house design zoning

jeremy hoffman: so,i'm jeremy hoffman. i'm a software engineer here. i've lived and worked inmountain view for six years. and for most of that time,i didn't give much thought to the factors shapingthe bay area, why housing is where it is andnot in other places and why jobs are where theyare, and not in other places, and how people get fromthose jobs to work. why do people drive insteadof walking, or biking,

or taking public transit? until, luckilyfor me this june i attended a public forum here inmountain view where egon here spoke about all the factorsthat shape housing and transit and really opened myeyes to all this stuff. and i thought his informationand his analysis and insights were so great that i gotreally excited about sharing it with more people. so thank you so much for coming.

i think this is goingto be a great talk. egon has a lot of greatinformation for us. i'll give you a little bitof a background about egon. he graduated phi beta kappafrom swarthmore college, earned a master's degree incity and regional planning from uc berkeley's collegeof environmental design. for five years he workedwith icf international, where he advisedcities and regions on economic development,everywhere from california

to louisiana, ohio, nigeria,canada, argentina, bosnia. and now egon is regionalplanning director up in san francisco atthe organization spur. he writes reports andhe's done policy studies about regional planning,economic development, land use planning, transportation,high speed rail in california. we're really lucky tohave him here today. so please join me in welcomingto google egon terplan. [applause]

egon terplan: thankyou very much. thank you very much, jeremy. thank you very muchgoogle for having me here. can everyone hear me finein the back of the room? great. it's really apleasure to be here. i actually haven't been atgoogle in a couple of years since i took my students. i was teaching asan jose state up,

and we met with kevinmathy and his team. and it was, i think, a timewhen a bunch of the new bikes were coming in. so it's great to be back. i'm glad a lot of you came out. just as a quick startingpoint, how many people here in the room livein mountain view, live in the townof mountain view? how about, how many peoplehere live in palo alto?

how about anywhere elsein santa clara county? so a lot of you. and how many people live north,live in san mateo county? so a smaller number, all right. that's tells us alittle bit of something. not about you, butsan mateo county doesn't have a tremendousamount of new housing. how about san francisco? how many people livein san francisco?

ok, a healthy amount as well. well, good. so actually, anywhere else? east bay, beyond? ok, so a smaller smattering. so you represent a spectrumof different places within the region. we're going to try to touchon a number of those things here now.

so i'm egon terplan,as jeremy said, the regional planningdirector at spur. i'm going to say aword to about spur, but just as a startingpoint, it's fun to be here talkingabout these issues now. and as i wasreflecting upon this, has anyone here heardof annalee saxenian? ooh, quiet in the room. so annalee saxenian'sone of the great writers

on the history of siliconvalley and wrote a classic book comparing silicon valleywith boston's route 128, and tried to understand,why did silicon valley grow the way it did? and it's veryinteresting, about a bunch of factors in howcompanies are structured. but she had writtenher master's thesis in the early '80s saying,silicon valley's over. it is too expensive.

it is too congested. no one's going tocome here anymore, and no one's goingto start companies. and that was rightbefore the apple ii plus. she was wrong, clearly. the question, though, isat what point do the issues with housing affordability,underinvestment and transportation,some of the challenges with the local governmentpolicy making on land use become

really profound,competitive factors that affect the regional economy? and i don't think weknow quite the answer, but we're certainlygetting to some of the moments thatcould be choking points. so what i'm going to dotoday is very quickly say a word or two about spur,who we are as an organization, and then go througha number of pieces, a little bit on the growthcontext of the bay area.

when i say the region,i mean the bay area. i don't mean the southbay or silicon valley. i mean the nine-county bay area. then talk about thesort of problems that we're confronting. some of the answers aboutwhy the problems exist, and then some solutions. all of that in about-- i don'tknow, let's see, 27 minutes?-- so that we have some chance tohear from some other folks here

that are engagedon local issues, as well as take your questionsfor the conversation. so quickly, who is spur? so spur is anorganization that is based in san franciscoand san jose. this is our urban center insan francisco, been around for 100 years. we're an urbancivic group focused on good planningand good government.

we write policypapers on a wide range of issues facingcities and regions. how many people here haveheard of spur before? a healthy number. well, those of youthat haven't, now you know a little bit about spur. i encourage you to come. come to the urban center in sanfrancisco on mission street. we have a number ofactivities there.

i will show you a photographof our san jose office as well, where we also havea number of lunchtime events and forums. that's the room wherewe have discussions in the san franciscooffice as well. we engage people in a varietyof ways through research-- we write our papers--through education, in going out and talking topeople, and engaging them, and through advocacyas well at times.

our work-- our offices, as wewill see in just a moment-- there's the san franciscourban center on mission street. we have a san jose onelocated on first street, right on the light rail line. so when you come to downtownsan jose, stop by there as well. and we're now movingin a direction of considering openingan office in oakland. and part of the idea is, theseare the three central cities of the bay area-- san francisco,san jose, and oakland.

what happens in those centralcities shapes the region. it doesn't shape allof it-- and we're going to talk some about theother cities in the bay area today-- but thosethree central cities have a very bigresponsibility for what happens within the region. so let me talk about thatregional context just for a moment. and as i said, the regionis the nine-county bay area.

