The point about people in rent controlled apartments having very little incentive to favor increased density is a different one than I've heard, and a telling one. If between owners and rent-controlled apartments you have a large voting majority, you end up with a large voting majority that has no interest in making the city more welcoming to newcomers.
People often talk about middle class people being driven out of SF, I think it's actually dangerous that even people making well above average wages have trouble affording housing alone. Many tech workers I know earn a decent living but having an apartment to themselves is simply unaffordable.
Yes, yes #richpeopleproblems, and of course we should worry about people further down the income scale, but it's indicative of just how pathological the situation has become that even people who are well off can't afford the city comfortably.
I agree that part of the motivation for people supporting zoning is to preserve or increase their property values. But I think that people that spend a huge chunk of change on a house should care about preserving the neighborhood they bought into. As an extreme case, without zoning, what if each home lot on your street were turned into a high rise residential or commercial building? I don’t think any homeowner expects nothing to change, but they bought a house hoping that it continues to have a similar quality of life going forward. It’s not all about money. Peace and quiet is important to people, for example. Lack of traffic is important to people. Having one neighbor on each side rather than 100 is important to people.
Zoning is important. The issue is that it is often abused and poorly thought out in San Francisco. For instance, Mission Bay [0] was a rail yard with no inhabitants sitting at the foot of San Francisco, just south of urban SoMa. It was a prime opportunity to make it a dense, metropolitan extension of the city with little voter backlash since there were no residents in the area. Not to mention, it is also the most accessible, commutable part of the city with 2 Caltrain stops and 2 freeway on-ramps. Instead, they made it it a low-rise biotech neighborhood with primarily 40 ft zoning.
There's another development in Downtown SF (SoMa to be exact) where current residents are suing to block the transformation of a PARKING LOT into a housing/office complex with over 200 units of affordable housing[1]. The area is already dense and urban, the building itself is not out of character (there's a 400 ft hotel right next door). It also introduces a lot of much needed open space to Central SoMa. However, some residents in the area are suing, claiming that development would cast shadows on nearby parks (0.08775% and 0.167% of sunlight in winter months) and increase traffic to the area. The lawsuit will probably delay the development for years. It's just sad to see such an irrational attempt to impede the progress of a potentially great city.
If every house around you is turned into a high-rise then your property values are going to shoot up massively. So, cash out and move. The real question is why can 1x people living in an area decide that 99x people get to move there or not.
In the end Mixed use walkable communities are much better for both peoples health and the environment. You can always move to the middle of Montana if you don't want to live near development, but carving out the hart of city's and saying "FU I have got mine" causes worlds of problems.
You have a right to your private property. That right does not extend to publicly owned land or land owned by other private parties. When you buy land in the heart of a large metropolitan area in an under-developed neighborhood, it's reasonable to expect that the city will densify and grow around you. Thinking that nothing will change is the unreasonable expectation here. San Francisco has been continuously changing for 150 years, expecting the city to freeze for you as soon ay you buy a piece of property does not make sense.
I don't mind that some homeowners seek to block new housing; that's their right, and might be in their best interest.
What I mind is that SF's local media never blames these people for their role in the housing crisis, and that ostensibly progressive organizations stand by their side, even though thwarting change and enriching the establishment at the expense of newcomers is about as far from progressive as you could get.
"preserving the neighborhood they bought into"-That means you're condemning all but the very well to do from every moving in in the future. You've lucked out on life's lottery, to be able to own a house in San Francisco.
One alternative is "Georgism", which is the idea that land is a resource collectively owned by society, but people can temporarily monopolize a piece of land by renting it from society. The rents thus collected go into the society's general fund to pay for public goods like fire stations, healthcare, universal basic income, etc.
The main problem is Prop13, in other states property taxes increase and drive people out as land increases in value. In California land owners are locked in forever. OTOH, somehow California ended up with the fastest growing economy in the country. Causation? Correlation? Who knows.
