It seems that the left are much happier with liberal principles when they are applied to other people, on other neighborhoods!
Why does a wealthy California town say it opposes affordable housing? To save mountain lions
The town’s decision drew quick scorn as a brazen attempt to evade even minimally denser development in one of California’s most exclusive locales.
by Liam Dillon, Tribune News Service | Saturday, February 26, 2022 | 7:00 AM EST
The well-heeled Silicon Valley suburb of Woodside, Calif., has come up with a novel way to block plans that would potentially bring in more affordable housing: Declare itself Cougar Town.
Earlier this month, officials in the enclave of 5,500 people announced that all of Woodside was exempt from a new state housing law that allows for duplex development on single-family home lots.
The reason? The entire town is a habitat for potentially endangered mountain lions.
Really? As in cougars — and I mean cougars, the animal, not the Urban Dictionary cougars — roam the streets of Woodside?
Woodside’s decision drew quick scorn as a brazen attempt to evade even minimally denser development in one of California’s most exclusive locales. The bucolic, woodsy town near Stanford University and the heart of Silicon Valley has a median home value of $4.5 million. Among its residents have been the founders of technology giants Intuit, Intel and Symantec as well as Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who reportedly spent $200 million to build a Japanese-style 16th-century imperial palace across 23 acres.
San Mateo County, where Woodside is located, gave Joe Biden 291,496, or 77.89%, of its votes, while just 75,584, 20.20%, to President Trump. That’s much higher than the statewide advantage Mr Biden enjoyed, 63.48% to 34.32%. While I couldn’t find the breakdown for Woodside individually, it’s safe to say it’s a pretty liberal area.
The mountain-lion card is not playing well with advocates, who note the jarring irony of enormous mansions inhabited by few juxtaposed against the housing needs of many.
“Right now, you could have five people in a 5,000-square-foot mansion sharing one kitchen, and it’s OK,” said Sonja Trauss, executive director of YIMBY Law, a San Francisco group that advocates for local governments to approve more housing. “But once you have two kitchens, it’s suddenly a problem for the mountain lions?”
Why am I thinking of Comrade Kaprugina in Dr Zhivago, saying, “There was living space for thirteen families in this one house!”
Yuri Andreievich Zhivago replies, “Yes. Yes, this is a better arrangement; more just.” Of course, Yuri Andreievich understands what happens if he doesn’t toe the Bolshevik line. The left might think that zoning for cheaper houses, more “affordable” housing, is “more just,” but it’s obvious that the folks who’ve driven the median home value to an insane $4.5 million aren’t very interested in having neighboring homes, and neighboring people, who will bring down the values of their own housing, their own community.
We see it all over, in the tony areas of Philadelphia like Society Hill and Rittenhouse Square, where the well-to-do white liberals are quite happy to vote for Democratic politicians and liberal policies, as long as the poorer, black and Hispanic residents of the City of Brotherly Love are kept down in Kensington and Strawberry Mansion. Philadelphia is highly ‘diverse’ as far as overall population figures are concerned, but far more internally segregated on a by-neighborhood basis.
California remains the state with the highest poverty level in the US, according to a September 2021 report from the US Census Bureau.
In the report, three-year poverty level averages were calculated for each state and the District of Columbia using the supplemental poverty measure, which found that 15.4% of California residents lived in poverty from 2018 to 2020. Only the District of Columbia had a higher rate of poverty — 16.5%.
The supplemental poverty measure expands on the official poverty measure, which was developed by Social Security economist Mollie Orshansky in the 1960s, by accounting for cost of living, work and medical expenses, tax credits, and government programs designed to assist low-income families and individuals.
If the Pyrite State has the nation’s highest percentage of poverty, it also has some of our wealthiest citizens, a lot of whom live in Hollywood, in Bel Air, and in Woodside. Seth Rogen is a Canadian comedian, actor, screenwriter, film producer, and voice actor who, according to the site Celebrity Net Worth, has a net worth of $80 million, and was excoriated for a mindless tweet in which he said that living in a big city, one has to simply accept that leaving valuables in your car means that people will break in and rob it. When you’re worth $80 million, you can afford to replace stuff. Mr Rogen isn’t homeless. He lives on a 10-acre estate in the West Hollywood Hills, having sold, for $2.16 million, another West Hollywood home behind high hedges and a tall, metal fence. ‘Twould seem that, despite his seemingly cavalier attitude toward petty robbery, Mr Rogan, a self-described left-winger, does care about security for his property and himself.
One wonders how many “affordable” duplexes Mr Rogan has had built on his 10-acre estate, to help the less fortunate in Los Angeles County.
As I have previously noted, the hypocrisy of the left is astounding! They are great at telling other people what they should do, but not so great at putting their money where their mouths — or keyboards — are.