Just about every community across the country needs to sort out having an appropriate supply of housing. Along with the gated digs for the company executives, there are the engineers, middle management and cleaning staff who all need places to live. For some reason, there is an innate tendency in to want housing for “those people” (generally meaning anyone who is ethnically, culturally, or economically different) to not be anywhere nearby, because it will hurt property values and be “dangerous,” etc. The truth is, if everyone down to the toilet bowl scrubber is paid enough to afford decent market rate housing, and there is enough supply of decent housing so that the market rate is not hideously distorted, you actually get stability and safety. Danger and instability come mainly when basic living arrangements are scarce and unaffordable, forcing large numbers of people to struggle just to survive. For a town like Cupertino, the benefits of having a hugely profitable company headquartered there come with the responsibilities of being a city that can accommodate all the people that come with those headquarters. Trying to preserve some (mostly imagined) idyllic past when it was a smaller place with fewer people is just a recipe for strife and disaster.
Sorry, market forces are the only thing that has been shown to work. That's what the anti-housing advocates are trying to disrupt, i.e., they are trying to keep the supply artificially low to keep their prices up. The value of the mall is best determined by the market. Clearly, the market has shown that a mall is not the highest and best use of it. It sounds like free market demand would dictate that housing is the best use for the owners. BTW, same goes for labor. Apple and others have to offer a wage and benefits sufficient for janitors, etc., to be willing to put up with commute, etc., to work there. That's why so many businesses support illegal aliens coming in as they can take advantage of them to work at lower wage. If the supply of illegal labor wasn't there, wages would have to rise to get people to take certain jobs. Partially addressing your concern over low wages; although it is unrealistic to expect free market would value janitorial work, your example, at a wage rate sufficient to afford multi-million dollar home near Apple Park.
Market forces are pretty good for setting the price of commodities and things like cars and iPhones. But pure market forces at work in housing, healthcare, energy and so on are why we Americans have elderly people thrown out on the street, why we have the worst healthcare costs in the developed world and why we are dependent on extremist Wahhabi Islamist fundamentalists in the Middle East for oil (actually a lot of that is good old government subsidies).
As for undocumented workers: it's not so much "businesses" who are hiring underpaid immigrants who don't have legal residency. Walmart doesn't pay slave wages that require workers on medicare and food stamps because it's hiring people running across the border. Walmart hires Americans and pays them nothing, less than they had been making at the mom and pop retailers crushed by Walmart coming into town to suck up local government subsidies in towns excited about these new "jobs."
Undocumented workers are being treated as slaves primarily by the American agriculture industry and by turkey producers and the like so Americans citizens can have dirt cheap food.
That's going to dry up if white supremacists evict all migrant workers and end visas for poors. Then Americans will have to either buy far more expensive food (or mechanically harvested food product) from US producers, or import food from elsewhere. That will destroy US ag, which by the number of Trump signs you see in the middle of CA or the US, is a primary industry supporting conservative Trumpland.
Within 4 years (3 left!) Trump looks set to grind Republicans into the earth, driving food producers and contractors who hire illegally (like himself) into bankrupcy while driving the GOP into the same level of popularity he enjoys. And then America will be driven into EU-style democratic socialism by Millineals sick of fascism, meaning all the cranky old republicans will at least be housed and fed in their old age, rather than being thrown in the street because they can't afford to keep up with inflation in a fascist-paradise where you're only valuable if you are capable of actively working for the goals of the state and are the right color. And really, Conservatives should pray for that working out.
Apple basically owns the city in which they are located because of their massive tax payments. It’s long past time for them to install their own puppet regime and have the city council, mayor and police all be directly answerable to them.
Works both ways tho, Apple has just (almost) completed building their HQ there, they're now at the whim of the city's taxes etc. unless they're wiling to up sticks and move elsewhere. Helluva investment to risk losing.
