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

$1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 547 posts

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#21

Post by davidw »

falsedan wrote: post #14
davidw wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'root' cause is that industries tend to concentrate, and that's not an easy problem to solve. And at the same time there's a massive economic draw, California refuses to let the market provide anything like enough housing.

Software development isn't an industry like oil refining. Imagine if all the architects or civil engineers were located in a small handful of cities!

Architects and civil engineers mostly work where their services are needed, which makes sense. The economics of their industries are different.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#23

Post by nugget »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #15

That's $50K/home. Is that even remotely realistic in the Bay Area?

The headline is misleading. In the article it says Google is rezoning $750 million worth of land (+ $250m in subsidies) from commercial to residential use, and making it available for private development. It wouldn't surprise me if one of the biggest problems for Google was retention of young talent driven primarily by prohibitively high housing costs. In that way there is an incentive for them to bring down housing costs, although I'm not sure what impact 20k units will have unless they retained ownership and became a landlord to their own employees.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#24

Post by twblalock »

brianwawok wrote: post #7
georgeecollins wrote: post #4

I think this is good and should be encouraged. The Bay Area needs more housing desperately.

My only question, is will these houses have access to public transit or will they drive? If driving, can your roads handle the increased traffic? Housing, transit, schooling.. these all seem interconnected. Just increasing supply of one just strains the rest of the system, no?

The only way transit will be built is if a strain develops. Otherwise what problem would be solved by building it?

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#25

Post by davidw »

onemoresoop wrote: post #17
davidw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked remote, and it's ok, but it's not the same thing as being in the office. It's not the same thing as having a bunch of local companies to choose from. Or from the company's point of view, it's nice to have a lot of local workers. And then there's stuff like high quality universities, and of course venture capital.

How about remote offices or remote subdivisions? It always worked out, why wouldn't it work out now?

Remote offices seem like a good compromise once a company is big enough. There are still coordination issues though, I would imagine.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#26

Post by quelsolaar »

Here is a buisnes idea Ive been thinking about lately for SF, Hong Kong, NY and other expensive places. Buy a smaller cruise ships and rent a pier to dock it. I found a newly renovated ship with 72 cabins for 5.8 million. With the average rent in SF that ship has paid for itself in 2 years (yes there will be additional costs, but back of a napkin, its a good start). Then buy more ships and stack them. Renovate/remodel in cheep places, then sail them to the bay. This could create housing in months not years, without the need for planing and building. If i had the money I would do it in a heart beat. It would be so much faster and cheaper then what google is planing.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#27

Post by GuiA »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #2

Most major tech companies want to hire onsite, when there are plenty of places in this country where you can buy a lot of real estate for much cheaper than the Bay Area. I pay less on my mortgage for a large house with over an acre of land than friends of mine pay for rent for studio apartments in San Francisco or Seattle. Investing $1B into housing in the Bay Area seems nice at the surface, but maybe if we stopped d…

> I pay less on my mortgage for a large house with over an acre of land than friends of mine pay for rent for studio apartments in San Francisco or Seattle.

That studio in San Francisco or Seattle comes with the opportunity of a high paying job at a tech company.

The large house with an acre of land gives you other opportunities, but if that one specific dimension is what you care about then it falls short.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#28

Post by albertshin »

Welcome to Googleville.

It's been a while since I've read cyberpunk novels like Cryptonomican, but I feel like the reality of corporations becoming villages and societal entities is slowly getting there anyways.

Your move, We.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#29

Post by newsoul2019 »

davidw wrote: post #3

You'd think they could spend a bit to "buy" someone like Senator Atkins, who effectively killed SB50. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-housing-single-fa...

Why can't they "grow their own" powerful politicians? Find somebody young, put them in all the right places with all the right people, and have them say all the right things. Shouldn't be hard with unlimited resources.

Re: $1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes

#30

Post by TotempaaltJ »

nugget wrote: post #23
bufferoverflow wrote: post #15

That's $50K/home. Is that even remotely realistic in the Bay Area?

The headline is misleading. In the article it says Google is rezoning $750 million worth of land (+ $250m in subsidies) from commercial to residential use, and making it available for private development. It wouldn't surprise me if one of the biggest problems for Google was retention of young talent driven primarily by prohibitively high housing costs. In that way there is an incentive for them to bring down housing…

$750m worth of land, $250m investment fund for affordable housing.
Post reply on HN