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As the sixth-richest man on the planet, with a net worth of $50.7 billion, Zuckerberg bought the four houses surrounding his Palo Alto neighborhood home at 1462 Edgewood Drive to stop real estate developer Mircea Voskerician from building an imposing house next door. It seems that Voskerician acquired an adjacent house to Zuckerberg in 2013 in the Crescent Park neighborhood, located just north of downtown Palo Alto and near the Bayshore Freeway. The developer had been moving forward with the city Planning Commission to build a house tall enough to look directly down at Zuckerberg’s master bedroom. It is unknown...

Four houses surrounding Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's home in Palo Alto will be demolished and replaced by smaller ones, according to an application filed with city planners Tuesday. Zuckerberg bought the homes on Hamilton Avenue and Edgewood Drive in 2013 after he learned of a developer's plan to build a house next door tall enough to have a view of Zuckerberg's master bedroom. Concerned about privacy, Zuckerberg paid more than $30 million total for the properties at 1462 Edgewood Drive and 1451, 1457 and 1459 Hamilton in the Crescent Park neighborhood.

s the left turning on its darling, Bernie Sanders? On Friday, Netroots titan Markos Moulitsas, namesake of the liberal Daily Kos, dropped a rhetorical bomb on the Bern, blaming the candidate for doing too little to denounce death threats received by the Nevada Democratic Party after Sanders’ state convention delegates complained they had received unfair treatment. “The problem isn't Bernie Sanders' supporters,” Moulitsas wrote. “It's Bernie Sanders himself … [He] refuses to forcefully and unambiguously reject that violence, instead rationalizing and explaining it away with a mix of grievances and outright conspiracy theory.” Actually, Sanders hasn’t lost much support among...

In this year of political rage, one aspect that baffles me somewhat is the absolute, electrified, apoplectic, blurred-vision hatred of Hillary Clinton. Nor do I get the similar outrage expressed about President Barack Obama, who in Comment Section World makes Donald Trump look like a lovable Disney character. I can only ascribe this Rage Against the Clinton Machine to misogyny. Yeah. I said it (send enraged emails to my boss, Dan Morain at dmorain@sacbee.com). Looking back on political figures, I can truly say that there are only a handful of people I could really get vein-popping angry about. â–ª Sarah...

Congress passed a proposal on Thursday that essentially bans Confederate flags from national cemeteries. With a 265-159 vote, the proposal makes it illegal to display the Confederate flag in Department of Veteran Affairs cemeteries – even on individual grave sites that honor soldiers who fought for the Confederacy, except on Memorial Day and Confederate Memorial Day. Introduced by Rep. Jared Huffman (D) of California, the proposal received support from 84 Republicans and all but two Democrats. Rep. Sanford Bishop (D) of Georgia, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, voted against the amendment, while Representative Betty McCollum (D) of Minnesota...

You might have heard the tales of horror over the supposed throwing of chairs by disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporters at the recent Democrat convention in Nevada. Several news outlets repeated those fables to demonstrate how barbaric the Sandernistas are in stark contrast to the "civilized" folks who support Hillary Clinton. California Senator Barbara Boxer who was present even claimed that she feared for her safety. However, one problem. No chairs were thrown. Snopes.Com has rated that story as false.

According to Census estimates, the number of blacks [in San Francisco] shrank from 13.4% of the population in 1970 to just 6.5% in 2005 — the biggest percentage decline in any major American city.

San Francisco’s Affordable Housing Shell Game $28 million affordable housing program in city where 44% are low income persons and average housing cost is $402 per month by Wayne Lusvardi - The Pasadena Pundit April 21,2007 A shell game is an urban form of street gambling where a person hides a small object underneath one of three nutshells, thimbles or cups and then by sleight of hand shuffles them about while spectators try to guess the final location of the object. The success of the trick by the con man is to keep his mark focused on conspicuous actions to...

Anne Bakstad and Ed Cohen are starting to feel as if their family of four is an endangered species in San Francisco. Since the couple bought a house five years ago, more than a dozen families in their social circle have left the city for cheaper housing, better schools or both. The goodbyes are so frequent that Carina, age 4 1/2, wants to know when she is going to move, too. Eric, 2 1/2, misses Gus, his playmate from across the street. "When we get to know people through our kids, we think to ourselves, `Are they renters or owners?...