Just about every community across the country needs to sort out having an appropriate supply of housing. Along with the gated digs for the company executives, there are the engineers, middle management and cleaning staff who all need places to live. For some reason, there is an innate tendency in to want housing for “those people” (generally meaning anyone who is ethnically, culturally, or economically different) to not be anywhere nearby, because it will hurt property values and be “dangerous,” etc. The truth is, if everyone down to the toilet bowl scrubber is paid enough to afford decent market rate housing, and there is enough supply of decent housing so that the market rate is not hideously distorted, you actually get stability and safety. Danger and instability come mainly when basic living arrangements are scarce and unaffordable, forcing large numbers of people to struggle just to survive. For a town like Cupertino, the benefits of having a hugely profitable company headquartered there come with the responsibilities of being a city that can accommodate all the people that come with those headquarters. Trying to preserve some (mostly imagined) idyllic past when it was a smaller place with fewer people is just a recipe for strife and disaster.
Sorry, market forces are the only thing that has been shown to work. That's what the anti-housing advocates are trying to disrupt, i.e., they are trying to keep the supply artificially low to keep their prices up. The value of the mall is best determined by the market. Clearly, the market has shown that a mall is not the highest and best use of it. It sounds like free market demand would dictate that housing is the best use for the owners. BTW, same goes for labor. Apple and others have to offer a wage and benefits sufficient for janitors, etc., to be willing to put up with commute, etc., to work there. That's why so many businesses support illegal aliens coming in as they can take advantage of them to work at lower wage. If the supply of illegal labor wasn't there, wages would have to rise to get people to take certain jobs. Partially addressing your concern over low wages; although it is unrealistic to expect free market would value janitorial work, your example, at a wage rate sufficient to afford multi-million dollar home near Apple Park.
Undocumented workers are being treated as slaves primarily by the American agriculture industry and by turkey producers and the like so Americans citizens can have dirt cheap food.
That's going to dry up if white supremacists evict all migrant workers and end visas for poors. Then Americans will have to either buy far more expensive food (or mechanically harvested food product) from US producers, or import food from elsewhere. That will destroy US ag, which by the number of Trump signs you see in the middle of CA or the US, is a primary industry supporting conservative Trumpland.
It will probably lead to mechanisation rather than everybody giving up. Its a bit odd to claim that undocumented workers are slaves, and then to support the continuence of that policy.
Just about every community across the country needs to sort out having an appropriate supply of housing. Along with the gated digs for the company executives, there are the engineers, middle management and cleaning staff who all need places to live. For some reason, there is an innate tendency in to want housing for “those people” (generally meaning anyone who is ethnically, culturally, or economically different) to not be anywhere nearby, because it will hurt property values and be “dangerous,” etc. The truth is, if everyone down to the toilet bowl scrubber is paid enough to afford decent market rate housing, and there is enough supply of decent housing so that the market rate is not hideously distorted, you actually get stability and safety. Danger and instability come mainly when basic living arrangements are scarce and unaffordable, forcing large numbers of people to struggle just to survive. For a town like Cupertino, the benefits of having a hugely profitable company headquartered there come with the responsibilities of being a city that can accommodate all the people that come with those headquarters. Trying to preserve some (mostly imagined) idyllic past when it was a smaller place with fewer people is just a recipe for strife and disaster.
Sorry, market forces are the only thing that has been shown to work. That's what the anti-housing advocates are trying to disrupt, i.e., they are trying to keep the supply artificially low to keep their prices up. The value of the mall is best determined by the market. Clearly, the market has shown that a mall is not the highest and best use of it. It sounds like free market demand would dictate that housing is the best use for the owners. BTW, same goes for labor. Apple and others have to offer a wage and benefits sufficient for janitors, etc., to be willing to put up with commute, etc., to work there. That's why so many businesses support illegal aliens coming in as they can take advantage of them to work at lower wage. If the supply of illegal labor wasn't there, wages would have to rise to get people to take certain jobs. Partially addressing your concern over low wages; although it is unrealistic to expect free market would value janitorial work, your example, at a wage rate sufficient to afford multi-million dollar home near Apple Park.
Market forces are pretty good for setting the price of commodities and things like cars and iPhones. But pure market forces at work in housing, healthcare, energy and so on are why we Americans have elderly people thrown out on the street, why we have the worst healthcare costs in the developed world and why we are dependent on extremist Wahhabi Islamist fundamentalists in the Middle East for oil (actually a lot of that is good old government subsidies).