we are right now in the midstof considering a long range plan that wasadopted a year ago. and the long rangeplan is trying to understand, how do weaccommodate the next two million people in population? this is the expected growth. you can see theprojections out to 2040 across each of the counties. so that's thegrowth in population

that we're expecting. but we're trying todo so in a way that reduces per capitagreenhouse gas emissions. that means that the newpeople have to drive less. they have to have adifferent behavior on average from the people that havebeen here historically. and this is partof a state mandate to respond to climatechange through changing how we live, changing whereour workplaces are, houses are,

and how we travel around. and so you cansee, we're supposed to reduce it by 15% in 2035. but part of that overallvision is considering, how do we accommodate housingfor workers at all income levels? meaning, buildinghousing for people who can afford themarket rate homes as well as people thatdon't have as much money

and can't afford the priceof the market rate home. and anyone who's been inthe rental market, who's been in the housing market,understands how expensive that specific market rate is. that is the regional contextof the broad based thing. and the vision is to try to putthat growth closer and closer to the existingtransit infrastructure. so first of all,the job goals are to get 38% of the jobs inthe three central cities.

and then you can see the listof the top 15 jurisdictions where the growth might go. so notice palo alto, which isranked number 6 in job growth, and mountain view as 15. this is the jobgrowth projections. when we turn to housing,interestingly palo alto disappears fromthe top 15 cities of where housinggrowth might go. now mountain view isstill there as 15th,

but palo alto isnot there as well. and that starts to tellyou something, a little bit about the relationship betweenjob growth and housing, that the placesthat are assuming a tremendous amount of jobgrowth perhaps, i would argue, have a little bitof a responsibility also to try to find somehousing for the workers that are coming there. so this data exists for citiesall across the entire region.

so let's understand anddrill down a little bit. we'll take questions atthe end, so mark them down. let's drill down a littlebit into the problems that are associated with this. housing costs too much. it's very expensive. ok, that's not aparticular surprise. but what you startsee here is, this is just the san franciscomedian-priced home.

you can see how we're gettingfurther and further away from california and thefederal figure in terms of housing prices. and actually, just comparingto a city like portland, portland's certainly muchcheaper than the bay area and much cheaperthan san francisco. but you can see that it was muchcloser back in the mid '90s. again, the difference isgetting greater between some of the bay area citiesand other places.

right now we're ata particular moment where properties, whenthey're put on the market, are sold extremely quickly. so oakland, san francisco,and san jose right there-- and this is earlierthis year, it's gotten even more accelerated inthe past couple of months-- not only are the home prices growingfaster than almost anywhere else, but they'repractically staying on the market forhardly any time.

so the difference betweenthis region and other parts of the united statesis getting greater on this particular account. let's think a little bit aboutsome of the economic factors though that are also under play. and we're doing alot of work right now on this question of accessto middle wage opportunities in the region. and what we have,like many regions

we have growth in jobsat the high end, growth in jobs at the low end,but a much smaller middle. and so one of the profoundchallenges-- and we say this because people aresurprised often that over 36% of all workers todayearn less than $18 an hour in the bay area. and that figure is infact likely to grow, because the opportunitiesto move those people to jobs that pay $25an hour, $28 an hour

is getting harder becausethere's fewer of those jobs. were working on it. we're trying to consider it. and one of the greatways, actually, to create some ofthose middle wage jobs has to do with infrastructureinvestment, housing construction, otherdevelopment related to that. but right now, that'sa specific problem, and it's an economic problem.

there's also anenvironment broadly, nationally wherethere's an increase in the number of renters. and that's a trend that'shappened since the housing bubble burst. a lot of people are choosingto rent instead of to own. on some national data,there are renters that are facing income declines. so that's been a concern.

it's not a concern acrossthe board with all renters, but that's somethingthat people are starting to see in some places. but the issue is, all workersacross the income spectrum are feeling this crunch,are paying more for housing. and that's a big,big consideration across lots of households. and i'm sure everybody herewho's confronted the housing market recently hasseen that as well.

the last piece ofthe problem puzzle is just the fact thatprimarily most people get to and from work by driving. and so what that means isthat the roads are congested. and congestion's a goodthing to the extent that it shows a lot of activityand people want to get around. a place that hasno congestion might mean there's nota strong economy and during therecession there was

less congestion in this region. but when most people aregetting around driving, that certainly has animpact on overall mobility. and for people that don'thave access to an automobile, that's a challenge. so let's get tosome of the answers. why is it thathousing's so expensive? first most obvious one is we'renot building enough housing. you would think it's simple.

but going back tothe 1950s to 1980s, that was the biggrowth of the bay area. that was the postwar boom. that was when this region reallybecame an industrial powerhouse first during world war ii, theearly rise of silicon valley, the postwar boom inthe east bay with a lot of the manufacturing, and theconversion of san francisco into a corporateheadquarters and environment. silicon valley then, of course,became a corporate headquarters

environment as well,and we responded by building lots of housing. we then also had alot of job growth. that all turnedaround about 1980. and yes, there's beenjob growth since then. the percent growthslowed down dramatically. but one of thefactors is actually that we didn't continueto produce as much housing after 1980.

and this littlething called prop 13-- everyone heardof prop 13 before? some of you haven't,which is fine. it was passed in the late'70s to essentially freeze property taxes atthe point of sale. what it effectively did was,for many local governments, they lost a tremendousamount of revenue. and it changed how they thoughtabout new development going forward.

