With rents and house prices going nowhere but up these days, the Palo Alto government is looking into how it can provide affordable housing to its residents. One of which is a proposal to introduce a subsidy for middle class households whose annual income ranges from $150,000 to $250,000.
According to Reuters, Palo Alto Vice Mayor Greg Scharff put forward the proposal which includes developing some 2,000 new houses and tiny apartments that will be intended for those who are earning below $250,000 per year. It is considering building houses as small as 200 square meter with kitchens and bathrooms shared among neighbors and co-housing communities. Some 587 units will be reserved for those "uniquely wealthy middle class" in the city, as per Daily Mail.
Scharff said that house prices in the San Francisco Bay area city, at an average of $3 million, have been pushing out longtime residents including professionals such as teachers, police officers and doctors. Likewise, those who work in the city could not afford to live there because of skyrocketing rental prices.
"Since many of Palo Alto's workers cannot afford to live in the City, the imbalance creates negative impacts such as long commutes for workers both inside and outside the region, increased traffic congestion during peak commute periods, and increased air pollution end energy consumption," the eight-year affordable housing proposal said.
Meanwhile, Professor Norm Miller, a real estate expert at the University of San Diego's School of Business, has warned that it the affordable housing plan will be difficult to implement. He told Daily Mail, "The only solutions to make housing more affordable are to add density, more units per acre and generally you need to add a lot of density like you have in New York City or to make units smaller as proposed."
Unfortunately, people in California have always been opposed to building small housing units and increasing density in the area, arguing that they will bring traffic to an insane level.
