next on "kqed newsroom" --r from fruit orchards to the home of high-tech titans. the transformation of silicon i] valley's cities. >> this is thei] heart and soul oft( silicon valley. this is the epicenter of the digital revolution.ko welcome to "kqed newsroom." i'mxd scott shafer. tonigbtñ we're going to look at how the tech boom is transforming the cities of silicon valley.fáñi in a moment i'll talk with the mayors of mountain view, sunnyvale, cupertino, and east palo alto about the big issues they're grappling with, from housing to transportation. but first monica lam showslp us how the valley has grown. >> 100 years xdago santa clara valley was covered inq orchards.

pears, peaches, prunes. it was called the valley of heart's delight. >> the weather was good, and it was beautiful. you could have gone upi] in the hills of cupertino and looked down. there are some famous paintings made up there during that period. you could5a look down in the valley and it's just a sea of blossoms. >> cupertino and itsfá neighbors sunnyvale anwá mountain view would soon grow to crowd out the blossoms and replace theme1 with very different industries. >> extraordinary things happen here but you don't really notice them. it's all very low-key. and soul of silicon valley.jf by the 1950s this is the epicenter of the digital revolution. >> in the mid 1950s lockheed martin moved to sunnyvale to open a missiles system division. mary wattin is the author of "silicon valley in pictures." she says high-tech brought early traffic jams. >>(/rj photo is very interesting to me because it's rush hour in the 1960s and this is lockheed's campus. you can see all the farmland

around it. and thenxd this is just a line of cars leaving work to go home. thefáq department of defense was the first venture capitalist of the area. they were the ones that initially paid for all of the research and development to createt( this new technology. and then they were also the end customer. an÷ that allowed for the industry to grow at such aq rapid pace. >> within a decade sunnyvale,x cupertino and mountain viewñi became a crossroads for inn#ation says historian mike malone. >> where bernardo meets fremont meets 85 an anonymous empty intersection full ofxd ce plant andçó not much else. in a given afternoon in the late 1960s you would have seen steve wozniak riding homet( from e1"hery chase supz club practice. you would have seen ted hoff turning off because he lived right at that corner. and youçó would have seen bob ñi noyes racing home in los altos. at that intersection you would have had the inventor of theq

integrated circuit, the inventore1 of the microprocessor, the inventor of the personal computer all in one spot. >> in spite of that -- >> int(w3 an interview with the silicon valley historical association steve jobs recalled an early productñi to tap into telephone networks illegally. >> the first digital blue box in the world. it was the magic of the fact that two teenagers could build this box for $100 worth of parts and control hundreds of billions mo dollars offá infrastructure in the entire telephone network in the whole world. we had the sense of magic that wydwãcould sort ofjf influence th"1 world. >> cupertino today is known around the world as the home of apple. mountain view is known as wheree1 google is headquartered. thergrowth ofq both corporations and communities haszv generatedd new zvrelationships and friction. >> quick question. i think people are curious as to know what the city residents can

largest taxpayer ine1 cupertino. so we'd like to continue to stay here and paye1ñifáj that's number one. >> okay. >> because if wei] can'te1 then we have to go somewhere like mountain view and we ),q our current peoplee1 with us and we'd give up and over yearse1 sell the land here and the largest tax base would got( away. >> the success of the high-techt( sector has put pressure on the valley's housing and transportation systems. >> inq 1970 people were complaining that all the orchards were getting cut down and this place wasn't the paradise it usedi]q to be.i] 20 years later people were saying this traffic's r unbearable. and then housing prices. people wereçó complaining when housing prices around here broke $100,000 for a suburban ranche1 house. >> stillq the growth of silicon valley hasn't always been conqrstent. east palo alto is down thex# @&hc& street from facebook's

headquarters but feels its residents work there.de >> east palo alto was always an anomaly because it never really developed the samei] kind of infrastructure that we saw in the rest of the towns of the south bay. it neverok participated in the boom. >> east palo altoe1 may be one of the last few affordable places in the valley. >> that's changing. it has to ch9n9ñt( first of all, there's too many people trying to get into this town. all you have to do is go out on 680 in th-lp morning and lookjf at the traffic trying to get intoñ.' silicon w3valley. >> already the median home price in east palo alto is nearl?á qok $550,000, up 16% in the last year. inçó unnyvale and mountain view it's double, at $1.2 million. in cupertino the median home price $1.6 million. the valley has attracted diverse communities. east palo alto is 65% latino+ sunnyvale 40% asian and 18% latino. and çócupertino, 63% asian.