Nearly half the families in San Francisco with preschool children stated in a newly released survey their intent to move out of the city in the next three years, citing the lack of affordable housing, concern over public safety and the state of the public schools as their primary motivators. The survey findings, contained in a report issued Friday by the mayor's office that looks at the declining population of children in San Francisco, confirms what many have known for a long time: The city has had a hard time attracting and retaining young families. People under the age of...

San Francisco -- Rebuilding San Francisco after a major earthquake would change its human face, hastening gentrification and driving out poor and elderly residents, experts and city officials warn. Experts say there's a 62 percent chance a quake with a magnitude of 6.7 or higher will hit the San Francisco Bay area within several decades — or tomorrow. Thousands of homes would be rendered uninhabitable, displacing up to 300,000 residents, almost half the city's population, according to some projections. A major issue would be creating replacement housing for the poor in one of the nation's most expensive markets. About 16,000...

Author, founder of Salon.com, and Bernal Heights resident David Talbot recently made a speech at Stanford which was then published in 48HillsOnline.com decrying “Stanford douchebags”, gentrification, and Mayor Ed Lee. Talbot’s strong words for Stanford students have struck a chord up north in San Francisco, and his speech is rapidly going viral.

If you’re out on the left coast and heading out for some tasty Chipotle goodness tonight, be prepared to dig a little deeper when you pay the check. Prices are going up and it’s not just because of the cost of beef. (From the Chicago Tribune) In its weekly survey of 10 Chipotle markets, Chicago-based William Blair found that Chipotle raised prices in half of the markets that the investment firm surveyed — San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis and Orlando. In most markets, the price increases occurred due to the rising cost of beef.The city by the bay, however,...

Struggling to live in America's $1M city: Photographer captures lives of ordinary San Francisco residents who have been forced to live in cars, trailers, garages and tents following the tech boom Photographer Wenxin Zhang moved to San Francisco in 2011 Discovered a group of people online that had been forced to find alternative means of accommodation 'I visited them alone with mutual trust,' she said The subsequent photo essay is called Goodnight Stories A recent report said that a family needs about $200,000 a year to live comfortably in San Francisco, so long as their children go to public school....

<p>Home prices have soared so high that affording housing is a problem not just for the poor but for middle-class families as well, experts say.</p> <p>"The run-up in single-family home prices is crowding out solidly middle-class households from buying," says Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution.</p>

San Francisco In my apartment building people of various income levels are stacked on top of each other. The architect and the teacher occupy one-bedroom apartments on the floor above me. They are considered middle-class and, for that matter, so am I. An affluent, well-traveled couple lives in a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor. A poor Chinese immigrant family of five is crammed into the converted storage room where half a dozen bicycles were once kept, their children often turning the foyer into a makeshift playground strewn with plastic toys. This is typical of the way we live in...

In urban centers around the country, rental prices are soaring. Cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City routinely report double-digit increases that make it nearly impossible for residents to make ends meet. But it’s not just dwellers of those metropolitan areas who are having a hard time paying the rent. According to a report out this week from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, more than half of renters in America are considered to be financially burdened by their rent, meaning that they spend more than 30 percent of their income just on where they live. High...

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — There’s no one at this new San Francisco vegetarian restaurant to take your lunch order or tell you when its ready. Instead, you’ll depend on machines for a fully automated dining experience straight out of an episode of The Jetsons. Welcome to Eatsa, a new futuristic fast food chain opening Monday in the Embarcadero (121 Spear Street) offering quick, healthy food for about $7 — a deal compared to other lunch time options in San Francisco. Customers tap their meal selections on an iPad or their smartphone and pay electronically. No cash is taken here....

If you're interested in whether rent control makes rent prices go down or not -- and plenty of people think it actually makes them go up -- then stop what you're doing right now and watch this video on San Francisco's real estate war, by my colleague Andrew Stern. The video features a heart-breaking interview with artist David Brenkus, who has lived in a rent-controlled apartment on Walter Street for 34 years. His building has been bought and now he is being evicted so that the new landlord can move in. Brenkus's rent is $735 month for a two-bedroom apartment,...

If you're interested in whether rent control makes rent prices go down — and plenty of people think it actually makes them go up — then stop what you're doing and watch this video on San Francisco's real-estate war, by my colleague Andrew Stern. The video features a heartbreaking interview with artist David Brenkus, who has lived in a rent-controlled apartment on Walter Street for 34 years.