Atherton, California, is a prosperous little town in Silicon Valley, a few miles south of Meta’s headquarters. The town’s average home value, according to Zillow, is just shy of $7.5 million; median household income exceeds a quarter of a million dollars per year. It’s one of the poshest ZIP codes in a state riven by homelessness, housing insecurity and wealth inequality.
So when Atherton residents oppose the development of new housing in their backyards, they hardly make sympathetic figures. Local homeowners Steph and Ayesha Curry learned as much recently when they wrote a letter to the town opposing a multifamily housing development at 23 Oakwood Blvd., the lot abutting their property.
In theory, I could hardly ask for a better foil than an Atherton multimillionaire who doesn’t want to live next to some apartments.
I’m a professional YIMBY (meaning “Yes in My Back Yard”). I spend most of every day thinking about how California can relieve its housing crisis by building more homes. In theory, I could hardly ask for a better foil than an Atherton multimillionaire who doesn’t want to live next to some apartments.
But this particular story isn’t quite so simple. For one thing, Steph Curry is the starting point guard for the Golden State Warriors, one of the greatest basketball players ever, and something of a secular saint to the people of the Bay Area. For another, the Currys raised some not unreasonable privacy concerns in their letter opposing the project.
“We hesitate to add to the ‘not in our backyard’ (literally) rhetoric, but we wanted to send a note before today’s meeting,” they wrote, according to Complex. “Safety and privacy for us and our kids continues to be our top priority and one of the biggest reasons we chose Atherton as home.”
The issue, the Currys clarified in the letter, is that residents of 23 Oakwood would have clear sightlines into their property. For most people, that would be a trivial concern; unless you live…
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