Business Ethics

Business Ethics Case (20 Marks) In an address to Bay Area government officials during the Center’s quarterly Public Sector Roundtable, Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian spoke about affordable housing in the Bay Area, using the ongoing housing dispute at Palo Alto’s Buena Vista Mobile Home Park as a case study. Although invisible to many, Buena Vista has been a fixture of Palo Alto since the 1920s. But depending on how the litigation plays out, the mobile home park’s 400 residents (consisting of approximately 117 families and 100 children) face the very real possibility of having to leave their homes, their town, and maybe even the entire Bay Area. When Simitian, the son of a teacher, moved to Palo Alto in 1967, he went to school with a group of kids from varying socio-economic backgrounds.

He shared classes with the son of an air conditioning mechanic, the daughter of a high school custodian, and the daughter of the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Simitian recalled that in 1967, nobody thought it unusual that kids of modest means went to the same school as the daughter of HP’s CEO. These kids would eventually grow up to become mayors and middle school teachers; there was no limit to what they could aspire toward. Unfortunately, Simitian said, the uncertain fate of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park vividly demonstrates that’s not the case in today’s Silicon Valley. A few years back, Buena Vista’s owners decided they wanted to sell the mobile home property. Given the high demand for land in the Bay Area, it was reasonable to assume that a developer would buy the park and immediately replace it with more lucrative housing. The average Buena Vista household currently makes $35,000 per year. Rent at Buena Vista is approximately $750 per month. If the residents are forced to leave as part of the sale, but wish to remain in Palo Alto, they’ll be faced with the prospect of paying three to four times that much.

And the neighboring cities aren’t much cost-friendlier. Despite the mobile home park’s invisibility, the people who live at Buena Vista do a lot of the work that Palo Alto residents have come to rely on. One female resident makes sandwiches in the deli at Molly Stone. Another works at the Four Seasons hotel in East Palo Alto. A third resident was the Rotary Club president of East Palo Alto. Simitian noted that it’s harder to “otherize” people once you know who they are and what their place in the community is. The dispute over the closure of Buena Vista is ultimately a city issue, but Simitian felt early on that something had to be done for the 117 families. Months and months of work have resulted in public backing from local newspapers, school board members, mayors, council members, and an astoundingly successful rally in which 500 people from all parts of the economic spectrum gathered to support their fellow community members.

Answer the following question. Q1. Explain why the affordable housing was necessary in the Bay Area. Q2. Comment on the question posed by Mr. Simitian in the roundtable “Do we have an ethical obligation to make the South Bay a place of opportunity for all?”