Housing Subsidy for "middle class" earning only 150-250k/yr in Palo Alto

[trailrated]

Holy crap, this is insane.

And I live in the Bay Area...

“We have people struggling to make it at a quarter-million dollars a year,” Bean said. “That’s a terrible thing.”

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/03/22/250k-per-year-salary-could-qualify-for-subsidized-housing-under-new-palo-alto-plan/

[2Birds1Stone]

That's tough! Only making a quarter million in Palo Alto must suck =(

[galliver]

You don't need to subsidize, Palo Alto. You need to Build. More. Housing.

That goes for the whole Bay Area. Either you create housing to accommodate the influx of tech workers and all the other workers/business that follows (someone has to patrol the streets, educate the children, drive the buses, sell toilet paper, etc) OR you accept that you, as an area, are not interested in economic growth.

[slugline]

Then there's that nagging problem that anything you subsidize just becomes more expensive. . . .

[seattlecyclone]

You don't need to subsidize, Palo Alto. You need to Build. More. Housing.

Yes, this. Subsidizing makes things better for the lucky few who happen to be at the top of the list for subsidies, but does nothing to address the root cause of the problem. Municipal zoning regulations serve to limit the amount of housing that can be built, and this limit falls farther behind the demand with every passing year.

[Jack]

Either that, or people need to quit being chumps and GTFO to somewhere where the prices aren't insane. Sooner or later the tech companies won't have anybody left to hire because even if their potential employees could afford it, they won't be able to buy local goods and services because everyone else in the community can't.

In fact, this has already started happening: Silicon Valley tech companies like to spew bullshit about a "shortage" of qualified workers, but there is no such thing. There is only a shortage of idiots willing to move to Silicon Valley and pay a million bucks for a shoebox when they could have a better standard of living in Seattle, Portland, the NC Research Triangle, Austin, Atlanta, or any number of other places with lots of tech jobs instead.

[Paul der Krake]

In fact, this has already started happening: Silicon Valley tech companies like to spew bullshit about a "shortage" of qualified workers, but there is no such thing. There is only a shortage of idiots willing to move to Silicon Valley and pay a million bucks for a shoebox when they could have a better standard of living in Seattle, Portland, the NC Research Triangle, Austin, Atlanta, or any number of other places with lots of tech jobs instead.

NC sucks, it's all humidity and barbecue stains. Don't come here.

[TheOldestYoungMan]

NC sucks, it's all humidity and barbecue stains. Don't come here.

Ditto for Texas.

[gimp]

In fact, this has already started happening: Silicon Valley tech companies like to spew bullshit about a "shortage" of qualified workers, but there is no such thing. There is only a shortage of idiots willing to move to Silicon Valley and pay a million bucks for a shoebox when they could have a better standard of living in Seattle, Portland, the NC Research Triangle, Austin, Atlanta, or any number of other places with lots of tech jobs instead.

NC sucks, it's all humidity and barbecue stains. Don't come here.

Mustard Barbecue inferior race.

[Jack]

NC sucks, it's all humidity and barbecue stains. Don't come here.

Mustard Barbecue inferior race.

Here in Georgia, being the crossroads of the South and the cradle of MLK and the civil rights movement, we accept all forms of barbecue (even the kind with the vinegar sauce).

[Vee2001]

You don't need to subsidize, Palo Alto. You need to Build. More. Housing.

That goes for the whole Bay Area. Either you create housing to accommodate the influx of tech workers and all the other workers/business that follows (someone has to patrol the streets, educate the children, drive the buses, sell toilet paper, etc) OR you accept that you, as an area, are not interested in economic growth.

Yeah, things in the Bay Area are kind of stupid.  Cities/Counties/NIMBY's make life difficult when you try to build additional housing (zoning regulations, Coastal Commission, etc) but then try to "solve" high rental costs by pushing through Rent Control.

