Readit News...we should pass more laws mandating that the housing we can't build should be built anyhow, apparently by magic?
> If Menlo Park wants to allow Facebook to build an office complex to support 2,000 more Facebook employees than it needs to create 2,000 more residential options for those employees.
And when you say Menlo Park "needs to create", you mean, they need to relax the zoning laws in the way SB827 would have mandated so that those houses can be built? Because otherwise, how is this meant to happen?
>...we should pass more laws mandating that the housing we can't build should be built anyhow, apparently by magic?
Unfortunately, it seems like Prop 13 is not going to get repealed anytime soon. Given that, then in this case, yes, more regulations could help.
It's called a Pigouvian tax [1]. Whenever a city like Menlo Park brings in 2,000 more Facebook employees while allowing for zero new housing, they impose a negative externality on their neighbors, who suffer in the form of higher housing costs. To counter that, cities should be made to bear the social cost of exacerbating the housing crisis. If every time a city like Menlo Park adds thousands of new employees without any new housing, they had to pay large fees into a state affordable housing fund, they'd have less incentive to contribute such a large housing imbalance in the first place, and everyone would be better off.