>“I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton,” wrote Andreessen and his wife Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen in an email. “Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and IMMENSELY increase the noise pollution and traffic.”
The comment, which was originally reported by The Atlantic’s Jerusalem Demsas, was also reviewed by Fortune. Andreessen did not respond to either outlet’s request for comment. The other executives who opposed the 58 housing units also did not respond to or declined Fortune’s request for comment.
Andreessen’s opposition seems to represent a shift from his expressed views in an essay he publish on his venture capital firm’s website at the start of the pandemic, titled “It’s Time to Build.”
“We can’t build nearly enough housing in our cities with surging economic potential—which results in crazily skyrocketing housing prices in places like San Francisco, making it nearly impossible for regular people to move in and take the jobs of the future,” he wrote.
In the essay, Andreessen also noted that his perspective was probably an uncommon one for someone of his ilk: “I expect this essay to be the target of criticism.”
The hypocrisy is delicious, and so typical of many ostensibly progressive tech magnates in California (and elsewhere). NIMBYsm at its peak.
Slightly less glib -- I think it's more about allowing the precedent. Not so much about breathing the same air as the poors, but more about letting the poors think they should have any such opportunity to share their air.
To be fair, even poor people don't like living around one another. That's why they move away as soon as they can afford it.
That's why after realizing her sudden immense wealth, even Patrisse Cullors purchased her homes in Inglewood and a spacious ranch in Conyers, GA, instead of say Compton or Oakland.
No, non-Atherton residents can 'f-off' with whatever their opinions are, unless it materially affects the community at large.
The residents can have whatever kind of municipality they want. If they want to keep it quiet and not be Manhatten, it's their prerogative.
Now - blocking the electrification of Caltrain - that - is actual NIMBYISM, because they're blocking needed infrastructure changes that don't likely hugely affect them.
Those kinds of actions make it impossible to have High Speed Trains etc. etc..
But otherwise, there's plenty of land, people can go elsewhere, and tell Google they need to open an office in Morgan Hill because nobody can get to GHQ without spending 1/2 their salary just to survive.
What happens in Atherton is, indeed, the business of Atherton residents. But if you have a net worth of $1.3 billion, and you walk around publicly telling every other municipality what they need to do, only to turn around and publicly refuse to do that in your municipality under the auspices of, "My gigantic pile of 'fuck you' money will still be a gigantic pile of 'fuck you' money just ever-so-slightly-smaller, so much so that I won't even notice the difference," then... yep. We're all going to roll our eyes and tell you to fuck off.
Now, you don't have to fuck off. That's your prerogative (after all, you've got all of that "fuck you" money!). But we'll still tell you to.
Andreessen isn't telling other communities what to do.
'It's Time To Build' is not about 'building buildings', for gosh sake's, it's about building companies, innovating, organizing ourselves better and 'doing stuff'. Not 'building homes' in Los Angeles.
You can 'fuck off' with your 'fucking off' language, this isn't the place for uninformed mob rage.
People have their quiet neighbourhoods and want to keep them that, it's not really any of your business. There's plenty of room for you to express yourself and even get angry with other by telling them to 'f-off' just not in Atherton apparently.
>Andreessen isn't telling other communities what to do.
"It's Time to Build" is literally Andreessen telling us what he thinks that we - the United States as a broader community - need to be doing as we move towards the future.
>'It's Time To Build' is not about 'building buildings', for gosh sake's, it's about building companies, innovating, organizing ourselves better and 'doing stuff'. Not 'building homes' in Los Angeles.
It's about all of that and building homes. As a matter of fact, it's actually a pretty well-rounded piece. An excerpt:
>You see it in housing and the physical footprint of our cities. We can’t build nearly enough housing in our cities with surging economic potential — which results in crazily skyrocketing housing prices in places like San Francisco, making it nearly impossible for regular people to move in and take the jobs of the future.
I'm struggling to square away how lamenting our inability to "build nearly enough housing" is "not about 'building buildings'".
>You can 'fuck off' with your 'fucking off' language, this isn't the place for uninformed mob rage.
Again at the risk of not having a typically-constructive HN conversation, there are 61 up votes for my comment and yours was decently downvoted. It's safe to say that more people disagree with you here, or - and I think this is more likely - that they at least understand my point better than you do. You see...
>People have their quiet neighbourhoods and want to keep them that, it's not really any of your business.
... I have never actually said that it is my business. In my first post, I only told a gigantically wealthy person off for whining in caps lock about losing an amount of money that will have next-to-no impact to their massive net worth. You then responded to me telling me that I don't get to tell Atherton residents how to determine what happens in their municipality.
