
$1B for 20,000 Bay Area homes - theBashShell
https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/1-billion-investment-bay-area-housing/
======
caymanjim
It's great that Google wants to increase housing, but is this really going to
work? The housing shortage in the Bay Area is not a money problem. If it were
possible to build 20,000 houses in the next 20 years, it would absolutely
happen without Google's help.

The problem with housing there has one simple cause: NIMBYism. SF doesn't want
to allow taller buildings and denser housing complexes. It's vastly worse in
the Valley. Towns like Mountain View and Palo Alto ought to be vastly denser,
with apartment buildings, duplexes, and other multi-tenant dwellings. The
people living there don't want that, though, so the laws prohibit it.

I don't blame people for wanting to keep their quiet neighborhoods and single-
unit homes, or low-rises in SF, but until those objections are overcome, the
problem is only going to get worse. So while I say that there's a simple
cause, there's no simple solution.

The only solution is changing the zoning laws, and that requires changing
peoples' minds. Once that's done, the money will flow in directly from
tenants, and will ease pressure all around. If Google wants to build more
housing, they need to spend that billion dollars on political efforts.

~~~
shados
> and that requires changing peoples' minds

Yup, and that is straightforward, if time and money consuming. Changing zoning
isn't enough: making an area denser without appropriate matching
infrastructure investment isn't going to go well. If you want the next Tokyo
or Paris (or even something significantly smaller), you need Tokyo or Paris'
infra.

Then the next problem is that people can't stand each other. People don't want
neighbors because neighbors are a pain. It's a problem everywhere, but in the
west, the US has it particularly bad. I don't know about Cali, but in a lot of
cities the building code is a total joke, and Americans are known to be LOUD.
City rules are rarely enforced properly, either. So the only option you have
is to prevent neighbors from moving in in the first place. That's easily
fixed: better construction quality and clearer, enforced rules that make
coexisting easier and nicer, alongside investments to keep the area from going
down the shitter.

Do that for a while, and people just won't mind. Having moved from a dense
city in another country to a medium sized American metro made me "appreciate"
why NIMBYs are such a problem here. Living near people can become a nightmare
real quick if you're not lucky.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> People don't want neighbors because neighbors are a pain.

> LOUD

Sound is very much the problem. I don't want a huge amount of land, I don't
want lawn, I don't want landscaping, I _definitely_ don't want a neighborhood
association, but what I _do_ want is good soundproofing and no shared walls
(or worse, floors/ceilings). In practice, there's no soundproofing that can
substitute for an air gap.

~~~
aidenn0
In practice there are a lot of soundproofings that can substitute for an air-
gap, but the cheapest soundproofing to meet code (resilient channels) is
useless:

Resilient channels basically work by fixing horizontal metal strips to the
studs, and then hanging the drywall on the strips with clips. Because there is
purposefully play in the connection, vibrations cannot easily transfer from
drywall to stud to drywall.

Why doesn't it work? As soon as anyone nails or screws or otherwise attaches
something into the stud through the drywall (say a shelf), the drywall is now
mechanically connected to the stud again.

The proper fix is to have a separate frame for each dwelling unit, preferably
with fiberglass insulation. This essentially doubles the cost of inter-unit
walls, so it is less popular. My parents live in a townhouse constructed in
this manner, and if they dial up the volumes on the movie to 11, the subwoofer
can cause pictures to rattle on the neighbor's walls, but audible sound is
nearly zero.

~~~
vinay_ys
One thing that has bugged me is why don't they use concrete construction in
US, like we have in India and most of Europe? Concrete construction would
definitely eliminate the noisy neighbor problem to a very high degree (unless
they are drilling into the concrete wall, you cannot hear them).

~~~
aidenn0
I disagree on "unless they are drilling into the concrete wall you cannot hear
them" A solid concrete wall better than drywall/stud/drywall for sound but
still conducts sound relatively well.

Now usually a fascia of some sort is applied to the concrete and what is used
affects the sound transmission. If you plaster over the concrete, for example,
you get much better sound insulation than if you just paint the bare concrete.

Sometimes drywall is placed over furring strips to leave room for electrical
work and this even better.

Another child comment mentioned brick, and all of the above is true for brick
as well, though I believe mortared brick conducts sound better than poured
masonry, and AAC conducts sound better than either.

As a further hiccup, I live in california, and the earthquake regulations
greatly slow the innovation in building. In order for a new construction
technique to be approved, someone has to pay the money to demonstrate that it
is seismically sound.

------
thorwasdfasdf
Bay area voters have made their intentions abundantly clear, in numerous
elections and voting: they don't want growth. So much so, that local
politicians even brag about how much housing developments they've stopped.

Why fight such a huge uphill battle in trying to get housing in the Bay area?
Wouldn't it be easier to start from a city or town outside of CA? or at least
outside the bay area? Maybe somewhere in the middle of no-where (there's still
so much unused land immediately outside the Bay area - even within -> just
west of woodside there's hundreds of square miles of completely undeveloped
land), where NIMBYs have no jurisdiction. Then create a high speed train or
subway system connecting it to the rest of the world. Since out there land
should cost very little, it would be a lot cheaper to create a highly
effective transportation system then spending 1.5 million dollars per lot!

I know in the past new towns have failed, but that's because they didn't put
employers there first. If we start a new town or city and put a major employer
in the middle, people will move there.

~~~
avocado4
The problem is the weather sucks everywhere else.

~~~
reaperducer
_The problem is the weather sucks everywhere else._

Only if you've never been anywhere else.

San Diego is the paragon of lovely weather in California, not the Bay Area.

