
Google’s modular apartment plan hailed as possible housing crisis fix - Mz
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/06/14/googles-moffett-field-modular-apartment-plan-hailed-as-possible-housing-crisis-fix/
======
Animats
FactoryOS, the builder, has never built anything. But they have a really cool
team video.[1]

It sounds like Google is building a "man camp", like the ones in oil
fields.[2] "Owned by management companies, the oil companies typically pay a
daily rate per employee for residency at the camp, and, depending on the
employment arrangement, the oil company may require employees to be
responsible for a certain portion of the cost. ... Many oil companies have set
up company policies that forbid alcohol, illegal drugs, firearms, and
unauthorized women. Rowdiness is controlled not only by background checks of
employees but also by working the employees long hours so that each day is
like "Groundhog Day" – work, eat, sleep – leaving little time for
shenanigans."

[1] [https://factoryos.com](https://factoryos.com) [2]
[http://www.ogfj.com/articles/print/volume-10/issue-4/feature...](http://www.ogfj.com/articles/print/volume-10/issue-4/features/what-
the-frac-is-a-man-camp-.html)

~~~
ceejayoz
> so that each day is like "Groundhog Day" – work, eat, sleep – leaving little
> time for shenanigans

Someone didn't watch that movie very closely.

~~~
logfromblammo
Some estimates put the time Phil spent repeating Feb 2nd at _10000 years_. He
spent half a year, practicing 4-5 hours a day, just learning how to flip
playing cards!

~~~
ceejayoz
There's some fun analysis of the length at
[https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/6334/how-long-
was-...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/6334/how-long-was-bill-
murrays-character-phil-davis-supposed-to-be-in-a-time-loop), including a post
directly from the screenwriter.

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gehwartzen
"innovative ways to address the housing crisis..."

So the bar for innovation has now been lowered to include fancy trailer parks
and the resurrection of the 'company town'?

~~~
Kalium
In a region where building housing is disruptive innovation...

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toddmorey
I thought most of the problems with prices in the area are geographic
constraints (think peninsula nature of San Fransisco) coupled with city zoning
laws (that, for one, limit vertical growth). In general, I never saw speed and
cost of construction as the biggest issue.

So the innovation here would be Google adding housing supply on its own land—a
company camp met of course with healthy critique.

I do think modular construction is set to dramatically change the way we
create buildings. For anyone interested, there's a still-operating 1968
modular 500-room deluxe hotel in San Antonio, Texas —designed, completed and
occupied in a then unprecedented period of 202 working days.

The best tidbit: Before arriving on the construction site, each room was fully
decorated, including color TV, AM/FM radios, beds, carpeting, bottle openers,
automatic coffee makers, ash trays, etc.

[http://www.modular.org/htmlPage.aspx?HtmlPageId=400](http://www.modular.org/htmlPage.aspx?HtmlPageId=400)

~~~
twobyfour
I want so badly to believe this, but the "innovative" modular apartment
complex recently constructed near the Barclay's Center in Brooklyn turned out
to be a boondoggle.

It was touted as being faster to erect than conventional construction. Then it
took nearly 5 years to assemble (similar-sized conventionally built towers a
block or two away have gone up in 18 months or less). And it's been plagued by
issues like leaks due to imperfect alignment (which can be adjusted for more
easily using traditional methods).

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return0
Can't someone see the absurdity of this? Building temporary housing for
extremely well-paid employees in a city where everyone is rich? Something is
off to say the least ... they will end up with uber-expensive makeshift homes
because people can simply afford to pay more for them. The logical thing to do
would be to expand their offices in other cities, or offer remote work. It all
seems to be driven by the billionaires who just love their city, but maybe
someone should point out that in the end the entire wealth and vibrance of the
US will be concentrated in a single city and that would have very bad
implications.

~~~
s0rce
The peasants (reasonably well paid tech workers) flock to their wealthy
patrons (billionaire CEOs).

~~~
return0
The last time that didn't end very well

~~~
sonthonax
Don't expect change to come from the peasants. They have bulwark of
conservatism throughout history.

------
austenallred
Honestly Google and Facebook should just become their own cities. The housing
restrictions are so incredibly broken in the south bay/peninsula that I'm not
sure there's a solution other than to work around them entirely.

~~~
rhino369
They need to lobby the state to take away the city and county governments
power to derail construction with bullshit zoning and permitting. If someone
wants to build 45 story high rises in sunset district, why should SF stop it.

