center at this city's struggling airport
might have been just another losing
skirmish in the battle between Silicon
Valley billionaires and middle-class
neighborhoods worried about noise
pollution. Instead, it is becoming the
latest symbol for the rapidly growing
gap between the region's haves, with
their private jets and untold wealth,
and the have-nots, clinging to more
modest lives in the dwindling number
of communities they can afford.
Google, which is responsible for many
of the jets that will use the new $82
million center, is helping bring badly
needed cash to Mineta San Jose
International Airport just as the tech
industry is creating jobs and wealth in
Silicon Valley. But the tech boom is
also sharpening income inequality and
fueling a housing boom that is
squeezing families out of many Silicon
Valley communities.
Whether it is the possibility of private
jets' disturbing the sleep of San Jose
homeowners, or the transformation of
Palo Alto's last mobile home park into
luxury apartments, local developments
throughout Silicon Valley highlight how
the tech boom is leaving many behind.
Local officials worry about the trend,
which experts say will only accelerate,
and its effects on the valley's work
force and diversity.
"We're very focused on being a
progressive and fair community in
terms of those issues," Gregory
Scharff, the mayor of Palo Alto, said
of his city's efforts to provide
affordable housing while recognizing
the "national treasure" that is Silicon
Valley. "We actually innovate and
create huge wealth for the United
States. If you look at the companies
that have just come out of Palo Alto, I
would make you a bet that it would be
one of the largest GNP's - it could be a
country."
In the past, the tech industry created
middle-class jobs and lifted the overall
economy of Silicon Valley. But as tech
companies have shifted manufacturing
and midlevel jobs overseas over the
years, highly paid workers have
increasingly clustered here. Per-capita
incomes have been rising even as
median incomes have decreased for
five years in a row, according to Joint
Venture Silicon Valley, a private
organization that publishes an annual
report on the region.
"We're getting more high earners, and
they're skewing the averages
completely off," said Russell Hancock,
chief executive of Joint Venture. "We
are becoming a community where our
teachers, our police, our firefighters,
our nurses, they can't live with us.
They have to come in from other
places. Healthy communities have all
these people living together."
Sales figures for single-family homes
in Santa Clara and San Mateo, the two
main counties in Silicon Valley, show
median prices have risen about 30
percent in the past year while the
inventory of available homes has
fallen by roughly half, according to an
analysis of local multiple listing service
data by the Silicon Valley Association
of Realtors.
The median prices for March -
$735,000 in Santa Clara and
$925,000 in San Mateo - only hint at
the current market's frenzy.
Each property now typically attracts
between 10 and 30 offers, eventually
selling from 5 to 25 percent above the
asking price, said Moise Nahouraii, the
owner of Referral Realty in Cupertino,
Calif.
Jeff Barnett, a former president of
the association and a regional vice
president at Alain Pinel Realtors, said
30 to 40 percent of sales were paid in
cash.
"Last year, the market came up,"
Barnett said. "This year, it's on fire;
it's just unreal."
In Palo Alto, one of the hottest
markets, the longtime owner of the
Buena Vista Mobile Home Park has
moved to sell the property to a
developer planning to build a complex
with amenities that include a pool, a
spa, a business center, a chef's
demonstration kitchen and a pet
grooming station. A local ordinance
would guarantee the park's 400
residents - more than a quarter of
whom are children and 85 percent are
Hispanic - some compensation and
possible relocation within Palo Alto.
But the Law Foundation of Silicon
Valley, a private group that provides
free legal services on housing and
other issues, is pressing the city to
reject the conversion. With the waiting
lists for affordable housing getting
longer by the day, the group argues,
the park's residents will be forced to
leave Palo Alto, away from jobs and
schools.
One resident, Mary Kear, 55, grew up
in Mountain View, where her father
owned a hardware store and was a
farmer, and where Google has its
headquarters. Kear, who worked in
sales for more than three decades and
is now a part-time school custodian,
said she had to move a dozen times
over the years because of rising rents,
eventually gravitating to the park
eight years ago. She hoped the city
would reject the conversion.
"But I'm also going to try to talk to
the guy at Facebook," she said in the
living room of her tidy two-room
trailer, adding that she had read that
the company's chief executive, Mark
Zuckerberg, had recently established a
political action committee for
immigration reform. "He's trying to
help immigrants, and immigrants are
here."
Here in San Jose, many residents
worry that the new corporate jet
center will lead to a spike in overnight
flights. Because of the airport's
proximity to the downtown area and
neighborhoods, aircraft generating
more than 89 decibels, like
commercial jets, are restricted from
flying between 11:30 p.m. and 6:30
a.m.; most corporate jets, though, are
exempt from this curfew.
Signature Flight Support, the company
that will build the center, said its main
tenant would be Blue City Holdings,
which manages airplanes belonging to
Google's founders, Larry Page and
Sergey Brin, and its executive
chairman, Eric Schmidt. Maria Sastre,
Signature's president, said her tenants
would abide by the curfew and use a
"wide range of aircraft."
Members of Citizens Against Airport
Pollution are proud of their 23-year
fight against noise and growth at the
San Jose airport. Without them, they
believe, the nighttime curfew on
certain flights would have vanished
long ago.
There were, of course, defeats along
the way, including one, in a skirmish
over decibels and aircraft weight, to
Larry Ellison, the billionaire chief
executive of Oracle. But the approval
of the corporate jet center last month
was a particularly major loss.
Jim Lynch, a 20-year member of
Citizens Against Airport Pollution,
stood in a parking lot at the airport
recently, listening to the familiar
sound of jets taking off and landing
every few minutes. Though Google's
executives are the only future
customers named so far, he was
worried about all the other tech
barons.
"We're sticking up for the little
people," he said. "We may get
bruised. We may get hit in the arm."
Ed Hodges, co-chairman of Citizens
Against Airport Pollution and a retired
junior high school science teacher, said
that behind the corporate jet center's
approval, he saw the ascendancy of
the tech elite at the expense of the
middle class in Silicon Valley.
He and his wife, a retired nurse,
bought their home here 38 years ago.
"We have a funny saying in our
family: We could not afford to buy our
own house today," he said. "This is an
example of what's happened to the
middle class in Silicon Valley."
© 2013, The New York Times News
Service
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