How to Alleviate Palo Alto's Affordable Housing Crisis
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Palo Alto, California has notoriously expensive housing. From Trulia:
Palo Alto market trends indicate an increase of $200,000 (9%) in median home sales over the past year. The average price per square foot for this same period rose to $1,519, up from $1,405.
And a lot of these 2,000 square foot homes selling for $3 million in Palo Alto are 70-year old ranch houses.
Here’s a proposal: Make Stanford University build housing on its nearly 5,000 acres (about 7.5 square miles) of undeveloped land. It would still have over 3,000 acres left over.
At a comfortable 3 houses per acre, that would accommodate about 50,000 people in the heart of Silicon Valley.
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It is distinctly probable that Stanford University does not want to have people who can only afford affordable housing living nearby.
Maybe Stanford could build a tasteful, unobtrusive...barrier of some sort.
But I bet most of those Palo Alto ranch house plutocrats and Stanford assholes push mass immigration. California has a population of 40 million. In 1970, California had a population of 20 million.
Mass Immigration Increases Housing Costs
High Housing Costs Hinders AFFORDABLE FAMILY FORMATIONReplies: @JimB, @MBlanc46
That would make room for even more H-1B workers. Great idea.
The Zeroth Amendment gives every human being on the planet the right to live here, so let’s just take every square mile of open space in the United States and build houses on it.
Just look at how many women want more diversity in Canada:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tcsRrk7AyR0
Americans may want to make sure they have some money left over from the southern Wall to build a northern Wall as well.
There is something of an iron law of human behavior, that every time you increase capacity, demand will just increase to match. It was noticed by Malthus in regards to food but applies in lots of areas.
Not that increasing capacity is a bad idea, it isn't, its just that it hits diminishing and then negative returns and at some point you just have to stop doing that. And yes, we are past that point with housing.
Belgium has actually taken this attitude to heart. Every single person I meet from within 30km of Brussels misses nature and is quite bothered that a single generational housing crisis is being dealt with by paving over the country for future generations not to enjoy in order to house an unending flow of foreigners they are indifferent to at best and have outright learned to hate at worst.
In spite of Steve’s sarcasm I can see a future where Standford does this, they’ll sooner turn the West into Blade Runner than they’ll give up on servants who ‘know their place’.
Or you could build a 100 billion dollar train set down into the Los Angeles basin. With a stop in Fresno
It’s always interesting to me, as a constant flyer, how unaware people are. The “over populated” Peninsula is a good case in point. A simple glance at google or Apple maps’ satellite imagery reveals in an instant that less than half the Peninsula is populated at all. The reason this “crisis” exists is because the locals who own property want it this way and nothing more.
Living in the areas you say are unpopulated is extremely inconvenient. That's why they are "unpopulated." And Yes, that's the way we want it.
It’s always tough to know if Steve is trolling or serious about housing crisis issues. Because affordable housing is indeed an issue in California, one for the middle class even more than the poor. Indeed, that’s a point the anti-gentrifiers like to make: that “affordable housing” in the context of LA and SF still means homes in the lower to middle middle class range, not Section 8. My sister had to move all the way to Murrieta to find an affordable single-dwelling home for her family in “L.A.”, and Murrietta is half way to San Diego (luckily, her tech-employed husband can work from home most of the time).
However, there seem to be, uh, more obvious ways to lessen the demand for housing than building on every last square inch of open space.
More right wing hate! Will it never cease, Mr Speaker?
Where are Levitt & Sons when you need them.
If Trump had brains he would do everything in his power to “diversify” elite Dem strongholds. Few things deserve more of his time and attention.
The Zeroth Amendment gives every human being on the planet the right to live here, so let's just take every square mile of open space in the United States and build houses on it.
http://politicoid.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Suburban-Sprawl.jpgReplies: @Anon7, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Abe, @eD
This is already the plan in Canada; see the Century Initiative, which has support at the highest levels of the Canadian government. The plan is to triple Canada’s population to 100 million in just eighty years.
Just look at how many women want more diversity in Canada:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tcsRrk7AyR0
Americans may want to make sure they have some money left over from the southern Wall to build a northern Wall as well.
The Zeroth Amendment gives every human being on the planet the right to live here, so let's just take every square mile of open space in the United States and build houses on it.
http://politicoid.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Suburban-Sprawl.jpgReplies: @Anon7, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Abe, @eD
200 million was plenty of us.
More recently a coworker bought aparment units in San Jose over 2011/2012 (post 2008 financial crisis, condos & apartments forclosures led to a short lived glut). They averaged ~$150K - each unit. They are now all North of $600K.