and a lot of themdidn't think housing would pay as muchin taxes as jobs. and so it led alot of communities to not favor housing asmuch and why a lot of them really like shopping centers. because shopping centersbring sales taxes. office buildings addproperty taxes to the roles, but it's really shoppingcenters, auto malls, those are the things that funda lot of local government.

so that changed incalifornia in the late '70s. and since then we'vereally entered this period of not producingas much housing. and that's the worldthat we're in today. so you can see it particularlypronounced in san francisco. and we've estimatedthat 5,000 units a year is about what san franciscocould do, or ought to be doing. and you can see that sanfrancisco has effectively never reached that.

it was sort of ablip for the moment, but those were authorized,not actually constructed. it's growing againnow, but this is something where, overtime, your housing problems don't happen in one year. they're chronic when overdecades you're underproducing. this is probably one ofthe most important points though to make. i said we don't buildenough, but supply matters.

and it really matterswhen you compare us to the rest of the country. there are essentially two kindsof inexpensive housing markets in the united states,places with not very strong economies-- let's saypolitely-- and places that build a lot of housing. there's no place witha strong economy that doesn't build a lot of housing. look at where we are.

san francisco, san jose,oakland, and then near us are honolulu and orange county. these are outliers ona national context. so it really is a keyfactor in where we go. and what you're seeingis how much was built. over to the left, wehaven't built a lot. and up here is the meetingasking price per square foot on a comparative basis. looking just at oneyear as a snapshot,

i said that's not abest way to do it, but just tounderstand last year. the biggest placebuilding housing is san jose, then san franciscoand interestingly enough, dublin, dublin in the east bay. if you go out there, there'sa bart station there. you see a whole numberof five story apartment buildings going up. now, they can't on their ownsolve the regional housing

challenge because they'rein a housing market where people arepicking and choosing. but when one citydoes it and you don't see other citiesof that scale doing it, that's what adds up tothe regional challenge. and you can seemountain view produced 37 housing units in 2013and palo alto less than 100. very small numbers. now, some of this is a blipbecause a particular project

might come forward whenthe calendar year changes. but the idea is that the bulkof the housing production's not happening incities that have had a significantamount of job growth. there's also a challenge when welook at the low income housing, or the housing where people thatcan't afford the market price. very little of thathas been built. and those of you that mightfollow the redevelopment system, we eliminatedredevelopment in california.

that was a major source offunding for housing for people that couldn't affordmarket rate housing. it's gone. so that side of it hasalso been exacerbated in the last couple of years. so part two, why ishousing so expensive when we make itdifficult to add housing? how do we make itdifficult to add housing? well, let's goback in time again

a little bit tothat postwar era. we're coming out, andthere was this thing called urban renewal thathappened in a number of cities in a lot of neighborhoodsthroughout san francisco and throughout oakland. parts of downtown san josewere torn out, were destroyed. so housing units were lost. it happened in wholenumbers of neighborhoods throughout the city, but it alsohappened in the downtown core.

anyone recognize this? it's now the yerba buenacenter by the moscone center right there in downtownon mission street. the church is there. so this was the buildingof it, but this had been, formerly, housing. all gone. so there's a wholehistory on urban renewal. we don't need to get into that.

i'm making a simple point thata tremendous number of housing units were lost duringthat period of time. what that also led to,in part was a backlash to growth and development. and this was particularlystark in san francisco, where there were attempts to tryto cap the heights of buildings in the city to fouror five stories. and in fact afterthe early '70s, residential heightsin san francisco

were almost universallycapped at 40 feet, which is four stories, with a fewexceptions-- one of them being downtown-- and that hadto do with the building at the foot of van nesscalled the fontana towers. and if you ever seeit, these sort of two partially curved modernisttowers facing right by ghirardelli square,right by the waterfront. so this backlash to growthis still with us today, and it was a responseto a number of changes.

but just from apolitical perspective, there was a ballotmeasure in san francisco to protect the waterfrontwas the name of it. it led to the factthat now anything that needs to be builton the waterfront has to go througha ballot measure. so that's now a new lawin san francisco that is going to have a direct effecton the number of housing units that could be built on variousportions of the waterfront,

around the giants' stadium. but this isn't just asan francisco issue. this backlash togrowth is something that happens in anumber of places. and palo alto votersin 2013 passed something called measured where they rejected a specific project, anaffordable senior housing project in palo alto. so that one specific eventdidn't transform the housing

market, but thesekinds of decisions are happening all the time. whether they'reat the ballot box, or they're at theplanning commission, or they're at a citycouncil hearing, those decisions are theones in the aggregate that make it very difficultto add housing. and each community seems to havea different reason for doing it, but they all come somehowin the direction of saying, no.

some places will say, well,we like our neighborhood character. that's going to change ourneighborhood character. we don't want that. other places say, well, we don'twant to see the traffic go up. it's going to makethe streets too full. they won't be safe. others say, well, it's goingto impact city services. where's the watergoing to come from?

we have to come upwith new sewer systems. and there's a point. it's not that-- these aren'tentirely without validity. it's just that the aggregateof all of these terms-- concerns aboutgentrification, concerns about a definition of urban tosuburban, which was something in marin countythat had them think they had to approve thingsof a certain density. the aggregate ofall these changes

leads to saying no to growth. and then we get to theregulatory process. there are a lot of smart peoplein the room who can probably do fantastic things. i would challenge youto be able to build a building throughthe planning process, because it's notjust actually-- if it were this easy tofollow the little path and go through it, thatwould be one thing.

