Facebook Pledges $1 Billion for California Housing (nytimes.com) 96
Facebook said on Tuesday it would give $1 billion in a package of grants, loans and land toward easing California's severe housing crunch by building an estimated 20,000 new housing units for middle- and lower-income households. From a report: The move is the latest in a series of efforts by technology companies to put their vast financial resources toward addressing a crisis that has afflicted tech centers including the Bay Area and Seattle. In June Google pledged $1 billion in a similar effort in the Bay Area, while Microsoft pledged $500 million toward affordable housing in Seattle in January. Facebook said in a statement that the money would be used over the next decade. The package includes these elements: a $250 million partnership with the State of California for mixed-income housing on state land, $150 million for subsidized and supportive housing for homeless people in the Bay Area, $250 million worth of land near its headquarters in Menlo Park, and $25 million for teacher housing in the Silicon Valley, along with $350 million that the company said would be spent based on the effectiveness of the programs. "Our investment will go toward creating up to 20,000 new housing units to help essential workers such as teachers, nurses and first responders live closer to the communities that rely on them," the statement said.
zone boards are the problem (Score:1, Insightful)
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They probably think they have enough clout in the area to get around them.
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Well that was interesting
Is there TL:DR ?
Re:zone boards are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
There is this general snobbishness towards housing and communities. Every neighborhood wants rows of McMansions to attract the wealthy to the neighborhood, where they can pay high taxes, and raise property values, so the poor can sell their homes, and make a lot of money to retire somewhere else.
The general population cannot afford such a life style, so they hunting for affordable homes, which increases demand (with a small supply) that makes these homes less affordable.
Zoning boards also poo-poo ideas such as condo's and apartment complexes, and the big no no, Trailer Homes. While the real issues with these types of homes, isn't them selves, but the fact that they are all zoned into one spot and not spread out in the neighborhood. Because god forbid we have an Apartment Complex with 10 families living comfortably right next to a McMansion, owned by some Boomer who is living off the inheritance from the greatest generation. So they take dozens of these complexes together so hundreds of families are all next to each other bugging the heck of each other, making the lower middle class seem like a bunch of barbarians.
Back in the olden times, the rich and the poor lived next to each other, and actually helped each other out. Not saying it was wonderful like Leave it to Beaver or the Waldens. But it was for some groups of people a road to upward mobility. As hanging out with rich people normally helps your stance. And hanging out with poor people helps you "Keep it Real"
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So last millenium. The drive is walkability, peaceful high rise neighbourhoods with distributed planning. High traffic first few floors as retail, then a bunch of floors as commercial and finish of with residential. There is also just looking at google maps, each and every time you see a typical car park, that is wasted land, they could have build residential right over the top of the capark. Even malls wasted carparks, the carpark should be the entire ground floor and then you go one floor up to the retail
Los Angeles alone spent close to 1 billion dollars (Score:4, Informative)
Just last year -- and homelessness increased nearly 20%.
The trend seems to be "spend more, get more".
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It has nothing to do with the spending. Throwing money at problems like this never works, unless you are willing to change your underlying approach, which they definitely are not. As long as you treat them as noble victims of societies' failings, instead of bums looking for handout (and getting it, courtesy of the $1 billion - on top of the $20-30-40 billion already being spent), you are just making the problem worse rather than better.
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I don't think people made homeless by medical bills are looking for a handout, they are looking to stay alive.
People who got caught up in crime because of the War on Drugs probably were not looking for handouts either.
Re:Los Angeles alone spent close to 1 billion doll (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the cause of this homelessness?
From my understanding, a lot of it is due to drug addiction, and the fact despite popular belief, most desperately poor people feel the need to get them selves out their trouble themselves, without going for help.
Money going towards homelessness doesn't necessarily mean it is going to end or lower it, but reduce the suffering from it.
For example.
If I were given a billion dollars towards homelessness I would do the following.
1. Create Shelters were everyone can have a room to safely sleep at night, and wash up.
2. Have an area where healthy and hearty food can be distributed reliably.
3. Offer health and dental clinics. With focus on addiction based problems.
4. Offer climate appropriate clothing, where they can look presentable in the streets and interacting with people. As well not freeze to death.
5. Give training and education to get these people a GED if they don't have one already, and put them on a path to sustainable living conditions.
