
The Poverty Just Over the Hills from Silicon Valley - Animats
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/silicon-valley-pescadero/531423/?single_page=true
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jdale27
California, especially Silicon Valley, wants to have its cake and eat it too.
People want to "preserve the agricultural heritage" of this region, but not
allow even the minimal amount of development needed to meet the basic needs of
the people who embody that heritage -- because then they would have to give up
the luxury of having (the illusion of) an untouched natural coastline nearby.
Similarly, they want all the jobs that sustain unlimited business growth in
the valley, but without the burden of having to build sufficient housing (too
dense) and infrastructure (NIMBY, higher taxes) to support those workers. It
just isn't sustainable.

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ac29
Anyone who lives in the Bay Area owes it to themselves to visit some of these
areas. The Santa Cruz Mountain communities and Coastal communities are
amazing, and close by.

As far as the contents of the article, well, there is an affordable housing
crisis just about everywhere in and near the Bay Area. People commute from as
far away as Tracy, Los Banos, Modesto, Stockton, and even Sacramento into the
Bay Area. Its understandable that these beautiful, relatively close by
communities are seeing housing prices quickly become unaffordable for those
who live there. As someone working in Silicon Valley, I'd much sooner live in
La Honda, Half Moon Bay, or the other assorted coastal and Santa Cruz mountain
communities than the cities in the San Joaquin Valley.

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sjg007
The coastside needs another highway near Pescadero and to upgrade 91 to four
lanes.

Ton of land as well that nobody will ever build on. There's talk that
marajuana might turn the area around. Flowers were a huge business and I
thought the revenues were higher than 140m. Still the need for housing is
desperate. But it is NIMBY central and then you still have the costal
commission, and various other lawsuits that will prevent any type of
development. Even infill is a difficult.

It's sad. A beautiful place, a lot of inaccessible areas (by design) and a no
growth mentality.

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dmckeon
The demand for housing is high enough that agriculture is getting squeezed -
high rents make labor cost more than growers can afford. Details covered in
the report TFA mentions:
[https://flipflashpages.uniflip.com/2/88537/377983/pub/html5....](https://flipflashpages.uniflip.com/2/88537/377983/pub/html5.html)

It is the same problem as the rest of the Bay Area - every place wants the tax
revenue of businesses and jobs, and expects workers to commute, but no place
wants the expense of housing and schools - or roads.

Nimby, yes, but also permits: proposals to address a recurring road flooding
problem near Pescadero needed ~12 approvals or permits from ~9 agencies. See
page 17 of:
[http://sanmateorcd.org/PescaderoFlooding/Pescadero%20Rd_Buta...](http://sanmateorcd.org/PescaderoFlooding/Pescadero%20Rd_Butano_Flood_Solutions_Final%20Report%202014.pdf)

The SR 92 traffic is very commute dependent. Prohibiting left turns during
commute hours might help, but the 92 West to SR 1 North (2 lanes to 1) would
still be an afternoon bottleneck. Widening 92 to 3 lanes, and running 2 East/
1 West in the AM, and reversing that in the afternoon might be a possibility.

What endpoints did you have in mind for "another highway near Pescadero"? I
can't find a good land use map for the South Coast at the moment, but finding
a technically feasible alignment might be challenging, even before the
permit/Nimby/EIR/lawsuit rodeo gets started. There are a _lot_ of parks & open
space areas in the hills.

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sjg007
Well make highway 1 four lanes as well.