Relevant to this topic, Youtube channel "The School of Life" talks about this issue where people are reluctant to build, causing the housing price to go up. One Reason Homes Cost So Much: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcbjWGj3jBk
It's a shame that when people focus on the bay area's ludicrous housing costs, they tend to speak exclusively of San Francisco and ignore the opportunity to develop Oakland, which has a lot of flat land that is easier to build tall buildings on top of, instead of trying to densify San Francisco's endless peaks and twists.
The author said a potential future for San Francisco is as a "gated community for the rich." That may be the case, perhaps already having been so for a long time. It's unfortunate that an economic juggernaut heralded as the shining center of modern American capitalism is also so inaccessible, but that does not mean the overall solution is by making that place accessible at the expense of more realistic options.
The author compares the density of SF to NYC's Brooklyn. Like Manhattan, San Francisco is owned by the rich and their rules, yet Brooklyn is big and booming. Oakland is prime to take up the role of the Bay's Brooklyn.
Side note: if people want to return to the halcyon days of San Francisco when the wealthy and the workers could live atop the same rock, it will cost a ton of money. Hairdressers, grocery clerks, teachers, and the like will either need massive housing subsidies or comparable salaries to tech workers. That possibility could exist too, if the well-heeled agree to let go of a big chunk of change.
> It's a shame that when people focus on the bay area's ludicrous housing costs, they tend to speak exclusively of San Francisco and ignore the opportunity to develop Oakland, which has a lot of flat land that is easier to build tall buildings on top of, instead of trying to densify San Francisco's endless peaks and twists.
It doesn't get ignored. The problem is that Oakland costs about as much to develop as SF does with potential revenues that are much lower. It's a terrible business proposition.
I get the sense Manhattan was established, and then tapped out, hence Brooklyn. Whereas San Francisco is neither of those. San Francisco is the hip place to be (for tech) and Oakland is perceived as the fallback for companies that can't afford to host. Which really surmounts to: I would much rather work in SF than Oakland (I really base my decision on what food & bar options I have around me, though).
I'm not sure about Oakland's geology, but the part of SF where I live (outer sunset) is more or less just houses on top of sand dunes. I'm no geologist, but I've always wondered how well one could build tall buildings on that kind of ground.
Being a Bay Area native, my opinion is that the push back to increased growth is due to the horrible traffic situation. More people means traffic gets worse, muni gets more crowded, commutes get longer. The only people who want growth are real estate developers and recent transplants who are fine with not trying to actually go anywhere besides home and work.
There's a point where the congestion starts to lower quality of life drastically and people would rather deal with high rents then being stuck in traffic for hours or stuffed into a filled to the gills muni, bart or caltrain with people coughing up flem around them.
Getting to work in downtown is awful when there's a Giants game going on and they wanted to eliminate pier 30 parking and put another stadium in there? I'm glad that got shot down. San Francisco is full. Get over it.
Too bad transportation infrastructure is completely verboten in America.
New York has it grandfathered in (was built before the car era) and New York does not have this problem. The simple reality is that cars don't scale beyond a certain density because, well, cars can't pass through other cars. Cars work fine for light to medium density but beyond that you must either build trains or stop growing. (Or waste billions and countless hours every day with millions of people stuck in traffic.)
Legit thought experiment and not a troll, because I'm curious about thinking through this.
What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents people from owning property that's not their primary residence? Like: if you don't live in it more than 190 days a year, you pay a really high property tax on it.
I've always thought a big part of the landlord - tenant issues around rent control, fair market housing, and a lot of other stuff all stems from the position that people are allowed to own more homes that they can live in, and derive income from landlording.
There's some obvious issues - not everyone wants to live in a home / apartment that they own (liquidity, mortgage, etc). This could be obviated with some workarounds (and market forces might help out a bit too - I'd imagine real estate could change hands a lot more frequently in that situation).
My opinion is that San Francisco's housing problems are at root a case of demand vastly exceeding supply. The solution is to produce more housing. This would happen naturally when demand exceeds supply, except that San Francisco has an excess of regulations that prevent construction of new homes and new apartments and a strong political coalition opposed to the construction of new housing.