I responded, clarified that I know that, and further clarified that I was only telling a gigantically wealthy person off for the same reason I mentioned just above and in every previous post of mine in this chain. Yet you are again telling me that "it's not really any of [my] business" what Atherton residents want. Stop putting words in my mouth!
Again - let them do what they want with their community. But Marc Andreessen absolutely can still fuck off for that comment.
I really don’t understand this mindset, shouldn’t you stop caring about money at a certain point? So what if one of your houses decreases in value, you’re set for life. Is it some weird money obsession/disease?
I think it's an excuse. The real reason is probably he doesn't want his neighborhood transformed. If your neighborhood is tree lined single family homes, you may not want multi-family living that breaks the "character" of your neighborhood. Lower prices also attract less affluent people, would increase school sizes, etc. I still think it's hypocritical, but I don't think its about just the home value.
Do you feel the same way about people that want to prevent chain stores or Walmarts from opening in their neighborhoods? It's something like that...
You are right! It looks like he might not give a crap about the actual financial "hit" from depreciation of his house as much as he worries that if the prices do go down, Atherton will become more affordable, and that to him is probably a massive problem.
I am a huge YIMBY but pretty sure he is stating arguments that he thinks will be compelling to the rest of the voters in his town. Most people their prob have net worths north of 10M - but entirely wrapped up in their property values.
Solution is to just not give local towns such strict control. Otherwise there is truly no incentive to allow building like this
I'm doubtful of both of those points. Perhaps I've not seen the part of town where the merely very affluent live, but there's not that much of the town to see. I'd guess that 25% or less of their wealth is in their Atherton properties.
If you're fighting for market share with other companies... IDK, fair enough. If you're trying to stop people with way less money from having a place to live, that's just gross.
And it's false in any case according to some of the research I've seen. It's housing. For people. Not a sewage facility.
This has always seemed like a very weak argument, almost like a straw man that people believe in for some reason. Even intuitively, why would one expect that reducing land use restrictions would devalue land?
But let’s try actual, if low quality, numbers:
Houses near Atherton, in Menlo Park, seem to sell for around $500k-$1M per 1000 sq ft of lot size. That’s $500 - $1000 per sq ft lot.
Houses in Atherton, supposed home of very expensive homes, seem to sell for around $10M per acre of lot. (Yes, Atherton is so fancy that it uses different units in Zillow!). That’s about $230 per sq ft of land.
In other words, Menlo Park (not exactly a paragon of high density and unrestricted land use) has 2x-4x the land value per unit area of Atherton.
So those NIMBYs who actually want to extract dollar value from their property should support less restrictive land use!
edit: of course this is the value of random houses plus their lots. I expect the effect would be more pronounced if the houses were removed — those Atherton houses tend to be quite fancy.
> Houses in Atherton, supposed home of very expensive homes, seem to sell for around $10M per acre of lot. (Yes, Atherton is so fancy that it uses different units in Zillow!). That’s about $230 per sq ft of land.
It should be noted that the zoning rules in Atherton require a minimum lot size of 1 Acre per home. Thinking of it in terms of square feet lets you compare it to nearby towns somewhat, but misses that building say two houses per acre (1/2 acre lots) is illegal there.
Computing land value per square foot isn’t missing something — this is the whole point. Atherton has a land use restriction that depresses property values.
(Under SB9, one can likely split a 1 acre lot once. I imagine that Atherton would try to block such a split.)
I have nowhere near the same problem with someone who claims the things Andreesesen does in his angry rebuke of this project, if that person doesn't at the same time preach for elsewhere what they very visibly don't want to practice close to home. Again, this is why NIMBYsm is so detested, not so much because of its specific arguments but because of its often overtly disgusting hypocrisy.
If that's how you think, then at least I hope you're not writing massive essays asking (the rest of) the entire the nation to build more housing, even if it makes neighbourhoods ugly.
Show me land on the periphery of an urban center that's large enough to meaningfully expand housing that isn't farmland, rangeland, forestry, or a protected habitat/important ecological preserve.
Generally solved by incentivizing large lush green lawns for single family housing in large tracts. The lawns have the added benefit of capturing carbon and increasing air quality.
Mandating one 18-hole golf course for every 2K people in municipalities would also create positive offsets to impervious surface and add to the benefit.
Let's say for the sake of argument that all of the water levels around the world rise by, let's say, five feet over the next 100 years. Say 10 feet over the next 100 years. And it puts all of the low-lying areas on the coast underwater. Let's say all of that happens. You think people aren't just going to sell their homes and move?
I don't want housing to be an investment. But I also own a house that will inevitably be treated like one because that's the currently supported cultural standard.
