She puts the Lord in 'vanlord.' Palo Alto wants to ban her business

The other option would be more like, incumbent Palo Alto single family homeowners can sell their homes at a huge premium to developers who want to build multi-family homes there to satisfy the obvious demand for more housing.

The two types of houses:

60's starter homes breathed on by rich corpos like in Palo Alto

Flophouses

You must be a property owner, these are all just the same tired NIMBY talking points

I would like to see her expand onto the water with housing barges and eventually decommissioned cruise ships.

I'll guess by intersection of Fabian Way with E. Meadow Dr. on either of these 2 streets.

For what she’s charging you could easily afford an apartment somewhere that isn’t Palo Alto.

I get what you’re saying but I think you’re going too far in the other direction. Some people are okay with a “bohemian” lifestyle and want to live on the beach in Venice or Palo Alto or whatever and will use exploitative means to do so.

Maybe instead of shitting on people you don't know, have a little empathy and compassion, and acknowledge that just because you don't know the reason someone might do something, it doesn't mean there's no reason, or the reason is a bad one.

Oh, and Fresno and Modesto are not "in that area", not by any stretch of the imagination.

But some people who would love to live in the bay area, and have jobs in the bay area, do live out in Fresno and Modesto because that's all they can afford. When people have to drive 3 hours each way during rush hour to get to their job because there isn't enough housing available closer to work, that's a dysfunctional society.

I grew up in the Modesto area. I know people who commute from that area to SF for work. I can absolutely understand why people would prefer to live in an RV rather than subject themselves to that. My current commute, which is the worst I've ever had, is trivial by comparison, and yet already soul-sucking.

Fresno is a 3 hour drive from Palo Alto. Acting like a home in Fresno is a substitute for one in Palo Alto is absurd.

How many of the peoople renting those are service workers working in palo alto? If you work as a waiter in palo alto, you are never going to be able to buy a house thats not hours and hours away. These people are taking their perceived best option, but the government needs to get more housing constructed.

I wouldn't place Palo Alto in the same area as Fresno and Modesto. If you work in Palo Alto you'll be doing a more than 2 hour commute.

I dislike people all bunching up into cities (we have plenty of free space), but consider that there are many jobs in places like SF, even low-paying ones, that the richer residents do want filled. You're not getting a barista to commute 2 hours because the only alternative is living with 6 roommates. It's not going to happen. So, do you still want your coffee?

The unfortunate truth is that Palo Alto is in the epicenter of one of the biggest providers of jobs and income. As much as many would prefer to have that epicenter relocated to somewhere more deserving given how little the area cares to develop beyond a dreary suburban money vacuum, network effects prevents it

The government doesn't need to build any housing. They just need to stop preventing people from building housing. All of the obstacles to building housing come from the government. Take them away and the problem will solve itself.

> demanding Palo Alto or some other high end desirable community to build them a place to live

That's not what's happening. They're asking to be allowed to build. Y'know, like pay a developer to build them a house.

But no, I guess it's totally fair that the people who live there already just happened to be born at the right time and place to get to take advantage of living in a desirable area, and everyone else can just pound sand.

As a SF resident (haven't lived down near Palo Alto in years), the housing crisis is what's responsible for homelessness and for the high cost of everything (not just housing) here. If I could wave a magic wand and 50k new housing units appeared in desirable neighborhoods within the city limits, I'd do it in an instant. Life would be so much better not just for the people who want to live here, but for the people who already live here. (And yes, I say this as a SF homeowner who might stand to have a reduced home value.)

But NIMBYs love the whole "I got mine, fuck you" shtick, even if ultimately it's against their and their neighbors' own interests.

> in some fancy place (Manhattan! San Francisco!) that is out of touch price wise for almost every human being on Earth.

You're just talking in circles. The reason these places are out of touch price wise for so many people is because of the anti-housing policies in place in these cities.

>why a high end and highly sought after community needs to use the power of the government to force development for anybody at all please do let me know.

Why should they be able to use the power of government to force everyone to not develop please do let me know.