I was just at a City Council meeting in Pacifica a couple months ago on Rent Control.  So many facepalm comments.  People pointing to the program in San Francisco as a great example and a "success".  Others talking about income disparity as a justification for rent control (what????).  Others making comments that somehow all the landlords were working together to rip people off.

One of the City Council members had a good point.  Apparently, not that long ago, they tried to approve a couple large low income housing projects in the city.  The only people who showed up to the City Council meeting were homeowners that were against the project.  Where were all the people concerned about rising rental costs then?  Why do they only show up to support rent control but nothing else that might help lowering housing costs/rents?

[Tetsuya Hondo]

NC sucks, it's all humidity and barbecue stains. Don't come here.

Mustard Barbecue inferior race.
[/quote]

Hey, HEY! I won't tolerate this cue-ist language against NC! South Carolinians are the inferior backwoods inbred hillybilly grits with mustard barbecue.

NC has that zingy vinegar based que.

[Dicey]

You don't need to subsidize, Palo Alto. You need to Build. More. Housing.

That goes for the whole Bay Area. Either you create housing to accommodate the influx of tech workers and all the other workers/business that follows (someone has to patrol the streets, educate the children, drive the buses, sell toilet paper, etc) OR you accept that you, as an area, are not interested in economic growth.

Yeah, things in the Bay Area are kind of stupid.  Cities/Counties/NIMBY's make life difficult when you try to build additional housing (zoning regulations, Coastal Commission, etc) but then try to "solve" high rental costs by pushing through Rent Control.

I was just at a City Council meeting in Pacifica a couple months ago on Rent Control.  So many facepalm comments.  People pointing to the program in San Francisco as a great example and a "success".  Others talking about income disparity as a justification for rent control (what????).  Others making comments that somehow all the landlords were working together to rip people off.

One of the City Council members had a good point.  Apparently, not that long ago, they tried to approve a couple large low income housing projects in the city.  The only people who showed up to the City Council meeting were homeowners that were against the project.  Where were all the people concerned about rising rental costs then?  Why do they only show up to support rent control but nothing else that might help lowering housing costs/rents?

^This^ I live in the East Bay and my city has built quite a lot of housiing in the last three years. You would not believe the screaming from the outraged populace. All they do is bitch about traffic and parking. There is not a single project that is not an improvement over what was there before. In the Bay Area, there is no new land. Something must be torn down/rezoned/redeveloped to build more housing, which is expensive and a total PITA.

[maizefolk]

Unfortunately I think bay area housing is trapped in a bit of positive feedback loop:

1. Demand for apartments exceeds supply.
2. Rents rise.
3. People who already owned existing rental properties see those properties appreciate and monthly rents increase.
4. That increased income is used to buy political power, which it turn is used to push new barriers to increasing the supply of housing through new construction.
5. New construction becomes more expensive and time consuming so fewer new apartments are built.
6. GOTO 1.

[Ricky]

I can only imagine this is awesome news for the rest of us. Glad that general America thinks $250k is not enough to live even in the Bay Area - only makes it easier for us to widen the income and expenses gap!

There is only a shortage of idiots willing to move to Silicon Valley and pay a million bucks for a shoebox when they could have a better standard of living in Seattle, Portland, the NC Research Triangle, Austin, Atlanta, or any number of other places with lots of tech jobs instead.

Agreed. Tons of opportunities in those areas. Paying millions of dollars is fine when you're making millions of dollars - but you have people moving there that have no business buying places who are indeed buying places. Portland, Austin, Seattle are already seeing an influx of Californians though and it won't be too long before those places are no better. At least those areas have room to expand though, where the Bay Area really doesn't. Raleigh in my opinion is the best place to be with cheap cost of living and an abundance of high paying jobs. The weather though...

[Syonyk]

Seattle is getting this way. One of the reasons I'm getting out.

People moan and complain, but the people who actually show up to meetings are homeowners and other property owners who profit incredibly from the rise in housing costs. Strangely, they oppose new construction.

