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I'm not sure why you feel insulted. The housing-jobs imbalance has been a serious issue in the South Bay for what, at least 30 years? Ask anyone stalled in traffic on south bound 680 or Altamont Pass about it.
Isn't that the same as saying the housing-jobs imbalance has been a serious issues in the East Bay or Central Valley for at least 30 years? Why put the onus on SJ?
So you're suggesting San Jose builds even more housing to skew its ratio even worse? What would be your suggestions?
I see what you're doing, taking what I said in one frame of reference and framing it another, more divisive, way.
From the perspective of residential burden in proportion to buildable area and in proportion to total population, San Jose is near on target. From that perspective San Jose should continue building because there is a general supply shortage and continued construction wouldn't burden SJ with some oversized percentage of the county's population.
It is an entirely different narrative if we talk about the jobs:housing ratio for SCC cities. But what that narrative says is the problem isn't too much housing, it is too few jobs in SJ. So we need to shift the focus from saying SJ is bearing some oversized burden for housing and instead focus on the number of jobs in San Jose.
Isn't that the same as saying the housing-jobs imbalance has been a serious issues in the East Bay or Central Valley for at least 30 years? Why put the onus on SJ?
I think the main jist of it was places like Mountain View or Sunnyvale (especially the latter) where a disproportionate fraction of the land area is devoted to tech companies, meanwhile, there is major push back on density in most parts of town. A few firms in SOMA / Mid Market / Mission Bay is one thing, versus, having 1/3 of a given city set up as tech business parks with a huge inflow of commuters.
I think the main jist of it was places like Mountain View or Sunnyvale (especially the latter) where a disproportionate fraction of the land area is devoted to tech companies, meanwhile, there is major push back on density in most parts of town. A few firms in SOMA / Mid Market / Mission Bay is one thing, versus, having 1/3 of a given city set up as tech business parks with a huge inflow of commuters.
My guess is that is not 1/3 of the city, when it comes to SF, but the amount of office space is huge considering most of SOMA and Mid Market is highrises, Mission Bay is more mid-rises though. Either way SF has been actively courting a lot of companies to start there or move there and it has decided not to build proportionate housing for all those people. I think it is only natural that all those people taking those jobs would want to minimize their commutes to whatever reasonable extent they can.
Not only do I think it is ridiculous to think that San Jose/Santa Clara/ Sunnyvale/Cupertino could house people working in SF, it is ridiculous to think that people working in SF would want to live so far away. Sorry, but San Jose cannot fix SF's housing crisis, Silicon Valley has its own housing issues and SJ is already building over 4000 housing units a year, it is still too little, but put on top the burden of fixing SF's issues and the city will not really be able to handle it. Caltrain, 101, and 280 are already at capacity, it is crazy to think that having people commute 40+ miles each way will solve any of these issue. The last part is that people just won't do a 1hr commute (without traffic), or realistically a 1:30-2hr commute, just because SF refuses to allow building housing, sorry, but realistically people will just crowd into 2bd apartments 4 people, 3bd apartments or whatever they can get rather than commute from so far away, so I doubt it would address SF's issues. SF has to be a fix it's own issues rather than take an elitist attitude that only some people can live in SF, and everyone else has to commute in, because when you do that people will fight for housing as it is happening, and it is not some other city's responsibility to solve what comes of that.
Last edited by cardinal2007; 03-12-2015 at 03:06 PM..
I think the main jist of it was places like Mountain View or Sunnyvale (especially the latter) where a disproportionate fraction of the land area is devoted to tech companies, meanwhile, there is major push back on density in most parts of town. A few firms in SOMA / Mid Market / Mission Bay is one thing, versus, having 1/3 of a given city set up as tech business parks with a huge inflow of commuters.
Yah, but if you didn't have the tech companies and their campuses, there wouldn't be a draw to the region anyway - and thus no demand for housing. Also consider how the Valley was built. Defense industry (aerospace, electronics manufacturing, etc) was the jobs engine back then. And the kinds of facilities needed required a lot of space (and why stint on your corporate campus and production facilities, especially when you were just building in the middle of former orchards, like Intel and HP and National Semiconductor and all these big employers were doing).
Now, if you want to look at contemporary decisions that could be responsible for the jobs-housing imbalance, you could look at Apple HQ and why the City of Cupertino chose to approve a project adding many jobs and no housing. But you could also look at zoning all through the entire Santa Clara County and also San Mateo region which prohibits high rise residential.
Personally, if I were in charge of "solving" this issue, I'd attempt to do it thru policy and not through new infrastructure, because I think when you just build, you are only putting a bandaid on the problem and really ignoring the best tools for reducing commuting and population which together is the source of congestion.
All you need to do is:
a) more telecommuting/telepresence
b) incentives for that
c) focus more on economic redevelopment and jobs development in the source areas of commuters, places that have a net deficit of jobs and a surplus (or adequate supply) of housing. For instance, this constant mention of the East Bay or Central Valley.
d) Put something in place where those existing commuters have opportunities to telecommute or work locally. Provide tax credits to commuters and their employers.
Business incubator or executive/shared office development projects could be given better tax breaks and incentives than the ones given to developers in the South Bay.