>> and i've even predicted that the face of silicon valley in 2020, 2025, is going to be an indian woman. i really believe that. i think that's the nextsreat wave of ceos is indian women. >> joining me now to discuss the ="11m facing their cities are cupertinot( mayor rod sinks, jim griffith, mayor ofe1 sunna0p&e lisa gauthier, mayor of east palo alto, and john mcalister mayor of mountain view.e1 mayors, thanks for being." with us. you all have differentw3 cities with similar problems, one of which is hous)zy which manifests in different way jim, tell us about your city. there's not enough housing. >> there isn't. there definitely isn't. rental and right now what we're seeing is some places wherei] the rents are going up 25% in a single year. this has the effect of driving the middle and lower class out of thee12ckty because they simply can't afford it anymore.

>> so whate1 does that mean for the quality of life there?i] people have to commute. >> absolutely. i was sitting on somebody's porch and they were telling me about one of their friends that lived in sunnyvale and worked at a fast food restaurant. he was forced to move to tracy and as at( result he's now living cyjddy in tracy commuting to sunnyvale because there are no jobs in tracy and no housing ini] sunnyvale. when you change the dynamic so that somebody instead of commuting 3 miles is commuting 60 miles that has a dramatic effect on transportation, for i] instance. >> and what about in cupertino? i assume it's the same thing. >> yeah absolutely. we have a lot off&1-m coming in looking for housing. our vaunted school system is a big draw. and people pay a premium to live in cupertino school districts. but the housing is certainly challe%or'g. and we're also experiencing these large jumpsqçjez rent. >> andlp so the solution tot( high prices is moreq housing. to what extent john, e1in say, mountain view are you building more housing? can you possibly build enough housing? )sñ we just completed our general plan and part of the general plan we identified five growth

areas. a lot of it was along transit el camino ori] caltrans. so when we're putting these developments coming in we're encouraging the developers or anybody to put inw3ñi high-density housing to go along withñr transportation. we've seen a lot of generality riff kaigs as they're talkingñi move out. we have a 65%w3 rental and 35% ownership. everybody's competing for space. we have google when they come in if a new complex comes in they will renxr out of 200 maybe they'll rent 50 units out of that and they'll give it to their employees to help for the housing shortage. which therefore makes it less supply for people -- >> fory2uju+(tk else. >> and they also get a housing allowance. so it makes it toughok to compete with them. >> lisa you have a different problem or different situatione= in east paloddy alto. for many years it was the last affordable enclave really on the peninsula. that'st(ñiçó really changing. give us a sense of how fast it's changing and what it means.

>> you're qk 9ñ the way that the housing market is going now, things are -- people are being priced out of the community. and it's really unfortunate that that isnb4shappening. you have the tech industry and people that are coming in, and i can remember when my mother bought her house years ago, i think she paid $18,000 for that home. right now homes are going for $500,000, $600,000. which is good for a homeowner because anytime your property value is increasing it's good for you. but it's really affecting the renters who are being priced out of the community. middle income low-income people, when you have the tech industry that's pushing and and we don't want to displace people. >> and i would imagine a lot of long-time homeowners have cashed out and left. >>kwg that has been a big thing that has happened. people have looked at the fact that you can get some additional money and move to a different%./ area. some people that have moved from east palo alto and gone to tracy and stockton and found they're

there and they can't come back, they wish they could come back but they can't. >> they're priced out. >> they're priced out. >> in san francisco there's been a lot of pressure on renters and many people getti. i evicted because the owner wants to listt( it onxd air bnb or do something to it to basically free it up.7n' because we have rent control in this city. what about in your cities? toxd what extent are rentersñi being actually pushed out t#qq their units? >> we have somebody wbol11 put in ai]e1 brand new class-aq apartment complex and they'll set the bar,çó it's like $4,000 for a two-bedroom unit. well-u get this other apartment complex that's been around for 30 years. they don't have to do anything to improve their property but they can keep jacking up the rents because the higher market's pushing it up. and so we're just -- it's tough out there for those people. >> what about in sunnyvale? >> it's pretty much the3w same. the other problem we're seeing is a lot of new construction of housing is being aimed at those particular demographics, particularly corporate housing. there's 650 new units being3w built within 750 feetñr of where i

