Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Personally this class of things really highlights an imbalance for me. Consider that Google runs its own own bus service for employees, and now is building housing for the same.

Traditionally, successful businesses in a region paid taxes, and those taxes were used by the local governments to invest in infrastructure like public transport and urban development.

So in this regard Google usurps the mandate of the community government in favor of using their excess profits to invest in the community that only benefits them (well peripherally it benefits others as Google employees would otherwise burden city services)

What is wrong with that picture is of course that the people without advocates are literally left out in the cold. From the article Google is investing $1B in better housing for their employees and putting $18+3+1.5 ($22.5M toward homelessness which is 2.25% of a billion dollar investment. Contrast that with if Google paid $1B in taxes to the bay area communities where it has facilities, would those governments have the same priorities for those funds?

The problem is that the local governments are not doing their jobs so private industry is stepping in to address the gap (with obviously a biased interest towards their customers, shareholders, and employees).

Literally every Bay area government has regulations (zoning, community review, etc.) that prevent housing to be put in place. On the transit side, we have multiple transit organizations (Muni, BART, Caltrain, etc.) that do not coordinate and operate as one entity; contrast this with NYC where the transit orgs have a common leadership.

What is happening in the Bay is that we are having an infrastructure crisis because a Nimby philosophy is preventing investment in critical areas like housing, transport, etc.

I agree that private industry won't solve this problem correctly because of its self interest, but frankly the problem is that the policy makers have no interest in solving the issue. Their loyalty is to their wealthy vocal residents who have no interest in creating housing or transit. They definitely do not care if underserved and disadvantaged people are suffering.

So while I agree that private industry will not tailor their solution to the disadvantaged (due to self interest), I don't think policy makers will either (due to self interest). Proposition 13 is a perfect example of how the voting population does not care about infrastructure for the poor. Prop 13 was marketed as a relief provision for the elderly, but the bulk of the measure is essentially a tax break for largely white wealthy landowners.

Property owners have no interest in creating housing; scarcity keeps their property values high. However, I don't get why it is that renters seem ineffective as a block in advocating for more construction. There are lots of renters, many with more roommates than they'd like, and they're all vaguely aware that their landlords could decide to evict everyone and sell, so they should be motivated to try to build the stock of alternatives.

Can you imagine how much more valuable property in Queens would be if it was zoned so you could build at Manhattan densities? You can create value just by increasing density, by making building more housing legal where it isn’t. In the very long run this may not be an obvious win for all property owners, as a group. But they’re not a group, and if you can be one of the first people to build a lot of housing in a supply constrained market you’ll make a lot of money.

If building more housing in the Bay Area was legal there’d be more housing. If they built enough housing prices would even fall eventually.

I can guarantee you that Bay Area politics would destroy the $1b if you gave it to them.

>So in this regard Google usurps the mandate of the community government

Great. The mandate of community government has created $3400 / month two bedroom apartments and I, for one, welcome some additional housing units.

>Contrast that with if Google paid $1B in taxes to the bay area communities where it has facilities, would those governments have the same priorities for those funds?

Of course not, because the goal of local Bay Area governments is to make land more expensive, not less.

Adding housing is adding housing. It doesn't matter who it's for or who builds it, it adds to the total number of dwellings and reduces occupancy of other units.

FWIW I think it would be illegal if Google tried to make the housing exclusive to its employees in the same way that the buses are.

So far in my quick bit of research since this story came up I have not found a law that would prevent it. There are laws about discrimination based on race, religion, Etc. but not about employee / non-employee. I have yet to find either a California law or Sunnyvale city ordinance that would disallow an owner from preferentially selling or leasing a house to someone who was employed by a specific entity, even if that entity was themselves.

Interesting looks like there is a specific permitting process for Employee Housing Programs (http://www.hcd.ca.gov/building-standards/employee-housing/in...). I hope that any zoning decisions are made with a written declaration of intent to / not to apply for such a permit.

That is super awesome, thank you! It isn't clear to me reading section 17005.5 [1] how exactly you trigger this law. For example section (b) which says you have to have at least 200 homes in a single community to be considered. That seems like a pretty big loophole to drive through. Now I have to motivate myself to walk over to the reference section of the library to see if there is any case law associated with this stuff that will add insight.

[1] http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com