Developers in the South Bay act how the government pays them to act which is mostly constrained by finances and also by public sentiment because stack and pack housing is generally a nuisance that lowers quality of life for nearby existing residents. And if developers make more money developing commercial, vs residential, then that's what they build. So if you wanted to fix the "imbalance" you have to get the policies in place to change behavior. But good luck getting The Chamber of Commerce, which is basically realtors and developers, to support this plan. They love stack and pack...they make loads of money on it)
d) penalize density increases. That's right..surcharge it like gas guzzler tax. Why should any property owner be entitled to raise density, which raises the cost of services, without paying the full amount of external costs? But since higher density in turn increases congestion and commuting, it should be strongly discouraged.
I see what you're doing, taking what I said in one frame of reference and framing it another, more divisive, way.
From the perspective of residential burden in proportion to buildable area and in proportion to total population, San Jose is near on target. From that perspective San Jose should continue building because there is a general supply shortage and continued construction wouldn't burden SJ with some oversized percentage of the county's population.
It is an entirely different narrative if we talk about the jobs:housing ratio for SCC cities. But what that narrative says is the problem isn't too much housing, it is too few jobs in SJ. So we need to shift the focus from saying SJ is bearing some oversized burden for housing and instead focus on the number of jobs in San Jose.
Divisive, if you want to put it that way, that's fine with me. Whatever.
It's simple. Because San Jose build much of the housing in the Valley, the other towns don't feel the need to build their own housing to house the workers. Instead, they focused on office spaces/commercial instead and pull in the jobs.
We brought this problem upon ourselves, and now it's a vicious cycle. Our thinking was that if we build a lot of housing, then the jobs would locate here to be closer to the housing. But this has failed to happen.
The only way to break out of it is to limit as much housing in San Jose as possible, FORCE housing to be built in the other towns, which reduces the amount of available land in the other towns for office, which will then push the offices and jobs into San Jose, where land is cheaper and more abundant.
Look, I'm all for more housing as well. But jobs has to be commensurate with the amount of housing we build. No jobs, no housing. Simple as that. San Jose needs to focus on getting more jobs, and at the same time San Jose needs to stem the blood loss coming from unprofitable housing developments.
We can argue about this all day, my views won't change, and neither will yours. Let's let it be.
The South Bay is already developed pretty much wall to wall. Let Marin pick up some of the slack.
And the NIMBYs in Marin say "someone else should build the housing". This is the NIMBY attitude in action. Everyone wants to pass the hot potato to someone else while still claiming they're not NIMBYs and still wringing their hands about the high cost of housing.
Last edited by mysticaltyger; 03-12-2015 at 10:01 PM..
My guess is that is not 1/3 of the city, when it comes to SF, but the amount of office space is huge considering most of SOMA and Mid Market is highrises, Mission Bay is more mid-rises though. Either way SF has been actively courting a lot of companies to start there or move there and it has decided not to build proportionate housing for all those people. I think it is only natural that all those people taking those jobs would want to minimize their commutes to whatever reasonable extent they can.
Not only do I think it is ridiculous to think that San Jose/Santa Clara/ Sunnyvale/Cupertino could house people working in SF, it is ridiculous to think that people working in SF would want to live so far away. Sorry, but San Jose cannot fix SF's housing crisis, Silicon Valley has its own housing issues and SJ is already building over 4000 housing units a year, it is still too little, but put on top the burden of fixing SF's issues and the city will not really be able to handle it. Caltrain, 101, and 280 are already at capacity, it is crazy to think that having people commute 40+ miles each way will solve any of these issue. The last part is that people just won't do a 1hr commute (without traffic), or realistically a 1:30-2hr commute, just because SF refuses to allow building housing, sorry, but realistically people will just crowd into 2bd apartments 4 people, 3bd apartments or whatever they can get rather than commute from so far away, so I doubt it would address SF's issues. SF has to be a fix it's own issues rather than take an elitist attitude that only some people can live in SF, and everyone else has to commute in, because when you do that people will fight for housing as it is happening, and it is not some other city's responsibility to solve what comes of that.
Agreed. And SF could start with the easy stuff....like addressing its overly strict rent control and other tenant friendly laws that have resulted in potential landlords deciding it's not worth the hassle to rent to people any more.
And the NIMBYs in Marin say "someone else should build the housing". This is the NIMBY attitude in action. Everyone wants to pass the hot potato to someone else while still claiming they're not NIMBYs.
From the article linked:
Quote:
We progressives are accused of being NIMBYs, of reflexively opposing higher density new development. I support lots of it. In Silicon Valley. Build all the market-rate housing you want down there.
My point is not that San Jose shouldn't build housing, if it wants jobs it should we willing to build housing corresponding to those jobs, but SF shouldn't expect that SJ and vicinity should house people that work in SF. Passing the buck is a strategy used by SF, but it doesn't work, and SJ shouldn't just pick it up. I'm sorry for SF having its issues but SJ shouldn't be the one to fix them, the city has enough problems as it is.
Higher mortgage rates = lower house prices, all else being equal. Part of the reason house prices are triple what they were in the '90s is because interest rates have been so low for the past 15 years.
True but not for bay area. Many people here buying with all cash due to stock vesting ;-)
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