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Palo Alto struggles to provide housing that's affordable (paloaltoonline.com)
2 points by jseliger on Aug 19, 2016 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment


Palo Alto is in serious trouble - little (new) housing stock, tremendous affordability issues, no zoning reform, most housing projects rejected... The city is bleeding human capital at an astonishing rate - and not just teachers and fire fighters, even those earning high salaries such as techies and attorneys struggle to afford to live here. The response ... "move some place cheaper", "don't buy expensive lattes and you'll be able to afford a home here some day", "your generation is entitled", "we have too much traffic already", "stop the jobs", "it's Palantir's fault"...

What do you say to this? Young people in Palo Alto and renters are subsidizing existing residents. By heavily restricting housing supply residents have built an investment machine. Foreign-owned "ghost houses" are a testament to that.

Questions: Can anything be done to build more housing in Palo Alto? Should we do it? Does Palo Alto care? And at the end - is Palo Alto even worth it? Maybe we all should move away...




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