Dear Mayor Combs and Council Members,
One key reason we’re facing unwieldy numbers of required housing from ABAG is that our prior Council(s) permitted way too much office to be built.
For every office construction, ABAG added equal requirements of housing. This was obviously a losing game for us, which the prior Council(s) ignored, to the detriment of the city.
Now we desperately need a total moratorium on offices, including the lion’s share of the office space sought by the SRI project, most of which should be housing, including affordable housing, and retail. No more offices—just housing to gradually meet our 2031 requirements, and retail—stores and restaurants providing the goods and services that people want and need, and that provide a source of revenue for the city.
This is all the more important since Silicon Valley has been losing workers, and local offices currently have a 20% vacancy rate!
Below are excerpts from an article that came out today on this topic.
Best regards,
Cherie
Silicon Valley Moving Swiftly Into DOOM LOOP
Stephen Frank, January 8, 2025
Oakland and San Fran are dead cities—just waiting for the date of the burial. Los Angeles, has been given Last Rites—it is dying. Other California cities are facing the DOOM LOOP. San Jose, the Silicon Valley, is showing signs of dying. One of them is the commercial vacancy rate.
Silicon Valley commercial vacancy rates pass 20%
By B. Sakura Cannestra
“Commercial vacancy rates continue to climb, even though development is making a comeback, according to a December report from Joint Venture Silicon Valley and commercial real estate firm JLL Silicon Valley. Vacancy rates are up across all sectors — with 24.6% vacancy in labs, 11.1% in research and development and 4.7% in industrial. The vacancy rate for office space reached 21.8% in the third quarter of 2024, up from 19.6% in 2023 and more than doubling from 8.6% in 2019.
The report compiles commercial real estate trends through the third quarter of 2024 in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, as well as Fremont and Newark. “I’m calling it the paradox of 2024,” Joint Venture Silicon Valley CEO Russell Hancock told San José Spotlight. “The paradox is that we have a growing economy and less need of space.”
As the State of California continues ot raise gas taxes, other taxes, promotes failed schools, watch as folks leave. Just yesterday Zuckerberg of Facebook announced he is moving a major section of his company to Texas. He claimed it is about bias. But, the California workers, with biases, will be moved to Texas. This is really about no income tax, an honest government and schools that educate. That is why the vacancy rate in Silicon Valley—jobs are leaving.
Employees working from home is one aspect, but Hancock identified remote workers as people who work for Silicon Valley companies and live outside the Bay Area and California.
“Now people have found that they can have it both ways, with the high pay and the opportunities and changing the world,” Hancock told San José Spotlight. “They can do that, and they can live in a house. They can do both.”
