My theory is that Google may end up going into the leasing business. With all its expansion plans it just might not want to delay them, but with the idea of people working from home being an attractive option for many of its employees, the fact is it may not need all the office space and even some of the living space since employees can work from anywhere.

As a result of this, it may end up with both office space and living space it can't utilize for its own employees. Therefore, if they want to keep the Silicon Valley as being The place for technology it just might want to get startups and others to lease their space.

Not an expert on Google of course, but I suspect that there is something deeper going on here than we might think.

An example of leasing problems can be seen at the huge business center at the end of Seaport Blvd. Port of Redwood City. All the buildings were occupied with technology firms, including Google. Now you can drive through and see that the signs of businesses are missing. There are two large business complexes in the port location and both show lack of signage for businesses. All should think about the buildings that are now available instead of building more buildings. One major problem in these huge projects is that it drives out the small businesses and existing housing for lower income people.

Building just to build as a goal is interesting but you have to fill the buildings with people and products. I don't see that now but hopefully that will change. So you have empty buildings and then have to increase the housing for the people that work form home. This is putting everything out of balance. The people that work from hone do not want to live in tiny apartments.

The big problem occurring in this section of the state is lack of diversity. We get dumped on continually with all type of columnist telling us about our lacking in this area. However diversity in the population is directly tied to diversity is the business base - that includes big and small business, commercial operations, manufacturing. Concentration of "tech" jobs and elimination of all of the diversity in the business base then leaves us with lack of diversity in the general population.

As these tech villages replace all of the existing diversified business base then this section of the state is amplifying that problem. The general population then has to figure out where they fit in and go to that place. Big Tech is generating the problem that eliminates all of the other type of businesses that would support a diverse population. Put that on the table and deal with it.

Housing - Mr. Becerra is suing the County of San Diego because the management of the Otay Mesa city wants to add additional single family housing tracts in planned communities, citing fire danger. We are talking about locations that do not have extensive tree coverage or ancient power lines that start fires. Housing is a political issue here - if housing and the CA population tilt to the south then the north is losing it's population which supports the bay area party goals.

Ripping out R-1 housing in this area is not a popular idea. And planned communities which include all types of housing in planned communities is a popular idea. So the tilt to planned communities begins tilting political power out of this area. Understand there is more to housing then houses. It is about concentration of political power.

I was in San Jose for my second shot at the El Camino Health Center on First Street.
Checking out the neighborhood there is unlimited giant apartment complexes in the First and Zanker areas. The place is filled with empty commercial buildings. Coming back in the Moffatt area again giant buildings that are empty. There is no housing shortage, there is no commercial building shortages. And this is all recent buildings with all of the bells and whistles. And yet the legislative people keep talking about the housing shortages and building shortages. They are paid to say that, and your papers are paid to keep up the hype. We do not need to throw ourselves to the wolves here, ruin our city, it is not serving any purpose.

why the city of San Jose allows itself to be torn apart for a new bunch of empty buildings makes no sense. Google has locations on buildings throughout - but what are they doing in those buildings? Anything?

Someone has to take a measure of the where the low cost housing is and where the small businesses are. In San Jose is that where Google is going to build? Focus on a few locations which do not have the ability to fight back. Result is chaos. Displaced people who had a home and now do not have a home. And then all type of columnist who say that we need to fill that gap. Pile on the guilt. Not going to work. The genie is out of the bottle.