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Comment by vadym909 | Hacker News Reader

Buy a 10 acre lot in a nimby area (Palo Alto Hiils/Atherton/Los Altos Hills) for $5M, Split it into 20 x 0.25 acres and sell it for $250K each to teachers, firefighters, police, retired army soldiers telling the buyers it is sold as-is. Let them build houses on their lots and figure out the rest.

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Ignoring the fact that undeveloped land in PA is going for about $3mm an acre, What you’re talking about is commonly known as a subdivision. You need to account for roads, utilities, zoning, etc. im also fairly certain you would run into nimby problems even just by trying to subdivide and sell individual lots.

You would also have no way (that I know of) of only selling to people like teachers, firefighters, etc because of fair housing laws. There’s may be an exception for military.

> You would also have no way (that I know of) of only selling to people like teachers, firefighters, etc because of fair housing laws. There’s may be an exception for military.

Isn't the San Francisco school district doing precisely this for teachers? I also recall reading that Stanford was securing housing nearby and 'selling' to faculty members by granting them loans with super generous mortgage payments, with the expectation that said faculty member will never actually pay off the mortgage.

From talking to SF Planning Department, my understanding is that a school district can own housing and use it for employee housing, but another entity (such as the Mayor’s Office of Housing) can’t rent only to a specific profession.

I’m not sure. I just know that source of income is considered “protected” under CA fair housing. Who knows what sorts of loopholes and exceptions exist.

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