[poof131]

You miss a big piece. These cities all allow new office spaces and thereby new jobs, since that brings in tax revenue. They just don’t allow new housing, so people pay astronomical prices, commute from far away, or live with entire families sharing spaces designed for single people. For an area that claims to care about the environment and the welfare of immigrants, the lack of building is selfish, greedy, and immoral and one of my biggest disappointments about where I grew up. I’m glad to see this being fixed at the state level and state law superseding local law.

[darth_avocado]

From the article:

> Its (Los Altos) zoning prohibits multifamily housing, whether apartments, townhomes or condos, along with commercial stores and shops in the entirety of its city limits.

The asymmetry of how cities/neighborhoods interact with each other is what creates the need for interventions like this. Some cities are more than happy to open up commercial and office spaces without allowing additional housing, eating up all the tax revenue, all the while pushing the burden of housing and other infrastructure on others. Meanwhile cities like Los Altos make any commercial development not possible in their neighborhood but will have its residents happily go to other neighborhoods to fulfill their need of a $7 artisanal coffee. Cities like Oakland will try to push high density housing in areas that don’t really add any value, simply because these are rich neighborhoods and you get election votes for doing it, meanwhile, plenty of medium/low income neighborhoods would benefit more from new high density housing with commercial space and the infrastructure upgrades that come from it. There’s all kinds of selfish interests and there needs to be a check on them.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

So how moral is the behavior of the companies building/renting offices there, knowing in advance that housing is unaffordable? Only because their investors live nearby?

[syzarian]

Instead of talking about morality I think it’s best talk about incentives and try to determine what incentives ought to be in place in order to achieve a desired outcome. For whatever reason, it is the case that building high density housing is not allowed in many locations and the accompanying expense of that is unsustainable. I use “expense” to encompass financial, economic, societal, and environmental costs.