but then mixed on topof this, of course, is the political processand the series of issues that you have to get through. so it's complicatedand it's expensive. we did a little back ofthe envelope calculation of what it would costto build new units. and this was justthe starting point for an 80-square footunit in san francisco. you start with thecost of land, $120,000,

construction cost $240,000. $300 a square foot'sprobably conservative. there's a subsidy for thebelow market rate units if you're doinga certain number. and then the other pieces,the permits and fees, selling expenses. and that's not taking intoaccount risk, that's not taking into accountthe bank issues, a whole variety of things.

it's expensive to build housing. there's also then theissue of part three about jobs and housing. and this is one that's alittle bit complicated. communities preferjobs to housing. but to the extent thatthey're supportive of jobs-- many places are--they're often not as supportive ofjobs in the core of their cities around transit.

so if you look at justsome of the numbers here, jurisdictions like jobs,housing not so much. santa clara county, 926,000jobs, 631,000 housing units. and it's flipped in someof the east bay communities that are more housing rich. if you look out to contra costacounty, it's different there. so part of this i mentionedbefore, after prop 13, the perception is thatjobs bring in more in taxes and workers consumeless in city services.

those of you that don'tlive in mountain view aren't consuming much inmountain view services-- fire, police, libraryservices, parks. you're here most of thetime during the day, and the same is true across jobcenters throughout the region. the other issue is that taxreceipts are inequitably distributed. just look over here atpalo alto, san jose, and santa clara.

palo alto and santaclara are job rich. they have high taxreceipts per capita. san jose is housingrich, and they have low taxreceipts per capita. and this affects thepolitics of those places, because san jose is reallytrying to figure out how to bring in jobsso they can become more in balance themselves. and this is ultimately thepoint of all of these things

i'm trying to raise isthat we're in this together as a region. this is not palo alto'sissue or san jose's issue. it's the bay area's issue. but individualcities are the ones that are making thecalls about what happens at their communities. so this is the newsurveymonkey building across the street fromthe palo alto caltrain

station in downtown. it's a lovely building. it's only four stories. now, it's a nice building. i'm posing thissomewhat rhetorically. i have an opinion,leave it to you. is four storiessufficient density directly around transit? and i heard from adinathat they actually

were required to addsignificantly more parking then they wanted to. but only 30% of the peoplearrive there by car. so they have all theseextra parking spaces that they were forcedto build which drives up the cost of the building. so you can get people,when their jobs are right next to transit a lot ofthem are going to take transit. but the communities are limitingthe amount of job space.

and this is the mostexpensive real estate market in the regionis downtown palo alto. but that limit on zoning is alsohere in downtown mountain view. and it's at almost every singleone of the caltrain stops up and down the peninsula andthroughout the south bay. you can't come in andplop a million square foot office building rightin the downtown, even though thosecommunities want jobs. and then this fall, menlo park'sgoing to have another ballot

measure about limitinggrowth, almost exclusively limiting office growthin their downtown core. it's going to affectretail as well. it doesn't directlyaffect housing so much, but part of the issueis these communities are trying to put astop on lots of things that they don't want to become--which, for menlo park's case, i guess is sunnyvale. that's the thing.

so part of this is that it'snot that much of a surprise that a lot of the major firms,like where we're sitting now, aren't located directlyaround transit. that the communitiesthat these companies are in that provide jobs andthat have these contributions to the region simplywouldn't permit this amount of commercial square footagein their downtown core, although there aresome regional benefits of being directlyaround transit.

and that's afundamental challenge that we face right there. the other sidethough is when you talk to people abouttransit-oriented development. who here has heart that term,transit-oriented development? do you think of housingwith maybe a coffee shop underneath whenyou hear that term? that's sort of whattransit-oriented development has become.

that's great. that's a wonderful idea. we should have a lot moreof that in our region. but transit-orienteddevelopment could also be office space in acore next to a rail stop. that's also anequally valid idea for transit-orienteddevelopment. and when we look atthe data on this, it shows that people aremore likely to take transit

if their job is rightnext to that transit. now, if their housing andtheir job is next to transit, they're even more likely. but job alone is moreimportant than just housing. and what this means is that whathappens right around rail stops in particular is extremelyimportant from a job perspective, from aregional perspective. and this has notchanged over time. this has really beenthat way for a long time.

so throughout thebay area, most jobs are located nearfreeway off-ramps and only a quarter of jobsare around regional rail. and so some of that are aseries of historical factors with highways and other things. but some of those are thoselocal zoning decisions. and where it's lightor orange is in fact where there's availablespace to build. there's not a lot of densityaround those particular rail

stops. we also know froman income analysis that people are travelingmore to get to better jobs. so better regional mobility is,in fact, a way to going back to the question of howdo we connect lower wage workers to good jobs,better regional mobility gets them that way. and this is a trendacross the whole region. but the problem is that wehave this transit system

throughout the bay areathat's not quite a system. it's 27 basicallyindependent operators. and this is probably anice way of how it looks. this looks like they allreasonably connect together. we've been trying toshow this in a way that really makes the problem worse. and it looks relatively even. but the problemwith that evenness is that we don't livejust in one county.