Golden State.Replies: @anonymous, @Old Palo Altan
Even one million of "them" was too many.
“It is distinctly probable that Stanford University does not want to have people who can only afford affordable housing living nearby.”
Maybe Stanford could build a tasteful, unobtrusive…barrier of some sort.
I can remember the USA of 200 million. It sure didn’t seem empty.
Here’s a more modest proposal- law against non citizens buy homes here. Or at least a punitive tax on homes for foreigners looking for a safe place to park their dough
I am only half joking but Trump Tower Palo Alto would help. How high can you build there? If they have mega skyscrapers in Japan they can go high at Sanford.
It would be better if illegal aliens just started squatting on Stanford land.
W/ or W/O tuition?
Bleak maps reveal where hopelessness is driving Americans to death with murder, suicide and overdoses
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5507235/Bleak-maps-reveal-hopelessness-driving-Americans-death.html#ixzz59vESPosR
White death might be the Appalachian death.
Lots of suicide in Vegas. I live in Vegas. It's like Vegas is the end of the line, and if you can't make a go of it here, may as well check out.
Indubitably so.
But I bet most of those Palo Alto ranch house plutocrats and Stanford assholes push mass immigration. California has a population of 40 million. In 1970, California had a population of 20 million.
Mass Immigration Increases Housing Costs
High Housing Costs Hinders AFFORDABLE FAMILY FORMATION
Oh, no, that’s reserved for the “Potemkin Village” alumni retirement housing community they’re going to build …
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hameau_de_la_Reine
"Sweetie, they are sent to this beautiful farm, that is, retirement village, where they can see their friends and play in the sun all day."
Stanford could subdivide that land and issue 99-year leases, like the gentry do in England. They can attach whatever use restrictions they want to keep the wrong sort of people away. Would this swell their endowment past Harvard?
https://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/april/lease-holder-program-042513.html
I am always amazed at the darth of multilevel buildings/parking structures in Northern CA. It has to be that the land is just not valuable enough yet to justify he cost? California still has lots of room for population expansion. To come anywhere near Japans, Chinas, Indias, etc. density levels the numbers would have to, at a minimum, triple from current. As I'm sure they will barring the unthinkable.
An aside is a new neighbor who just moved his family in from Utah (he got a position with the Tesla car factory, which I think is soon to be closed). I stopped by when I caught eye of his RC aircraft collection on the driveway. It had come as a bit of a shock to him that all his new neighbors are either East Asian or Indian (he is renting from one). Poor guy must have wondered if he had inadvertantly signed on with the Mars program, not the 'merican car building one?
Is the lack of affordable housing a feature or a bug? If ‘silicon valley’ needs the maximum concentration of STEM workers, then having unaffordable housing is one way of keeping non STEM people out. It also means if a worker is no longer super productive their mortgage will kick them out long before they need to be fired.
Silicon Valley does not seem to need cheap labor for their key industries, they might need cheap carpenters for their homes, but not cheap engineers. They seem to have back office operations, minor league teams, outside their core area.
The H1-B program should be abolished (albeit for other reasons than the ones screeched about here).
What has surprised me more is that essential non-tech workers (nurses, policemen, and even doctors) aren't leaving Silicon Valley. They should.Replies: @1661er
That does not look at all like Palo Alto to my eyes? My father, along with 3 of his workmates, bought a an 8 acre plot of land in Palo Alto in 1968. They each threw in ~$1K to make that purchase. Unfortunately they sold once their investment had tripled. The home he bought to house his family in, located in the near city of Santa Clara, set him back $29K that same year. That house last sold for $1.45M. Boggles the mind.
More recently a coworker bought aparment units in San Jose over 2011/2012 (post 2008 financial crisis, condos & apartments forclosures led to a short lived glut). They averaged ~$150K – each unit. They are now all North of $600K.
Golden State.
Perfection is never cheap, and never common.
Let envious Southern Californians keep silent - and far away.Replies: @Neoconned
This is not a creative solution, as Stanford is a private institution. There is a case to be made that Stanford should increase its size by 50% so as to demolish a lot of East Coast schools (since no school of Stanford’s caliber that has the same breadth and depth of departments exists within a 2000-mile radius). Stanford should grow by 50% and put Dartmouth, Princeton, etc. in a crunch.
Regarding Palo Alto, there is no shortage of land. A quick check on Google Maps reveals that there are tons of parking lots and one-story retail strip malls. Most of the parking lots are empty most of the time. It is entirely a zoning problem, exacerbated by NIMBY homeowners who want to keep their prices high through artificial scarcity.
