About 200 people received an economic and political forecast Wednesday from a premiere economist, several elected officials and representatives from the rental housing industry.
They all came together for the California Apartment Association’s Outlook 2016, held at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto.
The event included a panel discussion with Rose Herrera, vice mayor of San Jose; Jeff Gee, a city councilman in Redwood City; and Mike Kasperzak, a city councilman in Mountain View.
Economically, Herrera said, San Jose has emerged from a strong 12 months, with more good news to come. She pointed to the city’s approval this week of a 4.1 million-square-foot expansion of Apple, a move that will bring at least 1,000 jobs to San Jose over the next year, and an expansion of international flights at the airport.
“We are open for business and looking to keep growing,” Herrera said.
Mike Kasperzak of Mountain View pointed to a common issue among the Silicon Valley cities – an imbalance between jobs and housing. Jokingly, he made reference to the “little employer” that calls Mountain View home: Google.
“While Google hasn’t actually built any new office buildings since they’ve been in Mountain View, they have figured out how to get more people into the buildings that they occupy, which has put all sorts of pressures on parking and transportation and that sort of thing and housing, of course,” the councilman said.
Encouragingly, however, Kasperzak said the current city council, unlike its predecessor, is pro-housing, pointing to hundreds of units being built or in the pipeline.
Later, attendees, including about 30 elected officials, heard from keynote speaker Christopher Thornberg, a founding partner of Beacon Economics, who provided a more macro view of the economy.
In his keynote speech, Thornberg said that, despite pessimistic views expressed by politicians, the U.S. economy is doing fine. He urged listeners not to worry about reports of turmoil in the market or talk of another bubble. The economist pointed to positive trends in labor markets and housing, the expansion of credit, commodity prices being down and interest rates remaining low. It’s not a case for “miserablism,” he said, using one of his new favorite words.
“Remember how a few years ago they wrote off California as this place that’s going to implode? I’ve heard people actually say, ‘Ahh, California is going to collapse like Greece or Detroit’ or some such nonsense,” Thornberg said. “Well, it turns out right now we are actually far-and-away the driver of the U.S. economy.”
While Thornberg said no bubble is on the ecnomic horizon, Gee of Redwood City reminded the audience that a downturn will come eventually.
“This is a roller coaster and we’ve been up, but I can guarantee there will be a down cycle,”Gee said during the elected officials panel discussion. “The question is how far down, how quick do we go, and are we ready?”
Outlook 2016 also included insights from Rosanne Foust of the San Mateo County Economic Development Association, and a number of rental housing industry leaders, such as John Eudy of Essex Property Trust; John Hyjer of Equity Residential and Michael Pierce of Prodesse Property Group.
Giving legislative updates and analysis from CAA were the Associations chief executive, Tom Bannon; Debra Carlton, senior vice president of public affairs; Joshua Howard, senior vice president of local public affairs, and Anil Babbar, executive director of the Association’s Tri-County Division.