$1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by caymanjim » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

djakjxnanjak wrote: post #121

ProAm wrote: post #104

> The only solution is changing the zoning laws Or these companies can move. If you take successful STEM related businesses and move them to better area's the talent will follow. There is more than 1 answer to this problem, most people just want to change laws because its easier for them.

No way, no how is Google or any other decent employer going to uproot all their knowledge workers and make them unproductive for the foreseeable future by forcing them to move to another region. The diaspora from the Bay Area will keep happening the way it has been: at the economic margins. Over time, people outside of tech who aren’t subsidized by prop 13 or rent control will get priced out. There will be a perpetua…

Google doesn't need to move. They just need to expand elsewhere. Amazon is opening HQ2 because Seattle is "full", and there are lots of smart people elsewhere that they could employ. All the FAANGs should spread out more.

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

#162

Post by CiPHPerCoder » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

filoleg wrote: post #147

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not the same thing as having a bunch of local companies to choose from. What is the intrinsic advantage to having "local companies" to choose from in a world where every company you'd want to work for also offered remote positions? > Or from the company's point of view, it's nice to have a lot of local workers. Same question for that perspective, except I do have a few ideas of a cynical answer to that questio…

>What is the intrinsic advantage to having "local companies" to choose from in a world where every company you'd want to work for also offered remote positions? The advantage is that on the path in-between now and the perfect future where all companies are remote-first( that we are not sure will ever happen), you will not be at a significant disadvantage when it comes to job prospects. I don't think that many people…

As a short-term strategic move, sure. That's pragmatic.

But given a ceteris paribus comparison of the two, my question is what is inherently superior about the onsite position over the remote position?

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

#163

Post by ivalm » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

s3r3nity wrote: post #142

option wrote: post #99

I don’t understand why all the growth need to happen in this place and this place alone. Wouldn’t it be nice if “good” jobs overflow SV and appear in other places? (kind of happening to Austin, Boulder, NY, etc.) And people who already live in the area should absolutely have a right to direct it’s future.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted - it's the argument from NIMBY's that keeps getting pushed aside and needs to be properly addressed if this issue will ever get resolved. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: you don't have to live in California. For $1B, you could probably build enough houses for every single Google employee in a place like Detroit, or most other states (Arizona? Nevada? Colorado? etc. e…

Why would people move to Detroit for lower salaries to live in Google provided housing? They would just find other jobs in the bay.

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

#164

Post by chaostheory » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

option wrote: post #99

I don’t understand why all the growth need to happen in this place and this place alone. Wouldn’t it be nice if “good” jobs overflow SV and appear in other places? (kind of happening to Austin, Boulder, NY, etc.) And people who already live in the area should absolutely have a right to direct it’s future.

You bring up a good point. Why is this happening? Because there's value in having a bunch of people of the same profession being grouped to together in a location. It's easier to share ideas, collaborate, and get things done. It was already evident from all the innovations that came when Venetian glass blowers were all forced to live & work in the same little location. Silicon Valley is no different. Maybe this will change in the near future once VR and AR and our internet speeds get much better.

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

#165

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

iandanforth wrote: post #141

ChuckMcM wrote: post #123

Personally this class of things really highlights an imbalance for me. Consider that Google runs its own own bus service for employees, and now is building housing for the same. Traditionally, successful businesses in a region paid taxes, and those taxes were used by the local governments to invest in infrastructure like public transport and urban development. So in this regard Google usurps the mandate of the commun…

FWIW I think it would be illegal if Google tried to make the housing exclusive to its employees in the same way that the buses are.

So far in my quick bit of research since this story came up I have not found a law that would prevent it. There are laws about discrimination based on race, religion, Etc. but not about employee / non-employee. I have yet to find either a California law or Sunnyvale city ordinance that would disallow an owner from preferentially selling or leasing a house to someone who was employed by a specific entity, even if that entity was themselves.

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

#166

Post by enraged_camel » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

jofer wrote: post #93

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #56

Bay area voters have made their intentions abundantly clear, in numerous elections and voting: they don't want growth. So much so, that local politicians even brag about how much housing developments they've stopped. Why fight such a huge uphill battle in trying to get housing in the Bay area? Wouldn't it be easier to start from a city or town outside of CA? or at least outside the bay area? Maybe somewhere in the mi…

> If we start a new town or city and put a major employer in the middle, people will move there. Welcome to Houston! Seriously, the typical model for growth here has been for a major employer to make a new campus out in the middle of nowhere away from town, then things spring up around it. As a result, we have lots of urban clusters with skyscrapers a long way from downtown. The energy corridor and the med center sta…

Houston also famously has no zoning laws, which massively exacerbates problems associated with sprawl.

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

#167

Post by danans » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #55

bluedino wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$2,000 house payment vs a $3,000 apartment rental is only $12,000 a year in difference.

To many developers in "smaller" tech cities, that's nearly 20% of their pre-tax salary.

The difference housing cost as a percentage of the small tech city salary is an irrelevant statistic.

The relevant statistic to compare is actual housing cost vs actual compensation in both types of places. For many types of tech jobs, the number still favors big cities, if not in percentage terms, then in absolute numbers.

And when it comes down to a real life decision, there are plenty of other factors (financial or otherwise) besides that one statistic.

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

#168

Post by dannykwells » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

This is awesome. I hope they follow through on actually making this affordable and not only for Google employees (which I agree, would likely be illegal).

Pols in the bay area suck. All of them. They are against affordable housing and against families. But, they love money more than they hate families. So way this approach will help and pave the way for the other major companies to do the same.

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

#169

Post by icebraining » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #120

icebraining wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and instead we're stuck in cars commuting. Remote working frees up more time to spend with other people.

If only we had the knowledge to plan cities so that it's possible to live near where you work. Perhaps it sounds crazy, but we could even stack dwelling units on top of one another.

Then I would have to commute out to spend time with my family, who live nowhere near my work, or any workplace of my industry.

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

#170

Post by linuxftw » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

caymanjim wrote: post #75

It's great that Google wants to increase housing, but is this really going to work? The housing shortage in the Bay Area is not a money problem. If it were possible to build 20,000 houses in the next 20 years, it would absolutely happen without Google's help. The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism. SF doesn't want to allow taller buildings and denser housing complexes. It's vastly worse in the…

I'm generally against zoning restrictions. But, there's only so much a city's infrastructure can take. Let's say they build another 100k 3 bedroom units, where is all the waste going to go?

Is there a good reason for all of these people to live in one little area? No, I don't think there's a really good reason. Everyone wants to take advantage of what the city has to offer, but nobody actually wants to pay fair market value.