think of san mateo andsanta clara counties. they bleed together. we're part of oneurbanized corridor. now, people may not likethe word "urbanized." let's just call itone corridor where people are travelingback and forth. but we don't have atransit system that allows people to supportthat, so it becomes a big regional challenge ifyou're trying to get from, say,

walnut creek to here, or lotsof trips within the bay area. so we know most peopledrive alone to work. and in fact, you guys are onhere in this particular chart. the drive alonerate to this campus is almost comparable todowntown san francisco. so location is notan entirely-- you can, through a lot of theprograms google has offered, get to a drive alone ratewhich is similar to the most transit-oriented environments.

it requires the shuttle programsand the transportation demand management that you guys havedone here, which are fabulous. but most of therest of the region doesn't have that, doesn'thave those types of amenities. so on a regional scale, mostpeople are driving to work. and so we have this. we have people drivinglong distances, we have growing congestion,lots of in-commuting. the other side that it's gettingworse with a capacity issue

is on transit. and caltrain-- anyone here thatrides caltrain has seen it, it's growing and growing. and that's fabulous, but weneed to invest in it in order to make sure it's goingto be around there. and investment isa bunch of factors. and if you have questions,adina can answer those really at the end. but it's aroundelectrification, and new cars,

and train control systemsthat make it work. and bart has the same issue. so the regional railsystems in the bay area are very competitivewith the automobile. i'll mention shuttles briefly,just say what about shuttles. shuttles are not theproblem, they're the symptom. it's really aboutlocal land use, as i've been trying to say, thatthe local land use decisions that limit housingnear where people work,

limit jobs in thedense cores of places, the shuttles become a veryeffective solution to that. yes, it's about employeerecruitment and retention, and it's great in that regard. but from a land useperspective, that's at least how i seethis particular issue. so that last mile problemis what we have so much of. those red splotches are officebuildings near rail transit and the blue ones are thosethat are more than a half mile.

and that's the geographyof this region. and it's not going tofundamentally change. what's going to change is thedensity of those office spaces, the extent to which housing isallowed in those office spaces, and the extent towhich those rail places become more of job centersand have more housing around. those are the factorsthat we can really think about changing. so let's quickly get toa couple of solutions

so we can be optimistic andthen take your questions. one of them isaround the provision of affordable housing. this is not something where justbuilding housing of any kind is going to entirely solve it. lots of people willnot be able to afford market pricehousing at any rate. so we need to dothat, and there's a challenge in thisregion because, as i said,

redevelopment's gone and thesources of that have gone away. and it's very expensive tobuild affordable housing. so you can see the costof 1,000 homes, 10,000, and 100,000 homes. so we have to come up withnew sources that broaden this so it's not just newdevelopment that's paying for affordable housing. so that's one piece ofthe particular puzzle. we're also thinking aboutrenters and existing tenants.

and there are some places thathave good tenant protections and others don't. and that's an importantpiece of the puzzle as well. the next piece hisneighborhood planning. so thinking about wheregrowth can take place, doing a neighborhoodplanning process so places are allowed to grow. and part of that relates toreforming how we build housing and how we permitit, but the places

that have gone throughgood planning processes are able to grow. these are some of the bigareas in san francisco. and that mark at octavia, thatgreen one, those 6,000 units, a lot of those arehappening right now. this is the job growth. but i wanted to get to somephotographs of what we're seeing the growth happen in sanfrancisco along market street. that is the product ofneighborhood planning.

so as each buildingcomes forward, people aren't protestingit because the agreements were made long before. it's difficult, it'sexpensive, but ultimately it leads to the creation of lotsof development and buildings like this whichhave zero parking. and this is actually anaffordable housing project developed by david baker. so beautiful thingsthat are contributing

to the overall community there. the third piece then relatesto allowing more growth in some of the existingcommunities that we have. this thing calledsecondary units so people can havea backyard unit that they add to their home. you could add a third tothe san francisco housing count by doing it. and this is the zoning mapfor the city of mountain view.

and if you can see thislight yellowish color here, that's singlefamily residential. that means nothingbut one single home. so you can't havea secondary unit. so individualcommunities-- if we looked at the communities thatare around here or palo alto, you name it-- sanfrancisco, too. almost the entire westernhalf of san francisco has limitations like this.

it means you can't addapartment buildings, you can't add secondary units. that is limiting the totalavailability of housing. so i bet a lot ofyou are actually renting homes, single familyhomes, in some of these places and sharing them with roommates. that becomes asolution when you don't have that flexibilityin the zoning code. it goes back to thepowers that we've

given to cities topolice themselves. the next solution is toupzone around transit. i mentioned this. we can allow peopleto build more on top of the existingtransit stations. there are places like northberkeley where nothing has been builtsince bart went in. bart comes in, it'sunderground, and you've got this lovely bart station.

great regional accessibility andzero new housing in 40 years. and this might be thisway for another 25 years, because there's nothing tocompel berkeley as a city and the residentsof that community to allow housing onthose parking lots. and think about howmany parking lots are around a lot oftransit stations. think about all ofthose as opportunities where people couldhave existing homes.