As for undocumented workers: it's not so much "businesses" who are hiring underpaid immigrants who don't have legal residency. Walmart doesn't pay slave wages that require workers on medicare and food stamps because it's hiring people running across the border. Walmart hires Americans and pays them nothing, less than they had been making at the mom and pop retailers crushed by Walmart coming into town to suck up local government subsidies in towns excited about these new "jobs."
Undocumented workers are being treated as slaves primarily by the American agriculture industry and by turkey producers and the like so Americans citizens can have dirt cheap food.
That's going to dry up if white supremacists evict all migrant workers and end visas for poors. Then Americans will have to either buy far more expensive food (or mechanically harvested food product) from US producers, or import food from elsewhere. That will destroy US ag, which by the number of Trump signs you see in the middle of CA or the US, is a primary industry supporting conservative Trumpland.
Within 4 years (3 left!) Trump looks set to grind Republicans into the earth, driving food producers and contractors who hire illegally (like himself) into bankrupcy while driving the GOP into the same level of popularity he enjoys. And then America will be driven into EU-style democratic socialism by Millineals sick of fascism, meaning all the cranky old republicans will at least be housed and fed in their old age, rather than being thrown in the street because they can't afford to keep up with inflation in a fascist-paradise where you're only valuable if you are capable of actively working for the goals of the state and are the right color. And really, Conservatives should pray for that working out.
Bingo. Pure market forces don’t work well for things like labor and healthcare, etc., because people value their own lives at infinity. “Free market economics” makes a faulty assumption that parties to a transaction always have relatively clear access to information and will act on that information with cold rationality. In the labor market, an informed, rational janitor would simply refuse to take a job at a wage that doesn’t cover her costs for housing, transportation, and basic living needs. She would be able to do this because all the other informed, rational janitors would do the same, and the going rate for janitorial wages would necessarily go up to the required price point. What actually happens, however, is that people will take work at substandard wages because they need to survive, and they’re competing against others with the same level of desperation built into their decision-making processes. Those doing the hiring have more information, know that if one person won’t take the low wage, there’s someone else who will, and so the wage drops to a much lower price point. Then you have a whole class of low-wage workers who literally do not have the resources to survive. Next comes charity and government subsidies for food, housing, healthcare, etc., which looks like subsidies for poor people, but are actually subsidies for businesses that have externalized their labor costs.
If businesses were required to pay the actual unsubsidized cost of labor, even for low-skill jobs, there would be a miraculous shift in the political winds with regard to things like zoning and public transportation, because the way to bring those labor costs down is to lower the cost of basic survival, by making it possible for people to afford housing that’s within reasonable distances of jobs.
The development proposal (Sand Hill Development) is from a company that has a history of not building what they propose. During construction the neighboring "Main Street Cupertino" magically lost a senior residential housing area and about 30% of the open space that was in the plan. The Murphy Street development in Sunnyvale was literally abandoned half way through. The reason the residents were so against the Vallco proposal is that no one believes that the proposal is what will be delivered. Sand Hill spent substantial amounts of money to try and buy the hearts and minds of the city, but the residents stood firm.
It's outrageous that non-residents of the City of Cupertino are being encouraged to meddle in city affairs.
Just about every community across the country needs to sort out having an appropriate supply of housing. Along with the gated digs for the company executives, there are the engineers, middle management and cleaning staff who all need places to live. For some reason, there is an innate tendency in to want housing for “those people” (generally meaning anyone who is ethnically, culturally, or economically different) to not be anywhere nearby, because it will hurt property values and be “dangerous,” etc. The truth is, if everyone down to the toilet bowl scrubber is paid enough to afford decent market rate housing, and there is enough supply of decent housing so that the market rate is not hideously distorted, you actually get stability and safety. Danger and instability come mainly when basic living arrangements are scarce and unaffordable, forcing large numbers of people to struggle just to survive. For a town like Cupertino, the benefits of having a hugely profitable company headquartered there come with the responsibilities of being a city that can accommodate all the people that come with those headquarters. Trying to preserve some (mostly imagined) idyllic past when it was a smaller place with fewer people is just a recipe for strife and disaster.
