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Comment by pkelly | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure this is so much a company town as Google is trimming its mega in-person office footprint.

The bay area is in dire need of housing so I'm all for more homes getting built. 15% set aside for low-income housing too which is a good thing.

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Low income housing is a failed idea. Make rent affordable by building market rate units until supply outstrips demand. Or raise Section 8 to track the market rate. But creating a lottery system for a few lucky people to win a temporary government housing subsidy is not a solution to anything.

I have a theory that including any number of affordable units discourages development to some extent, so on net, it's counter-productive.

I've heard this before too and it is a concern. I'd like to see some study or some kind of evidence for or against it though.

I agree it is def not the only thing to do to tackle the housing problem, but I think it can be a good tool to help get these projects passed. NIMBYism in the bay is so rampant that neighbors pretty much oppose all high density housing developments.

I agree with you that the main problem is supply and demand. We need more homes to keep prices affordable and the only way to do that in the bay is more density.

I don't think it has to be an either or situation. We should subsidize low-income housing so ppl with lower incomes have somewhere to live right now, and also build more market rate units so everyone has a place to live at an affordable rate long term.

Are they just going to build a single family home suburbia for rich execs though? To attract people and convince them to move to CA?

The plan is for 7000 units, a lot of office space, and a bunch of other things. It needs to be midrise apartments to fit that many people. Which is exactly what they should be building.

7k units / 153 acres, so 45 units per acre. Decently dense. Suburbia is more like 10 so huge increase over most of bay area.

This site is helpful to visualize units / acre. https://mrsc.org/stay-informed/mrsc-insight/april-2017/visua...

that's a super useful visualization. thanks for sharing.

You're welcome!

It’s wild to me that someone making 300k/yr would want to live in an apartment building.

I’m assuming they’ll be constructed like every other apartment in the past decade with paper thin walls and little consideration for natural light.

I guess I’m the outlier but I would never consider living in one of those ever again.

Would you prefer 3 hours of freeway commute instead?

I prefer WFH.

I would prefer literally anything else over living in a McMansion in a liminal suburb. Only thing they could improve is putting some mixed use/retain in there.

Different strokes for different folks I suppose.

I also dislike living in McMansions in suburbia, I’m more of a rural dweller type.

I’ve wondered if it’s an introvert/extrovert thing. Maybe it’s just unique to the individual with no correlated personality trait.

I get there’s trade offs to each living situation and we all just assign different weights.

It probably won't make you more extrovert. In studies, behavior has been pretty consistently found to be linked to personality and vice versa, so it's always tricky to differentiate the two.

You would be hard-pressed to afford an SFH near Mountain View on one $300k/year income, unless you've worked for at least 5 years (probably more) to save up a down payment. Even then, that's the low end - any house you can buy with that income will probably be small (1500 sq ft max), built in 1960s at the latest, and in need of $100k-$200k of renovations to bring it up to modern standards. You might be able to buy a townhouse that's decently modern, but that will charge you $500/month in HOA for very minimal amenities (not even a pool in many cases).

With these options, unless you're starting a family and need the space, these apartments seem like a good deal for younger people working for Google. It will be priced to be within a Google engineer's budget and will have much better amenities than any SFH for sale that costs below $3m.

That all makes sense to me. I don’t live in California so I guess I’m just really out of touch with the housing situation there.

I guess if you really want to work for Google, and they’re moving away from WFH options, this is as good an option as any as you point out.

I think it is all about what you can afford close to your work. If you are early on in your career in the bay area you are very likely living in an apartment building. Maybe you get a few friends together and rent a house.

I've lived in both poorly built apartments and very nice new concrete walled ones where you can't hear your neighbors at all.

To your point, under engineered buildings are a serious concern. Ex: I lived in library gardens in Berkeley before they had the balcony collapse in 2015 which killed 6 students. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_balcony_collapse

> Decently dense.

Is densely living a virtue in itself? Seems so odd.

I mean, if you like to live near a ton of people you should be allowed to do so. But if you do not, you should also be allowed.

Not a virtue in itself. But if you live in the bay area you are priced out of living less densely. You can of course move away to a more affordable area. And now with remote work being more accepted that is a viable option for white collar workers, definitely not for blue collar though.

But if you have kids, family, friends, in the bay area then that is a difficult decision to say the least.

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