None of my options would necessarily reduce homelessness in the short term. But what it does do, is get the people off of survival mode and into self improvement mode, as well allow them to be part of society and not an undesirable in it.
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If one really wanted to help with homelessness maybe a combination of:
debt relief: buy off, or write off people's medical and CC debt. even a few thousand dollars could free up enough money to keep food on the table and/or keep them off the streets.
microloans: 0% interest: same as above; there's a sad number of people with zero safety net and all it would take is a car breaking down and they're unemployed and out on their ass.
(queue up the /. libertarians with the normal "they made bad decisions, fuck them
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"debt relief"
We have that. It's called bankruptcy. You can push the reset-button every 8 years.
A better solution would be REALLY teaching home ec in high school and emphasize one the real cost of debt.
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We have that. It's called bankruptcy. You can push the reset-button every 8 years.
Right. And since the modern economy is debt-leveraged, you're untouchable for seven years after you declare. You have to rely on the largesse of family and friends for even the smallest of loans unless you want to deal with high-double or even triple-digit APR's.
It's "teach them", not "fuck them" (Score:2)
> queue up the /. libertarians with the normal "they made bad decisions, fuck them" mindset. While that might be true; society as a whole does not benefit from that complete lack of compassion --
Perhaps the point hasn't been made clear. When I was homeless (due to a habit of making bad decisions - short-term decisions), someone could give me a place to sleep for the night. The next day I was still homeless. That changed nothing. The way to change my situation was to change my behavior. Giving me a pl
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Lack of compassion is all people are giving to these issues. I think guilt makes people extend too much sympathy.
To fix it?
1- enforced institutionalization for the mentally ill.
2- enforced rehab for the addicts
3- housing and job training for those out of luck/unable to earn enough.
But this involves saying to people "you have no choice, you are going to accept this help"
Frankly, if you don't belong to one of these three groups above, or are in group three and don't want to accept the rules of help: hit the r
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"police officers sleeping in their cars. "https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/technology/facebook-1-billion-california-housing.html There are people with jobs but CAN'T AFFORD HOUSING! Got it ass-hole.
And in California its really bade because you have all these tech companies - don't pay taxes - driving up property values and people can't afford housing.
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Median home price more than $500K? I expect that's a big part of the problem.
Add in generous social programs and a generally pretty nice climate, and you've got a recipe for large amounts of homelessness....
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The crazy homeless and the addict homeless would shun your things, because they would invariably involve rules, and they don't like rules. They're a large portion of the homeless population.
Ask them, they'll tell you: "I don't like that shelter, they make me come in at a certain time, i can't drink there, etc.".
Housing cirsis in CA (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not sure how far would 50K per housing unit would go in San Jose. This money would be better spent opening FB satellite offices elsewhere so people working at FB have more alternatives but to live in and around Silicon Valley.
Re:Housing cirsis in CA (Score:4, Insightful)
"am not sure how far would 50K per housing unit would go in San Jose. This money would be better spent opening FB satellite offices elsewhere so people working at FB have more alternatives but to live in and around Silicon Valley."
In CA, government funding to build "affordable housing" is running between $550k-$750k per unit. Yes, you read that right -- PER UNIT.
It's awesome (/sarcasm). By the time they build the 10k units of housing that were promised over 10 years (which has been revised down now to maybe 5k-7k) we'll have let 10k homeless people die on the streets. We're losing more than 1 person on the streets every 8 hours and the rate is increaseing.
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In CA, government funding to build "affordable housing" is running between $550k-$750k per unit. Yes, you read that right -- PER UNIT.
How is that even possible? I can imagine land is expensive and you have to factor in the cost of rezoning, permits etc. But even so, if you're building low rise apartment blocks it can't be much more than $100k per unit to put up the actual structure.
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"How is that even possible?"
No audits.
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Oh, it's not. And it's false, by the way.
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Oh, it's not. And it's false, by the way.
Without any sources (you or the GP), we're left guessing who's making shit up. In the complete absence of any sources, perhaps we should go with the lowest/oldest UID. GP's is lower so he must be more trustworthy!
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Cool, fake news then.
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
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Not fake, just misread.
The article points out that at least one of the new units has run $700k. The original poster said it was averaging ("running") between $550-700k. Do you see your mistake now?