SF is enshrined in a song made famous by Sinatra with the line, "She hates
California/It's cold and it's damp."

~~~
clairity
yup, LA beats SF and the bay area by a mile on weather, but san diego edges
out LA in both weather and lush greenery.

~~~
baddox
LA summers are ridiculously hot, but by all means live wherever you enjoy the
weather.

~~~
clairity
it depends on where you live. the (san fernando) valley and inland are
ridiculously hot, the coastal cities not so much.

the 10-15 really hot days we have center around august, with some spillover
into july and september. but it's nothing compared to texas heat, for example.

~~~
baddox
Oh yeah, nothing like Texas heat, or even the Missouri heat I grew up with. I
could definitely enjoy Santa Monica weather year-round, but I still prefer the
slightly cooler San Francisco weather.

------
summerlight
There's a bunch of people saying "why not going out of the Bay?" This doesn't
work because for most of the foreign workers with H1B visa job security
matters more to them. With H1B visa, you gotta find another job in 60 days
when there's a trouble with your employer. Otherwise you'll be kicked out.
Also note that Chinese and Indian people are typically stuck at H1B for 5~10
years and they're the majority of SWE H1B holders.

If you're in the Valley (or at least a big city), the solution is pretty
simple; take a day off, go to interviews and get a job. You don't have to move
out and will have a good chance to get a job relevant to your career. The same
thing doesn't apply to most of the other areas. The risk is so high that it
can effectively end your career, those people with H1B just tend to pay more
for living in the Bay.

So in order to have another big campus out of those big cities, there must be
a pre-established, significant SWE ecosystem that can guarantee a level of job
opportunity. Unfortunately, this cannot be done by a single company.

~~~
koala_man
Do you really think H1Bs are driving this? When I got my H1B, I was
significantly _more_ willing to move into a company town in the middle of
nowhere.

Arguably I did. Instead of New York or London, I moved to some dusty suburb an
hour south of SF just because Google's HQ was there.

Now that I'm no longer on an H1B, but have a house and wife with a job in the
area, I'm way less willing to do anything like that.

------
ChuckMcM
Personally this class of things really highlights an imbalance for me.
Consider that Google runs its own own bus service for employees, and now is
building housing for the same.

Traditionally, successful businesses in a region paid taxes, and those taxes
were used by the local governments to invest in infrastructure like public
transport and urban development.

So in this regard Google usurps the mandate of the community government in
favor of using their excess profits to invest in the community that only
benefits them (well peripherally it benefits others as Google employees would
otherwise burden city services)

What is wrong with that picture is of course that the people without advocates
are literally left out in the cold. From the article Google is investing $1B
in better housing for their employees and putting $18+3+1.5 ($22.5M toward
homelessness which is 2.25% of a billion dollar investment. Contrast that with
if Google paid $1B in taxes to the bay area communities where it has
facilities, would those governments have the same priorities for those funds?

~~~
hunter23
The problem is that the local governments are not doing their jobs so private
industry is stepping in to address the gap (with obviously a biased interest
towards their customers, shareholders, and employees).

Literally every Bay area government has regulations (zoning, community review,
etc.) that prevent housing to be put in place. On the transit side, we have
multiple transit organizations (Muni, BART, Caltrain, etc.) that do not
coordinate and operate as one entity; contrast this with NYC where the transit
orgs have a common leadership.

What is happening in the Bay is that we are having an infrastructure crisis
because a Nimby philosophy is preventing investment in critical areas like
housing, transport, etc.

I agree that private industry won't solve this problem correctly because of
its self interest, but frankly the problem is that the policy makers have no
interest in solving the issue. Their loyalty is to their wealthy vocal
residents who have no interest in creating housing or transit. They definitely
do not care if underserved and disadvantaged people are suffering.

So while I agree that private industry will not tailor their solution to the
disadvantaged (due to self interest), I don't think policy makers will either
(due to self interest). Proposition 13 is a perfect example of how the voting
population does not care about infrastructure for the poor. Prop 13 was
marketed as a relief provision for the elderly, but the bulk of the measure is
essentially a tax break for largely white wealthy landowners.

~~~
abeppu
Property owners have no interest in creating housing; scarcity keeps their
property values high. However, I don't get why it is that renters seem
ineffective as a block in advocating for more construction. There are lots of
renters, many with more roommates than they'd like, and they're all vaguely
aware that their landlords could decide to evict everyone and sell, so they
should be motivated to try to build the stock of alternatives.

~~~
barry-cotter
Can you imagine how much more valuable property in Queens would be if it was
zoned so you could build at Manhattan densities? You can create value just by
increasing density, by making building more housing legal where it isn’t. In
the very long run this may not be an obvious win for all property owners, as a
group. But they’re not a group, and if you can be one of the first people to
build a lot of housing in a supply constrained market you’ll make a lot of
money.

If building more housing in the Bay Area was legal there’d be more housing. If
they built enough housing prices would even fall eventually.

------
abeppu
They're pitching this as being a benevolent gesture, but

(a) It sounds like they're just becoming a larger real-estate developer? They
didn't say "we're donating all this land plus some capital to a housing non-
profit"; they're going to receive revenue from their investments. Are we
supposed to say thanks?

(b) How does 20k units compare to their impact on Bay Area housing to date?

This is not my area, and I'm not aware of any region that has this
requirement, but here's an idea: In the same way that we require large
physical development projects to do an environmental impact study, and
actively make mitigating affordances (e.g. setting aside land) to offset those
impacts .... should employers who intend to hire large numbers of employees
from out of the area (sending recruiters to schools across the nation, etc) be
required to do housing impact studies, and actively participate in building
the housing stock for the new residents they're pulling to an area?

