In the last six years, the residents of Palo Alto, a small town in the middle of Silicon Valley, have been struck with a major problem concerning their housing. Median home prices have increased by 103% and is now sitting at $2.486 million US.  Even with the respectably high average salaries that Palo Alto residents make, $2.5 million is still too expensive. 

An article on Business Insider speaks about how the best course of action for Palo Alto residents is to relocate by choice before they are forcefully relocated by the cost of living.  In fact, people are already doing that; people like Kate Vershov Downing are resigning from their jobs and leaving Palo Alto simply because the cost of housing is too expensive for them.  The residents are turning to the City Council for help, but the Council is more interested in making development plans for the future and the needs of the residents are disregarded as the priority for affordable housing continues to remain at the bottom.

Fellow classmate and blog writer, Estafania Millan Ronchetti also wrote about this article and had some very interesting comments.  She spoke about how the town of Palo Alto will eventually become an “investment ghost town” because people who rent are relocating and people who own properties are trying to sell their houses.  However, people who have the money and are willing to buy property are few and far between.  As a result, the population of Palo Alto will just continue to dwindle in the years to come. 

Personally, I agree with what Business Insider and Estafania are saying.  I can see that the housing is becoming too expensive and that the residents of Palo Alto cannot buy houses with their salary unless they get a massive loan or if they have a big inheritance.  By looking at the trend, I believe that people who are currently living in Palo Alto are better off leaving and relocating than staying in Palo Alto.  It seems like most Palo Alto residents will eventually be forced to leave and thus will have to go through the process of rebuilding their life in another place; It’ll be much easier to start a life elsewhere right now than to do it in the future.  I also believe that Palo Alto will indeed become an “investment ghost town” because very few people will live there and the property there will be nothing but assets for rich owners.  From this article it’s clear that despite the fact that Palo Alto is more technologically advanced than most of the world, the town may not be the future.

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References:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/emillanr/

http://www.businessinsider.com/its-time-to-get-out-of-the-palo-alto-housing-market-2016-8

https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Location=Palo-Alto-CA/Salary