Sorry, market forces are the only thing that has been shown to work. That's what the anti-housing advocates are trying to disrupt, i.e., they are trying to keep the supply artificially low to keep their prices up. The value of the mall is best determined by the market. Clearly, the market has shown that a mall is not the highest and best use of it. It sounds like free market demand would dictate that housing is the best use for the owners. BTW, same goes for labor. Apple and others have to offer a wage and benefits sufficient for janitors, etc., to be willing to put up with commute, etc., to work there. That's why so many businesses support illegal aliens coming in as they can take advantage of them to work at lower wage. If the supply of illegal labor wasn't there, wages would have to rise to get people to take certain jobs. Partially addressing your concern over low wages; although it is unrealistic to expect free market would value janitorial work, your example, at a wage rate sufficient to afford multi-million dollar home near Apple Park.
Market forces are pretty good for setting the price of commodities and things like cars and iPhones. But pure market forces at work in housing, healthcare, energy and so on are why we Americans have elderly people thrown out on the street, why we have the worst healthcare costs in the developed world and why we are dependent on extremist Wahhabi Islamist fundamentalists in the Middle East for oil (actually a lot of that is good old government subsidies).
As for undocumented workers: it's not so much "businesses" who are hiring underpaid immigrants who don't have legal residency. Walmart doesn't pay slave wages that require workers on medicare and food stamps because it's hiring people running across the border. Walmart hires Americans and pays them nothing, less than they had been making at the mom and pop retailers crushed by Walmart coming into town to suck up local government subsidies in towns excited about these new "jobs."
Undocumented workers are being treated as slaves primarily by the American agriculture industry and by turkey producers and the like so Americans citizens can have dirt cheap food.
That's going to dry up if white supremacists evict all migrant workers and end visas for poors. Then Americans will have to either buy far more expensive food (or mechanically harvested food product) from US producers, or import food from elsewhere. That will destroy US ag, which by the number of Trump signs you see in the middle of CA or the US, is a primary industry supporting conservative Trumpland.
Within 4 years (3 left!) Trump looks set to grind Republicans into the earth, driving food producers and contractors who hire illegally (like himself) into bankrupcy while driving the GOP into the same level of popularity he enjoys. And then America will be driven into EU-style democratic socialism by Millineals sick of fascism, meaning all the cranky old republicans will at least be housed and fed in their old age, rather than being thrown in the street because they can't afford to keep up with inflation in a fascist-paradisewhere you're only valuable if you are capable of actively working for the goals of the state and are the right color. And really, Conservatives should pray for that working out.
Please provide factual citations from unbiased sources for those claims that have been bolded. Otherwise, they should be considered politically-driven hate speech attempting to incite readers and violating the Commenting Guidelines of this site.
The development proposal (Sand Hill Development) is from a company that has a history of not building what they propose. During construction the neighboring "Main Street Cupertino" magically lost a senior residential housing area and about 30% of the open space that was in the plan. The Murphy Street development in Sunnyvale was literally abandoned half way through. The reason the residents were so against the Vallco proposal is that no one believes that the proposal is what will be delivered. Sand Hill spent substantial amounts of money to try and buy the hearts and minds of the city, but the residents stood firm.
It's outrageous that non-residents of the City of Cupertino are being encouraged to meddle in city affairs.
It's kind of outrageous that you want to prevent anyone new from moving into Cupertino so you come up with any and all excuses to make sure that happens.
This is the case across the entire bay area and it's growing increasingly pathetic.
I only wish you all had actual jobs or responsibilities so you didn't have time to meet in the middle of the day and oppose working members of society.
Working members of society...Cupertino is full of them and 80% commute out of the city and these valuable tech workers need traffic to be moving, but it isn’t and it’s going to get much worse. Cupertino is also fully employed, any new jobs will generate commuters.
The developer asked the city to change the General Plan starting in 2011 to give them 2,000,000 SF office, 389 residential housing units, and a minimum 640,000 SF retail. The developer asked for it, residents said no. This size along with Apple Park would shut down traffic, yet the city granted this.