[Abe]

Everyone stop mentioning Raleigh or I won't be able to afford to move back home! Luckily there's a lot of acres on the outskirts so not even San Franciscans can mess up that property market.

[Eudo]

You don't need to subsidize, Palo Alto. You need to Build. More. Housing.

Yes, this. Subsidizing makes things better for the lucky few who happen to be at the top of the list for subsidies, but does nothing to address the root cause of the problem. Municipal zoning regulations serve to limit the amount of housing that can be built, and this limit falls farther behind the demand with every passing year.

Let me play devil's advocate here. Having lived in the Bay Area for about five years, I can testify to what a desirable place it is to live. Climate, geography, the city, everything. Coastal California in general might in fact be literally the best place in the world to live. If you could wave a magic wand and make the median house be $250k, and then went to every person in the US and asked if they'd move there, you'd probably find something like 50% of the population would, in fact, want to move to coastal California if housing prices were $250k. There are currently 30 million people in California, and I'm guessing most live in coastal California. And then you'd have 150 million people that want to move in.

If you built more houses to lower the price,  people would simply move in until house prices were bid back up to $800k in San Francisco (where they are now). But the only difference is that you'd have, say, twice as many people, and quality of life for everyone would be worse. So building more and more houses to lower prices only works if you can build enough to accommodate all the people who want to live there and not lower the quality of life too much, which I'm not sure you can do in coastal California. It might end up like all the people in L.A. that thought you could fix all the traffic problems by just building more freeways. Didn't work out so well. You just ended up with a maze of freeways, all of which were just as crammed as before.

I don't know what the solution is, though. I'd love to move back to SF sometime, but housing prices are just comically high.

[CATman]

I heard this story from a different angle this weekend and the bay area has some serious problems if they don't solve the affordable housing problem. They are going to either have to fix the high cost of housing or start paying their municipal employees (police, firefighters, teachers, garbage workers, etc) a much more competitive wage to keep them in the area. These are the people that keep your city running and slowly but surely the housing market is pushing these people out of the area as well.

I'm all for personal responsibility in choosing to live in a part of the country you can reasonably afford, but I hope this measure doesn't pass and they finally realize that you need to pay people like teachers the wage that they are really worth.

[seattlecyclone]

You don't need to subsidize, Palo Alto. You need to Build. More. Housing.

Yes, this. Subsidizing makes things better for the lucky few who happen to be at the top of the list for subsidies, but does nothing to address the root cause of the problem. Municipal zoning regulations serve to limit the amount of housing that can be built, and this limit falls farther behind the demand with every passing year.

Let me play devil's advocate here. Having lived in the Bay Area for about five years, I can testify to what a desirable place it is to live. Climate, geography, the city, everything. Coastal California in general might in fact be literally the best place in the world to live. If you could wave a magic wand and make the median house be $250k, and then went to every person in the US and asked if they'd move there, you'd probably find something like 50% of the population would, in fact, want to move to coastal California if housing prices were $250k. There are currently 30 million people in California, and I'm guessing most live in coastal California. And then you'd have 150 million people that want to move in.

If you built more houses to lower the price,  people would simply move in until house prices were bid back up to $800k in San Francisco (where they are now). But the only difference is that you'd have, say, twice as many people, and quality of life for everyone would be worse. So building more and more houses to lower prices only works if you can build enough to accommodate all the people who want to live there and not lower the quality of life too much, which I'm not sure you can do in coastal California. It might end up like all the people in L.A. that thought you could fix all the traffic problems by just building more freeways. Didn't work out so well. You just ended up with a maze of freeways, all of which were just as crammed as before.

I don't know what the solution is, though. I'd love to move back to SF sometime, but housing prices are just comically high.

First off, I really doubt that anywhere near half of America would pack up and move to California if housing was cheaper there. Some people would, sure.