then there's the job questionaround regional transit. in downtown san franciscoin the trans bay zoning is a place where there'sa significant amount of dense employmentthat's going in around what hopes to be the northernterminus of high speed rail and caltrain. some of those towersare residential as well, but those kinds of spots areimportant for development. then there's newlocations, places

where we haven't hadhousing historically. we can add. let me get to aclearer version of that which is treasure island. this is a place that'splanned for thousands of units of housing. yes, there is sea level rise. we're aware of that. this is going to beplanned hopefully

with enough of abuffer around that. but that's a bayarea issue as well. sea level rise is notunique to treasure island. it's not going to be unique tothe hunter's point shipyards. but again, theseare places where there's a significantamount of growth that can, and we're moving forwardwith developing them. then there's the questionof the corporate campus. so we're in certainlya corporate campus.

and there's been a lot ofthinking here about the vision. this is the proposedsamsung campus that's currentlyunder construction on san jose onnorth first street. but the traditional modelof the building surrounded by parking lots, in some ways,we've moved away from that. and so what we want tosee are environments that could be transformative. i don't know if anyonehappened to catch these.

someone went throughand said, well, what if we added allthe housing that's being demanded by the jobsthat are growing at some of these campuses and putthem at the parking lots around them? that's what it would look like. so that's itown. think cupertinowould go for that? and then how about this one?

you think googlers would gofor this one around google? now those areresidential towers. this is a thought experiment. this is not proposedzoning or planning ideas. it's simply saying that there'sa significant amount of demand for housing. it's going to go somewhere. and that somewheredoesn't have to be five feet away,though ideally it

could be for some numberof the population. but it should be in aplace that's accessible, and it should be in a placethat people can get to easily. the suburban retrofit pieceis also a part of that. and that's a version of that. and there's other developmentsthat are being proposed. this is another one on northfirst street that's again trying to remake thetraditional corporate campus, to bring it closerto the street,

to make it morewalkable, to make it like it's part ofa neighborhood-- not just something youdrive to, you park your car, and you can't get around. i think this environment hereis much lovelier than most of the office parksthroughout the valley. there's bicycles,you can get around. a lot of the otherenvironments don't have that. they're more of an isolated pod.

and so this is just a visionof a direction it could go. and there is not yeta tenant for this. and they're searching forone, but they at least have a concept in place. so just a couple morequick points, and then we want to open it up. regionalism is key. we don't do this alone. we are not in isolationfrom each other.

we've saved the openspace in the bay area as a great productof regionalism. golden gate nationalrecreation area, these are thingsthat are actions of regional responsibility. so too will sea levelrise be the kind of issue that we're going to haveto work on as a region. it touches every community,and these questions of housing and transportationas well are part of that.

san mateo countyis trying to work across multiplejurisdictions to figure out how much housing to grow. it doesn't mean they're anymore supportive of housing, but at least theyhave a process where those cities talk to each other. and santa clara county is goingto copy a version of that, and we'll see thedirection that goes. those are promising steps,and one of the levers

we have as a regionis to say, we won't invest asmuch transportation money in a placethat's not going to grow in concert withthe regional goals. so lastly, the verylast point on this then is about transportation. we don't have this integratedregional transit system. that's something we certainlyshould strive towards. that is what ourcompetitor regions have.

the places at this region thebay area is competing with have that. they also have more housing. so those are some ofthe factors that we want to make sure we work on. so just quickly in summary,this has taken a long time to create. you would say that thisis a chronic problem. this is not a temporary problem.

it's not going to be immediate,but there's a lot of-- it's important to thinkregionally in this, but the solutions in manyof this take place locally. so with that i think we'regoing to hear from some folks here on some ofthe local issues. and then i look forwardto your questions. thank you very much. jeremy hoffman: thanks, egon. so i just want totalk briefly about how

local issues play into this. these sorts ofdecisions, these are playing out right nowin your city councils, in your city halls, inyour local elections. i've gotten involved this year. there was a group i gotinvolved with called campaign for a balanced mountain viewthat really has been drawing light on the jobs housingbalance in mountain view. and it's been reallyheartening for me

to see how the city councilmembers, they're our neighbors. they do care about theopinions of the residents. and it's actually verypossible and plausible to influence them and let themknow what our concerns are and what ourpriorities should be. and also, i'd like tointroduce eric rosenblum. he's on the planningcommission in palo alto. would you like tosay a few words? eric rosenblum: yeah,just very quickly.

first, again thank you egon. and great to see a good turnout. so i'm eric rosenblum. i was a googler untilabout two years ago. and i was alwaysinterested in these issues, but never knew howto get involved and didn't even know ifi could get involved. it turns out, it'snot that hard. the people thatoppose all growth

are not necessarilythat numerous, but they're extremelywell-organized. and it turns out that if youbring a slightly different mindset, i went from beingcompletely uninformed to being a planning commissioner forthe city of palo alto, helped to form a group calledpaloaltoforward.com. so if you'd liketo educate yourself more about some local issuesand how to get involved, i encourage you to goand read up a little bit.

and feel free to contact me,jeremy can find me easily. jeremy hoffman:and i'd also like to thank adina levin who iswith the friends of caltrain organization that helpedorganize egon's talk that introduced me to him. do you want to say a few words? adina levin: sure. and there are some reallyimportant regional decisions being made about how tomodernize caltrain and then how

to fund it. greencaltrain.comis the website, and this is one of theseregional efforts where citizen participationwill be helpful. and don't underestimateat all the power of citizen participation. the things that jeremy anderic have been doing even in the last few monthshave been changing what's going on in our cities.

