Apple pledges $2.5 billion to fight California housing crisis

[crazytown]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - Apple Inc on Monday said it would commit $2.5 billion to easing a housing shortage that has driven up prices across California, with most of the money dedicated to funds that will be run either with or by the state government.

One billion dollars will go to a jointly run fund with state officials aimed at jumpstarting delayed or stalled affordable housing projects. Another $1 billion will go to a state-run fund to provide first-time home buyer financial assistance to teachers, nurses and first responders such as police and firefighters, among others.

In an interview with Reuters, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said the company felt a “profound responsibility” to improve California’s housing crisis. Apple’s current headquarters - a ring of gleaming metal and glass nicknamed the “spaceship” in Cupertino, California - sits less than five miles from the suburban family home where co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak assembled the first Apple computers in the 1970s.

“We want to make sure that it is a vibrant place where people can live and also raise a family,” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook told Reuters in an interview. “And there’s no question that today that isn’t possible for many people, that the region suffers from an affordability crisis that is existential.”

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-housing/apple-pledges-2-5-billion-to-fight-california-housing-crisis-idUSKBN1XE12X

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Fighting gentrification is difficult

Everytime you inject low-income housing into an area, it attracts the support people that the gentry needs, but then the supporting jobs become pretty good paying because of location, so you get more gentrification. Many low-income people find it easier and cheaper to flee.

[iluvtennis]

2. Like that Apple is donating the money for affordable housing, but the key is to keep the housing

affordable long term. I paid $2990 a month for a 2 bedroom apartment in San Mateo (20 miles from San Francisco). When I moved out the landlord increased the price to $3600 month. This was an older (60's vintage) very small apartment and no way worth $3600 a month. Landlord set that amount strictly because they could do it. Some serious rent control is needed in California.

[BigmanPigman]

5. I just signed a petition about this last week outside

of my S CA supermarket. I knew the person getting signatures. There were two about rent control and one is about limiting increases between moves.

[iluvtennis]

8. Excellent BigmanPigman.

[JohnnyRingo]

3. Part of the problem are local zoning laws.

Trendy areas like Silicon Valley don't allow new multi occupancy buildings. More and more California zoning laws require the property acreage to be a certain multiple of the house square footage, assuring new developments are estate McMansions. It's all about maintaining high property values.

[Retrograde]

4. Huh? Nothing being built here but multi-occupancy buildings

Looking at the part of Silicon Valley I'm most familiar with - Mountain View and north - practically all the new construction is multiple residence or multi-use. There have been a lot of densely packed townhouses constructed on just about every piece of vacant land in these parts in the last 2 decades. I don't know where you're seeing int this minimum acreage thing, but it's not where I live.

[JohnnyRingo]

10. Rolling Stone Magazine.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been so specific about Silicon Valley, but I was posting from memory. It's a good read nonetheless, highlighting how Golden State taxpayers vote to ensure housing shortages. Certainly I understand why homeowners in California would want to protect their property values, but I'm sure that if an apartment building does go up it will unlikely be affordable due to supply & demand (unless it's subsidized).

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/california-housing-crisis-causes-874803/

Why Can’t California Solve Its Housing Crisis?

<excerpt>

At its heart, California’s housing problem is one of scarcity: According to one analysis, the state has 3.5 million fewer homes than it needs to house all the people who live there. That gap was created over decades — largely as a result of the zoning policies of individual communities, under pressure from local residents. Randy Shaw, a longtime Bay Area housing advocate and author of the book Generation Priced Out, says the best way to describe the dynamics at play is to look at the city of Atherton. Thirty minutes from San Jose, Atherton is the most expensive city in the country: The median price of a home there is $8.1 million.

“You can’t build an apartment building in Atherton,” Shaw says. City code prohibits anything other than a single-unit building with a footprint that cannot exceed 18 percent of the land. In other words, everything but a single, detached home with a yard is verboten. “You have all of these cities in California where you can’t build anything but a luxury home,” Shaw says. “When you have zoning restrictions that prevent you from building the housing you need, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get in the situation we have.”

It’s a problem lawmakers across the state are grappling with, including in San Jose, where 94 percent of the city is zoned for single-family homes. “You got lots of family housing, and you’re not going to bulldoze it to go build apartments,” Liccardo said at a meeting of the state’s mayors in July. “At least, not if you don’t want [homeowners] to burn down City Hall.”

[Retrograde]

11. Atherton is billionaire central

and it buts up against the Fair Oaks section of Redwood City, which is largely Hispanic. Atherton is home to people like the former CEOs of Google and eBay, not to mention my congressperson. It's an anomaly in that it has almost no businesses and has not been affected by the building frenzy that's going on in neighboring Menlo Park and Redwood City. It's a nice town to bicycle in, though, since aside from the few through streets there's little traffic.

[JohnnyRingo]

14. It's cited as as extreme example of the problem.

Runaway property values in the paradise that is California has left little real estate for affordable housing near upscale job centers. It makes little sense that the Hooters waitress could live in an apartment building in Madonna's neighborhood. Indeed, it makes sense that said Material Girl would seek zoning laws that kept it that way.

Unlike you, I don't live there so I take your word for the housing situation. I can't afford it.

[mpcamb]

6. Developers will snuff up that 2.5 billion like it coke.

[maxsolomon]

7. It has to be directed to non-profits that retain and operate their buildings.

money going to help 1st-time workforce buyers won't help the unhoused off the streets.

[oldsoftie]

9. I bet Apple would do a better job spending the money than the government would

[killaphill]

12. Republican talking points

n/t

[oldsoftie]

13. No, actual facts. Just watch & see how much is eaten up by "administration costs"

If it actually happens.

[LanternWaste]

16. You're confusing an unsupported sentiment with "actual facts."

For example, Medicare's administrative costs are app. $132/person vs. an average of $700 for private plans.

(Source: 2017 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds)

[oldsoftie]

17. If we were talking about healthcare, you'd have a point. We're not.

Especially on the West coast, private development has been cheaper than government controlled development. In Portland, a developer built affordale apartments for the city at under 100k each
Government almost always takes longer & spends more on projects like these.

[RandiFan1290]

15. Yes, they are