How quickly would the Bay Area housing situation change if the ability of tech
companies to grow headcount was tied to their ability to proportionally build
housing?

~~~
derekdahmer
You have the right idea but the wrong enemy here.

Local governments love adding corporations. They pay taxes while using few
resources. So corporate campuses get approved super easily - sometimes even
with tax breaks!

New housing on the other hand is fought against tooth and nail because it
brings new residents that require roads, services, and schools. Worse, if all
the land has been used up, it requires larger buildings to be built where
there used to be smaller houses and commercial strips which upsets local
residents with voting power. Local governments sometimes even make residential
developers pay extra taxes or make mandatory donations to the community.

It's these local city governments like Palo Alto and Mountain View that
allowed Google to massively expand without also allowing developers to build
housing to support the employees for that expansion. Hence, why Google is
spending its own capital just to get some units built.

~~~
danans
> It's these local city governments like Palo Alto and Mountain View that
> allowed Google to massively expand without also allowing developers to build
> housing to support the employees for that expansion.

There's probably plenty of blame to go all around. IMO companies like Google
(disclosure: I work there) caught on to the magnitude of the problem too late,
and when they did, they ran into the local political resistance.

Why were they so late to catch on? Well I only have theories, including that
it's only in the last few years that the cost of housing has made life
difficult even for well paid employees, and those employees have voiced their
frustrations.

In some ways I don't think that Google (and other companies that might follow
them) deserve so much praise for finally attacking this by the horns at this
late stage.

~~~
derekdahmer
Blaming or praising Google is irrelevant. This is simply a response to a
broken political system where regional housing supply is wildly inadequate
relative to demand.

It isn’t the job of a company to provide housing for its employees. In the
absence of constraints real estate developers will naturally build to satisfy
this demand. However local governments have control over how and if housing is
built and have systematically prevented building to meet this demand for
decades. The blame is theirs since they are the only entities can and do
constrain new housing. This is the part of the system that needs to change.

~~~
danans
> This is simply a response to a broken political system where regional
> housing supply is wildly inadequate relative to demand

Which is why, IMO, the praise for Google on this matter is unwarranted. And
it's not the political system that is broken, it's the regressive views of the
elected officials and the people who have tended to vote in local elections.

> In the absence of constraints real estate developers will naturally build to
> satisfy this demand.

We don't need a policy that is absent restraints. We need housing policy with
sane restraints, i.e. incremental upzoning planned at the regional level to
allow more housing density and building employment centers accessible via
transit instead of only cars and private bus systems.

Even public agencies like BART have had to fight at the state level to be
allowed to develop housing on their own property.

This isn't really an issue of restraints vs no restraints but rather what the
restraints optimize for, and currently they optimize for increasing property
values and not providing sufficient housing supply.

------
davidw
You'd think they could spend a bit to "buy" someone like Senator Atkins, who
effectively killed SB50.

[https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-housing-single-
fa...](https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-housing-single-family-
zoning-senate-bill-50-dead-20190516-story.html)

~~~
newsoul2019
Why can't they "grow their own" powerful politicians? Find somebody young, put
them in all the right places with all the right people, and have them say all
the right things. Shouldn't be hard with unlimited resources.

~~~
csmattryder
The problem with humans is that Free Will stuff. Eventually the human says or
does something unpopular and your investment is written off, along with the
politician.

Maybe this young upstart has already tweeted something in their more free-
spirited days, just waiting to be scrolled onto.

Much more effective to pump money into the political parties directly. They're
going nowhere.

------
taurath
As a thought experiment, lets say Google owns a significant percentage of the
housing market in the areas they operate in. They thereby receive both rent
from their own employees, and others in the area. Lets see how this gives them
leverage:

* Want to fully choke out competition on salaries, while leveraged against it by taking in the rent money those salaries provide for?

* Why not invest in housing, when you're the company that is vastly increasing the home values? It seems like you'd end up actually make a killing since you then control the market

Maybe someone more clever than I can come up with more things - it feels like
a neo company town model, where you don't own everything, but you have all the
control and all the levers.

~~~
aiisjustanif
Welcome to the less extreme version of Seoul.

~~~
taurath
It feels like a vertical integration ala a Zaibatsu. If they move heavily into
education next they'll have control of their own knowledge worker supply
chain.

------
bcp2384
It's sad how many times I walk around in SF and see basically crumbling
buildings or empty parking lots and wonder why new housing has not been built
there yet? And more importantly who would actually oppose development on
crumbling or wasted land?

~~~
ryanianian
It's pretty easy to understand locals' opposition. More people => more
congestion. More housing supply => lower property values (at least at first).
It doesn't matter if the housing is on what used to be a parking lot it's
still more people and housing supply. (You can argue that NIMBYism is selfish
and short-sighted but that doesn't mean it's irrational in the economist
sense.)

~~~
m463
Maybe someone could bore tunnels underground to alleviate traffic problems.

