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Comment by AlbertCory | Hacker News Reader

I don't live in Cupertino, but it's right across the street (or several streets). I follow a lot of this on NextDoor.

Cupertino isn't some random city; it's where Apple has been since the beginning. They contribute massively to the traffic around here, and they could easily afford to buy the empty Vallco site and build housing for their employees, who could then walk to the Spaceship. Only now are they even talking about building teacher housing there.

Cupertino lets them get away with it because of all that money they're paying. I always thought a Chicago Move would be for the city to go to Tim Cook and say, looking around appreciatively at the Spaceship,

"Nice building you have here, Tim. What was it, five billion? Very nice. Be a shame if we had to close it down for health inspections."

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>they could easily afford to buy the empty Vallco site and build housing for their employees, who could then walk to the Spaceship

You do know that the voters of Cupertino elected to their city council the person who posted on NextDoor that allowing Apple employees to live at Vallco would result in more high school prostitution right?

https://twitter.com/HousingValley/status/1154781703262498816

I thought you meant Steve Scharf for a second there.

Steve Scharf instead just said they should build a wall around Cupertino and make San Jose pay for it.

He's actually someone I've known for a long time, so I was hugely amused to see him become a national figure (as it were).

Moral panic driven land use policy. Nice.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

This is just a minor defect in democracy; representatives are chosen by people that already live there, so there is no strong electoral incentive to advocate for new residents. Sure, they will get more property tax revenue which pays for ... everything ... but, if you already have enough, you don't really want more. I don't think anyone in Cupertino is suffering from lack of government services, so there isn't a strong reason to vote in change.

I think people are also irrationally afraid that building new housing will drive down the price of their existing housing, but do we really see that happen? (Why do real estate prices always go up? Because people will be stubborn and not sell their home for less than they paid, unless there is a Detroit-like crisis, which Cupertino is definitely not in danger of. At that point, things like the federal prime rate are really what put a damper on housing prices, not Apple employees moving into apartments built on a vacant lot.)

To some extent, everyone is aware of these factors, which is why California said "enough is enough" and moved some control to the state level.

No joke but I know of an Apple employee with a HS girlfriend (underaged). If you go to Berkeley CS you’d know.

"Ok say goodbye to $2B in annual tax revenue, we're moving to Redwood City!"

An empty threat.

Edited: what are they going to do, rent out the Spaceship for low-income housing? I don't think there's enough plumbing.

They could move it.

(picturing a trailer on 101 with a "Wide Load" sign on the back.)

You’ve seen Stargate Atlantis right? I imagine it’ll be more like that…

Less than 50% of Apple employees in the Bay Area work at Apple Park.

how is that relevant to Cupertino?

I know Cupertino is upscale but residents still get in their cars and use the roads to get to work right? Not every resident is independently wealthy.

Apple employees and contractors may contribute to the traffic by commuting from inside and outside of Cupertino to the office but does the company contribute "massively"?

People also clog up the roads going to all manner of jobs and also coming to Cupertino for one of its many big box stores.

> its many big box stores

and you live where?

I count two: Target and Home Depot.

You mean the Home Depot at 975 S De Anza Blvd, San Jose, CA 95129?

There's a TJ Maxx.

I call that a "store", not a "big box store."

Home Depot (and Trader Joe's and H-Mart) are just outside of Cupertino, in a trick that would otherwise look like gerrymandering since the border follows S De Anza Blvd and Prospect Rd to the south instead of jutting out to enclose those specific stores in San Jose's jurisdiction. There is, however a number of popular stores, including Whole Foods, Target as you mentioned, a 99-Ranch and a Safeway, and a JOANN Fabric and Crafts. There's also Apple's Infinite loop campus which isn't a big box store but does involve a lot of traffic, as well as De Anza College, the local community college which also involves a lot of traffic. I swear there used to be a Best Buy on that stretch of Stevens Creek, but that was too long ago for my memory, and Google's memory.

Complaining about people clogging up roads is some NextDoor level shit though.

I'm talking about the Target all the big supermarkets and the Home Depot which isn't in Cupertino but contributes to traffic.

Cupertino doesn't have those stores anymore since Vallco closed.

The city has been fighting Vallco redevelopment as hard and illegally as it can because the last thing they'll let Apple employees do is live in Cupertino. Only retirees and landlords allowed.

(People on the planning commission have directly said Apple employees are too poor to be allowed to live there, are men so will molest their daughters and hire prostitutes - meanwhile the locals who show up to meethings think they're too rich so will park their BMWs in front of their houses and attract crime, and will give them cancer by planting 5G cell phone towers.)

Schrodinger's codemonkey

I would not consider Cupertino to be "upscale".

It’s not Dubai

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