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This is my reaction too. How much are construction workers being paid? How much of that cost is just for the land? How much land does the state own?
I have no idea what the answers to these questions are and I don't want to see the same mistakes of past housing projects made again,but shouldn't we figure out something?
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In CA, government funding to build "affordable housing" is running between $550k-$750k per unit. Yes, you read that right -- PER UNIT.
How is that even possible? I can imagine land is expensive and you have to factor in the cost of rezoning, permits etc. But even so, if you're building low rise apartment blocks it can't be much more than $100k per unit to put up the actual structure.
Rent seeking and obstructionism explain it. Any government involvement, especially in California, includes massive rent seeking and anybody with an investment near the location is going to object because it will lower their property values.
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No, that's not true. Funding peaked in 2017 at around $300k per unit, but has been coming down steadily under Governor Newsom.
If you show me your link, I'll show you mine.
Re:Housing cirsis in CA (Score:4, Interesting)
"No, that's not true"
Except it is.
"If you show me your link, I'll show you mine."
Ok.
https://blogs.wsj.com/economic... [wsj.com]
"A single unit of housing for a low-income family can cost nearly $750,000 to build in California, according to a government report that provides new details on the cost to taxpayers of building affordable housing in states with high land prices and heavy land-use regulations."
https://www.kcrw.com/culture/s... [kcrw.com]
"But affordable housing units can routinely cost more than $400,000 dollars to build."
(it's gone up since last year -- jhon)
https://californiapolicycenter... [california...center.org]
"The same problem exists in Los Angeles County, where the average per unit costs for “permanent supportive housing” for homeless people is also around a half-million. Asreported by NPR, “The PATH Ventures project in East Hollywood has an estimated per-unit cost of $440,000. Even with real estate prices soaring, that’s as much as a single-family home in many places in Southern California. Other HHH projects cost more than $500,000 a unit."
https://ternercenter.berkeley.... [berkeley.edu]
"In some cases, the cost of building affordable housing in California has topped $600,000 per unit, or more."
Now, realize -- that the bulk of CA homeless reside in Los Angeles. Nearly over 10% of the entire NATIONS homeless are in LA alone. About 25% in CA. Much of the higher costs (exceeding 500k) is *IN* Los Angeles.
We couldn't even build a small wooden deck for under $700k on a small pilot housing site.
https://www.latimes.com/local/... [latimes.com]
""If you show me your link, I'll show you mine.""
I await your examples.
Re:Housing cirsis in CA (Score:4, Interesting)
They're not even necessary. You original assertion that "In CA, government funding to build "affordable housing" is running between $550k-$750k per unit. Yes, you read that right -- PER UNIT." is proven false by your own links. We have a throwaway line in a WSJ op-ed that affordable units can go "as high as" $750k (without any evidence offered or examples given), and the highest average asserted anywhere in any of the other links is $440k.
The official numbers from the state budget office tell a different story, and the current projections are coming in much lower.
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2017... [ca.gov]
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"The official numbers from the state budget office tell a different story, and the current projections are coming in much lower."
Do you live in CA? I do. When has ANYTHING CA has spent on been at or UNDER budget? That data was projected for 2017-2018 about 4 years ago. The reason why I could produce so many links is because that cost has EXPLODED.
Come on. Do better. Provide a contemporary link -- not an outdated projection that has proven to be completely wrong.
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I have a place on the Central Coast. If you live in California, then you should be aware of the fact that it had a budget surplus in 2018 and is projected to have one for 2019.
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" If you live in California, then you should be aware of the fact that it had a budget surplus in 2018 and is projected to have one for 2019."
If you live in California, then you should be aware that we are on a fiscal cliff and that "surplus" is an illusion. Unfunded liabilities are going to destroy the amount of money the state and our cities have unless we dramatically increase taxes in the highest taxed state in the union.
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It's an illusion because of future projections regarding pensions. Like most populous states, California has what might (or might not) be a "debt bomb". The problem is, that debt bomb is based on a lot of assumptions about future economic circumstances that cannot be predicted, and there are still several "off-ramps" for those states. It has nothing to do with the operating budget, which is
Re:Housing cirsis in CA (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.kcrw.com/culture/s... [kcrw.com]
Here's what I thought was the most interesting part of this article:
KCRW asked Richard Green, director of USC’s Lusk School of Real Estate to review the cost breakdowns of the first HHH projects under construction.