Most parking lots are empty most of the time. That has no effect on their use at other times. It is almost impossible to park in downtown PA except maybe at night, like when most of the parking lots are empty.Replies: @Thomm
These academic “for thee, but not for me”, elitists ought to finally put their money where their liberal rhetoric is, and build high-rise, section 8 apartment blocks, as close to the Stanford campus as is humanly possible. Let them finally revel in the joys of the diversity that they are happy to inflict on the people of places like Fresno.
Silicon Valley does not seem to need cheap labor for their key industries, they might need cheap carpenters for their homes, but not cheap engineers. They seem to have back office operations, minor league teams, outside their core area.Replies: @Thomm
I thought one of the favorite narratives on Unz.com is that H1-Bs are the greatest crime against the American worker ever perpetrated (even though H1-B average salary in Silicon Valley is $125,000).
The H1-B program should be abolished (albeit for other reasons than the ones screeched about here).
What has surprised me more is that essential non-tech workers (nurses, policemen, and even doctors) aren’t leaving Silicon Valley. They should.
Police with their concentrated On/Off schedule, are increasingly living in central valley while living in RV/Camper. And many urban departments do have staffing issues.
As for nurses, I think this headline spoke for itself.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/San-Francisco-crazy-commute-nurse-Pennsylvania-12425117.php
Some guy yammered about Democracy vs Populism, and he apparently thinks nationalist-populists are anti-democratic.
Okay, so let’s look at the political result of a state that totally destroyed such people through mass invasion and PC lunacy. California. How democratic is that state? Total one-party rule. Biggest division between rich and poor. Most restrictions on free speech.
Are we to assume that all of the US will be more democratic if it follows the California model?
California is about Tribe and Bribe. The ruling Tribe brought over tons of non-whites and bribed them with welfare and chain migration if they vote Democratic and hate on Whitey.
Tribe as ruling elites, white cucks and Asians as their managerial class, and everyone else as helots too divided by race, culture, and faddish ideologies to ever form a common front. And progs more allied with Hollywood and Silicon Valley than with working class and middle class(that continues to move out of Ca).
Some democracy.
Tentrification is the future.
The easier way is to dust off the old ACE plan to fill the bay. Almost 400 square miles of lands to build housing on. Japanese had been filling Tokyo Bay to build new business/housing on Odaiba. And they had increased the pace for the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympic.
https://blog.savesfbay.org/2013/09/bay-or-river/
In the mean time, POTUS should use the vast federal land holding to affect housing. An EO to allow RV parking in GGNRA, Moffit Field, Treasure Islands. Could bring hundreds of thousands of modern day Arkies/Orkies to vote out Nancy Polosi and others.
No. easier way, easiest way, is to stop all immigration, permanently.Replies: @1661er
More recently a coworker bought aparment units in San Jose over 2011/2012 (post 2008 financial crisis, condos & apartments forclosures led to a short lived glut). They averaged ~$150K - each unit. They are now all North of $600K.
Golden State.Replies: @anonymous, @Old Palo Altan
I read somewhere not long ago that near Alamo Park in SanFran, tiny studio apartments were renting at around $5K –all to Silicon Valley types.
The H1-B program should be abolished (albeit for other reasons than the ones screeched about here).
What has surprised me more is that essential non-tech workers (nurses, policemen, and even doctors) aren't leaving Silicon Valley. They should.Replies: @1661er
Police with their concentrated On/Off schedule, are increasingly living in central valley while living in RV/Camper. And many urban departments do have staffing issues.
As for nurses, I think this headline spoke for itself.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/San-Francisco-crazy-commute-nurse-Pennsylvania-12425117.php
Regarding Palo Alto, there is no shortage of land. A quick check on Google Maps reveals that there are tons of parking lots and one-story retail strip malls. Most of the parking lots are empty most of the time. It is entirely a zoning problem, exacerbated by NIMBY homeowners who want to keep their prices high through artificial scarcity.Replies: @Wakandan Diplomat, @Enochian, @athEIst
I agree. Stanford should grow its undergrad enrollment by some amount. Doing so would squeeze a lot of schools, though probably not the type you mention.
On one hand, the Ivies are not standing still. Though Dartmouth has rejected plans to grow, Princeton will grow by another 500 undergrads, or 10%. That’s on top of another recent expansion. They’ll fill those spots in an instant.
