[pkaye]

You do realize one can live an hour drive from Palo Alto and have a place than the 25% of the price in Palo Also? And the commute time is much shorter than from France. It is just that people want to be close as possible to work.

[declan]

I'm acquainted with a construction worker who's the foreman for a general contractor working on the mid-peninsula. Current projects include single family homes in Palo Alto, Atherton, Woodside, and Menlo Park. The foreman makes $44/hour without health insurance and is about to close on a house in Hollister.

Hollister to Atherton is 68 miles. To get to Atherton by 8am tomorrow, Google says he should leave at 5:50am: https://goo.gl/maps/bfSBp4vFtJQ2

If cheaper housing could be built on the peninsula--where there happens to be lots of low-density housing and open space!--he could live closer to work and the 101 and the 280 would have one less vehicle twice a day. But for reasons we all know, this will not happen.

PS: The structured wiring guys on this project are driving in from Tracy in the Central Valley and staying at a hotel on the mid-peninsula. That commute is even worse than Hollister. Google estimates it at 2hrs 40min one-way (!) for an 8am arrival time tomorrow.

[ridgeguy]

The only place within an hour of Palo Alto where this might have been true is East Palo Alto. It's adjacent to PA. It is still a somewhat dangerous community.

That's changing. Prices in EPA are now >50% of equivalent housing in PA, and rising rapidly through the same processes that have given us $1.7 million starter homes elsewhere in the Bay Area.

There's really nowhere within an hour of PA that has home prices even 50% of PA, much less 25%. Three hours, maybe.

[scylla]

Union City across the Dumbarton Bridge should be less than 50%. It's 22 minutes with no traffic. You can also get to SF in 40 minutes on BART.

I've lived in a home similar to http://www.zillow.com/homes/34404-Torrey-Pine-Ln,-Union-City...

[phamilton]

Gilroy?

[akgerber]

Having a 2-hour commute driving in heavy traffic every day is something many people, myself included, would move across the country to avoid. In general, it's awful for one's relationships and health, and it's awful for the environment (perhaps less so with a Telsa or Chevy Bolt and solar panels, but that's presently an outlier).

It might be the right personal choice for some people, but public policy should not be designed so long commutes are the norm.

[sjg007]

You can live 10mins away in East Palo Alto and pay less. The big issue is schools. Same with Oakland and San Leandro.