Why aren't tech companies buying or building massive apartment complexes, making them appealing with a few amenities, and renting them out for cheap to their employees? I know building development in San Francisco proper is limited, but in the general bay area or South is not. Now you have a very attractive package: a relatively big salary and somewhat affordable housing. Talent would be much more willing to relocate, even if your tech lab is outside San Francisco proper.
Many seem very keen to, but most housing initiatives brought before at least the Mountain View and Sunnyvale councils (in my experience) face hard opposition from individual homeowners.
Local city governments have made it impossible to build large amounts of housing. The entrenched interests of current land owners do not want lots of housing in their city. From their point of view, it's only hassle. More people on the roads, things changing, etc. Also it stops their property values from rising so quickly.
Well there you nailed it on the head. There's a valid reason the NIMBYs don't want more housing: US city governments are traditionally very very poor at housing planning and companies use that as an excuse to avoid taking into account all the externalities.
I mean, you increase housing but don't increase retail units or parks in the same area, thereby creating a cultural/food desert. Even if you do, if you don't increase road capacity or install better public transit (which since it's usually at county level requires a lot of coordination), then you're simply increasing problems.
NIMBY is the simplest solution - often folks who end up in that camp have tried advocating other solutions and have failed at them because no-one wants to foot the bill for all the planning bits that make a decent (or even livable) neighborhood.
It's the other way in California: compared to elsewhere, excessive amounts of retail and non-residential development because of prop 13. Local governments are very dependent on sales tax since the aggregate property tax rate can't support local services, and retail throws off that sales tax revenue.
Leaving aside any restrictions on development which do exist, it’s still a pretty awful thought. Now if you leave for any reason you presumably also have to find new housing in short order.
Because tech companies want to be in the tech business, not the real estate business. And investors would rather see slightly higher salaries for employees who then fend for themselves, instead of the business getting involved in real estate as a potential huge distraction.
