I wonder if it works: Company buys land to build office but sets apart a certain percentage for employee apartments. In essence a company town. Hires a management co to run it, no buys just lease. When the company folds, downsizes or whatever, the apartments are part of it. It costs, but it's cost of doing business. Otherwise a huge company can distort the home market . Maybe not enough land is available, especially…
but sets apart a certain percentage for employee apartments.
It would be difficult to do that legally due to Fair Housing law.
Parking would be less of a deal if they built mixed developments, which are more desirable anyway. It’s quite nice being able to walk out of your house and drop right into a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant. Walking to work or school is amazing too. People here seem to be so afraid that their neighborhoods will begin to look more like Dubai or Hong Kong. But clearly what we’re doing now isn’t sustainable, nor is it ev…
Grass is always greener on the other side.
Having lived and grown up in ultra-dense urban cities like Hongkong, Singapore and Tokyo, I very much prefer somewhere with a little more breathing space. Though not to the extent of American suburbs. The European cities are probably a good balance.
Unfortunately Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz have anti-housing factions similar to everywhere else in the Bay Area, and the pro-housing faction is in earlier stages of organization than in the Bay Area. Scotts Valley City Council actually had a member say in open meeting that they don't want "those type of people" living there, in reference to renters and presumably others without the means to buy a home. Santa Cruz is…
why can't someone buy enough land and incorporate their own city?
I'm hoping there will be more land-reclamation projects from the Pacific or even inside the Bay itself.
Maybe that's Ellon's plan: use Tunnel Boring machines to make transport tunnels, and use the extracted earth to push back the coastline to make more habitable land!
> I have no idea how a teacher would be able to live in SV and plan to have a family and everything else. The math teacher at my high school in Santa Cruz was a retired electrical engineer with a Ph.D. from Stanford. There's no rule that says teachers need to make a living from teaching. It's known for being pleasant work. Granted, the school hasn't pursued that strategy since then...
Teaching? Pleasant work? I've tried it and it's worse than the ops job I have now. Very stressful. Even teachers I know agree. You do get long vacations to compensate, but it's not all good.
Yes, many, many people enjoy working and generally interacting with the children. The vacations are a perk, but they're not even the primary perk.
10k is a drop in the bucket. We need blocks of high rises going up around all the Caltrain stops, and a corresponding increase in Caltrain capacity.
Please call your state Assemblymember and Senator about SB 827 and 828, which will allow this to happen. They are certain to be contentious bills. You can find them here: https://sankarravi.github.io/yimbyscorecard/ Caltrain capacity increase is on the way in 2-3 years thanks to electrification and a new fleet of trains.
Note that 828 is purely declarative ("It is the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation that would do all of the following"); only 827 would have immediate effect.
828 is still worth watching, to see who comes down on which side.
Isn't that the same type of building? I thought an "apartment" in the US was just a rented condo.
The type of housing is called "apartment", because it's a part of a larger building. A condominium is an apartment that is owned by an individual, who then pays maintenance fees to the condominium association, who in turn manages the building. If you own a condo, you may be allowed to rent it out to someone else. A more common option for rental apartments is that a landlord of some sort (an individual, a corporation,…
Is the condominium not a part of a larger building?
I would stand up and oppose dense urban housing plopped down in the middle my suburban single-family home neighborhood, too. I guess that makes me an evil, dirty NIMBY, but oh well, I'll live with the label. When your message is "dense urban is the only acceptable way to live" don't be surprised when people who don't want their neighborhoods to turn into apartment complexes push back.
Yikes, stop with straw men. Live however you want! Nobody istearing down your house. Nobody is making you move. And NOBODY is plopping down density in the middle of single family homes, or even proposing that. But please just let me live the way I and many others want. Just stop interfering with mixed use buildings in the middle of commercially zoned areas. So you might drive by a commercial area that has housing on…
> And NOBODY is plopping down density in the middle of single family homes, or even proposing that.
There is a fair amount of rumbling about upzoning single-family lots to permit mid-rise apartment buildings, i.e. SB827.
(Dec 13, 2017) - This is a great start. But I think we really need more like 100,000 new units built. Just to help reverse some of the astronomical housing prices. I have no idea how a teacher would be able to live in SV and plan to have a family and everything else. At this rate, the housing costs are unsustainable. We wont be able to have a functioning city with all the needed staffing like teachers, nurses, seller…
The problem is that most people making the decisions own one or more units. If they decided to build more housing, the value of their investments would decline.
I'm not sure this is true - the value of their land would skyrocket if rezoned for a more productive use.
I wish it were a straw man. Whenever one of these threads starts here, half the responses are "we need high rise condos, town homes, and dense urban units everywhere in the bay area!". If that's not the message intended to be sent, it's often the message received. I don't care what you do to an already-urbanized area. Build housing on top of retail, knock yourself out. Pack another apartment high-rise next to the las…
The places where people are proposing new development are almost always along existing transit corridors or adjacent to job centers, like El Camino Real or Caltrain. Even those projects generate opposition. San Mateo just rejected a 10-unit, 35 foot condo building fronting El Camino Real, that had 26 parking spaces, because... it was "too tall." Millbrae residents fiercely oppose 5 and 8 story buildings located... ad…
The proposed bill I've seen people supporting - SB 827, by the SF state senator - defined "along existing transit corridors" so broadly that it covered the entirety of San Francisco and anywhere else with a vaguely functional bus service, and used state preemption of local laws to set a minimum height, remove parking minimums, and require local planners to allow dense mid-rise apartment buildings in the entire area. Its more keen proponents insist that it's absurd to call this radical in any way because it's obvious that dense buildings around transit hubs is the way to go.
Parking would be less of a deal if they built mixed developments, which are more desirable anyway. It’s quite nice being able to walk out of your house and drop right into a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant. Walking to work or school is amazing too. People here seem to be so afraid that their neighborhoods will begin to look more like Dubai or Hong Kong. But clearly what we’re doing now isn’t sustainable, nor is it ev…
This. I grew up in Los Gatos, but now live in London. Virtually anywhere in the city there are decent shops within a 5-10 minute walk; this fact alone makes London vastly more liveable than 95% of Silicon Valley. This is only viable with mixed-use zoning and a certain minimum density. This in turn makes public transport more viable, further increasing the quality of life. Done right -- and it really isn't that hard to do it right -- high-density mixed-use development produces a very virtuous feedback loop.