Palo Alto Weekly journalists dig into a new report on Silicon Valley’s trends and challenges and discuss Palo Alto’s recent actions to address its housing and transportation problems. They also look into how city residents view the idea of “middle class.”
Watch the webcast here. To jump to a specific topic, open the description box below the video in YouTube and click on the time stamp.
• Silicon Valley Index (0:00)
• Demographics (1:00)
• Gender income disparity (2:14)
• Commercial development (2:40)
• Commute times going up (3:13)
• Rising home prices & mortgages (4:00)
• Growth in senior population (5:40)
• Lack of affordable housing (7:20)
• Income (7:35)
• Retirement and lack of security (8:45)
• Middle class in Palo Alto (10:18)
• Rent prices (12:53)
• Housing in Silicon Valley (13:50)
• Housing going to higher-income people (15:30)
• Housing in Palo Alto (16:12)
• Transportation in Palo Alto (20:30)
Webcasts are posted every Friday afternoon on PaloAltoOnline.com, as well as on Palo Alto Online’s YouTube channel, youtube.com/paweekly.
Check out previous weeks’ episodes in the “Behind the Headlines” archive.
We read every day (newspaper and online articles) about all the housing issues and data gathered on them, from polls and the research results. The report is sad to read and overwhelming in the numbers presented. And now, today, our Daily Post had an article about what our brilliant minds, progressive extremists, in Sacramento are proposing, on how to solve the housing crisis, and trying to pass it down to municipalities as a legal directive, that, if not met, might result in severe consequences and penalties. Sorry for another of my ‘too familiar’ run on sentences.
Honestly, I’m not that worried because I know how well the other state mandated housing legislation, and ABAG’s authority to enforce it, worked out. We filed the obligatory report on how we would plan for it…then gave them the middle finger, and said ‘go away’. PA will never meet the mandated numbers. But, no sitting CC member or future candidate will admit to that. Come election time, they will all be in favor of housing for the poor, low income folks and homeless…yada yada yada…and we’ll hear ‘affordable’ a lot. Be sure to ask them what that really means in our town.
I sure hope our own local officials, planners, staff, and CC members, take a stand against the SB proposal and make it clear that we want to control our own future in ‘my town’. Our US Constitution has a lot in it to protect ‘States’ Rights’. We should have the same in California to protect our ‘Cities’ Rights’.
BTW, how is our former CC member, Marc Berman, coming down on this issue? I’m sure some of you CC members, his good PA friends, know.