> What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents people from owning property that's not their primary residence? Like: if you don't live in it more than 190 days a year, you pay a really high property tax on it.
That already exists in a way - there's the concept of a primary residence tax deduction, which is (more or less) what the name sounds like.
It varies widely by jurisdiction, (not just country, but state and local government as well), but the idea of trying to differentiate residents from landlords in tax policy is nothing new.
If you do that, you'll get more single-owner homes, and less rental units, but you'll kill the ability to have apartment buildings (or, at most, one per owner). More single dwellings and less apartment buildings doesn't sound like the path to "more affordable housing".
Have you ever bought a house? I have. I do not want to go through that process every time I move. Plus, while I have purchased a house before, it ended up being foreclosed on and I certainly couldn't get a mortgage now (and I shouldn't... I can't afford a mortgage). I would be pretty SOL if owning a house was a prerequisite for not being homeless.
How is commercial property treated?
What prevents a company building a huge apartment building, "selling" it to an apartment manager (in the form of a very expensive mortgage) and then having the apartment manager rent out "rooms" in his very large "house" to cover his mortgage?
In short, the longer I think about the idea, the less practical it becomes.
"would lift U.S. gross domestic product by 9.5 percent"? Really? Over what period of time? If it's one year it's unbelievable. If it's over 50 years, who cares?
I believe the calculation is for when the system approached its new steady state. And why shouldn't one care about the world of fifty years from now? I intend to still be alive, and so will a lot of the people I care about.
Plus it's not like we'd see no improvement whatsoever for 49 years and then WHAM. We'd see gradual returns on this investment every year.
People who want to move here (for opportunities or work) by definition do not have an established life here, are not part of our community, do not have family and friends they have known for years based here, and have not worked to contribute to making San Francisco what it is. I am not overly concerned about how hard it may be for them to arrive.
[+] [-] entee|10 years ago|reply
People often talk about middle class people being driven out of SF, I think it's actually dangerous that even people making well above average wages have trouble affording housing alone. Many tech workers I know earn a decent living but having an apartment to themselves is simply unaffordable.
Yes, yes #richpeopleproblems, and of course we should worry about people further down the income scale, but it's indicative of just how pathological the situation has become that even people who are well off can't afford the city comfortably.
[+] [-] pluckytree|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] capkutay|10 years ago|reply
There's another development in Downtown SF (SoMa to be exact) where current residents are suing to block the transformation of a PARKING LOT into a housing/office complex with over 200 units of affordable housing[1]. The area is already dense and urban, the building itself is not out of character (there's a 400 ft hotel right next door). It also introduces a lot of much needed open space to Central SoMa. However, some residents in the area are suing, claiming that development would cast shadows on nearby parks (0.08775% and 0.167% of sunlight in winter months) and increase traffic to the area. The lawsuit will probably delay the development for years. It's just sad to see such an irrational attempt to impede the progress of a potentially great city.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Bay,_San_Francisco
1: http://www.5mproject.com/
[+] [-] Retric|10 years ago|reply
In the end Mixed use walkable communities are much better for both peoples health and the environment. You can always move to the middle of Montana if you don't want to live near development, but carving out the hart of city's and saying "FU I have got mine" causes worlds of problems.
[+] [-] erispoe|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|10 years ago|reply
What I mind is that SF's local media never blames these people for their role in the housing crisis, and that ostensibly progressive organizations stand by their side, even though thwarting change and enriching the establishment at the expense of newcomers is about as far from progressive as you could get.
