What does it take in your city to feel "wealthy"

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by austlar1

And her step-son's withering tell-all coming of age memoir. Dede does not come off well at all in this book. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/b...-rich-boy.html

Charlotte and George Schulz, of course, got mixed up in the Theranos scam (currently at trial) and induced their grandson to get a job working there. He recognized it was a fraud but couldn't convince Grandfather George of that so he outed the whole mess.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

Yeah Charlotte Swig is definitely another one. The City has no shortage of Queen Bees.

Dede Wilsey came to mind first for me because of her fabulous jewelry...

I remember when another one of these dragons, Elise Haas (the Haas family started Levi Strauss during the Gold Rush and owned it until it went public), donated this Matisse painting to the SFMOMA and I believe they promptly sold it for a room full of post-war California artists' works.


https://www.ebay.com/itm/39309354424...CABEgLEAvD_BwE

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by homebucket

SJ houses aren't particularly nice. West SJ and Cupertino is mostly tract housing but at least they have excellent schools. I'd try to get something in Palo Alto or Menlo Park if I were them. Atherton is probably out of their reach. If even Palo Alto and Menlo Park are out of their reach, then I'd suggest Los Gatos, San Carlos, or San Mateo. All of these cities have cute little walkable strips and nice, leafy neighborhoods.

I think they don't want to spend so much on housing even if they can afford it on paper (they may want to take sabbaticals or something).

As for Palo Alto... Stanford literally has to build housing for professors. I had lunch with one of my old professors a few years ago and he said he can't afford to change universities because he'd owe Stanford money on the house they built him.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

I think they don't want to spend so much on housing even if they can afford it on paper (they may want to take sabbaticals or something).

As for Palo Alto... Stanford literally has to build housing for professors. I had lunch with one of my old professors a few years ago and he said he can't afford to change universities because he'd owe Stanford money on the house they built him.

Many California universities have been doing this for years. UC-Irvine and UC-Davis are two I know about from first hand discussions.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

Many California universities have been doing this for years. UC-Irvine and UC-Davis are two I know about from first hand discussions.

UC-Irvine I believe but is Davis so expensive? How can all those cows afford to live nearby!

[Crawford]

I don't know if it's common with major universities in big metros, but Columbia, NYU and Harvard all offer housing subsidies for tenured faculty, and, some cases, literally buy residences for high profile faculty (though I think the institutions own the properties).

Columbia has purchased large apartment buildings for faculty (and not dorm-like accommodations, but typical Upper West Side luxury prewars).

Stanford, given its wealth and the absurd local market, has to offer generous housing subsidies.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I don't know if it's common with major universities in big metros, but Columbia, NYU and Harvard all offer housing subsidies for tenured faculty, and, some cases, literally buy residences for high profile faculty (though I think the institutions own the properties).

Columbia has purchased large apartment buildings for faculty (and not dorm-like accommodations, but typical Upper West Side luxury prewars).

Stanford, given its wealth and the absurd local market, has to offer generous housing subsidies.

Yeah many universities offer subsidized mortgages to live nearby, but actually building housing is relatively rare. I can believe NYU/Columbia do it. I'm not aware of Harvard doing it but they might. I'm pretty sure MIT doesn't. Even UChicago offers incentives to live nearby (https://humanresources.uchicago.edu/...2006.03.16.pdf ) though the the surrounding area isn't particularly expensive (and the subsidy is least in the most expensive part).

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

UC-Irvine I believe but is Davis so expensive? How can all those cows afford to live nearby!

It's always been known as expensive and it was always overpriced, and Davis has always been anti-growth to include pressuring Dixon over the Wal-Mart . I don't know if they picked on Woodland, but for sure Davis has in the past interfered with stuff in Dixon and it's not even in the same county.
For here, all it takes to be wealthy is prob 2k a month to live like a king in the trailer park!

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by homebucket

Doesn't sound like they're managing their finances well then.

To be honest, I’m not particularly close to either of them, so I don’t know the full story. I do know that they sold their condo in Oakland a few years ago and decided to move to the South Bay so that she could be closer to work. Before they got married, they lived separately—she rented in SF and commuted down to MV with her sister (also a tenured Google employee) by company shuttle. Neither sister wanted to live in San Jose (e.g. Santa Clara County) because they thought it was “boring.”

Like I said, I don’t know what their plans are (much less their finances). I just find it bemusing that they’ll probably end up living in an ordinary-looking home in SJ not unlike my other cousin and her husband whose household income, while comfortably six figures, is almost certainly far less.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

I think they don't want to spend so much on housing even if they can afford it on paper (they may want to take sabbaticals or something).

Yep, this. They like to travel frequently and don’t have children yet. They probably could afford a 3-bed, 2-bath home on the Peninsula (he works in Oakland, so that’d be a more equitable situation as far as commute) in the mid-to-high million price range. But that too only gets you housing that is no less ordinary; it’s just in a nicer zip code.