------
quelsolaar
Here is a buisnes idea Ive been thinking about lately for SF, Hong Kong, NY
and other expensive places. Buy a smaller cruise ships and rent a pier to dock
it. I found a newly renovated ship with 72 cabins for 5.8 million. With the
average rent in SF that ship has paid for itself in 2 years (yes there will be
additional costs, but back of a napkin, its a good start). Then buy more ships
and stack them. Renovate/remodel in cheep places, then sail them to the bay.
This could create housing in months not years, without the need for planing
and building. If i had the money I would do it in a heart beat. It would be so
much faster and cheaper then what google is planing.

~~~
Shivetya
You would run into the same issues which are used to sabotage any new
development. I gave a list below, it really isn't meant to be in jest but it
sadly does happen.

The only way to get the issue fixed is with a state amendment and even then it
would be years in court. It really comes down to two real reasons, they do not
want those people in their city and second it makes so much money for all
involved the longer nothing changes.

1) you would have to set aside a good number of units for low income residents
2) all work would have to be done by union member organizations 3) you would
need to have multiple environmental impact studies to include traffic to and
from the location 4) you would also have to appease groups concerned with the
affect such a ship would have on naturally occurring views; this has been used
against new construction as well as shadows cast 5) Plus a litany of
politically associated special interest groups would have to be appeased, this
is the primary method of wealth building among the political class.

~~~
gamblor956
Literally none of what you said is true.

1 is required only for developers seeking zoning changes. Low-income housing
allowances aren't required if a development falls within existing site zoning,
which is something that LA developers have used to great effect.

2) This is completely false, anti-union FUD.

3) This wasn't true before CA law was changed to simplify the approval
process. You only need 1 comprehensive environmental impact study, and if
you're close enough to another planned development (generally within 1 block),
you can incorporate parts of their EIS into your own.

4) Views are not protected in CA...Appeasement not required.

5) Both cynical, false, and also misunderstands where the political class gets
its wealth from (lobbying, not real estate).

------
gesman
Why don’t allow employees to WFH full time and only come to office as
necessary?

Why don’t government stimulate and encourage corps who promote full time (not
1 day a week for good behavior) WFH policies?

There is absolutely no need for 2/3 of all high tech employees in Bay Area to
drag their physical bodies into their statically assigned corporate chairs.
Lots of meetings, conf calls and work can be done remotely.

That’s the solution that doesn’t require $1B and will take very little to
implement and could have REAL impact.

~~~
foolfoolz
this is already happening and a big part of the problem.

when you separate work location from living location, that opens up people to
live farther away from work. so you end up with more people living in places
with less housing because its "cooler". like san francisco. even though tons
of people work at businesses outside the city.

~~~
camel_Snake
Are you aware of any studies that support this hypothesis? It's an interesting
one.

------
scarmig
Google should take a couple billion dollars, build a company town in South
Dakota, and simultaneously get a House seat and maybe even some Senators out
of it.

------
CiPHPerCoder
Most major tech companies want to hire onsite, when there are plenty of places
in this country where you can buy a lot of real estate for much cheaper than
the Bay Area.

I pay less on my mortgage for a large house with over an acre of land than
friends of mine pay for rent for studio apartments in San Francisco or
Seattle.

Investing $1B into housing in the Bay Area seems nice at the surface, but
maybe if we stopped demanding everyone be willing to relocate to one of a
handful of cities to work in our industry, we'll solve the root cause of the
problem.

~~~
davidw
The 'root' cause is that industries tend to concentrate, and that's not an
easy problem to solve.

And at the same time there's a massive economic draw, California refuses to
let the market provide anything like enough housing.

~~~
falsedan
Software development isn't an industry like oil refining. Imagine if all the
architects or civil engineers were located in a small handful of cities!

~~~
davidw
Architects and civil engineers mostly work where their services are needed,
which makes sense. The economics of their industries are different.

~~~
falsedan
I don’t know what the point of this fact is. Architects and engineers mostly
work from offices, which are usually located so that there is a good pool of
potential employees around.

------
albertshin
Welcome to Googleville.

It's been a while since I've read cyberpunk novels like Cryptonomican, but I
feel like the reality of corporations becoming villages and societal entities
is slowly getting there anyways.

Your move, We.

~~~
runevault
I'd put this more on Snow Crash than Cryptonomicon.

~~~
DataWorker
Right, don’t they live in shipping containers in snowcrash. A few years back I
heard there was a movement in Oakland to build shipping container villages.
Nothing new since the 90s except for Facebook.

~~~
0xEFF
Ready Player One is the shipping containers.

~~~
runevault
Actually I'm pretty sure Hiro also lived in a shipping container at least at
one point during the book. Though it's been years since I read it (something I
need to correct).

------
lalos
Reminded me of this interview with Peter Thiel:
[https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1133942478501888000](https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1133942478501888000)

Interesting investment decision but to their defense they might be
diversifying.

------
georgeecollins
I think this is good and should be encouraged. The Bay Area needs more housing
desperately.

~~~
brianwawok
My only question, is will these houses have access to public transit or will
they drive? If driving, can your roads handle the increased traffic?

Housing, transit, schooling.. these all seem interconnected. Just increasing
supply of one just strains the rest of the system, no?

~~~
twblalock
The only way transit will be built is if a strain develops. Otherwise what
problem would be solved by building it?

~~~
ketzo
Man, sometimes it's fun to imagine having a gigantic autocratic government
like China that could just... build empty cities, or huge railroads that 11
people ride every day, knowing people would fill them up eventually. But then
I guess you'd get everything else that comes with a gigantic autocratic
government.

------
dannykwells
This is awesome. I hope they follow through on actually making this affordable
and not only for Google employees (which I agree, would likely be illegal).

Pols in the bay area suck. All of them. They are against affordable housing
and against families. But, they love money more than they hate families. So
way this approach will help and pave the way for the other major companies to
do the same.

~~~
wbronitsky
“Ah yes, all of them. Every politician in a place where millions live is bad,
none of them are working to build housing and schools, transit and
infrastructure.”

That’s a horrible argument that has no basis in fact. Multiple cities, like
Mountain View, Oakland, San Jose and Foster City, just to name a few off the
top of my head, are putting in affordable housing. Alameda County Transit has
vastly expanded their bus fleet, something the tax payers chose on the ballot!