[+] [-] ZanyProgrammer|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jey|10 years ago|reply
One alternative is "Georgism", which is the idea that land is a resource collectively owned by society, but people can temporarily monopolize a piece of land by renting it from society. The rents thus collected go into the society's general fund to pay for public goods like fire stations, healthcare, universal basic income, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
[+] [-] guelo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matkam|10 years ago|reply
As a follow up, the same channel offers some more ideas and broader view solutions. How to Make an Attractive City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4QjmKzF1c
[+] [-] rm_-rf_slash|10 years ago|reply
The author said a potential future for San Francisco is as a "gated community for the rich." That may be the case, perhaps already having been so for a long time. It's unfortunate that an economic juggernaut heralded as the shining center of modern American capitalism is also so inaccessible, but that does not mean the overall solution is by making that place accessible at the expense of more realistic options.
The author compares the density of SF to NYC's Brooklyn. Like Manhattan, San Francisco is owned by the rich and their rules, yet Brooklyn is big and booming. Oakland is prime to take up the role of the Bay's Brooklyn.
Side note: if people want to return to the halcyon days of San Francisco when the wealthy and the workers could live atop the same rock, it will cost a ton of money. Hairdressers, grocery clerks, teachers, and the like will either need massive housing subsidies or comparable salaries to tech workers. That possibility could exist too, if the well-heeled agree to let go of a big chunk of change.
[+] [-] Kalium|10 years ago|reply
It doesn't get ignored. The problem is that Oakland costs about as much to develop as SF does with potential revenues that are much lower. It's a terrible business proposition.
[+] [-] gravity13|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pfooti|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vhold|10 years ago|reply
Not only did they want to fill the bay in with the mountain, they wanted to build another Bay Bridge there.
[+] [-] wmil|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgy1|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] narrator|10 years ago|reply
There's a point where the congestion starts to lower quality of life drastically and people would rather deal with high rents then being stuck in traffic for hours or stuffed into a filled to the gills muni, bart or caltrain with people coughing up flem around them.
Getting to work in downtown is awful when there's a Giants game going on and they wanted to eliminate pier 30 parking and put another stadium in there? I'm glad that got shot down. San Francisco is full. Get over it.
[+] [-] api|10 years ago|reply
New York has it grandfathered in (was built before the car era) and New York does not have this problem. The simple reality is that cars don't scale beyond a certain density because, well, cars can't pass through other cars. Cars work fine for light to medium density but beyond that you must either build trains or stop growing. (Or waste billions and countless hours every day with millions of people stuck in traffic.)
[+] [-] pfooti|10 years ago|reply
What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents people from owning property that's not their primary residence? Like: if you don't live in it more than 190 days a year, you pay a really high property tax on it.
I've always thought a big part of the landlord - tenant issues around rent control, fair market housing, and a lot of other stuff all stems from the position that people are allowed to own more homes that they can live in, and derive income from landlording.
There's some obvious issues - not everyone wants to live in a home / apartment that they own (liquidity, mortgage, etc). This could be obviated with some workarounds (and market forces might help out a bit too - I'd imagine real estate could change hands a lot more frequently in that situation).
Anyway. Thoughts?
[+] [-] VintageCool|10 years ago|reply
Adding more restrictions on housing helps no one.
[+] [-] chimeracoder|10 years ago|reply
That already exists in a way - there's the concept of a primary residence tax deduction, which is (more or less) what the name sounds like.
It varies widely by jurisdiction, (not just country, but state and local government as well), but the idea of trying to differentiate residents from landlords in tax policy is nothing new.
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xffff2|10 years ago|reply
How is commercial property treated?
What prevents a company building a huge apartment building, "selling" it to an apartment manager (in the form of a very expensive mortgage) and then having the apartment manager rent out "rooms" in his very large "house" to cover his mortgage?
In short, the longer I think about the idea, the less practical it becomes.
[+] [-] gmarx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|10 years ago|reply
Plus it's not like we'd see no improvement whatsoever for 49 years and then WHAM. We'd see gradual returns on this investment every year.
[+] [-] JauntTrooper|10 years ago|reply
9.5% of that would yield an additional $1.7 trillion of net goods and services produced by our economy.
For comparison, we spend ~$0.85 trillion on Social Security and ~$0.6 trillion on defense a year.
[+] [-] AlexWest|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] MichaelTerry|10 years ago|reply
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