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Apple Commits $2.5 Billion to Fight California Housing Crisis
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This is why the kids hate capitalism.
Great to see Apple doing this. Housing prices and shortages has negative effects on all residents of SF, and affects Apple too. Even relatively well paid people can't afford housing and live in portable accommodation.
Apple doesn't need corporate welfare. They don't need tax breaks and other incentives, they have enough money.
Apple doesn't need corporate welfare. They don't need tax breaks and other incentives, they have enough money.
They're paying what the tax laws require them to pay. We do have some presidential candidates who are proposing to raise the tax rate (and close a lot of loopholes) on corporations (in order to help the rest of society). Perhaps you should consider supporting them.
lol
The housing crisis is not something that can be "fixed" by injecting money. That always has the opposite effect. We should have let 2007/2008 do its thing and let everything fail. But because we didn't, the next financial meltdown will be 10x bigger. Oh and we're on a nearby collision course.
The housing crisis is not something that can be "fixed" by injecting money. That always has the opposite effect. We should have let 2007/2008 do its thing and let everything fail. But because we didn't, the next financial meltdown will be 10x bigger. Oh and we're on a nearby collision course.
They’re making money on loans with their cash. Apple has tons of cash and it’s sitting idle; this will provide at least a little bit of ROI on a ton of cash, plus it diversifies the company a bit more, which is necessary for a company worth more than a trillion dollars.
I’m a shareholder and I’m happy to see this.
Not true. People move to California so they can work for companies like Apple; they don’t move because they want to live there and then so happen to get a job at Apple.
The thing is, Apple insists that everyone must live there, go into the office, and not work from home.
You’ve given me hope that smart people still exist on the internet.
"Calling Stan Brown from your contacts"
About damn time...with all the success of the iPhone, iMac, iPod, and now they decide to address the elephant in the room.
We should have put the people responsible for 2007/2008 in jail, rather than saying their companies were "too big to fail" and either leaving them untouched or allowing them to exit with "golden parachutes".
If the people who do such things make huge profits off it and suffer no consequences, there's nothing to stop them from doing it again, and plenty of $$$ reasons to do so again. (One consequence of trying to deregulate everything.)
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I love it! Apple commits to investing a huge amount of money to address housing in the Bay Area and people here work overtime to whine-n-moan about how terrible or insignificant that is.
Engineers moving to Silicon Valley are stupid. There, I said it. Move to Charlotte, Columbus, Austin, Jacksonville... In today's technology-focused world, putting everyone worth a damn in one location is just absurd. So many opportunities outside of that ridiculous bubble.
Shareholder's should know when to get out of a company that will pull itself down. You should never follow a company to the ground once you realize that it is making bad choices that will hurt the stock/company.
Nobody is telling you to keep the stock. Plenty of other ones that will go up much faster than Apple...
Kids look at that and hate capitalism while turn their eye away from Venezuela.
LOL. The workers for Silicon Valley already have to commute into work because house prices are so high in that area, so what would be the difference?
Well, not exactly. It might be desirable and expected that housing prices will keep going up. But homes are there to serve a primary purpose of providing a residence for an individual or a family that needs a place to live. For that reason, they're always subject to market demand.
A house is NOT an investment, in the strict sense. It just happens to be an asset you can leverage to make money if you're able to rent it out profitably. True investments are things you can purchase and just hold them, doing nothing to them, and they're worth more in the future simply because you kept them for a length of time. Homes suffer from wear and tear, and have plenty of ongoing maintenance expenses. Sometimes you can't even close a deal with a potential buyer without agreeing to doing additional work on the property first, at your expense.
Most house "flippers" are really just gamblers / con-artists. They're buying properties in relatively poor condition for low prices and then betting they can fix JUST enough on it to make it presentable as a much better quality property so they can turn a quick profit. Most of the time, the new buyer gets stuck with a lot of substandard quality work on the renovations and may have to do them over.
As far Apple lending out money to help create more affordable housing? My guess is, it won't be enough money to put much of a dent in the California housing costs -- beyond maybe creating a few new neighborhoods or apartment complexes / condos that have attractive initial pricing? Most companies who would spend their own profits on such a thing would be looking at some type of "corporate housing" where you have to work for the company to qualify to buy the property or rent the property at the reduced rate.
