Why $4.5 Billion From Big Tech Won’t End
The cure is straightforward, free land use of its government restrictions, but that is not going to happen. The current landowners are fully invested in the idea that their land is worth its current pie in the sky inflated value. They will never vote to do anything which would drop their land values by 70-80% or more. Nor will politicians throw themselves on their swords by acting against the demands of their constituents. So, nothing will happen, prices will remain absurdly high, the cost of living will remain high, and the working and middle classes will be squeezed out of the state. Detroit, ho! "A mile from Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino lies the sun-faded carcass of the Vallco Shopping Mall. At the moment it consists of empty, buff-colored buildings, acres of black asphalt and a pile of rubble where the parking garage used to be. About a year ago, a developer submitted a proposal to build 2,400 apartments on the site, half of them subsidized to put rents below the market rate. The city approved the plan reluctantly, and afterward a community group sued. The project is stuck in court. Stories like that hang heavy over Apple’s $2.5 billion plan, announced Monday, to help solve the dire shortage of affordable housing that has come to dominate life and politics in the most populous state. The pledge came weeks after Facebook announced $1 billion for a similar program, and months after Google did the same. Earlier, in January, Microsoft committed $500 million for affordable housing in the Seattle area. Beyond public relations, the moves amount to a statement from some of the tech industry’s largest employers that they are starting to take a more active role in addressing the chronic regional housing shortage that makes their expansion difficult — not just for their employees, but for the public at large. But don’t expect the money to make much of a difference. A few billion dollars doesn’t buy a lot in California’s punitively expensive housing market. Even if it did, the companies’ announcements were accompanied by crucial yet mostly unanswered questions like where, how and when this money will be spent. And as the Vallco struggle illustrates, the biggest question is the one California has long wrestled with: how to get much-needed housing built when local governments and homeowners do everything they can to prevent it." A word of advice to those living outside of areas like Oregon and California, where there are restrictive zoning and urban growth boundaries, don't follow this model. In the end, this model will destroy anything it is applied to without reservation. Worse yet, it will be the property owners who ensure the destruction. Humans are willing to believe desirable fantasies, like the idea that urban growth boundaries will preserve farms and timberlands or that socialism is a caring system. Good luck with that.
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