On the other hand, the number of qualified students is so large that especially for foreign students, brand universities will remain irresistible. Even if Stanford grows 50% (3500 undergrads), you think the Ivies will lose 3500 students? They’ll just get a different 3500 students. Other schools, both domestic and overseas, will lose those 3500.
I predict the Ivies will remain strong for a long, long time.
Somebody e-mail this to Matt Yglesias so he can sperg out some more.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5507235/Bleak-maps-reveal-hopelessness-driving-Americans-death.html#ixzz59vESPosR
White death might be the Appalachian death.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Daniel H
The final map in their series is of “deaths from interpersonal violence”. The caption gives the causally false but Narratively Correct interpretation that
In reality, the map is simply of where blacks and Indian reservations are.
It is not a question of ‘filling those spots’. It is more a question of how much can Stanford fill, without standards going down.
But at any rate, most people who got into Stanford also applied to the Ivies, or to MIT. It is far less the case that Stanford is drawing from public schools that are nearby like UC Berkeley or UCLA.
Plus, undergrad may not even be where the increase is best utilized. Many top universities (including Stanford) have more grad students than undergrads. Expansion there might be more productive (and beat Princeton, which is just a finishing school for rich kids, and does not have a Law, Business, or Medical school).
They say the top five overlap schools for Stanford applicants are UCLA, UCBerkeley, USC, UCSB and UCSD, with some Ivies below that;
and for Berkeley applicants they are UCLA, UCSB, USC, UCSD and Stanford, with no Ivies in the top ten.
Use this data well. Some good men gave their lives getting it.Replies: @EdwardM
Indeed they should…but they won’t. And don’t expect them to either. After all, they’re hypocrites. And all I ask is that they acknowledge that they, like the people towards whom they condescend, are all part of the same hypocrisy.
“of us” is the operative phrase. We would survive more of “us”.
Even one million of “them” was too many.
Few months back someone here proposed the Trump DOJ using fair housing laws to stick it to shithiles like Marin County and Palo Alto….when they have to put up with drunk black dudes urinating in the fuckin allies but they can’t do anything about it “because discrimination” then it’ll stick like meat & potatoes
Is Princeton still “just a finishing school for rich kids”? That would surprise me.
But it certainly was that in the not so distant past. It didn’t even begin to register as a serious college until the late nineteenth century (despite the honour of having had the great Jonathan Edwards as its first president).
I have long been in the habit of comparing the members of my extended cousinage who attended Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. All were originally local schools. Harvard began to attract largely from outside New England after the Civil War, and Yale some twenty years later. Princeton not until after World War One, and even then almost never from anywhere further north than New York City. There were however a fair number of students from the South even earlier.
But the one striking pattern is this: the intelligent who happened to be rich went to Harvard or Yale, the rich who happened not to be intelligent went invariably to Princeton. Most dropped out after a year or two. (Yale men rarely dropped out; if Harvard men did, it was usually because their family firm beckoned too enticingly). After 1960 at the latest everything seems to tighten up, and the fun goes out of it.
I doubt that Princeton has escaped the present rat race.
Regarding Palo Alto, there is no shortage of land. A quick check on Google Maps reveals that there are tons of parking lots and one-story retail strip malls. Most of the parking lots are empty most of the time. It is entirely a zoning problem, exacerbated by NIMBY homeowners who want to keep their prices high through artificial scarcity.Replies: @Wakandan Diplomat, @Enochian, @athEIst
So what if it’s private land? The government could acquire it via eminent domain, and turn it into a massive low-income housing project. But what would be really fun would be a Calais jungle style encampment of illegals on Stanford’s undeveloped land. The good liberals of California could show the world how handle thousands of illegals camped on their land with humanity and tolerance.
As a native Californian, I feel a little comic relief is needed.
More recently a coworker bought aparment units in San Jose over 2011/2012 (post 2008 financial crisis, condos & apartments forclosures led to a short lived glut). They averaged ~$150K - each unit. They are now all North of $600K.
Golden State.Replies: @anonymous, @Old Palo Altan
No, the photo is not of Palo Alto, which must stay as it is, however high housing prices must rise to keep it so.
Perfection is never cheap, and never common.
Let envious Southern Californians keep silent – and far away.
CK, The street that borders Stanford’s athletic fields is lined with campers and mini vans and cars that now serve as affordable housing. The police are ticketing and towing vehicles that don’t abide by the rule that says a vehicle must vacate a parking space after 72 hours of parking. Problem is many of these quasi homes are not able to be driven. I think that while Stanford may lean left it is a campus of high achievers driven to succeed, unlike an uber liberal campus such as Oberlin.
