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Comment by phlakaton | Hacker News Reader

It is not OpenAI's or Anthropic's responsibility to build housing in SF. It is the city's. Putting the heat on the mayor and supervisors is the correct move.

I've been "entertaining" myself recently with a report on how various Bay Area cities are tracking against their housing elements. Remember, these housing elements were their state-mandated plans for additional housing units between 2022 and 2030, and extra emphasis was put on this cycle to make sure the plans were realistic, accountable, addressed the magnitude of the need, and included (relatively) affordable housing.

We are close to halfway through this time period. San Francisco has built, according to this report, less than 10% of their commitment. They have a little over four years now to come up with 76K units. See: https://cities.fairhousingelements.org/cities/san-francisco

Last year SF built 1.75K units. This year, by June, they had built 400 units.

This isn't an OpenAI problem.

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The federal government should step in. Give San Francisco four years to build the 76,000+ homes it needs. If the city fails, impose a substantial penalty for every unit missed and authorize the federal government to take over suitable public land and build the housing itself. At some point, housing shortages require consequences.

I don't think the local political mess in San Francisco warrants breaking two hundred years of federalism. Nothing does, really.

Also worth keep in mind the US tried mass public housing projects in the 60s. And then they stopped because they all ended up being crime ridden shitholes.

Those were arguably due to neglect rather than public housing being problematic per se. Perhaps the same thing would happen if the Feds tried it again; perhaps the neglect is a practically unavoidable consequence given our politics. But I think it should still be on the table. We tilted at the Bank of the US a few times before figuring out the Federal Reserve, after all.

But I agree, it would be far preferable to let property developers solve this problem. I support regional and state-level interventions and accountability. I don't want this particular federal administration within a thousand miles of the problem!

"It's full of bad ideas/effort like 1960s housing projects, but that's no reason to chuck 200 years of idiocy in the bin."

Carrots work better. Bankroll HSR and the burying of PG&E’s power lines in exchange for Sacramento forcing San Francisco to build. Tie funding distribution to actual housing starts.

You're not wrong, but from load-balancing perspective, if one of these companies moved to another city then probably both cities would be better off?

Anthropic and OpenAI don’t have that many employees compared to most big employers. Their employees are highly compensated. The ratio between the housing the occupy and the taxes paid by their employees has to be one of the most favorable ratios of all companies in the area.

Losing those companies and their employees would cost the cities far more than they might gain.

Makes sense financially, but I suspect that the reason this isn’t all that appealing politically is that ordinary people can’t get those jobs. “We have a few, very rich employees” doesn’t seem like much of a selling point. It’s another example of inequality.

Data center finances seem vaguely similar? They could be a good source of tax revenue but don’t provide many jobs.

Silicon Valley exists as a persistent thumb on the nose against load-balancing ideas. It's had an absolute glut of tech companies for many decades now, with no apologies needed. Many people in the region benefit from that concentration of talent, wealth, and capital.

It does seem that way nowadays, but I wonder why more tech companies don't bring it to a different city, like Microsoft did in Redmond. The old tech companies did things like that but the newer companies mostly aren't for some reason.

I suppose there are some moving to Texas. But the East Bay is a lot closer.

The East Bay does have some spillover! But there are various reasons it's not as attractive. My hunch is that one of the major reasons is that commutes from the Peninsula and Silicon Valley itself are rough.

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