~~~
acchow
City planning is not done well in SF. But it is a real thing. And it can be
done well.

~~~
rhino369
Sure, but SF has proved it has no interest in doing it well and the entrenched
interests are strongly incentivized to not do well.

The current situation is worse than unplanned.

I think urban planning makes more sense when you are going from undeveloped to
developed. But it's harder to do once you already have developed land that
needs to be torn down and redeveloped.

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SilasX
Wow. You know you screwed up city planning when "having to use company
housing" is an _improvement_.

~~~
r00fus
Is it?

Perhaps part of the issue is the fact that companies like Google/Apple/FB use
tax loopholes so their HQ cities don't really have the funds to properly
manage the problems these companies create with their large employee base.

~~~
ropiku
What tax loopholes are used to avoid local taxes ? From my understanding
corporate tax doesn't go to the local government. Looking at City of MV page
they only tax Business license, property and sales tax. From what I know they
prefer offices due to prop 13 which limits property tax growth.

~~~
FussyZeus
It really seems like some corporate tax should go to the cities. These
companies are more or less responsible directly for the insane gentrification
of the Bay Area, why shouldn't they use some of their immense profits to help
the city deal with the consequences of it?

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intopieces
FTA:

"The tech giant plans to buy 300 units of modular housing to serve as
temporary employee accommodations on its planned “Bay View” campus at NASA’s
Moffett Field, according to a source familiar with the plan."

Are the units temporary, or are the employees? Serious question.

“The end product is of the highest quality. It’s impossible to tell the
difference between a modular construction project and a traditional project,
other than that the modular goes up much quicker.”

I would like to see more based on this assertion.

~~~
astrodust
Could be they're billed as "temporary" for legal reasons. Another thing to
consider is there's a lot of "temporary" housing from the post-WWII era that's
still in great shape.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
My university housed chunks of departments it didn't like in one of those
buildings. The cyber-security club located its infrastructure (racks of old
servers) in the center of the building in a vain attempt to make it settle as
fast as the perimeter of the building.

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jumpkickhit
I hope they have a company store too, and you can get paid in credits for it!
/s

Personally, I don't like the idea of handing money right back to the company
you work for, for property they own and you just rent.

~~~
s0rce
Stanford does it for their faculty since they don't pay them enough to
actually afford to live in the area:

[https://fsh.stanford.edu/](https://fsh.stanford.edu/)

------
dredmorbius
The housing crisis is the result of both policy _and innate incentives to
rentier asset inflation_. If you want to attack housing, you've got to change
the _system_ , not simply construction.

We know how to build attractive and high-density housing. And there's a hell
of a lot room for improvement above Palo Alto's 960 persons/km^2

Redondo Beach, CA, ranked at #132 on the list of most densly-populated U.S.
cities, clocks in at 3,900/km^2.

Changing tax laws, real-estate financing, and costs of failure to develop will
have a far greater impact.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density)

~~~
nwah1
Well said. Unfortunately, California has Prop 13 which prevents implementation
of reforms such as the Land Value Tax.

~~~
dredmorbius
An obvious place to start concentrating fire.

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quantumwannabe
Could someone explain the pricing? $30 million for 300 "modular homes" that
appear to be very similar to trailer homes seems a bit much. That's $100,000 a
unit; you can build a much larger and fancier house for that kind of money.
From the WSJ article mentioned in the article, it sounds like the deal is for
the houses only, not any land.

~~~
DannyBee
"That's $100,000 a unit; you can build a much larger and fancier house for
that kind of money."

Not here, where the minimum tends to run around ~350 a sq ft, and higher
quality homes can be ~600-800 per sq ft.

(coming from the east coast, yes, this is bonkers, but ...)

~~~
quantumwannabe
It sounded like the $30 million was for construction costs only, not the price
of land. The price of a house is mostly land, not the actual materials and
labor that go into building the house. If the $30 million includes the land
price, then it's a great bargain. If not, it feels like Google's being ripped
off.

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sarcasmic
Company towns are a very old idea.

Unfortunately, demand response curves are fun. By providing company housing,
this venture will cause more people who've stayed away from the area due to
housing costs to consider it more favorably, as they will have the prospect of
obtaining relatively affordable housing through their employer.

This will intensify employee competition for those jobs, a quest in which
personal connections still help. Those personal connections are best
cultivated onsite and in-person, so this will likely drive up prices further
for non-company housing in the area.

