1) Exclusionary zoning is a problem-- it's keeping those out except those who are fortunate (rich or lucky), and not paying for the privilege. It's a country club atmosphere, but with Prop 13, without the requisite fees (which should go back to the community at large)

2) "Many cities near Palo Alto have houses at a reasonable price, East Palo Alto, East Menlo Park, Mountain View, Redwood City"

Their houses sell for less than Palo Alto/Atherton, but they're far from reasonable. An artificial scarcity of land has driven prices up everywhere.

>Many cities near Palo Alto have houses at a reasonable price

LOL

Your theory doesn't explain why she's moving to Santa Cruz -- the schools are nothing special there.

We're moving to Santa Cruz because we wanted to live in a walkable area. If you travel up and down the peninsula, any house near the walkable downtown area is going to be $2M+. Yeah, sure, you can buy for less and have to travel by car absolutely everywhere. But why spend $1.5 to live in a dead cul de sac when you can spend the same money to live in a lively walkable area near the beach? If you're going to hang an albatross around your neck, you better think it's awesome. We're sick of driving everywhere and we want our kids to be able to go bike around the neighborhood safely.

If you hate driving, you're really gonna hate being on the wrong side of Highway 17. Many of my coworkers commute over the hill (I used to go to UCSC, too) and it's a really bad commute: there's effectively a single path, with 2 lanes, and a high rate of accidents that block both lanes.

Formerly America's deadliest highway (prior to the dividing barrier)

As you say, lane-closing accidents daily...but also hillbillies in huge 4x4s from Redwood Estates who also hate tech people and are often high

You're preaching to the choir :-) I lived in Santa Cruz for 13 years, and I would love to go back -- except that commuting to Sunnyvale would be hell.

As I've pointed out elsewhere on this post, you've setting up a ton of requirements that can't be met. While I appreciate that you want to live in a "walkable area", that's pretty much the first requirement you should drop. That's a "want to have", not a "must have" in housing. Like I've pointed out elsewhere, you're setting up specious arguments when you insist of a bunch of details, like living directly in PA, living directly in a walkable area, being able to bike on the streets in your neighborhood.

The point is that if two professional salaries aren't enough to buy a home in Palo Alto, then it highlights how much everyone else must be struggling. It highlights just how far away all of our service workers must live. Highlights just how miserable housing prices and commutes have gotten for the vast majority of people in the Bay Area who aren't lucky enough to have two professional salaries. If two professionals are, according to you, expected to have a half an hour commute, then everyone else is melting into their car seats every day.

By the way, in San Mateo, my children go to school with a number of children whose parents are "service workers" for neighboring cities. They live in San Mateo- most of them have bought fixer-uppers in areas like East of 101 where prices are lower (unfortunately, also very close to the freeway, with lots of pollution and noise). Obviously, this is anecdotal, but it's clear that there are people who have recently purchased in this area and are commuting to nearby cities.

Dude, where do you get off telling her what choices to make about where to live?

Well, she and I share a great deal of things in common in this situation. We're both dual professional marriages with families in the Bay Area who are in the situation where housing in the areas where we want to live is unaffordable. The difference is while I also want to see denser and more affordable housing and shorter commutes, I didn't rage-quit on the internet over not being able to buy a $2.7M home in exactly the place where I want to live. Instead, I was extremely rational, considered a wide range of issues, decided that the problem with housing in California is effectively systemic and unchangeable because existing homeowners are an extremely powerful voting block.

If I wanted to live in Palo Alto the first two things I'd drop are the requirement for "walkable to downtown" and "my kids can bike on my street". Those are great attributes, but that's about half a million of additional house cost, and I think any rational person buying a home would drop those requirements if they truly want to live there. Adding on to that, I'd also suggest buying a fixer-upper, fixing it up, and living there (not flipping it).

Ultimately, if you rage-quit on the internet, you can't complain if people call you on the irrational parts of your rage.

"Rage-quitting"? She couldn't find what she wanted, so she left. Her argument is not "everyone should get what they want" but that the majority of people's situations are worse than hers. You having different priorities regarding where/how you want to live is great, doesn't mean that they're right for her, or that the choices others have made to get by are right for her. It's great that you can zero in on what the actual problem is, but it seems much more valuable to do what she's doing and spread the information (including how the voting block would have to be overcome) than to give up and suggest everyone else give up, too. "systemic and unchangeable" sounds more like quitting to me than anything in the article.

Redwood City has a lot of nice houses near the downtown for under $2M

It didn't when we were looking. We didn't see a single property come up on the downtown side of El Camino. We would have liked that, but we didn't see it. And also $2M would also not have been within the band we were looking for.

Speaking as a Los Gatan...get ready to HATE hwy 17