Here are a few examples.
? Companies should take jobs elsewhere, like Oakland or Oregon for example or other places that need more jobs.
There is a serious answer.
Of course companies are already free to locate outside of Palo Alto and the peninsula so if they wanted to be in Oakland or Oregon, they could make that happen and some do so.
The companies that want to locate and expand in the peninsula like Google and Facebook and many others do so because it makes business sense to them. One major reason (since it is not the cheapest location) is that there is a large workforce here and many workers prefer to work up and down the peninsula.
Moreover, in terms of overall job growth in our local area, we have Stanford University, Stanford Research Park, Stanford Shopping Center and the Stanford Hospital and medical services complex. So there has been and will be lots of expansion here.
There is also a more in your face answer.
Moving works both ways. Since it seems unlikely that Stanford and companies are ready to abandon peninsula locations and growth, perhaps these posters should take their own advice and move. Freedom and choice do work both ways.
? People who want an urban, dense living environment should move to San Francisco (or Manhattan or Hong Kong)
There is a serious answer.
First, people are free to move to San Francisco or Tracy or Oregon if they wish. There are reasons they prefer cities like Palo Alto.
Palo Alto (or most cities up and down the peninsula) is not like San Francisco. In Palo Alto, new "tall" buildings are four stories, not 20 or 50 stories. Most posters (obviously not all) CAN tell the difference in what is considered dense between San Francisco and Palo Alto. There are obviously other major differences that might attract some people to a downtown, walkable, slightly dense center of Palo Alto who prefer that to San Francisco.
And, oh yes, there are the schools and parks. So to me at least it seems perfectly reasonable that young families or older residents might want to live in buildings like where I live and would not want to live in Manhattan or San Jose.
The bidding wars going on for condos and townhouses in my neighborhood and across the city gives market validation to the fact that my living situation is attractive to many kinds of families.
There is also a more in your face answer.
Most housing being built up and down the peninsula is no longer single family homes. That is the future although change is slow. So, again, moving works two ways. Posters are free to move and take the advice a few so freely give to others.
? Some variation of "no one wants to live in dense housing" (some of the angrier posters call it stack and pack") and/or young families when they have children will want a suburban home and older residents want to stay in their homes and not move downtown.
These allegations are demonstrably false. The bidding war for condos and townhouses is evidence that there is strong demand. In our building and among my friends are young families with children living in "dense" downtown housing and young families with children living downtown in single family homes.
These families are free to move to places like Tracy where single family homes are available for much less cost than in Palo Alto but they prefer to live here.
And we have a number of older residents like those in Channing House and elsewhere who have sold their single family homes and prefer their new living arrangements. Again, the market evidence confirms that downtown locations and I assume around California Avenue command interest and high prices and rents.
Why is any of this important?
The policy answer is that the city council will consider a variety of housing issues in the Comp Plan update including moving some sites in the Housing Element from the south of the city to downtown, Cal Ave and similar locations and consider policies that affect what kind of housing will be allowed and preferred.
And we will continue to have a policy debate about housing job growth in Palo Alto. That will probably go better without telling other people where they should live and work. Posters probably do not want anyone telling them where to live and work.