so you have more powerhere than you know. jeremy hoffman: so iencourage everyone, read your local papers. these issues are covered. the debates, getinvolved, learn more. and now, we'd like toopen up the floor for q&a. audience: sure. so i noticed you have theprojections going forward something like 25 or 30years for not just jobs

but also housing. how do you takelegislation into account when you project howmany housing units are going to be builtin a given city? egon terplan: so thehousing projections are-- there are two factors. one of them is lookingat how much california's going to grow asa state, and then apportioning that to the region.

and then within the region,it's a little bit more of a political process downon the jurisdictional level. so in terms of legislation, it'sthinking about factors like, where is there zonecapacity within cities? what cities have doneplanning for this? but it is not thinkingabout, is there going to be some legislativechange in 15 years? is there a piece of legislationyou're thinking about? audience: no, iwas just wondering

egon terplan: but so it's apolitical process in part. and so you may hear aboutrhna, if you get involved, the regional housingneeds allocation. but it becomes a questionof palo alto saying, well, we don't want to add1,000 units, 2,000, whatever the number isfor their particular city, because then theyhave to find locations where they would plan for it. and they can besued if they don't

identify locations for it. but they can't be suedif they don't approve it in the same way. so the teeth aren'tquite so strong. i think adina has acomment on this too. adina levin: the typeof legislation in a city is called a general planor a comprehensive plan. and the type ofplanning for an area is called a preciseplan or a specific plan.

and that's where the city makesthe law for how much housing and offices areallowed to be built. audience: thanks. i'm curious, do you thinkthat development that's going to encourage people tolive closer to their employers is an important part ofsolving these problems, or if orientingthings towards transit makes that less important? egon terplan: that'sa great question.

so i think both are essential. but just for example,let's say there was going to be asignificant amount of residential developmentin the north bayshore area here in mountainview around google. well, some number of the peopleliving in those apartment units would probably work hereor would work close by. they would make that choice,so it's incredibly important. it is not the entiretyof the solution.

we also have to investin regional transit, because people aremoving around the region. this is a region thathas a lot of mobility, and people change jobs. so both factors are important,but you can very clearly demonstrate that housingclose to people's jobs will reduce theamount they drive. audience: so it seemslike a lot of these issues are coming that aregovernmental in nature,

whether it's permits,or measures, or zoning. now that this is becominga more hot button issue, have you seen changes happeningat the ballots what people are voting for? or is it still sort oftoo new, and this november is what we shouldkeep our eye on, and what's happening atthe local government level? well, this has beengoing on for a long time. so some of the votes to restrictthese things go back decades.

san francisco, for example,a place that i was arguing is a great place to addjobs, it restricts the amount of office space on anannual basis going back to the voters in the 1980s. you can't build more than acouple office buildings a year. so i think that it is one wherethere's growing interest in it. and some of the examples ofthese folks getting involved is a good sign. it looks like, adina, doyou want to make a comment?

audience: are thereany relevant elections coming up in mountainview and palo alto? jeremy hoffman: there arerelevant elections coming up. so the way mountainview city council works is there are seven seats electedat large across mountain view. in alternate every two years,either four or three candidates are elected for four year terms. so three newcandidates are going to be elected this november.

google here-- there area lot of candidate forums in mountain view and beforenovember 4 election day. and you should all registerto vote in your town. one of the candidateforums will be here at google on october 15. it'll be over atcharlie's at 4:00 pm. so if you want to hear thenine candidates running for three seats and their takeon the problems facing mountain view, you shoulddefinitely come to that.

again, that's october 15. eric rosenblum: jeremy, i wantedto add just quickly also, i thought it was a greatquestion about what has happened locally. i'll give two examples. one's very positive,and one i would say is negative in thecontext of this talk. a small group started talkingto palo alto about what's called tdm, so transportationdemand management.

so that's what you allenjoy here at google. the shuttles thattake you to work, the good work that kevinmathy's team does for all of you but most towns don't have. and actually, just a small groupof people coming into the city council got palo altoto start adopting this measure forall of downtown. so they've justbegun that process. hugely impactful, didn'ttake that much work.

on the flip side, thiselection in palo alto is likely to result ina slate of candidates that their platformis no growth. there's been a major backlash. and so it's an importantelection coming up. this is apparentlyfairly unprecedented. but however you feel about theissue, one side or the other, there are some majorchanges happening on both sides of the issue.

audience: for thehousing problems, one of the solutionsyou mentioned is more low income housingand more rent control. i was under theimpression that one of the causes ofthe housing crisis is the rent control lawsthat make a tenant not want to move even though theirjob is not in san francisco, but they have a well belowmarket rate apartment. and the homeowners want toget out of the rental market,

and fewer and fewerproperties are on the market. and some of themare even converted to non-residentialspace, because it's hard being a homeowner ofa rental property. can you comment on that? egon terplan: yeah,that's a great question. so in part, this is anincredibly complex situation. and there's people atmany different income levels in our region.