I guess where we disagree is that I don't believe a few extra neighbors is going to make my quality of life worse. Quite the opposite! More population density leads to more businesses, activities, and potential friends within walking and biking distance. It leads to better mass transit as well. Driving myself around to places may get a bit harder, but I don't really like doing that anyway!

Regardless, I don't think it's very neighborly to support zoning laws that perpetuate a condition where people making a quarter million dollars per year can say with a straight face that they have a hard time paying for a place to house their families.

[Ricky]

You don't need to subsidize, Palo Alto. You need to Build. More. Housing.

Yes, this. Subsidizing makes things better for the lucky few who happen to be at the top of the list for subsidies, but does nothing to address the root cause of the problem. Municipal zoning regulations serve to limit the amount of housing that can be built, and this limit falls farther behind the demand with every passing year.

Let me play devil's advocate here. Having lived in the Bay Area for about five years, I can testify to what a desirable place it is to live. Climate, geography, the city, everything. Coastal California in general might in fact be literally the best place in the world to live. If you could wave a magic wand and make the median house be $250k, and then went to every person in the US and asked if they'd move there, you'd probably find something like 50% of the population would, in fact, want to move to coastal California if housing prices were $250k. There are currently 30 million people in California, and I'm guessing most live in coastal California. And then you'd have 150 million people that want to move in.

If you built more houses to lower the price,  people would simply move in until house prices were bid back up to $800k in San Francisco (where they are now). But the only difference is that you'd have, say, twice as many people, and quality of life for everyone would be worse. So building more and more houses to lower prices only works if you can build enough to accommodate all the people who want to live there and not lower the quality of life too much, which I'm not sure you can do in coastal California. It might end up like all the people in L.A. that thought you could fix all the traffic problems by just building more freeways. Didn't work out so well. You just ended up with a maze of freeways, all of which were just as crammed as before.

I don't know what the solution is, though. I'd love to move back to SF sometime, but housing prices are just comically high.

First off, I really doubt that anywhere near half of America would pack up and move to California if housing was cheaper there. Some people would, sure.

Not nearly half. Not even half of half. Not even half of half of half. That's ludicrous. There was a study I read that said weather and geography were only slight influences on happiness. The greatest factors affecting happiness are of course opportunities/fulfillment and relationships.

Here's the article I'm talking about:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-18986041

[sol]

If you built more houses to lower the price,  people would simply move in until house prices were bid back up to $800k in San Francisco (where they are now). But the only difference is that you'd have, say, twice as many people, and quality of life for everyone would be worse. So building more and more houses to lower prices only works if you can build enough to accommodate all the people who want to live there and not lower the quality of life too much, which I'm not sure you can do in coastal California. It might end up like all the people in L.A. that thought you could fix all the traffic problems by just building more freeways. Didn't work out so well. You just ended up with a maze of freeways, all of which were just as crammed as before.

Manhattan seems to have solved these problems remarkably well, all things considered, and they're much more space constrained than coastal California is.

[Yankuba]

If you built more houses to lower the price,  people would simply move in until house prices were bid back up to $800k in San Francisco (where they are now). But the only difference is that you'd have, say, twice as many people, and quality of life for everyone would be worse. So building more and more houses to lower prices only works if you can build enough to accommodate all the people who want to live there and not lower the quality of life too much, which I'm not sure you can do in coastal California. It might end up like all the people in L.A. that thought you could fix all the traffic problems by just building more freeways. Didn't work out so well. You just ended up with a maze of freeways, all of which were just as crammed as before.

Manhattan seems to have solved these problems remarkably well, all things considered, and they're much more space constrained than coastal California is.

Manhattan? Home of the $1 mil one bedroom apartment and $2 mil two bedroom apartment. Far worse than California.

