Petition for Rent Control in Sunnyvale (San Jose, San Francisco: rental market, movers, tenants)

[jade408]

I don't think rent control should keep things artificially low but there is a happy medium. 5-7% sounds reasonable to me.


On an autocorrecting iDevice.

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by bigdumbgod

So what of those folks who get paid a fraction to maintain the techies' lavish lifestyles? Let them eat cake? Or shall the toilets runneth over, since the janitors couldn't afford to live anywhere near the place?

This is what I'm thinking. I wish all the people working retail and other low wage jobs in this area would move out. That would force employers to pay living wages without mandatory increases in the minimum wage. Of course, I'm sure they'd just find a way to import more people from the 3rd world, legally or illegally.

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by SportyandMisty

At some point, it probably is reasonable to say "enough." At some point, it probably is reasonable to say we don't have road capacity or water capacity or school capacity or other public services capacity to allow more development. When do we hit that point? Some say we already have hit that point.

I think this "we've hit capacity" stuff is mostly nonsense. What people really mean is "I won't be able to do things the way I always have if we get more housing".

I mean, cities like SF and NYC have much more density than SJ. Even Oakland is more densely populated. We generally use roads wastefully. We could fix the traffic problem with better mass transit. And if there is more housing closer to where the jobs are, there will be less marathon commuting, so at least some types of traffic might actually decrease.

[SportyandMisty]

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

I think this "we've hit capacity" stuff is mostly nonsense. What people really mean is "I won't be able to do things the way I always have if we get more housing".

I mean, cities like SF and NYC have much more density than SJ. Even Oakland is more densely populated. We generally use roads wastefully. We could fix the traffic problem with better mass transit. And if there is more housing closer to where the jobs are, there will be less marathon commuting, so at least some types of traffic might actually decrease.

Certainly, reasonable people can disagree.

Of course SF and NYC have much more dense housing -- but you say this as if it were a good thing to which Silicon Valley should aspire. I disagree -- such environments are my idea of the theological place of eternal punishment.

When you say we could fix the traffic problem with better mass transit -- well, the the first rule is that when you find yourself stuck in a hole, stop digging. If we could have fixed the problem with mass transit, we already would have. For most of us, mass transit isn't going to serve our daily transportation needs. This isn't NYC and we should stop pretending it ever will be NYC nor should it ever be NYC. People who want to live in that environment are free to move there. The reality is we will never have mass transit that goes from anywhere near each of our doorsteps to anywhere near where each of us wish to travel. That's why we have cars.

We talk about adding housing close to where jobs are, but the reality is it doesn't seem to work very well. There are numerous projects around the bay area where we have housing above retail -- but the people who live in that housing don't work in that retail. People want to live where living is good & schools are good & shopping is good -- few wake up in the morning & say "Gee, I wish I lived next to an oil refinery or semiconductor fab, or I wish I lived next to light manufacturing, or I wish I lived across the street from my white collar job so I can spend more time in the office."

[jade408]

The problem is housing isn't close to work because we have segregated housing from the offices. Housing close to work doesn't mean housing on top of your office only. If you worked at Google, what if there were more reasonably priced homes/apartments/condos within 3 miles? You could bike, drive an perhaps take transit. You wouldn't née to live in Sunnyvale or Fremont an endure a 30 minute commute.

This is true for most of the South Bay and Peninsula. Additionally most office parks are not on transit lines, so you don't solve the last mile problem. If most office were located within 1 mile from Caltrain or major VTA lines more people could opt out of their cars.

It is a multifaceted problem.


I am on my phone, please forgive the typos.

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by jade408

The problem is housing isn't close to work because we have segregated housing from the offices. Housing close to work doesn't mean housing on top of your office only. If you worked at Google, what if there were more reasonably priced homes/apartments/condos within 3 miles? You could bike, drive an perhaps take transit. You wouldn't née to live in Sunnyvale or Fremont an endure a 30 minute commute.

This is true for most of the South Bay and Peninsula. Additionally most office parks are not on transit lines, so you don't solve the last mile problem. If most office were located within 1 mile from Caltrain or major VTA lines more people could opt out of their cars.

It is a multifaceted problem.

Thank you. This is what I was getting at. I do agree it's a multifaceted problem, and that it is tough to fix after you've created complete suburban sprawl. But people shouldn't say "We're overcrowded. We're using up all the infrastructure!". Those things are patently false. What is true is that this area was planned for people to drive their cars for 100% of their trips. And that whole development model quickly fails once you become a metropolitan area of any significant size.

People always love to bring up extreme examples like SF or New York. I don't think SV needs to be that dense for transit to be more convenient & effective. Even Oakland levels of density could suffice if we coupled better planning with prioritizing funding transit over roads.

[majoun]

Rent control works wonderfully to ensure there is a bountiful supply of affordable housing. Just look at how San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and West Hollywood all boast an ample supply of reasonably priced apartments!

[silverkris]

Well, lack of rent control also doesn't guarantee affordable housing, either. I lived in HK, where they constantly churn out new units of housing, and the real estate property developers have a lot of political clout. Yet housing costs continue to skyrocket.

Admittedly there just doesn't seem to be any easy answers to this matter...

[otterprods]

Originally Posted by PhoenixSomeday

Please explain how it's trolling. I'm saying that it's sad that profit is the only thing that drives people these days, and in a detrimentally aggressive manner. I'm curious as to why. I'm talking about the really low, down deep, rock bottom root cause of its pursuit. On an individual basis; not something generic and ethereal like "it's our right," or "because we can." I mean really why.

Don't you know?... Anytime you disagree with someone, that's trolling? Actually, people calling other people trolls for having a strong opinion is the more trollish behavior, IMO.

I could tell you the answer to that but I don't think you'll like it.

[bobby_guz_man]

At least we can all agree on some points:

1) We need more housing as a better way to make things A BIT more affordable. And newer housing should be predominantly high-density, multi-family housing as a means to both increase housing and preserving as much of our pristine land as we can.

2) We all can agree that San Jose/South Bay can do better with its density. I prefer the density to approach Oakland's. I DO NOT want SF or NYC, or even Chicago's and Philadelphia's level of density. No thanks. If I want that, I'll just move there. I ride bikes AND I drive cars. I like to be able to do both in San Jose and the South Bay.