We can learn from Reno’s Gigafactory mess
Tesla’s Gigafactory proves why you don’t give away the farm for jobs — even thousands of highly coveted tech jobs.
Nevada rolled out the red carpet — and more than a billion dollars in incentives — for what the company promised to become one of the world’s largest factories.
But according to USA TODAY’s investigative podcast, The City:
❚ Emergency crews have been hardpressed to answer regular calls from the factory.
❚ Housing is in short supply for workers, and what is there is generally not affordable. This has only exacerbated problems with homelessness.
❚ Traffic regularly clogs roads to the massive site, which is just 30% completed.
Sure, Reno may have gotten a lot of accolades for snagging the factory. But the rapid influx of 7,000 new Gigafactory workers has not necessarily made it a better place to live.
And, thanks to those tax abatements, local and state governments have generally lacked the resources to do much about it.
This isn’t just a Reno problem. Seattle residents have complained about similar issues that have come with Amazon’s success, including snarled traffic, skyrocketing housing prices and a growing homeless population. Fear over what Amazon might do to New York City — which also threw massive incentives at the company — helped scuttle plans earlier this year to build a sprawling HQ2 campus there.
Let this be a lesson for Arizona, which also tried to woo the Gigafactory with incentives in 2014. Some lamented at the time that we didn’t have enough dealclosing funds, and sharply criticized lawmakers for not calling a special session to approve them.
The lesson isn’t necessarily that we should turn away thousands of tech jobs.
But we need to recognize that even good growth comes with costs that someone will have to pay. Offering massive incentives only makes that worse.
And if we continue to let problems simmer — like the chronic lack of transportation funds to keep traffic at bay, or the growing lack of affordable housing — what has happened in places like Reno will come home to roost in metro Phoenix.
We are not immune.