When regime change doesn’t work, go for People Change.
Sabril, the illegals and homeless do squat on Stanford’s land. That’s why you have to watch where you step.
The Zeroth Amendment gives every human being on the planet the right to live here, so let's just take every square mile of open space in the United States and build houses on it.
http://politicoid.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Suburban-Sprawl.jpgReplies: @Anon7, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Abe, @eD
Yes. This was always my impression. The fact that Princeton does not have Law/Med/Business schools at all is telling.
I haven’t noticed it going THAT far, as all prestige is lost if the degree is not completed. But yes, a large aspect of the school is a finishing school. The emphasis on ‘eating clubs’ and the large number of females who just went there to study something easy, was indicative.
As for not finishing one's undergraduate degree: in the golden age (1870s till perhaps the 193os) the upper-class undergraduate did not have to worry about not actually graduating. Harvard in the early post Civil War period up into the '90s was perhaps the most egregious here: work (and the money which went with it) called loud and clear. The Yale men were always steadier.
With Princeton the failure to graduate was often down to mere stupidity, but at the social level I'm most familiar with, it just didn't matter. Social background will (or did) always trump everything else. These families did not need the prestige of an Ivy degree - as you rightly point out, it was just a few more years of fun before marriage, a family, and a job.
Things changed quickly after the second war.
I think its "eating clubs" are simply its rough analogue of fraternities, which Princeton lacks. As independent entities with few or no boarders they more closely resemble the "final clubs" at Harvard or the "secret societies" at Yale.
(Apologies if I have culturally appropriated; back at Wakanda U. - GO PANTHERS! - we didn't have clubs like these.)
Perfection is never cheap, and never common.
Let envious Southern Californians keep silent - and far away.Replies: @Neoconned
Shit, LA kicks the Bay Areas ass any day of the week….
You mean like Mexico has?
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5507235/Bleak-maps-reveal-hopelessness-driving-Americans-death.html#ixzz59vESPosR
White death might be the Appalachian death.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Daniel H
Interesting maps. The highest rates of alcohol related deaths seem to map precisely onto Indian reservations.
Lots of suicide in Vegas. I live in Vegas. It’s like Vegas is the end of the line, and if you can’t make a go of it here, may as well check out.
https://blog.savesfbay.org/2013/09/bay-or-river/
In the mean time, POTUS should use the vast federal land holding to affect housing. An EO to allow RV parking in GGNRA, Moffit Field, Treasure Islands. Could bring hundreds of thousands of modern day Arkies/Orkies to vote out Nancy Polosi and others.Replies: @Daniel H
>>The easier way is to dust off the old ACE plan to fill the bay. Almost 400 square miles of lands to build housing on…..
No. easier way, easiest way, is to stop all immigration, permanently.
“Princeton University continues its reign as the nation’s top university, according to U.S. News & World Report, with the school topping the publication’s annual Best Colleges ranking for the seventh consecutive year.”
You’re good at SIMPLE glances.
Living in the areas you say are unpopulated is extremely inconvenient. That’s why they are “unpopulated.” And Yes, that’s the way we want it.
The reality is it is only possible to provide ‘subsidized’ housing. “Affordable housing” in a high cost area is an illusion. Since a 1500 square foot house in Palo Alto is going to be ‘worth’ north of $ 2 million there is no way to offer it to someone for $500,000 without someone else ( taxpayers, builders, Stanford U.) ‘gifting’ the reduced price to the buyer ( and isn’t that taxable?) or restricting the right of ‘ownership’ such that the resident is little more than a tenant.
It depends. I would rather live in LA (Orange County in particular). But a tech career is like no other, and is rarely to be had in LA.
Did Stanford declare itself a Sanctuary University?
W/ or W/O tuition?
I once took the Moscow metro out to the burbs and when I popped up in a neighborhood I was surrounded by identical apartment buildings, all about 20 stories and looking as if they used the same blueprints to build them. The were beautiful in sort of an ugly way. In the Soviet Union, if you were going to build one, you may as well build a dozen. That could have been the fate of Moffett Field. The lack of cars also helped. Everybody walked but the public transportation was good so you did not feel it so much.
