Local governments are typically very easy to influence. Especially when you are the largest tax provider.

Mountain View required Facebook to give up the free meals benefit to lease a building. Google jumped through tons of hoops to develop housing in Mountain View.

Palo Alto has blocked new housing for the last decade. They enforce strict zoning that has curtailed commercial development too.

> Mountain View required Facebook to give up the free meals benefit to lease a building

Not quite. The rule is that for offices in the Village at San Antonio Center project meals within an office cannot be subsidized more than 50% on a regular basis. Meals that are in restaurants that are open to the public can be subsidized as often and as much as the office wants to.

That development includes several restaurants. I expect Facebook will make arrangements to use them to provide Facebook's free meal benefit at that development.

The point is that local governments are making companies jump through hoops to get space.

not true either, it is the opposite, in fact. see more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bl19RoR7lc

Well, sure. If you're going to bluff the car salesman, you have to be willing to walk out of the dealership (otherwise it really is just a bluff).

...and then you haven't actually influenced the local government, you've just found a new one.

One would hope that a local government that lost its town Facebook or Google would be influenced by that loss, but maybe things are actually so bad that they wouldn't be.

Many of the people who are long time residents and home owners in Mountain View wouldn't shed a tear if Google packed up and left. The general local attitude toward those large tech companies is ambivalent at best.

Yes, I know. They aren't going to change that position voluntarily. I strongly suspect that state intervention is inevitable.

If Big Tech wanted to fix it, they could. They have the capital to purchase new governance in California & the Bay to effectively change the laws to foster growth.

Despite popular opinion, you can't actually just throw money at politicians and get them to do whatever you want. Politicians need money because it helps them get votes, but allowing dense housing in neighborhoods full of single family homes is a great way to lose votes. No amount of money will make up for that at the polls.

>They have the capital to purchase new governance in California & the Bay to effectively change the laws to foster growth

That's not exactly a good thing. One day it's sponsoring cheap apartments, the next it's dissolving labor laws.

The zeitgeist of local politics has been moving against them. With attacks on commuter buses, rallies, and blame for the housing crises assigned to them.

Buying politicians isn’t leadership.

Leadership is saying “I’m willing to lose some of my home price appreciation in the short term to keep the ecosystem thriving”

Unfortunately, only residents get to vote, not people who are just working there during the day. And these areas are so expensive, most of their workers commute from outside.

California has an initiative system. If Big Tech wanted to get more housing built, it could do so, and it wouldn't require any changes in elected officials.

Our next campus needs to handle buildings up to 8 stories high, plus apartment buildings the same height for all our jobs were bringing.. I guess we can't come to your town.

Repeat that 2 or 3 times, and the problem goes away quickly..

How about to diversify geographically??