and i think what i'mtrying to acknowledge is you can't just come upwith an answer that solves it for the people who could affordthe market price housing. a lot of people cannot affordthe market price housing, and there's a variety ofstrategies within that. what you're gettingat is the question of what's the impactof rent control specifically on some places. there's only been a few citiesin the region-- san francisco,

berkeley, oakland to a lesserextent, san jose to a lesser extent-- that have anyform of rent control. so within thoseplaces, yeah, there's been some of those impacts. but by and large, the questionof neighborhood stability and housing stabilityis an important one. but it's a much longer--it's a good question to ask, but i think the broad housingsolution needs to make sure that we have housing forpeople that can't afford

the current costof housing as well. yeah? audience: do you thinkthe stagnation exists because homeownersdon't have incentives to vote for thisgrowth, because there's no economic incentive for themto lose value on their house? and how can we moveforward with that? egon terplan: and localhomeowners don't actually have an incentive on theimpact, the fiscal impact,

of the decisions. their propertytaxes stay frozen. and so the extentthat their community-- take san jose as an example--is looking for more revenue to add to it's city services. the individual homeowneractually who's been in a home for a long periodof time doesn't have to contribute to that. audience: but what aboutthe price of their home?

egon terplan: i think there'sa lot of misperceptions about the price of their homein terms of changes to things. and one thing i wouldpoint out, that if people are going to buildmore densely, that's a sign of rising land values. so there's not adirect relationship between increasingdensity in a community and the impact onhousing prices. so a large part ofthat is perception.

but a lot of it's people justdon't like change of any kind. audience: i havea quick question. so we have seenhow you have shown the projection of 15% growth. i was thinking, can we think of50% more capacity in the sense we come to a place for 9hours and commute for 2 hours. so those 12 hourswe're outside home. so house occupancy rightnow is 50% in that sense. and populationalso, they are also

thinking in terms of 24 hourbanking, 24 hour hospital, 24 hour services. so in that sense, can we extendone more shift in working and distribute peoplein that accordingly so that our roads arenot that congested, our houses are notthat congested? egon terplan: soyou're suggesting that people might takethe homes that they're not in during the day andhave people sleep in them?

audience: the samefamily can distribute who works in the day, whoworks in the night, who is with the kids during theday, who is with the kids during the night rather thanjust going to some daycare. egon terplan: that's the realityof how low income people can survive in the bay area. what you have justdescribed is what happens every day incommunities over this region. someone works asa janitor, someone

stays home with the kids,someone works at night, someone works during the day. is it by the force of policyto try to impose that? unlikely. i think you canencourage companies to be more flexible in theirworkforce and other phenomena. but i think that whatyou're getting at is probably more about akind of social and cultural transformation thatwould need to happen.

but it's creative,and it's important. audience: the currenthousing crisis and the policiesthat gave rise to it are related tothe deurbanization of american cities in the recentpast and the social tumult and migrations that resulted--white flight suburbanization, deindustrialization, et cetera. is the area sufficientlypast those social ills? or is some of theresistance to growth

still drawing onthose old wounds? egon terplan: wow, verycomplex, important question. short answer is yes. we're a product ofour recent past. the deindustrialization affectedlarge parts of the east bay. and this is why i was reallytrying to make a point and think aboutthe income factor. just think about thebay area for a moment. historically, you had alot of suburban migration.

like lots of regions, wehad lower income populations living in older communities inparts of san francisco, parts of oakland, partsof the east bay. that has changed. so some of the pressures you areseeing, particularly in oakland right now, are verydifferent from the pattern of deindustrialization,and decentralization, and moving out. and you're going to havepolitical pressure as prices

go up and people perceive thatthey're going to be pushed out, or in reality theirchildren won't necessarily be able to afford therents as they go up. so i think theseare ones that we want to get in frontof as a region. and the answer is to thinkabout this more broadly to make sure webuild enough housing, but these are a lot of complexissues in that question. adina levin: back in thatgeneration, suburbs were cool,

cities were uncool. if you had a choice, youmoved to the suburbs. so the earlierconversation about what do current homeownersthink, they're thinking what makes my place greatis that it's suburban. walking and biking and transitare what uncool people do. and the current generationof younger adults think really differently. there's a culturalshift going on.

audience: i've been readinga lot about the shuttle pilot program in san franciscoand facebook's doing a lot with housing developmentaround menlo park. is there a pointat which you think these companies that aregrowing really rapidly have more of aresponsibility to step into with public/privatepartnerships? or is that happening already,and is it-- to what extent? egon terplan: that'sa good question.

i'd love for kevin andthe transportation folks to address that. but i think thereality is-- and i think google recognizes this--caltrain is fundamentally important to theregion, and it's fundamentally important tomaking all of these pieces go together. the shuttles that arebeing run are great, but they're a partof a solution.

and so to the extentthat you all as people working here get involvedwith issues that are happening with caltrain and make surethat caltrain's successful, as well as thinking--when you're saying public/privatepartnerships, there's the public investmentin the transit system. but there could besome sort of scenario where you have morepeople riding caltrain, they get off inmountain view, and then

you're running more expressfeeder buses-- public, private, shuttles, whateverkind-- from downtown mountain view to this area. and in fact, i think some ofthe planning for shoreline boulevard coming herewould facilitate that. so that's the kindof direction we need to go in anumber of these things is to make sure some ofthose regional trunk lines have enough capacity,so a lot of people

can move big distances. and then public/privatepartnerships, a variety of mechanisms to getpeople the last couple of miles ultimately to their destination. so i really hope all ofyou can get involved. i didn't mention before, i alsowant to recognize my colleague leah toeniskoetter inthe back of the room who runs our san jose office. so those of you who livein santa clara county,

want to continue these kinds ofconversations in the south bay, talk to her, show upat our san jose office. get involved withfriends of caltrain or think about these are thekinds of issues where these are really being talked about. jeremy hoffman: thankyou all for coming. and thank you, egon.

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