Palo Alto is filled with rambleshack little 60's starter homes. It's fucking preposterous they're a walking commute to the HQs of some of the largest employers in the region, some of the largest companies on the planet in history, and the houses near by are basically the same size and style of the ones in the Midwestern suburb I grew up in, but with less land and pissier neighbors! And because its lacking in density, every fucking road is a horrible shithole loud stroad, so don't even give me that bullshit "its so natural and pretty", it's an ugly strip mall. The land isn't expensive because it's nice, it's because of where it is, and the insane, overreaching rules that keep the built environment exactly the way it was 50 years ago, that makes it expensive.

The entire Bay has a natural growth boundary. If it hadn't been unnaturally ossified in amber, it'd be a wonderful, confederated metropolis of taller multi-unit, lots of 3+ flats, multi-use, even plenty of SFHs, and transit to link it all together. Instead, it's a ponzi scheme for the rich and the lucky who got there first, who are starving the state of voters for the 2030 census, the middle class schmucks clogging the roads in their car, and all the poor who can't afford to live there, but can't afford to leave, so they pitch a tent in a park to get out of the rain and get their face plastered on Fox News. It's short-sighted, selfish, and fucking stupid. Absolutely brain-dead land-use policy all around.

Ain't no one fucking dreaming of a $3.1M ranch home with < 1400 sq ft. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/527-Rhodes-Dr-Palo-Alto-C...

> Also include in your answer why just living somewhere affordable is no longer an option, seeing as that is what seemingly everyone else so far in human history has done. In fact, it wasn't all that long ago that Palo Alto itself was just some undesirable hayfields. Every place you don't want to live is just a few decades away from being someone else's coveted dream home.

Until the '50s nowhere had zoning laws, that's the big difference. Not to mention all the other ways to make housing illegal by stealth, like building code and electrical code and plumbing code requirements that make it illegal to work on anything yourself. It is now functionally illegal to build anything in cities (occasionally a developer who pays a big enough brib^H^H campaign contribution to the mayor's reelec^H^H an unaffiliated PAC supporting candidates that align with their interests gets to build a couple of buildings); if you're willing to build in an empty hayfield then sure, you can build a handful of houses for people who don't need jobs until there are enough people living there that they vote to incorporate and make building illegal. It's now functionally impossible to obtain a house near where the jobs are unless you are a boomer who got one back when it wasn't illegal, or are descended from one, or otherwise have generational wealth.

The people who built when that was a small town growing into a bigger town have pulled the ladder up behind them; that's new, and happening everywhere, and unfair. Especially because the whole scam only works because existing homes are grandfathered in. If you made the existing homeowners play by the same rules they're imposing on everyone else, and tore down any house where the guy who did the wiring back in 1955 couldn't prove that they had the required 4 years of college or what have you, things would get sorted out pretty quick.

Your entire comment is basically an asinine way of talking around the fact that employers want people to go to work in places that they can't actually afford to live or must otherwise waste vast portions of their lives and pocketbooks commuting to work. Perhaps I'd be more sympathetic if employers were taxed on their employees' commute distance and time, or had to pay overtime rates for employees commutes, even for salaried workers, or something, but as it stands people don't "feel like they must live in Manhattan." Instead, they feel like they have to work for whatever company that's got good vibes, aligns with their career (because network effects are very real), and locates their office or coworking space in SF or Manhattan, and then don't want to spend all their salary on rent or commute 2 hours each way.

I would like folks I hire, folks I work with, etc, to not be forced to live an hours commute by car in order to do business with me. I would like jobs and lives to be possible to be co-located. As part of that, I'd love to do things like demolish the single-family home on my property and pay, with my own money, to turn that into a let's say 6-to-8 unit apartment/condo building.

However, I cannot do that. Due to zoning, I can turn this house into at most 2 houses. Unfortunate. If I could secure the money and funding, I'd love to build more housing via the land I own.

Notice, I haven't mentioned the government at all other than to say I am being held back from building housing. That's what folks talk about.

This is not to say I don't support government operated social housing. But I'd love to START with just making dense housing legal.

What would it matter with a self-driving car if the commute is four hours? No-one will care. Notice how it's often "worth it" even now to drive for half an hour or so to get cheaper fuel. Except, with no rent in the picture, it will be far more worth it. Add to that that Americans aren't willing to give up bigger cars ("easy-ish" to live in) and ... Self-driving will just become a way to use more public resources for specific people.

I just pity the people who still expect to normally get through traffic.