[Dicey]

If you built more houses to lower the price,  people would simply move in until house prices were bid back up to $800k in San Francisco (where they are now). But the only difference is that you'd have, say, twice as many people, and quality of life for everyone would be worse. So building more and more houses to lower prices only works if you can build enough to accommodate all the people who want to live there and not lower the quality of life too much, which I'm not sure you can do in coastal California. It might end up like all the people in L.A. that thought you could fix all the traffic problems by just building more freeways. Didn't work out so well. You just ended up with a maze of freeways, all of which were just as crammed as before.

Manhattan seems to have solved these problems remarkably well, all things considered, and they're much more space constrained than coastal California is.

Manhattan? Home of the $1 mil one bedroom apartment and $2 mil two bedroom apartment. Far worse than California.

^This^, plus the fact that Manhattan has a long, storied history of multi-family housing, whereas Southern California is the birthplace of suburban sprawl. I'd love to buy a two-or four- family, but they are hen's teeth in my corner of paradise. They're either in terrible areas, on very busy streets or both. Since CA housing was so comparably affordable in the way-back-when days, only "poor" people needed to live in multi-families, and they never really caught on. Not anything like the east coast, except for San Francisco Proper. That's because land was always scarce there. In the early days, much of the land was unbuildable, so multis have always part of the landscape, which is part of why The City seems so "quaint".

[tobitonic]

You don't need to subsidize, Palo Alto. You need to Build. More. Housing.

Yes, this. Subsidizing makes things better for the lucky few who happen to be at the top of the list for subsidies, but does nothing to address the root cause of the problem. Municipal zoning regulations serve to limit the amount of housing that can be built, and this limit falls farther behind the demand with every passing year.

Let me play devil's advocate here. Having lived in the Bay Area for about five years, I can testify to what a desirable place it is to live. Climate, geography, the city, everything. Coastal California in general might in fact be literally the best place in the world to live. If you could wave a magic wand and make the median house be $250k, and then went to every person in the US and asked if they'd move there, you'd probably find something like 50% of the population would, in fact, want to move to coastal California if housing prices were $250k. There are currently 30 million people in California, and I'm guessing most live in coastal California. And then you'd have 150 million people that want to move in.

If you built more houses to lower the price,  people would simply move in until house prices were bid back up to $800k in San Francisco (where they are now). But the only difference is that you'd have, say, twice as many people, and quality of life for everyone would be worse. So building more and more houses to lower prices only works if you can build enough to accommodate all the people who want to live there and not lower the quality of life too much, which I'm not sure you can do in coastal California. It might end up like all the people in L.A. that thought you could fix all the traffic problems by just building more freeways. Didn't work out so well. You just ended up with a maze of freeways, all of which were just as crammed as before.

I don't know what the solution is, though. I'd love to move back to SF sometime, but housing prices are just comically high.

First off, I really doubt that anywhere near half of America would pack up and move to California if housing was cheaper there. Some people would, sure.

Not nearly half. Not even half of half. Not even half of half of half. That's ludicrous. There was a study I read that said weather and geography were only slight influences on happiness. The greatest factors affecting happiness are of course opportunities/fulfillment and relationships.

Here's the article I'm talking about:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-18986041

Mmm, there's that "love and work" bit again.

[trashmanz]

Plenty of more affordable homes just across the way in east Palo Alto.

[Hadilly]

Anecdotally, I know of three teachers who are leaving their jobs in Palo Alto and Menlo Park public schools because they can't afford to live here and don't want a two hour commute.

We house hunted in Palo Alto three years ago. Everything we looked at is now a million more expensive, so 1.3 is now 2.3, and will still go for well over the asking price. I am talking about a small lot, one or two bathrooms and three bedrooms, nothing fancy.

It is a massively competitive housing market, though when you ride your bike around, it just seems like a sweet California college town, albeit one with a lot of Teslas.

East Palo Alto is definitely more affordable. The crime scares people off and if you have kids, the schools are not awesome.

So yeah, 150-250k a year is not going to get you far in the housing market here.