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Comment by conk | Hacker News Reader

What I don’t understand is why cities like Menlo Park, Palo Alto and Cupertino allowed to add office spaces for 100,000+ jobs but not required to add a similar number of residences for the people who work those jobs?

Atherton isn’t building a tech campus (or any office/retail for that matter), why should it be forced to build housing to accommodate people who work in nearby towns that choose to prioritize commercial space over residential?

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Because property tax freezes means commercial propeties actually pay their taxes and homeowners don't vote against commercial construction.

If you think people actually want to be left alone in their community and want no further immigration you're falling for pretty obvious lies.

Commercial properties are also covered by Prop 13, and loophoos mean they can be sold without causing a property revaluation.

The jobs/housing ratio is strange, but I imagine they wanted to add commuters rather than residents, thereby enjoying increased tax revenue without increasing residential density or building upward, both of which could potentially reduce the value for incumbent homeowners and/or change the character of existing neighborhoods. The main downsides for the cities themselves would be increased traffic, potential parking issues, and a completely unaffordable housing market, as well as long-term threats like state intervention.

I haven't done the math, but my intuition would be that people living there would give you more tax revenue per unit of area than office spaces and their parking lots. Parking lots are dead areas that will not generate tax directly and roads are huge sinks of tax money, even if the people using them are not working in your commune.

Your intuition is wrong because residential property taxes are frozen and only change when people move.

Prop 13 applies to both residential and commercial property. Also new home construction would be assessed at the currrent market value. So no difference from a tax perspective for the town/city.

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