You might hate your elected officials, but not all of us do.

------
kennystone
George Pullman made a town outside of Chicago for workers to build his
railcars. It didn't end well:

"the town and its design were... a paternalistic system that took away men's
rights as citizens, including the right to control their own domestic
environment"

[http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1030.html](http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1030.html)

Happy that google is making this investment; it's worth a shot even if it is
far the ideal way to build housing. Hopefully the NIMBYism that defines this
area won't kill it.

~~~
pessimizer
It ended perfectly well for the person who built it. The object wasn't to make
the workers happy, the object was to make Pullman money.

------
nova22033
>This will enable us to support the development of at least 15,000 new homes
at all income levels in the Bay Area, including housing options for middle and
low-income families. (By way of comparison, 3,000 total homes were built in
the South Bay in 2018)

This nails the root cause of the housing "crisis" in the bay area.

~~~
khazhou
That's not the only root cause. It is also trivially easy for Google and other
BigCo's to hire from outside the Bay Area (college recruits, etc) and those
people move here without a plan of where to live. They arrive and set up in a
small apartment and soon discover there's no other housing option, but the job
is too lucrative and interesting to leave. Another 1000 follow the next week.

------
pneill
Politics is a huge factor in the lack of affordable housing. Both legislation
and concerns by citizen about how new housing will "change" a neighbor make it
next to impossible to build higher density housing.

Watch this video - it's eye opening
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4)

------
carapace
> Building enough housing to roll back prices to the "good old days" is
> probably not realistic, because the necessary construction rates were never
> achieved even when planning and zoning were considerably less restrictive
> than they are now. Building enough to compensate for the growing economy is
> a somewhat more realistic goal and would keep things from getting worse.

[https://experimental-
geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employme...](https://experimental-
geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employment-construction-and-cost-of-san.html)

However, if the political consensus could be developed there are
possibilities, e.g. "Prefab housing complex for UC Berkeley students goes up
in four days"

22 units, four stories, four days.

> This new 22-unit project from local developer Patrick Kennedy (Panoramic
> Interests) is the first in the nation to be constructed of prefabricated
> all-steel modular units made in China.

> Kennedy notes that the cost of trucking to Berkeley from the port of Oakland
> was more expensive than the cost of shipping from Hong Kong.

> But the savings haven’t been as great as expected, he said. “Sixty-five to
> seventy-five-percent of the construction costs are still incurred on the
> site. In addition to the usual trades, we have crane operators, flagmen,
> truckers and special inspectors.”

[https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/02/prefab-housing-
compl...](https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/02/prefab-housing-complex-for-
uc-berkeley-students-built-in-four-days)

(Reminds me of Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion House. Factory built prefab homes that
were to be delivered by helicopter, installed onto masts built onsite and
containing the power/comms/water/sewage hookups.)

------
abc_lisper
Nice of google to do this. People who complain about this also complain about
google being one of the causes, but there is only so much one can do. Glad
that google is setting a good example for other companies to follow!

------
khazhou
There's a very large area of land directly south of Redwood City with an
extremely low housing density, that could be torn down (with some controversy,
no doubt) to make way for the new Google housing.

You can easily see the underutilized density on the satellite view, by how
green it is compared to surrounding cities:

[https://goo.gl/maps/K3i32Rj4yoQ9gcUD6](https://goo.gl/maps/K3i32Rj4yoQ9gcUD6)

~~~
skoocda
I do wonder if you're joking when you say "some" controversy.

A quick check of property values shows that these are estates in the $5M -
$20M range:

[https://www.zillow.com/homes/Atherton-
CA_rb/](https://www.zillow.com/homes/Atherton-CA_rb/)

~~~
khazhou
Indeed.

To be less facetious about it, there is some irony in this project being
promoted by Google executives, who live in chateaus and mansions in Atherton,
Los Altos Hills, Woodside, etc, with an acre of land to their name, when this
investment is of course to house the labor that got them those mansions to
begin with. The execs who sponsor the housing projects obviously won't sell or
give up their own land to make room for the new apartments.

Random Atherton listing on Trulia:
[https://www.trulia.com/p/ca/atherton/87-patricia-dr-
atherton...](https://www.trulia.com/p/ca/atherton/87-patricia-dr-atherton-
ca-94027--2082694121)

------
40acres
I think Big Tech has enough clout to make a dent in the housing woes of large
coastal cities. The cost of moving away from California is too high for
Google, using it's political capital to advocate for housing is a great way to
force change. NIMBYs are gonna NIMBY, but if half these NIMBYs work for
companies that are lobbying for rezoning of land they own and providing
grants.. who wins out?

------
rndmize
As usual when big tech talks housing, "Bay Area" actually means "Peninsula and
west SJ". The other two-thirds of the Bay, bedroom communities and cheaper
areas - who cares about those? Perhaps there's something about say, the tri-
valley area that makes it unacceptable for office buildings that I don't know?

Dublin has doubled in population in the last 20 years. That sounds like an
area that is pro-growth, where a company could have a useful impact without
getting shot down by NIMBYs every step of the way.

I'd dig up stats on the biggest employers in Dublin, but can't seem to find
any, so we'll go with Pleasanton as a proxy - Kaiser, Safeway and Oracle. Wew.
We got one. Too bad most of tech doesn't even know the East Bay (much less the
parts of it past the hills) even exists.

