I visited Palo Alto for the first time today as an intern. I grew up in an outer suburb in another state, where normal homes cost as much as a trailer park home in the Bay. Non-Bay people think I’m misinformed when I mention housing prices here. I want housing prices fixed. But holy shit this place is such a vibe. Like I have no backyard and I’m a slight NIMBY now 😭 How can we get everyone a backyard, Blind? TC: 🥜 (not Comcast) #housing #paloalto
Nimby?
Not in my back yard. Basically people who oppose things when it is in their community, but they’re all for it if you do that someplace else. Low income housing, for example.
Not everyone needs a backyard. Nor should they expect one.
*wants
YIMBYs want to turn all nice neighborhoods into dense slums. The reason zoning code exists is to prevent nice places from becoming overpopulated shitholes. **** you YIMBYs, leave my nice pre war walkable neighborhoods alone. Every building you build looks like absolute garbage and makes quality of life worse for all existing residents.
1) all the nice cities of the world have beautiful dense hoods 2) the houses in many low density neighborhoods look like shit and its no loss to replace them w apartment buildings
Number one, YIMBYs don’t go after real low density sprawl. They go after nice low density “inner suburbs” that aren’t replaceable. Number two, I 1000% bet the existing residents in the shitbox single family homes don’t want a even more ugly 5 over 1 overlooking their yard.
dense city w nice parks > sprawl w shitty yards. but the bottom line is -- if it's my plot of land i should be able to build more housing there if i want. no one is making nimbies give up their own literal yards. nimbies are trying to tell ME what I can't do w MY yard fuck em
I partially agree but here's a thought experiment. Start with a baseline that you have control over your own land. Now, say, a few people pool together to create a larger cohesive development that they co-own. Collectively they still have exclusive control over it. Maybe they establish some bylaws, have a process for setting new rules. An HOA. Free association in a private market. Scale this up. Isn't that all municipal zoning is? One possible answer is HOAs suck and should be disbanded, I just don't see that it's a violation of personal freedoms to choose to buy in one. One possible answer is that beyond a certain size, an HOA becomes a trust. A city size HOA should be trust-busted.
The issue with NIMBY is not that it’s bad to want/have a backyard/nice house. The problem is that they deny new/affordable housing for anything even remotely close to where they live for bs reasons
Yes, Palo Alto is nice. I would love to have a house there. Yes, 5 over 1 is ugly, and cities never grow infrastructure appropriately. Living in cities during a growth spurt is annoying. And yes, urbanists are dead wrong about density fixing affordability. SJ is cheaper than SF. But here's the thing. Density doesn't create affordability, balance does. Demand outstrips supply. Yeah the Bay has nice weather but 100% of people moving here are moving for jobs. Those jobs are in buildings that the city allowed to be built. So the city is choosing to manufacture the imbalance. Palo Alto daytime population increase is 50%. Mountain View is 50%. San Francisco is 30%. (These are approximate and shockingly understudied figures.) Only San Jose has a decrease, and the SF urbanists want to turn SJ into SF because they're idiots. NIMBYs have a point, if they're consistent about it. But what makes them so gross, is that people who got here earlier and joined tech earlier, rank higher. The growth of the tech boosts their portfolio. The newcomers pay higher prices and higher taxes (prop 13) and subsidize early arrivals. The passive income accelerates, people buy income properties. Finally when they turn around and sell, the profit taking is on the back of a new arrival. It is straight up economic rent. Best thing for the Bay is frankly to downsize tech and force these fangs to have more satellite campuses and remote workers. If Google wants to triple their FAR or get an insider deal on federal land, we should say fuck no. If you don't know what any of these terms mean you are not qualified to comment on this market.
Density helps with cost because most of the value of a home (in a high priced area) is the land, not the structure. If you have a million dollar plot of land, putting a fourplex on it means four cheaper dwellings with 25% of the cost of land compared to a SFH. Multiplexes with shared walls are also cheaper to build per square foot.
I don't think you read the whole thing. If you upzone only residential, then yes residential will be cheaper per unit. More supply same demand. But if you upzone offices, more companies locate there or expand, more people move for jobs. More demand. The ratio of jobs and employed residents is what drives prices. Literally if supply is meeting demand or not. If there are more jobs in your city than people to work those jobs, people have to commute in, and there is more competition for the homes with shorter commute. Cities never, never upzone only residential.
And to directly answer OP's question, the total acreage of backyards is capped at the total acreage of land, which you can't increase.
Backyards require a lot of time and money to maintain. No, thanks
Why does everyone need a backyard? Not everyone wants want you want and to imply otherwise is self centered
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What’s the vibe exactly? Boring?
Sleepy-looking neighborhood dripped up in sequoias where a lot of history has been made