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How has East Palo Alto not been gentrified?


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2019 Jan 6, 9:53am   1,308 views  7 comments

by BayArea   ➕follow (1)   💰tip   ignore  

It puzzles me daily driving through Palo Alto... EPA is right near some of the most expensive real estate in the Bay Area. How has the city not been fully gentrified yet?

What’s preventing that from happening?

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1   mell   2019 Jan 6, 10:55am  

Obama's sons. Plus the wealthy effete leftoids governing the bay area know very well that they need to leave a few areas out of gentrification so they can keep their voters gettoized instead of priced out of their voting districts. Consider it a pawn sacrifice.
2   Sunnyvale94087   2019 Jan 6, 11:00am  

That has always puzzled me as well. Two problems, I believe, are rent control and people renting to section eight housing recipients. Both keep dwellings from being upgraded — gentrified. That, in turn, drags down the whole area.

I had a friend who bought new $600k fancy houses in year 2000. It was part of a 50 home redevelopment area within EPA. It was a great house in every way except the surrounding neighborhood once you left those 3 streets. In the 8 years he lived there his house was burgled twice, graffiti sprayed on the outside of his house and on the street and driveway, shrubs and other yard decoration vandalized and stolen, cars parked in the driveway were vandalized and parts stolen. It should have been a quiet, residential neighborhood, but loud-engined vehicles with screeching tires and blaring modern "music" would punctuate the peace at all times of the day and night. By 2006 the market value was nearing $1M, but as the 2008 downturn hit, the price fell right back to the original $600k. Oh, he also had to spring for a post office box because his mail kept getting stolen.

As for the existing "old stock" houses, I had a different friend who bought one in 2009 as an investment property. It already came with a section-8 renter "family" (1 woman and her 3 kids) installed. My friend (also a woman) didn't need to do anything to the property to keep the tennant. She considered upgrading, but adding $100k to the house to refurbish wouldn't have increased the rent she could charge by very much. Any improvements to the yard would be destroyed. She wasn't constrained by rent control, but she was already at the max price for section-8 and convincing non-section-8 people to move in would be very difficult (see previous paragraph about break-ins and vandalization). So there it sat, a house not upgraded from 1950 collecting government money month after month.
3   RWSGFY   2019 Jan 6, 12:24pm  

I heard that Amazon tried to build an engineering office in EPA but the "city leaders" demanded only local residents to be hired to work there. Amazon proposed to add a warehouse to the site which would provide suitable jobs for local residents in exchange for dropping the requirement for engineering/managerial positions, but "city leaders" refused saying that all and every job should be filled by EPA residents or GTFO. At which point Amazon obliged and GTFO.
4   RWSGFY   2019 Jan 6, 2:17pm  

ThreeBays says
DASKAA says
I heard that Amazon tried to build an engineering office in EPA but the "city leaders" demanded only local residents to be hired to work there. Amazon proposed to add a warehouse to the site which would provide suitable jobs for local residents in exchange for dropping the requirement for engineering/managerial positions, but "city leaders" refused saying that all and every job should be filled by EPA residents or GTFO. At which point Amazon obliged and GTFO.


Cool story, but Amazon does have an engineering office in EPA.


I heard wrong then.
5   Ceffer   2019 Jan 6, 2:45pm  

The RichFucks need someplace convenient to buy their drugs and blast hoes.
6   clambo   2019 Jan 7, 8:22pm  

HUD housing probably.
7   zzyzzx   2019 Jan 8, 8:15am  

Whenever I have wondered why certain parts of Baltimore City haven't been gentrified yet, it usually happens in 15-20 years. Today's toxic was site is tomorrows high rise or yuppie housing. I'm not even exaggerating. Even a relatively new Amazon warehouse I suspect will be moved to a lessor part of town for something more expensive to be put in it's place.

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