There are options to deal with the housing problems, even staying within the
bay. Companies simply aren't pursuing them.

~~~
dver
San Ramon as well. GE digital and SAP are big in Bishop Ranch. Of course there
is the Chevron HQ.

Many of my neighbors are FANG employed, equally as mystified as to why none of
those haven't opened a satellite office here.

------
yep_thats_right
As someone who lives in a single-family home, I'm totally for public transit,
having fewer cars on the streets, more walkability, etc.

But until cities solve the issues of smell and noise, I'm not interested in
living in a dense area. Keep it clean and quiet. Invest in urban forestry.
Then it starts to look appealing.

~~~
jefftk
I live in Somerville MA, which is has about 18k people per square mile,
compared to the ~2-6k I see in the South Bay. It gets that density through
many two and three family houses placed closely together, and it's not smelly
or noisy. Here's a representative street view example:
[https://goo.gl/maps/ggwHETDomuRUQAB89](https://goo.gl/maps/ggwHETDomuRUQAB89)

You can be much denser than the Bay Area while still having trees and feeling
"residential".

~~~
shados
> and it's not smelly or noisy

Yes, yes it is. Somerville mades me go to NYC when I want a quiet vacation.
The absolute noise and other issue is much lower, but the city is designed and
built so poorly it can't handle it. When houses are built in cardboard with no
space between the walls and the sidewalk, and someone walks home drunk, you'll
get woken up something quick.

~~~
jefftk
_> The absolute noise and other issue is much lower, the city is designed and
built so poorly it can't handle it_

My experience of Somerville has been very different from yours: I've never
been woken up by noise coming in from the street, and I've lived in two very
typical wood-frame houses (first a triple-decker in East Somerville, now a
two-family near Davis).

But it's also worth separating "what should you build a house out of to avoid
noise infiltration" and "what sort of neighborhood densities can you have with
low levels of ambient outdoor noise".

~~~
shados
I mean, just the noise from the events in Davis Square can be heard from half
a mile away, so most decibel meters would flag that as "pretty loud".

~~~
jefftk
I'm within a half mile of Davis and don't remember ever hearing an event there
from my house? Maybe Honk?

~~~
shados
Just the typical music events (not the small solo musicians but when there is
an actual show) they hold every now and then, or when the flea market gets
pretty crazy can definitely make it hard to watch TV even with windows closed
in my experience.

------
ei8htyfi5e
Are we entering a new age of Feudalism? Corporations will provide housing,
food, salary and company stores. This is so incredibly dystopian it's crazy.

------
Apes
I feel like I'm going crazy here: why is absolutely no one talking about the
fact that $1B is no where near enough money for 20,000 homes? That's only a
budget of $50,000 per home. In an area where the average cost to build a home
is over $250,000, they're clearly only investing around 1/5 of the required
cost, but seem to be taking the credit for all the work.

------
newsoul2019
Every state and local official is going to try and stop this in its tracks,
with their hand out, until they "Get Theirs!"

------
dev_dull
Eventually people will wake up and realize the Bay Area is the way it is
because there’s vested political, financial, and ecological interest in
keeping it broken.

The reason there’s no affordable low income housing isn’t because that
specific type of housing isn’t being built, it’s because they’ve made it
nearly impossible to build anything BUT luxury.

------
arghzoo
My friend wrote a really interesting piece on why this is important:
[https://medium.com/@seandoeshousing/cssr-corporations-
should...](https://medium.com/@seandoeshousing/cssr-corporations-shouldering-
societys-responsibility-f830fbc87ba1)

------
redm
Its a big country with lots of space. Remote work and virtual offices work.
Companies should spread out some.

------
shrimpx
This looping discussion, the same observations raised over and over, with
similar responses, threatens to completely kill people's drive to get to the
actual issues. Oh it's that same thread about nimbyism and the general
hopelessness surrounding bay area politics.

------
goatsi
So 15000 single family homes? What density are they going for? The language
isn't clear.

------
os7borne
Quick Question: Will Google be using this project, once built out, to test all
its future "Home" products? Clearly it will have the leverage to do so and
will greatly benefit the company over the long term. If so, great strategic
thinking.

------
bprasanna
Sorry, off the topic. Firefox and Opera browsers report this page as Insecure
Connection!

"The owner of blog.google has configured their website improperly. To protect
your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this
website."!!

~~~
what_ever
Looks okay here on FF.

~~~
bprasanna
Well looks like being in VPN makes the difference! Same error observed in
Chrome as well. [https://imgur.com/a/cpe12US](https://imgur.com/a/cpe12US)

------
gok
> we’ll repurpose at least $750 million of Google’s land, most of which is
> currently zoned for office or commercial space, as residential housing

Generally it's not up to the owner of property how it should be re-zoned...

------
option
A much better solution would be:

1) open more large centers in other states. having a single supercenter with
good jobs in one place only is bad for that place and country as a whole

2) encourage and promote remote work

~~~
pertymcpert
No it's not a better solution, it can help but the you have a ghost town that
is the Bay Area it makes sense to make it denser and more like European
cities.

~~~
option
Bay Area is not a ghost town, it is already overcrowded

~~~
pertymcpert
It is. Walk around Cupertino or Sunnyvale. Everything is so far apart, cars
everywhere. You can be the only person walking on a block.

------
timwaagh
Google home just took on a whole different meaning

~~~
judge2020
"Get a free Google home mini for each room in your Google Bay area house!"

------
m0zg
$1B/20000 is 50K. That's perhaps enough to build an outhouse in SV, or a tool
shed, but not a "home".

~~~
partingshots
I think in this case, this money is not going to be used for building the
homes themselves but rather developing the land in partnership with private
developers who will then do the actual portion of making buildings.

------
thrower123
How are they going to build houses for 50k apiece? You'd be hard-pressed to
throw up a trailer park that cheaply.