One thing about Palo Alto and the surrounding area is that people are completely dependent on cars. If you commute south a little way you are OK but it is the least accessible part of the Bay Area because of the bay, the bridges, and lack of BART. 280 to SF is usually open but you cannot speed. 101 is a disaster and if you try to get out on a weekend, either leave very early or late because you will be stuck in traffic.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/alt-right-youtuber-accused-of-luring-autistic-teen-in-pregnancy-plot
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/03/13/twp-chief-matthew-heimbach-arrested-battery-after-affair-top-spokesmans-wife
Rough week for White Supremacy…
If only the people advocating for us were not the least worthy male members of our race. Then again, I have long said that what makes the top 80% of whites better than others is that most of us DON'T see race in everything. The bottom 20% who do (like blacks) have more in common with blacks than successful whites (hence we call them an epithet that fits that description).Replies: @Pericles
Oddsbodkins, yes lease it they could, and in fact do! My understanding is that when Leland Stanford built the original railroad up the peninsula, part of the deal was that he was granted 10 miles of land on either side of the tracks. Much of that land has been retained, and is indeed out on 99 year lease. There remains a lot of undeveloped land in the area as a result. Just one of the reasons Palo Alto such an invitingly nice place.
https://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/april/lease-holder-program-042513.html
I am always amazed at the darth of multilevel buildings/parking structures in Northern CA. It has to be that the land is just not valuable enough yet to justify he cost? California still has lots of room for population expansion. To come anywhere near Japans, Chinas, Indias, etc. density levels the numbers would have to, at a minimum, triple from current. As I’m sure they will barring the unthinkable.
An aside is a new neighbor who just moved his family in from Utah (he got a position with the Tesla car factory, which I think is soon to be closed). I stopped by when I caught eye of his RC aircraft collection on the driveway. It had come as a bit of a shock to him that all his new neighbors are either East Asian or Indian (he is renting from one). Poor guy must have wondered if he had inadvertantly signed on with the Mars program, not the ‘merican car building one?
Regarding Palo Alto, there is no shortage of land. A quick check on Google Maps reveals that there are tons of parking lots and one-story retail strip malls. Most of the parking lots are empty most of the time. It is entirely a zoning problem, exacerbated by NIMBY homeowners who want to keep their prices high through artificial scarcity.Replies: @Wakandan Diplomat, @Enochian, @athEIst
Most of the parking lots are empty most of the time.
Most parking lots are empty most of the time. That has no effect on their use at other times. It is almost impossible to park in downtown PA except maybe at night, like when most of the parking lots are empty.
Plus, Downtown Palo Alto itself should allow construction of highrises to at least 6 storys. Under even a remotely free market, this would happen at lightning speed.Replies: @athEIst
At present, nearly EVERY undergraduate program (and an increasing proportion of master programs) in the United States is in effect a finishing school with the exception of engineering, nursing and architecture programs (and I’m not taking into account the various specialty liberal arts colleges which are pretty much explicit frauds). The higher-scale schools of course are more socially acceptable for the well-to-do, and as Martin Hutchinson put it offer a bit of social gloss and useful connections to the uppity lesserlings who happen to shatter the ceiling and make it in.
Most parking lots are empty most of the time. That has no effect on their use at other times. It is almost impossible to park in downtown PA except maybe at night, like when most of the parking lots are empty.Replies: @Thomm
That is bull. Plenty of flat parking lots can be converted to multi-level parking structures. Plus, more and more people in Palo Alto are rich enough that they just use Uber now.
Plus, Downtown Palo Alto itself should allow construction of highrises to at least 6 storys. Under even a remotely free market, this would happen at lightning speed.
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/03/13/twp-chief-matthew-heimbach-arrested-battery-after-affair-top-spokesmans-wife
Rough week for White Supremacy...Replies: @Thomm
Heh. Well, it is never a good week for White Trashionalists.
If only the people advocating for us were not the least worthy male members of our race. Then again, I have long said that what makes the top 80% of whites better than others is that most of us DON’T see race in everything. The bottom 20% who do (like blacks) have more in common with blacks than successful whites (hence we call them an epithet that fits that description).
Somewhat On-T:
The FIU pedestrian bridge that collapsed yesterday was supposed to connect to a new 20-story highrise (scheduled for completion in 2020).
When first announced, the tower was supposed to house “student condos,” but the new plans call for rental apartments:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article204130824.html
Only eight percent of FIU students live on-campus.
A good point. Harvard men could stay there for either law or business or medicine, and usually did. Yalies had law and Sheffield for the sciences (Harvard men had MIT: the important thing being to stay within the Boston-Cambridge ambience). Princeton people (who made it through) would usually go down to Philadelphia for the graduate programs, or maybe Columbia.
As for not finishing one’s undergraduate degree: in the golden age (1870s till perhaps the 193os) the upper-class undergraduate did not have to worry about not actually graduating. Harvard in the early post Civil War period up into the ’90s was perhaps the most egregious here: work (and the money which went with it) called loud and clear. The Yale men were always steadier.