Green said, given the market, so called “hard costs” made sense. These are things like materials and labor costs. But hard costs are only part of the cost of construction.
“What was really striking to me was how expensive what are called ‘soft costs’ are,” said Green.
Soft costs often involve finance and legal fees associated with housing projects. In the first three approved HHH projects, soft costs account for 29 percent of the total.
Green says the complexity of financing low income housing likely drives the costs up.
“It makes it more expensive, said Green.” I mean in an existential sense, does it make sense? No. Is this how it’s actually done? Yes.”
So you're increasing your costs by almost 50%, due to the complicated financing, much of which is developer trying to get credits for low income housing.
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"So you're increasing your costs by almost 50%, due to the complicated financing, much of which is developer trying to get credits for low income housing."
Look at the berkley study. There's a huge cost associated with fees and labor requirements. It's public money -- it must be CA unions. It's not sustainable.
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It seems like you have no retort on his claims though, you lose the debate.
Re: Housing cirsis in CA (Score:1)
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And working from home!
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Same ol' for thousands of years (Score:1)
"OR WE'LL HURT YOU!"
Well, which is it? (Score:2)
>> creating up to 20,000 new housing units to help essential workers such as teachers, nurses and first responders
Given that the job transition for homeless generally isn't going to be to something that requires a degree or works with drugs, which is it?
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Those are "fantasy" numbers. CA is currently spending close to $550k-$750k per unit of housing. Private industry will be able to cut that down -- but crazy government "fees" and "flaming hoops" that devolopers must jump through -- not to mention they need to make back the money donated to the current "office holder", their pet causes -- or provide employement opportunities for their family members.
Californa doesn't have a housing shortage -- it has too many "holes" drilled in the money pipe that causes it
$1 billion? (Score:2)
That should handle a few houses at California prices, but not many.
not if you build them yourself (Score:1)
the materials don't cost millions, they cost almost the same everywhere... so you have the cost of empty land, and then, the houses just cost a few tens of thousands depending on size.
Get off my lawn (Score:1)
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"The NIMBY's have been crystal clear this whole time.. "Go Build Your Own City!""
Well, that's not true. I consider myself a "NIMBY" when it comes to the "housing first" philosophy. Low barrier housing (Active drug addiction? OK. Open warrant? OK. Untreated mental illness? OK) in our local communities.
What many of the Church of the Holy Homeless Advocates call NIMBY have no issue with community housing -- for addicts who've gone through rehab and have been clean -- the mentally ill who've been stabali
Re: Get off my lawn (Score:1)
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"Building a rural metropolis on the eastern half of California with tiny home communities would hopefully open up vacancies in the overcrowded housing markets, achieving a similar goal to building overpriced cracker boxes."
Have you TRIED to suggest such a thing to the strong armed "housing first" faithful? They will come after you as a "homeless hater" How DARE you suggest moving people where it's cheaper for them to live and they have a better chance of actually supporting themselves!
Go ahead. Try. It'
Re: Get off my lawn (Score:1)
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People do not have a better chance at actually supporting themselves in a place with no jobs. The problem is, the places with the jobs are consequently the places that are the most expensive.
It also doesn't help to move people to a place where they don't know anyone and have no relatives to potentially help out.
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"People do not have a better chance at actually supporting themselves in a place with no jobs."
https://www.indeed.com/l-Baker... [indeed.com]
A few thousand jobs in bakersfield. Where you can live on a minimum wage job flipping burgers because you can find apartments under $600/mo. Get a room mate and a 2 bedroom cheaper still. Share a one bedroom and cheaper still.
"The problem is, the places with the jobs are consequently the places that are the most expensive."
Not really... at least not as stated. It would be the
Spend it differently (Score:5, Insightful)
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LOL. The free market would be happy (and perfectly able) to turn any available land into a bunch of million dollar homes. What would be the economic motivation to construct cheap houses, instead?
The only way to build cheap housing in the Bay Area is the exact opposite - have the government give up lands at below market costs, in interest of the greater good of having available low/medium income housing.
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The fact that a lot of people would buy them instead of the million dollar homes, if they had the choice. The regulatory regime in California does not currently allow that choice to exist.