------
peterwwillis
George Carlin had it right. We should turn all golf courses into public
housing, and plow up cemeteries for farming.

------
pyb
How were they allowed to rezone their land to residential ? Are they getting
preferential treatment?

------
option
I don’t understand why all the growth need to happen in this place and this
place alone. Wouldn’t it be nice if “good” jobs overflow SV and appear in
other places? (kind of happening to Austin, Boulder, NY, etc.)

And people who already live in the area should absolutely have a right to
direct it’s future.

~~~
s3r3nity
Not sure why you're getting downvoted - it's the argument from NIMBY's that
keeps getting pushed aside and needs to be properly addressed if this issue
will ever get resolved.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: you don't have to live in
California.

For $1B, you could probably build enough houses for every single Google
employee in a place like Detroit, or most other states (Arizona? Nevada?
Colorado? etc. etc.) and then have those employees live there on campus. In
fact, with the savings on cost of living and the like, which would mean those
workers don't need as high wages, you could probably do the math that this
would _save_ you money in the long run.

(...then again someone probably _did_ do the math and determined that the
investment in these 20k homes, with current market rates increasing at a crazy
pace, would probably be a higher return, but I digress.)

People can complain about NIMBY's / supply side all they want, but the fact
that the demand side (the labor market) refuses to correct itself more
strongly (there is _some_ growth in places like Austin, Boulder, Chicago,
Boston, etc., but not enough) is bonkers to me. And if I owned a home in the
Valley, my incentive would be to never change that market dynamic.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> it's the argument from NIMBY's that keeps getting pushed aside

It gets pushed aside because it's a bad argument, and it's often asked in bad
faith.

"Hubs" for various industries pop up all the time. Hollywood for movies, NYC
for finance, etc. There are very real advantages to the strong ecosystems
created by gathering so many specialists in a single area, both for companies
AND for workers; working for Google making a Google salary in a small office
in Topeka instead of SF sounds great until you think about whatever happens if
you lose your job somehow, and suddenly you have no local options for jobs of
that tier.

Plus, most of the NIMBYs are trying to avoid density to preserve suburban
sprawl-type neighborhoods, which themselves are anti-environment and classist.
Pushing people out to metros where they'll contribute to yet more sprawl is A
Bad Thing.

~~~
s3r3nity
I wouldn't call it a bad argument, as it's rooted in rational economics -
which is also why it's unfair to call it "bad faith."

The ecosystem of tech is partly built upon the idea of decentralization - as
long as you can connect to the internet, you should be able to do what you
need to do from anywhere. Otherwise tools like "video conferencing software"
would tank quickly, as we might as well just fly to visit everyone we need to
meet, right?

If you as an employee want to price in the substitutability of your job search
as the demand side of the market, fine - as a homeowner, I would recognize
that inelasticity and price my rent accordingly. There is no "bad faith" there
- just rational economics, where one market understands that the other refuses
to correct itself.

A "Google Salary" doesn't mean anything if you take home a small fraction of
it, and what's left is eaten up by higher prices of the same goods; anywhere
else, you can take home more, and those remaining $dollars can get you more.
It's at the point now where I recommend to my employees / friends / colleagues
that they shouldn't move to the valley unless they're getting 2.5x their
salary, as that _might_ get you the same standard of living vs. our current
spot.

Now I don't live in the Valley, but I somewhat empathize with the homeowners
argument to _some_ extent: It's not necessarily classist or anti-environment
for homeowners in a community, who _own_ the land, to band together and
dictate what should go on in that community: how it should look, what would be
the best for their investment, etc. And the point that talks past them is
"this pushes people out to metros." The easy response is: it only pushes those
out to metros _who feel like they have to live there._ Otherwise you price
that into your decision to move there along with all the other factors at
play.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> which is also why it's unfair to call it "bad faith."

It doesn't _have_ to be bad faith, sure. It's just been my experience with the
people putting the argument forth that they're making it in bad faith. Or
maybe intellectually lazy is a better descriptor: they give the impression
that it's a serious suggestion, but upon questioning it becomes clear that
they haven't applied the least thought to it; it was just a reflexive "I don't
want them here" masquerading as a policy proposal.

> as a homeowner, I would recognize that inelasticity and price my rent
> accordingly. There is no "bad faith" there - just rational economics, where
> one market understands that the other refuses to correct itself.

No idea what you're talking about here. Nobody's disputing that if demand is
high and supply is low, it makes sense to charge high rent prices. At least,
I'm certainly not arguing that.

> A "Google Salary" doesn't mean anything if you take home a small fraction of
> it, and what's left is eaten up by higher prices of the same goods; anywhere
> else, you can take home more, and those remaining $dollars can get you more.

Whether this is true depends on what those goods you want are. If you want to
dump your money into international travel, seeing shows, buying cars and
electronics, then high cost/salary places make more sense than low cost/salary
places. If you want to own a big house with a lot of land, then the cheaper
places are better.

> It's at the point now where I recommend to my employees / friends /
> colleagues that they shouldn't move to the valley unless they're getting
> 2.5x their salary, as that _might_ get you the same standard of living vs.
> our current spot.

It sounds like you're engaging in a common fallacy of assuming people value
the same things you do, which is probably a big home, since otherwise needing
2.5x the salary wouldn't make any sense, as there are few other major goods
that are impacted that hugely by cost of living (well, there's also
childcare).

> It's not necessarily classist or anti-environment for homeowners in a
> community, who _own_ the land, to band together and dictate what should go
> on in that community: how it should look, what would be the best for their
> investment, etc.

