Hat tip to Eddie89 for sending in this article – he also wondered when we’ll see this around here!
Excerpts:
Palo Alto is seeking housing solutions for residents who are not among the Silicon Valley region’s super-rich, but who also earn more than the threshold to qualify for affordable housing programs.
The city council has voted to study a housing plan that would essentially subsidize new housing for what qualifies as middle-class nowadays, families making from $150,000 to $250,000 a year.
The plan would focus on building smaller, downtown units for people who live near transit and don’t own cars, along with mixed-use retail and residential developments.
“Prices have just gone through the roof, making it unaffordable for middle-class people, your firefighters, your teachers, and, frankly, some of your doctors,” Palo Alto Vice Mayor Greg Scharff said.
Scharff worries that losing middle-class workers will hurt the city. “What the council is proposing is that we work together to fund and subsidize, what is basically middle-class housing; which, traditionally, has not been subsidized,” Scharff said.
Bean can hardly believe it.
“We have people struggling to make it at a quarter-million dollars a year,” Bean said. “That’s a terrible thing.”
When I was living on the Penninsula back in late 90’s, I listened to a news story on NPR about the mayor of San Carlos. He grew up in San Carlos, went away for college, and then came back and ran for office. He moved back home to live with parents……after he was elected MAYOR! His salary was not enough to buy anything even in the surrounding areas (Belmont, San Mateo, Redwood City).
No matter what solution Palo Alto politicians come up with, it is guaranteed to make things worse and not better.
But, politicians like corporate executives have to be seen doing “something” in order to justify their existence.
London has a very similar problem, 2 hour commutes to work as a waiter, nurse or copper.
In New York state, I believe you can qualify for HUD rental assistance if you make $100K or less.
What is it some wise guy said about democracy? Something about every single one of them failing once the teeming masses realized that they can vote themselves money out of the public coffers?
I think those fellows who were in a quartet, and kept playing as the Titanic started listing, had the right idea. Don’t run around yelling and screaming like big babies. Just try to relax, have fun, and enjoy what you have while you have it.
Banks holding onto properties and not foreclosing to keep the losses off their ledgers, creating artificially low inventory, causing prices to inflate.
Easy fed money policy allowing people to borrow many, many times more than their actual income.
All cash buyers, local and foreign, seeking a place to park their money that actually gains interest.
Flippers doing the same.
Yep! Everything’s fine! No bubble here, whatsoever!
Audit the Fed? Then what?