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Nothing's stopping people from buying a cheap house in Tracy or somewhere far away like that. We're talking about building cheap houses in a good location. It seems you weighed in on a subject that you don't know the first thing about.
And then the former homeless will get a job at LRL to afford the house.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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If you allow developers to knock down houses and turn them into high density apartments you will end up with a city that looks like Hong Kong. Insanely small apartments with a combined kitchen/toilet/bedroom.
The solution is not shitty micro apartments, it's to fix the underlying issue which is that everyone wants to live in the same place. That can be done my making new places they want to live further out, and by improving transport links so they can commute in for work.
A good example would be the Tsukuba
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total nonsense (Score:1)
those are the scary bedtime fairy tales your Boomer told you at nap time.
Quickly bought up by the Chinese (Score:1)
It is going the build three homes (Score:2)
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Whoo Hooo... (Score:2)
More housing for black-outs.
That's like, what, 200 Bay Area houses? :-) (Score:2)
Living near NYC, California is about the only place in the country I can look at and say, "Wow, they have worse housing price issues." Those $350K SRE salaries at Google look nice, but houses _start_ at $1 million anywhere within an hour (one way) commute of work. Anything beyond a total dump is way more than that. So, a billion dollars is going to be a drop in the bucket. Even if Facebook uses it to build a 100 story apartment block right next to their headquarters, it won't move the overall housing market
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Just build dorms on campus (Score:3)
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"Just build dorms on the corporate campuses"
Sounds good until you quit...or worse, get fired.
It's bad enough to lose your health insurance...imagine getting fired meant the corporate security goons tossed you and your stuff outside the front gate and you have to find a new place to live too.
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The problem with company dorms is that anyone in them can't easily change jobs. If the company they want to change too doesn't also have a dorm with free space then changing job means also finding somewhere more expensive to live.
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If FB was taxed correctly (Score:2)
then the $1B would not be needed, and the investment wouldn't have concessions attached. Oh, yes, there will be concessions attached.
The answer is: (Score:2)
Build a Soylent Green factory.
How much did the Republican tax cuts... (Score:2)
How much did the 2017 tax cuts save Facebook, and how much did the SALT elimination rob from California? How about we reinstate the taxes we had before and let democratic institutions build houses?
This is just another example of corporations overreaching their turf. Pay $1b, one time, today, to avoid paying $100b in the future. Facebook wants to be our new government. First they want to become an unregulated bank that prints their own money. Now they are trying to build housing for the poor. Next they'll be
Fucking Idiots (Score:2)
Pumping $1,000,000,000 into a bloated bubble will just allow it to bloat further.
What do you think land owners, property owners, developers, contractors, builders, material suppliers, surveyors, electricians, plumbers, HOAs, etc. are going to do when you inject another BILLION dollars to prop up their fat asses? CHOOSE ONE:
A - Lower prices and increase availability.
B - Raise prices, citing a strong market and increased demand.
Hint - See the "affordable" care act and the individual mandate.
This will solve nothing (Score:2)
Crack Houses to the rescue (Score:2)
Use the Billion to buy one house each in a neighborhood with high house prices. Open a crack house, create as much private nuisance as possible, go tot hte school board meetings and create obstruction.
When the price of houses start to fall, the investor mafia sitting on thousands of rentals will start selling. once it goes into a spiral it goes down really fast.
Buy up the houses at the bottom and mark them as affordable housing. Sell a few to recoup your capital
Rinse and repeat.
California prices are held up
"government" housing (Score:1)
Housing (Score:4, Informative)
Housing would be affordable to everyone if developers were allowed to build housing complexes freely. It might like Mumbai or something. But housing would he cheap. If you made it so that anyone could build housing units easily as much as they want housing prices will fall like a rock to the build cost.
Yes it would prolly mean some neighborhoods go to the dogs .. but that can be solved with increased cameras and neighorbood watch etc. point is, politicians pretend to be concerned about housing prices but they could easily solve it without a power grab. They are the ones blocking developers.
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Housing would be affordable to everyone if developers were allowed to build housing complexes freely. It might like Mumbai or something..
Why do you think Mumbai is cheap? https://www.forbes.com/sites/e... [forbes.com]
What about the rest? (Score:2)