The Hills at Vallco was voted against by the residents because it was too big on top of Apple Park. The article correctly states the closeness of the two projects, but falsely claims residents ever spoke about home prices, some felt they would go up thinking it was a posh mall coming in. Once people looked and saw it was even bigger than Apple Park, they said no. The advertising said we were getting a revitalized mall and a big roof park. It was a giant way to hide an office park. Office leases for much more than retail and residential we were told, developer needs to make money and so forth.
People have to function here, which means getting to work and school. Nobody thought the roof park next to a noisy, packed freeway was healthful or drought smart. Some are now concerned that the roof would trap exhaust from the freeway and street grid under it. People familiar with the area know it’s a clogged mess and going to get a whole lot worse.
There is an approved 942 residential unit project adjacent to Apple Park on the Wolfe exit north side, but Irvine Company won’t start building for some reason. They’ve wasted a year.
I really am tired of the insults hurled at Cupertino residents who have had city council approve way too much in such a small area. Main Street Cupertino is basically two Apple office buildings and some restaurants, this is adjacent to more Apple buildings, Apple Park, and Vallco. Literally every major project got dumped on us in one spot.
The real NIMBYS aren’t the powerless little guys living near this mess but the city employees who actually live in Saratoga, the developer and their shills who don’t live near the site, and SFYIMBY who comes to City Council meetings supporting projects with excess office:housing at locations 40 miles or more away from their back yards. They mean yes in your back yard, regardless.
It’s a congested mess here and 14,200 Apple Park employees haven’t shown up yet.
This could be an ideal time for Apple to hook up with The Boring Company (Elon Musk's tunneling business) and get set up with transporting these employees from much farther away using underground Hyperloops. Employees could potentially get on a Hyperloop hub from 10-20 miles away and take a high-speed ride to work, freeing up the surface streets and solving the housing issue in one fell swoop.
Cupertino made the SB 35 hit list, if more than 50% of Housing is affordable NO CEQA review, so environmentally screwed up 4.4 Million SF Hills at Vallco feeding at capacity schools can be shoved down the residents’ throats just by swapping some office for residential. Totally saw this crap coming. Our best guess is 1 Million SF office, 2,000 units residential, and the same scattered ground floor retail as before (restaurants and scanty stores to service office workers and residents). No EIR required to study air Quality under an enclosed roof and underground parking beside a freeway. Sorry for the bad news, but “Build Baby Build” wants to force that same project regardless of the failed ballot measure.
In the next couple of months bet on seeing 1,000 units of affordable housing put adjacent to the 250,000 vehicle per day freeway plus 1,000 units market rate. They’ll probably drop Office to 1 or 1.5 Million SF which means 3,333 employees minimum and the minimum 640,000 SF retail scattered on the ground floor. So employees will outpace residential units and the project will not help Apple at all.
The project is about double the height of Apple Park and the parking garage is 9 floors above ground, Apple’s is 4 floors across the freeway. It will be tall and cave like so enjoy seeing the Hills from the freeway now, Vallco will blot them out. Don’t bother warning the city, they don’t care as long as it’s not in their backyard. :
This could be an ideal time for Apple to hook up with The Boring Company (Elon Musk's tunneling business) and get set up with transporting these employees from much farther away using underground Hyperloops. Employees could potentially get on a Hyperloop hub from 10-20 miles away and take a high-speed ride to work, freeing up the surface streets and solving the housing issue in one fell swoop.
A 20 mile run of hyper loop tunneling would clock in at about a billion dollars (probably more, with NoCal geology issues). That kind of money would build a lot of apartments right there in Cupertino, and wouldn’t take nearly as long to happen.
Comments
As for undocumented workers: it's not so much "businesses" who are hiring underpaid immigrants who don't have legal residency. Walmart doesn't pay slave wages that require workers on medicare and food stamps because it's hiring people running across the border. Walmart hires Americans and pays them nothing, less than they had been making at the mom and pop retailers crushed by Walmart coming into town to suck up local government subsidies in towns excited about these new "jobs."
Undocumented workers are being treated as slaves primarily by the American agriculture industry and by turkey producers and the like so Americans citizens can have dirt cheap food.