A house is NOT an investment, in the strict sense. It just happens to be an asset you can leverage to make money if you're able to rent it out profitably. True investments are things you can purchase and just hold them, doing nothing to them, and they're worth more in the future simply because you kept them for a length of time. Homes suffer from wear and tear, and have plenty of ongoing maintenance expenses. Sometimes you can't even close a deal with a potential buyer without agreeing to doing additional work on the property first, at your expense.
Most house "flippers" are really just gamblers / con-artists. They're buying properties in relatively poor condition for low prices and then betting they can fix JUST enough on it to make it presentable as a much better quality property so they can turn a quick profit. Most of the time, the new buyer gets stuck with a lot of substandard quality work on the renovations and may have to do them over.
As far Apple lending out money to help create more affordable housing? My guess is, it won't be enough money to put much of a dent in the California housing costs -- beyond maybe creating a few new neighborhoods or apartment complexes / condos that have attractive initial pricing? Most companies who would spend their own profits on such a thing would be looking at some type of "corporate housing" where you have to work for the company to qualify to buy the property or rent the property at the reduced rate.
I assume by commute you mean long distances. Some workers do. Many don't.
Facts matter.
Money is nice and all, but it’s only part of the solution.
Due to Bay Area NIMBYs, and complete local control over development to elected officials in every Bay Area city; I don’t believe it will move the needle on helping us build more housing.
For example, the local pushback regarding the redevelopment of Vallco mall into housing literally a mile down the street from Apple Park.
We need to address the lack of courage in the Bay Area to allow more neighbors in areas that make sense - such as near major transit lines and job centers.
Maybe add a 1 Billion for lobbying efforts in Sacramento, a hefty donation to local YIMBY groups, and possibly fund and promote a ballot measure for Senator Scott Weiner’s SB50 in the 2020 General Election.
Due to Bay Area NIMBYs, and complete local control over development to elected officials in every Bay Area city; I don’t believe it will move the needle on helping us build more housing.
For example, the local pushback regarding the redevelopment of Vallco mall into housing literally a mile down the street from Apple Park.
We need to address the lack of courage in the Bay Area to allow more neighbors in areas that make sense - such as near major transit lines and job centers.
Maybe add a 1 Billion for lobbying efforts in Sacramento, a hefty donation to local YIMBY groups, and possibly fund and promote a ballot measure for Senator Scott Weiner’s SB50 in the 2020 General Election.
Forgivable grants. Lol.
Yeah. Let’s help the people looking for handouts and leave people who’ve been responsible throughout the ups and downs.
I might as well just leverage the **** out of myself and then demand help.
Yeah. Let’s help the people looking for handouts and leave people who’ve been responsible throughout the ups and downs.
I might as well just leverage the **** out of myself and then demand help.
Of course it doesn’t. That’s not the point. To solve the underlying issues would require politicians to acknowledge they screwed up. Much easier to get like minded CEOs to give free money. The problem is never solved so politicians get to keep promising fixes, CEOs get to look noble spending other people’s money, everyone wins.
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I feel like in this article "California" means the bay area. Meanwhile, us people in Southern California still waiting for that affordable housing.
I am all on board. But this involves locking up lots of Wall Street and most of DC. Politicians would prefer we let Wall Street off so we don’t look to closely on the laws they were passing and what the bureaucrats were allowing.
I honestly think it's just because companies avoid scaling up salaries and people collectively aren't demanding better pay. For me, in terms of cost of living, the actual dollar amount is irrelevant. $83,000 isn't well paid for San Francisco. $50,000 in San Antonio, Texas will let you get a single bedroom apartment, a nice car, and still save for a home or retirement and thus I'd consider $50,000 in such a city to be well paid.
If a good sized single bedroom can go for $700-$900/month here in San Antonio but the comparable apartment is $4,000/month in San Francisco, I'd expect at least another $3,000/month in take home pay for a comparable position in SF but it doesn't work like that.
That's why as a native Californian I got out of there. Luckily for me, Civil Engineering is needed everywhere all the time, so if I have the ability and experience I can choose the city I want, unlike the computer engineer grad I talk to who literally can't find a local job in San Antonio and says he'll probably have to eventually suck it up and move to the Bay Area.