Billionaire Marc Andreessen slammed a proposal to bring affordable housing to his neighborhood after bemoaning "crazily skyrocketing housing prices" in the past.
In a public comment submitted to the Atherton Town Council and first reported on by The Atlantic, Andreessen wrote that he was "IMMENSELY AGAINST multifamily development" in his uber-wealthy neighborhood — an area where the typical home value is $8 million.
Andreessen and a spokesperson for his investment firm did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.
"Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July," Andreessen and his wife, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, said via an email to the mayor and city council. "They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and IMMENSELY increase the noise pollution and traffic."
The co-founder of the Venture Capital firm Andreessen Horowitz's comment was one of 270 that was submitted to the town regarding the housing proposal — the majority of which were against the initiative, The Atlantic reported. As a result, the proposal was left off the town's housing draft which was submitted to the California Department of Housing and Community Development for review on August 2.
The housing draft was created to show how the town would meet community needs. The multi-family housing proposal would allow the construction of a few smaller properties for apartments or condominiums, allowing for about 130 units by 2031.
Andreessen's stance against the housing plan come only a few years after the billionaire criticized the lack of affordable housing in key cities like San Francisco in a 2020 essay called "It's Time to Build."
"We can't build nearly enough housing in our cities with surging economic potential — which results in crazily skyrocketing housing prices in places like San Francisco, making it nearly impossible for regular people to move in and take the jobs of the future," Andreessen wrote in the essay. "We should have gleaming skyscrapers and spectacular living environments in all our best cities at levels way beyond what we have now; where are they?" he added.
"We need to want these things more than we want to prevent these things," he went on to say in the essay.
Andreessen's home town was identified as America's most expensive zip code last year. The town is home to some of Silicon Valley's most powerful people, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, former HP CEO Meg Whitman, and investor Charles Schwab.
In 2018, a local news outlet reported that the town was struggling to find places for local police and dispatchers to sleep between their shifts due to the length of their commutes into Atherton. Some officers told the publication at the time that planned to drive campers into the station to accommodate sleeping needs.