That's going to dry up if white supremacists evict all migrant workers and end visas for poors. Then Americans will have to either buy far more expensive food (or mechanically harvested food product) from US producers, or import food from elsewhere. That will destroy US ag, which by the number of Trump signs you see in the middle of CA or the US, is a primary industry supporting conservative Trumpland.
Within 4 years (3 left!) Trump looks set to grind Republicans into the earth, driving food producers and contractors who hire illegally (like himself) into bankrupcy while driving the GOP into the same level of popularity he enjoys. And then America will be driven into EU-style democratic socialism by Millineals sick of fascism, meaning all the cranky old republicans will at least be housed and fed in their old age, rather than being thrown in the street because they can't afford to keep up with inflation in a fascist-paradise where you're only valuable if you are capable of actively working for the goals of the state and are the right color. And really, Conservatives should pray for that working out.
If businesses were required to pay the actual unsubsidized cost of labor, even for low-skill jobs, there would be a miraculous shift in the political winds with regard to things like zoning and public transportation, because the way to bring those labor costs down is to lower the cost of basic survival, by making it possible for people to afford housing that’s within reasonable distances of jobs.
Please provide factual citations from unbiased sources for those claims that have been bolded. Otherwise, they should be considered politically-driven hate speech attempting to incite readers and violating the Commenting Guidelines of this site.
This is the case across the entire bay area and it's growing increasingly pathetic.
I only wish you all had actual jobs or responsibilities so you didn't have time to meet in the middle of the day and oppose working members of society.
The developer asked the city to change the General Plan starting in 2011 to give them 2,000,000 SF office, 389 residential housing units, and a minimum 640,000 SF retail. The developer asked for it, residents said no. This size along with Apple Park would shut down traffic, yet the city granted this.
The Hills at Vallco was voted against by the residents because it was too big on top of Apple Park. The article correctly states the closeness of the two projects, but falsely claims residents ever spoke about home prices, some felt they would go up thinking it was a posh mall coming in. Once people looked and saw it was even bigger than Apple Park, they said no. The advertising said we were getting a revitalized mall and a big roof park. It was a giant way to hide an office park. Office leases for much more than retail and residential we were told, developer needs to make money and so forth.
People have to function here, which means getting to work and school. Nobody thought the roof park next to a noisy, packed freeway was healthful or drought smart. Some are now concerned that the roof would trap exhaust from the freeway and street grid under it. People familiar with the area know it’s a clogged mess and going to get a whole lot worse.
There is an approved 942 residential unit project adjacent to Apple Park on the Wolfe exit north side, but Irvine Company won’t start building for some reason. They’ve wasted a year.
I really am tired of the insults hurled at Cupertino residents who have had city council approve way too much in such a small area. Main Street Cupertino is basically two Apple office buildings and some restaurants, this is adjacent to more Apple buildings, Apple Park, and Vallco. Literally every major project got dumped on us in one spot.
The real NIMBYS aren’t the powerless little guys living near this mess but the city employees who actually live in Saratoga, the developer and their shills who don’t live near the site, and SFYIMBY who comes to City Council meetings supporting projects with excess office:housing at locations 40 miles or more away from their back yards. They mean yes in your back yard, regardless.
It’s a congested mess here and 14,200 Apple Park employees haven’t shown up yet.
Vallco needs to be unobtrusive whatever it is.
In the next couple of months bet on seeing 1,000 units of affordable housing put adjacent to the 250,000 vehicle per day freeway plus 1,000 units market rate. They’ll probably drop Office to 1 or 1.5 Million SF which means 3,333 employees minimum and the minimum 640,000 SF retail scattered on the ground floor. So employees will outpace residential units and the project will not help Apple at all.
The project is about double the height of Apple Park and the parking garage is 9 floors above ground, Apple’s is 4 floors across the freeway. It will be tall and cave like so enjoy seeing the Hills from the freeway now, Vallco will blot them out. Don’t bother warning the city, they don’t care as long as it’s not in their backyard. :
http://www.hcd.ca.gov/community-development/housing-element/docs/SB35_StatewideDeterminationSummary01312018.pdf