live. and all of u> to what extent are these companies, ó[google, apple, saying, well, if you improve our expansion plans we'll build some housing or we'll goe1 into a partnership with a housing developer? i think googl=d did that in mountain view. >> part of their deal for the new development for north e1 bayshore, they said if you approve certain p'suj j they'll do that. but we can't build enough housing to take care of the demand of what's going on. and one of the solutions is we're trying to get those big companies to work on transportationjf ssues so that by going throughout the region ('@sing becomes more attainable. it's not affordable. affordable is a misnomer now. it's either subsidized ore1 attainable. >> and for rent stabilization in east palo alto we do have a rent stabilization program so it helps a lot of the residents. but the problem with rent stabilization and affordability is that under the rent stabilization plan once somebody moves outx#jt that unit it's noe1

longer -- they noehoonger keep it underjf that. it therefore goes to market rate. >> sometimes this problem is described as a jobs-housing imbalance. right? but it's really just a housing shortage. but it's also this explosion of jobs. i mean, is it possible we could debt to the point where get to the point where wew3 just can't accommodate more jobs? >> i don't think that will happen. i must say for facebook i know they justt( purchased like a certain number of some land in menlo park with the idea of building homes. now it's going to take some time. they won't have it next year. but the fact that at least they're thinking about and they know how they're affecting the region they know they need to excuse me create housing. >> yeah. >> but there are limits. i mean,çó mountain view andt( sunnyvale are built-out cities. we don't have any vacant land available. so now all of the development that happens is denseification. andq there's only so much the infrastructure can support in termsñr of that whether it's

transit or utilities or even ñi toq!=um%9 soñ what we'ret( seeing now isçó shifting, the single-family neighborhoods stay the same but we see certainly ymqi%1 densifying and other portions of industrial being converted to high density housing in order to try to achievei] a better balance. >> you know, it was interesting, that clip from steve jobs at the city council trying to convince the cupertino city council to approve his plans for the expansion. to what extent do you feel that in some ways these companies are -- i don't want to say extorting you but they're sort of like give us what we want or else. >> i think the companies are bringing substantial value to our communities. i xdmean ifñi we look at apple's contribution to our budget overall it may be on the order of 30% or so. >> and that comes through jfwhat? >> it comes through sales tax. it comes through property tax.xd it comes through negotiated agreements such as we did at t$3 time that-$1e1 apple campus 2 was approved. but the challenges that come

with that growth, particularly in transit,jf particularly in funding, you talked about the pressures housing,sá ande1 they create pressures on our schools. in cupertino we're a revenue limit district in the elementary school. >> which meansok fáwhat? >> which means we'rexd funded at the floor of all schools in the state. and the high school district is not much above that which we share w so theset( pressures to build more ande1e1 more housing become issues for our residents who would like to have our schools better supported. and that's a basic challenge. >> what do you expect from these companies in termsxd offá housing corporate citizenship? i mean what do you want from themfá that they're not giving? or are they giving -- arexd they being good corporate citizens already?jf ohn? >> well in mountain view we have google we have linkedin we havefá intuit microsoft, allok in there. and what they're giving back to

the community when you were talkingñiok earlier about ransom we have so many people so many businesses want to come to mountain view that we don't feel like it's a ransom. it's just you haveçó to come to us and prove what you can do for the community benefits for us. and that could be helping the schools, helping the transit, helpingi]çó the freeways helping q housing wi-fi,ñi infrastructure, all these different things. so we're not feeling that as a deterrent for those people to come along. what they're doing is their community benefits, they are helping usq in some regards and we'll see how it goes. >> lisa, it's different for east palo alto. >> it's different for east palo alto because although we're in silicon valley we don't benefit from the companies. growth is happening outside of palo t(alto. part of that, we can't develop becauseaw2q lack of water. that's something we faceko in our community right now. as i look and ilp see all the different cities i seercik:mñi going up and development actually happening but we're not experiencing that right now. >> but you are seeing the

