiyt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Or move the jobs out of ridiculously high COL areas? An area of land has a carrying capacity dictated by the will of the people who live there through their votes. Why fight it when you can simply move work elsewhere?

> Why fight it when you can simply move work elsewhere?

You can't really do that. You underestimate the powerful network effect Silicon Valley has on the tech industry. Almost all of the investors are here, and many of the world's best software engineers choose to live here and will not move elsewhere for work. There are only a few other cities that have a lot of software jobs and also a large pool of software talent, and they also have a high cost of living -- NYC, Boston, and Seattle come to mind.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#19

Post by toomuchtodo »

twblalock wrote: post #18
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or move the jobs out of ridiculously high COL areas? An area of land has a carrying capacity dictated by the will of the people who live there through their votes. Why fight it when you can simply move work elsewhere?

> Why fight it when you can simply move work elsewhere? You can't really do that. You underestimate the powerful network effect Silicon Valley has on the tech industry. Almost all of the investors are here, and many of the world's best software engineers choose to live here and will not move elsewhere for work. There are only a few other cities that have a lot of software jobs and also a large pool of software talent…

Go remote. High quality engineers, project managers, designers, etc can be had all around the world, and if you're seeing a drop in team or employee performance from working remotely, you're not managing properly.

Your argument about investors and quality developers only being in SFBA is a strawman. There are successful startups all over the world. Unicorns? Probably not, but that's a perception issue, not a quality issue (current unrealistic valuations will continue to come back down to Earth)

The number of orgs supporting remote, even fully remote, grows all the time: https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job#companies... ; if an employee chooses to expose themselves to outrageous housing expenses due to the employer's ability to externalize this cost to the employee (with no penalty to the employer, because "that's just the way it is"), this will never change.

Re: The Shame of Palo Alto: An Interview with Kate Downing on Affordable Housing

#20

Post by diamondtrim »

twblalock wrote: post #12
ChuckMcM wrote: post #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 mon…

For those who aren't familiar with the Bay Area: East Palo Alto is a high-crime city. It is not the eastern part of the city of Palo Alto -- it is not even in the same county. It has such a high rate of crime that there were no grocery stores there for many years, because the shoplifting put them out of business. There are frequent gang-related shootings. And yet, it still costs more to live there than it does in mos…

Fun fact: Antarctica got its first ATM before East Palo Alto did. (Both in 1998)
Post reply on HN