I don't think ordinary folks should lose their shirts off their backs if they lose their homes. Sure, I have zero sympathy for the investors who are manipulating markets, but the every day worker? Nah.
Usually if the solution seems that simple, and you think everyone else is an idiot for not realizing it, then they are not the ones being idiots. It's a pattern we should all consider when we "don't understand" a widely understood concept.
And I don‘t understand why the idea that the only way to keep things nice is to never change anything, ever, is en vogue. I find it incredibly uninspired and depressing.
It's not socialist to allow private entities to build the housing that the market demands on the land they own in order to make money. It's much closer to "socialist" to have state apparatus dictating that people not build housing.
I own and live in an 80-year old single family house. My neighborhood -- one of the more desirable ones in my city -- has had a massive ongoing build out of 3-5 story apartment buildings in the past 10 years. They don't bother me in the least. It's either that or people can't afford to live here, which seems bad.
> AB 686 requires all public agencies to “administer programs and activities relating to housing and community development in a manner that affirmatively furthers fair housing, and take no action inconsistent with this obligation”
AB 686 also makes changes to Housing Element Law to incorporate requirements to AFFH as part of the housing element and general plan to include an analysis of fair housing outreach and capacity, integration and segregation, access to opportunity, disparate housing needs, and current fair housing practices.
Every nice town was a lot nicer in the past. Including Atherton. By that logic, he should tear his house down and give his land to his neighbors, making the town nicer.
Peopleperson is trying to dodge around saying they don't want to live near people who are lower income. Often this is a way of saying, "I don't want people with different ethnic, racial, or cultural backgrounds near me."
It's more the density that people object to, not more people, or more housing. It's when there's an area in the denominator. More density means more cars, more air pollution, more traffic, more noise. More accidents, more time searching for parking and standing in lines. It may not add up to ruin, but it's objectively worse.
That's typically how it's done, yeah. Intentional communities will often market themselves specifically as walkable or transit adjacent.
But there's no reason not to take the things that work well in them and bring them elsewhere. Traffic separated bike lanes and Dutch style intersections are common sense improvements that we can build that improve access without requiring a car.
Socialist? Letting you build whatever you want on your own property is the spirit of capitalism. NIMBYs are the ones who want every town to be run by central planning.
Socialism doesn't even mean central planning either. Most socialists are just interested in, "everyone who wants a home should be able to get a home." Not necessarily a big fancy home with a three car garage, but somewhere they can call their own.
Even if that means billionaires might lose some of their home value.
Sure, but targeted political messaging shouldn't be concerned with things like factual accuracy. The people who complain about socialists don't know any self-identified US socialists, since those Bernie-type people didn't exist before 2016.
Totally. I'm a Marxist and I have no idea where half the complaints about socialists even come from. People just make up a bogeyman and slap the "socialism" label on it.
He lives in a quiet neighbourhood and he likely moved there for that reason.
The community wants to keep it that way.
It's (almost) entirely none of your/my/our business otherwise.
The anti-NIMBYism issue is an irrational hysteria ... pushing everyone to think that the moment an area becomes popular, it must be turned into New York or Hong Kong.
And FYI are those places affordable?
There's tons of land in the US, it's time for stupid cities to organize themselves and not have antiquated/disjoint transport systems i.e. Caltrain/Bart.
If the 'Valley' were 'intelligent' they'd have a train from Santa Rosa to Morgan Hill in 1 hour.
What is 'very hypocritical' is that in Atherton they apparently refused the infrastructure changes necessary to electrify the CalTrain.
Now that - is terrible.
I'd imagine this would mean a modicum of change / trouble, for quite an important common/civic benefit.
Andreesen should be pushing for that electrification change, and probably other forms of change, and finally not be ALL CAPS in emails like a giant turkey. I mean, it evokes images of an angry giant bald man smashing his fists on the table. I mean, Marc, chill. Just make your point ...
> There's tons of land in the US, it's time for stupid cities to organize themselves and not have antiquated/disjoint transport systems i.e. Caltrain/Bart.
I’ve never understood how some of these executives support the widening income and wealth gap developing in most of the modern world. Is it not incredibly short sighted to reduce the discretionary money available to your customers and price them out of living within commuting distance of the jobs you need filled?
Where I live, it’s so expensive to live anywhere near our major cities that I’m left wondering how the NIMBY classes who live there expect to get their morning coffees or their houses repaired when they’ve finished pricing any young people and trades out of a 50 mile radius from them…
I have zero respect for this crypto grifter. Try enough number of folks and eventually a few lucky ones like him emerge. Doesn't mean he knows what he is talking about.