It doesn't have to be, but it generally is, because the decisions they reach
are generally anti-environment and classist.

What do you think it does when you mandate single family homes on big plots of
land? Poorer people can't afford that, ergo they can't afford to live there,
ergo poorer people are kept out of living in that neighborhood. And you're
saying that economic segregation is not classist, because...?

Similarly, that style of zoning is also energy inefficient and results in
people cutting into nature because you need more land per person. Pretty
simple. But it's not anti-environment, because...? You haven't actually
explained why.

> The easy response is: it only pushes those out to metros _who feel like they
> have to live there.

Who cares? I'm talking about the actual impact. The impact is encouraging
suburban sprawl.

------
all_blue_chucks
Alternative headline: Software company expands into the real estate business.

------
bufferoverflow
That's $50K/home. Is that even remotely realistic in the Bay Area?

~~~
nugget
The headline is misleading. In the article it says Google is rezoning $750
million worth of land (+ $250m in subsidies) from commercial to residential
use, and making it available for private development. It wouldn't surprise me
if one of the biggest problems for Google was retention of young talent driven
primarily by prohibitively high housing costs. In that way there is an
incentive for them to bring down housing costs, although I'm not sure what
impact 20k units will have unless they retained ownership and became a
landlord to their own employees.

~~~
chucksmash
> It wouldn't surprise me if one of the biggest problems for Google was
> retention of young talent driven primarily by prohibitively high housing
> costs.

Well, it would surprise me :-)

According to levels.fyi, a new grad at Google is clearing $180k/year all-in.

Next tier, still not senior, clears $250k/year. That's more than $20k/mo pre-
tax. Even at an outrageous $5k rent on a single income and with no roommates,
you're still talking about $6k or so >>monthly<< surplus for living your life
and saving.

~~~
maxsilver
> Well, it would surprise me :-) According to levels.fyi, a new grad at Google
> is clearing $180k/year all-in. Even at an outrageous $5k rent

Is that really enough to afford to live? Is that housing cost accurate?

A programmer at Google making $180k/yr salary brings in about $9,315.58 in
after-tax income (according to PaycheckCalculator). The average house within
10 miles of Google's HQ currently costs about $1.5 million dollars according
to Zillow's current month averages. (That's _$9,745 /month_ in after-tax costs
per month, assuming 0% down on 30yr mortgage).

Like, maybe if you are single and live off of ramen and you pick the shittiest
housing you can find, those numbers can work. But I personally couldn't afford
to live in California on that salary (despite it being, under normal
circumstances, an amazingly high salary).

~~~
iandanforth
Is it common where you are for new grads to buy homes right out of school?

~~~
maxsilver
It is common where I am for people who make 200%+ median income to be able to
own a place to live, yes. This is true regardless of their age or education
level.

~~~
iandanforth
That's a useful perspective, thank you.

------
lisper
There are tons of apartments going up in San Carlos and Redwood City.

------
wallacrw
Still a shithole -- [https://memes.getyarn.io/yarn-
clip/57b0057d-268a-48dd-b4e5-c...](https://memes.getyarn.io/yarn-
clip/57b0057d-268a-48dd-b4e5-c9ff5d235a45)

------
pier25
So Google plans to spend 50,000 for each home?

------
ficklepickle
Google wants to disrupt the inefficient legacy government.

You won't even need to vote. They will already know how you feel about the
candidates. Much more efficient!

------
optimuspaul
that billion would be better spent moving their workforce to more hospitable
environments.

------
ikeboy
I'm reading this as Google has a bunch of land and they want to cash in on
sky-high prices.

~~~
ketzo
Eh. If you wanna be cynical, they could've cashed in harder by building more
commercial real estate. They say they're specifically rezoning a bunch of land
that's currently zoned for office or commercial space, so I gotta give 'em
some credit.

~~~
ikeboy
>First, over the next 10 years, we’ll repurpose at least $750 million of
Google’s land, most of which is currently zoned for office or commercial
space, as residential housing. This will enable us to support the development
of at least 15,000 new homes at all income levels in the Bay Area, including
housing options for middle and low-income families.

This doubles their investment if the average home price net of costs is 100k.
It seems likely the number will be way above that, just glancing at median
home prices.

------
ProAm
> The only solution is changing the zoning laws

Or these companies can move. If you take successful STEM related businesses
and move them to better area's the talent will follow. There is more than 1
answer to this problem, most people just want to change laws because its
easier for them.

~~~
djakjxnanjak
No way, no how is Google or any other decent employer going to uproot all
their knowledge workers and make them unproductive for the foreseeable future
by forcing them to move to another region.

The diaspora from the Bay Area will keep happening the way it has been: at the
economic margins. Over time, people outside of tech who aren’t subsidized by
prop 13 or rent control will get priced out. There will be a perpetual
underclass living in trailers and garages, and the landed aristocracy will be
further entrenched.

~~~
PaulHoule
It's an interesting question.

How much less productive would these workers be if they were moved to Salt
Lake City or Henderson, NV or Syracuse, NY?

If you lost 20% of the productivity but could pay 30% less that would be OK,
wouldn't it?

~~~
rhinoceraptor
In the long run they'd be as productive (or more, since the commute would
likely be better). The problem is it would take months or years to move, and a
lot of people don't want to or can't move, so they'd quit and find a new job
almost instantly.

~~~
erik_seaberg
The fact that they can find a new job almost instantly is why they came here
in the first place. It would take many competing employers showing up to make
another labor market similarly appealing. You'd have to pay me a lot to move
to the middle of nowhere, because not only am I not excited about living
there, I'm still better off _moving back here_ for the next job.