I'm not sure that's much of a solution to the housing crisis.

------
pasbesoin
Ok, if anyone relevant from Google is passing by, please consider spending a
few percent of total cost on _soundproofing_.

Your tenants will thank you. And they will be better rested and more
productive.

------
Raphmedia
This feels like the Arcology of Shadowrun lore.

"Arcology (short for Architectural Ecology) is a term used to describe a self-
sustaining colony, typically a massive building which does not need to import
or export supplies to stay running and maintain a population of humans. The
most famous arcology is the [...] Self-Contained Industrial-Residential
Environment (SCIRE), and now known as Arcology Commercial and Housing Enclave
(ACHE) [...] Originally was home to over 90,000 Renraku employees and family
members. The SCIRE served as a shopping mall, industrial complex, and
basically self-contained private city of Renraku within the Seattle
Metroplex."

It's worth noting that this universe has the widespread concept of a "wage
slave", employees that have to work to keep living and live to keep working.

~~~
sedachv
Arcologies have nothing to do with videogames, they were a concept for a
three-dimensional city invented by the architect Paolo Soleri. Soleri's 1969
book Arcology: The City in the Image of Man is worth reading.

This project has nothing to do with arcologies. It is a trailer park.

~~~
Raphmedia
ShadowRun has video games but it's not a video game. It's a huge RPG universe
(first published in 1989) featuring video games, pen & paper rule sets, novels
(around 60 of those) and tons of lore.

I was pointing out the similarity of contemporary coporate campuses (Google,
Apple, etc.) with the "Self-Contained Industrial-Residential Environment" of
that very dystopian world where corporations have taken the upper hands on
governments.

------
ikeyany
A handful of huge tech companies could single-handedly fix the housing crisis*
by taking one of those disruptive risks they claim to cherish and move
headquarters outside of Silicon Valley/Seattle. Because other companies want
to be around the big guys, it will become a trend.

* - This is presuming you consider the current state of things, $2,500+ for housing as the norm, to be a crisis in the first place. At some point you have to admit that it couldn't really be a crisis, if thousands of people eagerly advance its existence year after year.

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magic5227
300 units is a "game changer"?

~~~
puzzle
Google getting 3 units, let alone 300, built in its home turf of Mountain View
is quite the breakthrough. If it sounds silly to you, it's because you are not
familiar with the soap opera that is the relationship between the city and its
largest business.

~~~
shostack
Tell me about it. Google has wanted to do things like making road changes to
improve traffic from the massive amount of people getting on and exiting 101
and Shoreline, and as I recall, MV basically said no.

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petra
Isn't the main reason for high rent costs in desired places , is the high cost
of land, not construction ?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
We're talking CA here. Just parking a double wide requires a 30-man crew paid
prevailing wage, ten grand in permits, etc, etc. Land and construction are
both expensive.

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bryanbuckley
Doesn't strike me as very creative. Sounds like Google should be talking with
their van-dwelling employees to seek a better solution. Would be great to open
up a van-dwellers Mecca to the public as well. I've thought about doing it
myself but I don't have the money to bootstrap such a thing myself.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
They already have those. They're called Walmart parking lots and the
arrangement is mutually beneficial. Walmart gets security, people get a place
to park and sleep for free without being hassled by cops. I understand that
people who live in "nice places" may be skeptical of their existence but trust
me, they exist.

"Nice places" with Walmart usually make the existence of said Walmart
conditional on that particular store not allowing overnight parking.

~~~
bryanbuckley
Walmart parking lots pale in comparison to what I'm suggesting. If you are a
Google employee already, a Google parking lot is pretty darn good but still
not as good as what I'm suggesting.

Sure, if you are on a road-trip and in a pinch Walmart is OK. But if tied to a
region, you can do much better than Walmart (as evidenced by driving around
the valley and cities and seeing where the vans are parked).

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rndmize
What a bad joke. This isn't even remotely close to fixing the big issues, like
prop 13 or zoning/NIMBYs or regulatory processes, or even minor ones in Google
control, such as building office space somewhere that isn't on the peninsula.

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bassman9000
Google Feudalism

Disclaimer: idea not mine, just shamelessly copying from someone else.

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randyrand
I think the word crisis is beginning to lose its strength.

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usuallybaffled
I was expecting something more along the lines of THX 1138