Sadly, this is all very predictably Bay Area progressive. Yes, I'll put up the BLM sign on my window, but no, you cannot build anything for the riffraff near my Victorian, we wouldn't want to endanger the historic character of this neighborhood.
There's a bunch of this in Seattle too - where neighborhoods are raising upzoning, despite the fact that building mixed use creates walkable neighborhoods, increases character, brings in new businesses, and generally improves things.
Thankfully, Washington seems to be moving to do away with single family only zoning.
Very true. Just look around Marin County. There are tons of BLM signs but I doubt most of them have ever seen a black person. Certainly not one that wasn't a millionaire.
Atherton is not your typical "Bay Area progressive," unless your cartoon idea of Bay Area progressives is Marc Andreessen, Eric Schmidt, or Steph Curry.
Aside from all the hypocrisy etc... isn't this concept just plain wrong? Doesn't more housing + business increase the property value of an area? I could see the first-order effects being a reduction of surrounding property as supply increases, but the second order effects of more people are almost always accretive. The downtown area of a city is typically some of the most expensive real estate.
Not every expensive neighborhood is expensive for the same reason. There's definitely an "archetype," if you will, of neighborhoods that primarily derive their value from being exclusively home to the upper class. Atherton, River Oaks in Houston, even Palm Beach in Florida are examples. Compare property values in Palm Beach to West Palm Beach, for instance.
Are those property values high because there are a lot of mansions built out there, or is it specifically because of the population density in county limits?
Atherton is literally a town of nothing but mega-mansions with very, very little in the way of commerce or industry. Its entire raison d'être is to be a retreat for the ultra-wealthy. Having ordinary people walk around in your billionaire enclave lowers property values.
> Having ordinary people walk around in your billionaire enclave lowers property values
I understand this is the argument is being made. This just seems to me like this is an opinion stated as if it were a fact, and not a tautological truth of property valuation.
Tell that to Marc himself! Atherton residents are the kind of people who call the cops on pedestrians for walking around suspiciously. They have given every indication of not wanting the non-rich anywhere near them.
no. rezoning to multifamily housing in single family housing areas pretty much always lowers the value of the single family housing units. crime goes up, schools get worse. it's all relative, but it's a real phenomenon.
if people wanted to live by multifamily housing they would live in the city. people move to suburbs to escape dense housing.
You see this everywhere, I would be more surprised if it DIDN'T happen.
It's why there are almost never (in the USA) bus lines to the fanciest malls or other shopping areas - if you can't even afford a car to get there, you're not wanted there.
And even if you could get a bus, people like Robert Moses designed parkways and bridges such that it was difficult or impossible to route buses to places where wealthy people gathered. See: hostile architecture and architectural exclusion.
Probably way above median housing prices and also probably above market rate for the size. Guessing backed by some smarts / conveniences. Whoever wants to afford those - good for them. But we sorely lack affordable ones - no need to be fancy, luxurious or new, just affordable.
I think RHNA is an important measure to make sure communities like Atherton aren't allowed to externalize the cost of their lifestyle onto the rest of the Bay, but I think a land value tax coupled with dramatically liberalized zoning laws would be an even better solution.
That way, people who "don't want to see their community change" would be free to buy up land and pay the opportunity cost of not developing it. Society could use that revenue to either invest in the welfare state, or offset taxes for the rest of us.
I have always wondered my community (Park City, UT) is spending money to build affordable housing rather then just paying subsidies to make existing housing more affordable. The estimated cost for the last development under consideration was something like $600,000 dollars for one unit, and that was a few years ago. I bought my market-rate condo at under $300,000 a few years before.
There are plenty of lower-cost units available, and subsidizing rent/purchase of these would allow a small benefit to be realized by a large number of qualified people, rather than a huge benefit to a small amount of lucky people who win the lottery that is used to allocate the small number of inits that exist.
Because the population has grown more than supply in most of the western world, leading the existing housing supply as a shortfall situation versus demand that exists. Therefore by subsidising purchases and thereby increasing the purchasing power of each buyer, you just end up removing one limiting factor on sellers increasing prices, and most of the subsidy ends up pocketed by the sellers in the form of increased house prices, which is both inflationary and not the policy goal of these programs.
It's hypocritical, sort of, but doesn't outrage me. Like other celebrities, these guys have a public and a private persona. Basically tweeting in support of their ventures is part of their job, a bit like 50 Cent's job is to take pictures surrounded by wads if cash. It wouldn't offend me if it turned out actually he had a bank account.
It might be that their position on new housing in their region is an egregious one, i haven't really thought about it, but the hypocrisy around it is, I think, par for the course.
The people working in tech. This motherfucker needs us, just doesn't want us very close. Close enough that he can siphon the life out of the workforce, but not that close.