property values go up. >> we are benefiting from the propertyxd values. yes indeed. >> and are you seeing -- we talked about the diversityok of silicon valley in all of your ñr cities. palo alto historically was aok primarily afcan-american city,u now it's 65% latino. to what extent are you seeing éáhat beginning to change? >> that's part of the beauty of being in east palo alto. we've always been e1multicultural. we've grown to this multicultural community. and that's the beauty of it just to see all the different cultures coming in and just to be able to work together. it is changing. every day you see somebody different in the community. but we celebrate that. >> yeah. jim, wt about you? sunnyvale. what are you getting out ofn&o ñ15"q! companies? >> we're a little bit different because sunnyvale is as large as thelp other three cities combined. we have a very diverse market e1 place. we have google, apple, yahoo! motorola, microsoft, you name it. >> lockheed. >> lockheed.e1 and we're not as -- i don'te1e1 want tow3 say captive but -- >> you have more options. >> we have a lot more options.

so ourñr focusxt rto be more demand. you know, if a business wants to come in and they want to bring in 2,000 workers, our answer to them is great, we love it please do itfá but we don't want 2,000 mor sow need to come up with ai] way to d(iq 30%, 35%, whatever it is, of your employees to alternate means of transportation so that we can accommodate you. >> but is the trarmgs there, the infrastructure there? >> no, it definitely is not. we are largely driven by valley transportation agency in terms of public transportation and unfortunately the way vta tends to work is they respond after the fact to demand. they don't proactively go out and develop transportation demandok -- or transportation solutions in advance. >> so what do these companies say when you say you need to figure out a wayt( to divert your employees? >> apple said great we will sign up for a 34% transportation demand plan. you know,e1 in the private sector our companies have been booming the last few years.

public sectorñi"n hasn't kept up. particularly on transportation. so we look at plans fromq 1992 or the year 2000 that would have enmeshed the south bay in a real transportation system, thatt( would have made it an effective people mover. what did we get? a bunch of spokes that go to downtown san jose. nothing hitting the rim of the : q valley cities, going up into the north6m county into mountain viewt( and sunnyvale along the 101 and 237 corridor, where a lot of jobs are. and the private employers have takenxd it upon themselves5abecause we failed. they've taken it on themselves to go all over tarnation. so now we haveáq"s of companies doingqçñthis.x >> and those buses are quite controversial here in san francisco. where you are not so much. >> well, it is and it isn't.- it's definitely changing the transportation model. i know in san francisco, for instance, if y within two or three blocks ofc one of these shuttle stops the

further away. we are seeing -- and one of the reasonsf ds in the high-tech community it tends to be dominated by kids inewtheir 20s and early 30s who want to live in san francisco and work near us. our roads are certainly getting clogged up with these buses but it's much better to have buses than to have carñ >> johne1 you wanted to jump in. >> well, yeah.xdñifá google, they havejf the largest private busozsystem in the united states. and without that -- they're bringing in thousands of people into the mountain view and north bayshore area.xd and if we didn't have that, the traffic would really be añi standstill. >> then for east palo alto we're just a drive-thru city. people coming from the east bay to silicon valley people drive through east palo alto at this time.q bute1 i sit on thefáfáfá dunbarton rail corridor. and we're trying to figure out how tofá -- >>8here's a lot of talk about b.a.r.t. being extended down to san jose. is that going to helpq any of you? >> not really.

on the clip you were showing earlier they talked about 680. take a look at 237. take a look atjfçó highway 85. take a look at highway 101 where everybody's coming into what we call the epic center of silicon valley. and the transportation isn't there. it's going somewhere else. it's goingi] southeast. nd we like to see that extension or -- there's not even mass transit bus service that goes down a lot of these -- >> and is that a case of san jose kind of bigfooting all the other cities or what is that? >> no, i don't think so. i think early on in the planning of b.a.r.t. there was consideration about whether or not to bring it all l way around and cities further up the peninsula were the ones who said we don't want it in our city. that kind of hamstrung thei] rest of us. the four ofok us represent cities that areçó in the big gap of b.a.r.t. and we'll probably never get it. san jose certainly had the extension where they could do it and the cities in betweent( were willing to support that. >> let me ask another ramification, about another ramification of these buses. and the campus, the nature of these hugeó[ campuses.ñi because what i hear is they're sort of self-contained.

