title: MAKE $250K A YEAR? You Could Qualify For Subsidized Housing In Palo Alto
text: Is this not the craziest thing ever? No wonder California is broke! This sounds so much like Agenda 21 everyone s on the dole!Palo Alto is seeking housing solutions for residents who are not among the Silicon Valley region s super-rich, but who also earn more than the threshhold to qualify for affordable housing programs.The city council has voted to study a housing proposal that would essentially subsidize new housing for what qualifies as middle-class nowadays, families making from $150,000 to $250,000 a year.The plan would focus on building smaller, downtown units for people who live near transit and don t own cars, along with mixed-use retail and residential developments.Sky-rocketing housing prices in Palo Alto have left some in limbo; with teachers, firefighters and other government workers not earning enough to afford cost of living.Randy Bean says while she still loves her Palo Alto neighborhood, she can t help but notice the changes that are making it unrecognizable. I just find it kind of sad that we are reducing ourselves to this small profile of young, rich, mostly white, mostly tech. It s not the community that I moved into 33 years ago,  Bean said.And now, as a documentary film producer, she says she can t afford to stay here.Some of the small two-bedroom, one-bath homes on her block are worth between $1.5 and $2 million   as teardowns. That s just what the dirt is worth. Prices have just gone through the roof, making it unaffordable for middle-class people, your firefighters, your teachers, and, frankly, some of your doctors,  Palo Alto Vice Mayor Greg Scharff said.Scharff worries that losing middle-class workers will hurt the city.  What the council is proposing is that we work together to fund and subsidize, what is basically middle-class housing; which, traditionally, has not been subsidized,  Scharff said.Bean can hardly believe it. We have people struggling to make it at a quarter-million dollars a year,  Bean said.  That s a terrible thing. Read more: KCBS