With Princeton the failure to graduate was often down to mere stupidity, but at the social level I’m most familiar with, it just didn’t matter. Social background will (or did) always trump everything else. These families did not need the prestige of an Ivy degree – as you rightly point out, it was just a few more years of fun before marriage, a family, and a job.
Things changed quickly after the second war.
The Zeroth Amendment gives every human being on the planet the right to live here, so let's just take every square mile of open space in the United States and build houses on it.
http://politicoid.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Suburban-Sprawl.jpgReplies: @Anon7, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Abe, @eD
I had thought of something on the lines of Buzz Mohawk’s comment # 2.
There is something of an iron law of human behavior, that every time you increase capacity, demand will just increase to match. It was noticed by Malthus in regards to food but applies in lots of areas.
Not that increasing capacity is a bad idea, it isn’t, its just that it hits diminishing and then negative returns and at some point you just have to stop doing that. And yes, we are past that point with housing.
But I bet most of those Palo Alto ranch house plutocrats and Stanford assholes push mass immigration. California has a population of 40 million. In 1970, California had a population of 20 million.
Mass Immigration Increases Housing Costs
High Housing Costs Hinders AFFORDABLE FAMILY FORMATIONReplies: @JimB, @MBlanc46
OT Leland Stanford pioneered the practice of using cheap foreign (Chinese) labor to create a fortune. The California Railroad Museum in Sacramento, which virtually deifies him, has recently been re-purposed from being a pleasant destination for white homeschooling families to enjoy quaint Americana to a grim monument of racial politics emphasizing the dominance of immigrants, blacks, and women in building America’s transportation system. Featured prominently by the docents is a moral lesson about the superiority of immigrant laborers in the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. While the Union Pacific, almost exclusively built by coolies under conditions of virtual slavery, laid their tracks on time to reach Promontory, Utah, the Central Pacific, which employed unionized white labor, was delayed by a dispute over wages and work conditions. Little did a fledgling nation know, the Golden Spike was the cheap labor nail in the coffin of white blue collar America.
Aspen, Colorado has affordable housing, both rented and purchased. The people who “own” their units aren’t allowed to sell at market rates so many have neglected to do proper maintenance on their property. Another problem is that as the baby boomers retire many are refusing to move and free up the affordable housing for the next generation of workers.
The Peninsula is overpopulated. You can’t just go by housing density or total land use. You have to look at things like average commute times. There are clearly too many people in that space.
No. easier way, easiest way, is to stop all immigration, permanently.Replies: @1661er
Japanese don’t have much immigration, but they still have to deal with internal migration toward cities from countryside/”Inaka” They still build up lands in Tokyo Bay to keep housing affordable for their citizens. Odaiba is just one such example.
Stanford has a unique opportunity to help alumni pursue their dreams to live that Marie Antoinette life.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hameau_de_la_Reine
Plus, Downtown Palo Alto itself should allow construction of highrises to at least 6 storys. Under even a remotely free market, this would happen at lightning speed.Replies: @athEIst
So we all live in high-rises so that another 1 or 2 million people can “affordably” move here. People mostly don’t want to live in high-rises. What we have is too many people who want to live here, thus prices rise until people don’t want to move here. What is the problem?
The peninsula is much more mountainous than people give it credit for. Granted, NIMBY-ism does play a part, but the terrain of much of the peninsula doesn’t lend itself to high-density tract housing.
When I first moved to SF, there were still old timers who remembered that Richmond/Sunset were mostly sand dunes that were flattened by dynamites. People like Pat Brown and Rob Morse used to build things like this. Somehow, we lost that "can-do" spirit to NIMBY/BANANA. Let's MAGA by fill the bay and flatten part of the Santa Cruz mountain range.
Won’t somebody think of the chickens!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/03/02/feature/the-silicon-valley-elites-latest-status-symbol-chickens/?utm_term=.0813e30cbe09
I could have sworn I read this article on Steve sailer but I guess my memory’s playing tricks on me since I couldn’t find it..
http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Sunset_District:_From_Dunes_to_Cityscape
When I first moved to SF, there were still old timers who remembered that Richmond/Sunset were mostly sand dunes that were flattened by dynamites. People like Pat Brown and Rob Morse used to build things like this. Somehow, we lost that “can-do” spirit to NIMBY/BANANA. Let’s MAGA by fill the bay and flatten part of the Santa Cruz mountain range.