they have food. they have laundry. they have massages. they have transportation in and transportation out. people don't even have a car to go, say, intoe1 mountain view andfá have lunch. how do you feel about that? >> well, i know for mountain view with google, they want a collaboration-o so theye1 want to keep everybody on campus. well, now all the other side companies are having to do the eiápsq thing to attract talent. if you don't serve a meal you're at a disadvantage to try to get in talent and talent is really hard to get right now because they're all jumping "und. and therefore without keeping them on site, any retail that is surrounded suffers because they don't have the density of the mass people coming and buying. therefore, retail doesn't really work and so it keeps isolating that area where those campuses are from the rest of the community. >> and that's also a complaint about those buses, you know, that they're sort of isolated almost some people here call it elite transportation. but i'm wondering what do you

hear from small businesses? they'd probably like more of these workerse1 tof come to their place for lunch or ice cream orx >> yeah. >> you own a couple ice cream places. >> we know that employees in our big businesses do get out around town. they do bring people to our hotels. we get substantial revenue now from hou1se1q occu)ñ;e tax. small businesses are taking advantage of the fact that even employees in rather captiveq campuses do want to get out and enjoy the community. the,wwant to enjoy our green spaces. so we see substantial economic benefit. maybe 2-1 on fáevery, you know, dollar spent by the employee, on the employee directly. >> believe it or not we have just a few minutes left. but i want to ask each of you, what do you see for youre1 city? what would you like your city ton- be in ten years? start with you, rpvy >> i wouse love to see a great÷ city filled with green spaces some intensification. our residents want measured

growth and metered growth and i think we need to respecti] ñithat. so more economic diversity in town,ñrñ ot just concentñrated in a few hands but a wider group of companies to buffer the diversity. >> what about east palo alto? >> east palo alto would love to see someó[ development so we can continue to be a city. we'd tliek seelike to see revenue coming in -- >> you'd like to have some of the problems -- tekp>> i'd love to have5a some of the problems they have. eá-fuáájqq+elopment in dollars. >> johnxd mcalister. zplt way >> the way oure1 city's going right now quality of life. safe streetsut( bicycle routes housing that'se1 attainable, more open space, parks and rec. better library. >> that sounds like a big wish list. >> yeah. >> do you see it happening? >> yes werdo. because we have the resources and commitment to do it. >> jim? >> i want to see a sustainable and balanced community, sustainable in terms of environmentalc sustainability,

transit, all in 4m!÷ services we needoke in terms / schools our library. also i'd like to see a diverse community. i'd like to see us maintain that diversity of economic classes,q of racial backgrounds, of all of the factors that makee1 ite1 a very interesting and vibrant community. >> i want to thank you all for coming up 101 to be with us. rod v' sinks, mayor of cupertino, jim griffith fromq sunnyvale, lisa gauthier from east palo alto and john mcalister from mountain view. very interesting conversation. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thank you. that's alle1 for tonight. but before we go we want to make a moment to remember richard moore who died last month at the age of çó95. moore was president of kqed from 1969 to 1973.e1 richard moore was a man of many talents.fá he helped launch kqed's original "newsroom" in 1968. fh(urj a strange, strange world

we're lu9♪ he was also one of the founders#3mjddy of public radio station kpfa in berkeley and a prolific documentary filmmaker with more than 110 films to his credit many of which he narrated. >> there are now more people in california than in any other state in the union. >> in ok1963 moore invited the writer james baldwin to san francisco tolp chronicle the lives of the city's black residents. he also made films about duke ellington and photographers ansel adams andlp dorthea lange. as a young man moore was one of the san francisco renaissance poets, crafting poetry in his writing shed. friátj describe moore as a lifelong pacifist, a belief reflected in his poetry.ñr >> i have knelt in the four dusty corners of my life and have been shown the bloody hands of the keepers of theñi promised land. >> moore published his first book of poems at 90. in a 2009 intu$@%ew he described

what inspired his creative efforts. >> that the world is vanishing immediately upon our efforts to enunciate it clearly. >> well versed ine1 american music, moore said he borrowed the title of the james baldwin film "take this hammer" from a ot/ leadbellye1ehñsong. ♪ take this hammer ♪ >> take this hammer carry it to thee1 ?lcaptain tell him i'm gone. tell him i'm gone. if he asks you was i running, tell him i was flying. tell him i was flying.e1 ♪ if het( asks you ♪lp ♪ was i running ♪ ♪e1fác

♪qñrñiñir ♪ ♪ñixdñiñrñr

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