Hacker News Reader

Wow. You know you screwed up city planning when "having to use company housing" is an improvement.

Local government consistently fails at enabling adequate public transportation to the point where the large tech companies need to step in and fill in the gaps with their own bus services. Is it any surprise that local government fails to enable adequate housing?

Is it?

Perhaps part of the issue is the fact that companies like Google/Apple/FB use tax loopholes so their HQ cities don't really have the funds to properly manage the problems these companies create with their large employee base.

Mountain View doesn't have the funds to permit more housing? My understanding is they give permits for new offices no problem, so I'd like to know where that point of view comes from.

What tax loopholes are used to avoid local taxes ? From my understanding corporate tax doesn't go to the local government. Looking at City of MV page they only tax Business license, property and sales tax. From what I know they prefer offices due to prop 13 which limits property tax growth.

It really seems like some corporate tax should go to the cities. These companies are more or less responsible directly for the insane gentrification of the Bay Area, why shouldn't they use some of their immense profits to help the city deal with the consequences of it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com