You speak as if this is the first time ever that a city saw its core local industry explode, leading to a lot of job creation in that city. Boomtown management is a simple, well-established practice. That is, unless the NIMBY crowd gets greedy about artificially restricting supply of new housing.
What’s, for lack of a better term, ironic, about that is the early 70’s most bay area people preferred not to live in The City (SF proper). Home prices/rents in nearly all surrounding bay area cities were significantly higher than those in SF itself. The counter culture/hippies had kind of made it unfit for “straights”, as your upright citizens of the time were refered to as, to live there. A few blocks in the best parts the city maintained value, but most of the rest was not far from dirt cheap.
The Million Dollar Shack –
“But Daddy, after they have paid all that money and worked so hard all their lives, where do the alumni go when they get old?”
“Sweetie, they are sent to this beautiful farm, that is, retirement village, where they can see their friends and play in the sun all day.”
If only the people advocating for us were not the least worthy male members of our race. Then again, I have long said that what makes the top 80% of whites better than others is that most of us DON'T see race in everything. The bottom 20% who do (like blacks) have more in common with blacks than successful whites (hence we call them an epithet that fits that description).Replies: @Pericles
The high-achieving white looks with disdain at the lowest 20% of his race while magnanimously not seeing race.
Trump could build veterans’ housing on the Presidio.
Trump could build veterans’ housing on the Stanford land after eminent domain.
Make the housing market-rate rentals, just like the Presidio officer’s houses are today. But 50% of the adult residents must be veterans.
If you’re rich enough, like Mark Zuckerberg, you can just buy four houses around yourself and a 1,000 acre bug-out plantation in Hawaii. Nothing wrong with that; I’d do it too. The economists’ objection is the Palo Altans are capturing value by zoning laws instead of paying the “true” cost to outbid your neighbor from building a 40-story apartment on a theoretical unrestricted market.
But the same result follows if a bunch of people buy land and restrict development by private covenants which would be enforced by, what else, a central authority with a monopoly on violence. The Palo Altans didn’t just buy real estate; they bought self-governance. If they want to keep the land expensive and the infrastucture low well, that’s their right. If IT companies have trouble finding cheap housing for their employees on a hilly peninsula with great weather and coastline, there’s plenty of cheap land in the Midwest. Let them locate there.
High-density living doesn’t really scale any better than low-density living. People take up space and generate waste in whatever configuration. Urban government doesn’t get more efficient; taxes are always higher in cities. Social costs don’t go down; cities are fertility sinks with higher crime rates.
“Diseconomy of scale” is an under-used term.
I’m old enough to remember it too. The difference in scale is still pretty significant.
Do San Franciscans not know how to build on hills?
So Princeton is a finishing school for dumb rich kids, good to know. I value my conversations with Americans. One learns a lot.
I think its “eating clubs” are simply its rough analogue of fraternities, which Princeton lacks. As independent entities with few or no boarders they more closely resemble the “final clubs” at Harvard or the “secret societies” at Yale.
(Apologies if I have culturally appropriated; back at Wakanda U. – GO PANTHERS! – we didn’t have clubs like these.)
Agreed. Speaking of China eating our lunch…
Based on data Wakandan Intelligence has given me from a paid college info site, you have it backwards.
They say the top five overlap schools for Stanford applicants are UCLA, UCBerkeley, USC, UCSB and UCSD, with some Ivies below that;
and for Berkeley applicants they are UCLA, UCSB, USC, UCSD and Stanford, with no Ivies in the top ten.
Use this data well. Some good men gave their lives getting it.
Does Stanford compete with these schools for applicants coming from the east coast? Maybe some want to go to California or bust.
You need to do some hiking on the peninsula. We are not talking hills.
But I bet most of those Palo Alto ranch house plutocrats and Stanford assholes push mass immigration. California has a population of 40 million. In 1970, California had a population of 20 million.
Mass Immigration Increases Housing Costs
High Housing Costs Hinders AFFORDABLE FAMILY FORMATIONReplies: @JimB, @MBlanc46
Bad think!
They say the top five overlap schools for Stanford applicants are UCLA, UCBerkeley, USC, UCSB and UCSD, with some Ivies below that;
and for Berkeley applicants they are UCLA, UCSB, USC, UCSD and Stanford, with no Ivies in the top ten.
Use this data well. Some good men gave their lives getting it.Replies: @EdwardM
A lot of Californians are insular, and wouldn’t really consider going back east for school, so it makes sense that it’s UCB if not Stanford, another UC next in preference.
Does Stanford compete with these schools for applicants coming from the east coast? Maybe some want to go to California or bust.