My hope would be the supervisors for The Mission district as well as Chinatown in SF would read this and take notice. But... given their politics, even if they came to understand it, I don't think they'd come around on this, to the detriment of those they purport to represent.
The politics in SF are weird. Many politicians do superficially irrational things --they look good on the surface, but in effect they are detrimental. On the bright side, the mayors themselves have been rational about attracting business and bringing in development.
If you listen to KQED and their local reporters, it's like they'd like to have SF frozen in time in 1992. As if they'd rather it go down the way of Detroit rather than it become an economic center on the Pacific with the effects they bring ("gentrification" population moves, etc.) They want to eat their cake and have it too. And I understand it. It's very attractive. Let's have a great economy BUT let's have it so all other things stay the same, no disruption, no changes to neighborhoods, etc. Not even China can pull that off. Especially when SF proper is all but 49sq mi. But if we will it that way hard enough...
I wish the Mission activists would spend some effort teaming up with http://www.spur.org and similar organizations to promote improved zoning and housing development in other SF neighborhoods, e.g. the Richmond/Sunset/Parkside, which consist nearly exclusively of single family houses, and waste tremendous amounts of space on wide streets with massive amounts of street parking. Turning a few more streets in those neighborhoods into mixed-use commercial corridors or even denser (3–6 story) residential could add a huge amount of housing stock to the city. (Not to mention advocating for more housing development in the peninsula and south bay, where the worst employment/housing imbalances are.)
I do not think that San Francisco can in any way be compared to the decline of Detroit.
Poor civic planning, racism and the loss of jobs to non-union Southern plants all paid a part in Detroit's population dropping by two thirds over a fifty year span.
I read a great book over Christmas, Once in a great city by David Maraniss, which covered Detroit at its peak from 1962-1964. Wayne State actually pretty accurately predicted the city's future then but the report was ignored by those in a position to stem its decline.
I thought the article was weak. There was barely a change in displacement with new market rate housing vs not.
My biggest issue is the highway theory - build more lanes, commute time is shorter, more people drive, purpose defeated. Here build more market rate housing, prices fall, more people move in that would have loved elesewhere in bay area, prices rise. Purpose defeated.
I like projects that include percentage of units to be affordable, rent control, and programs to build on surplus public land for affordable housing.
Beyond that not sure what else they can do. At end of day government only has so much they can subsidize. Unless they start building homes underground or on the bay...
Funny thing about this theory: the luxury housing market in San Francisco is in decline, and yet, it's still a seller's market for middle- and down-market properties. [1][2]
This is not surprising to anyone who follows real estate. There's no such thing as "a market for housing" -- there are several markets, each moving more-or-less independently, based on the net worth of the participants involved. A drop in the prices of units in the Millenium Tower doesn't have much of an impact on the rent of a pre-war hovel in the Mission.
The reason that the author doesn't understand this is because there's a latent correlation at play: the communities with the most high-end construction tend to have the most construction overall. But in a city like SF, where all of the new construction would be high-end (if so allowed), all bets are off.
Observing that properties become cheaper as they age is also silly. There are some properties that become cheaper as they age, but there aren't many of them, say, in Pac Heights.
This is specifically related to the SF Bay Area and there is a link to the source which has a easy-to-use Excel sheet of the data, so feel free to make an awesome geo-mashup:
Yes. Contrary to popular belief, not a single housing unit (at any income level) has been torn down in the Mission, for any reason, since at least 2010 (as far back as online records go).
Also, I should note that, contrary to popular belief, there's not much new luxury housing in the Mission. In fact, there's not much new housing in the Mission at any economic level. In 2014 (the last year for which data is available), there were a grand total of 74 units built in the entire Mission. Not 74 buildings. 74 units.
No one is tearing down old units. People are trying to get new units built, mostly on vacant lots, and getting blocked by incumbent landlords who want to see prices go even higher.
It's not misleading. It makes some assumptions of the reader [that the context is housing and that given constrained supplies, the pressure on affordable housing is eased when more market rate stock is built for those who can afford it --i.e. they have other stock to choose from].
Like when you go to the grocery store before a holiday, many people will tend to buy the leftovers [constrained stock] they normally would not buy --so it is with housing.
There is nothing in the article to justifying the headline. What the headline should have said is "more expensive housing keeps the prices of the expensive housing lower". While true, this has absolutely no reflection on the affordability, the latter being dependent on things like level of income and such. If the cheap housing is removed to be converted to expensive, there is less cheap housing, and it becomes less accessible, because more poor compete for it.
And if the total housing stock increases then that means that rich people won't be buying up the poor housing stock.
For every "Rich Person Condo" that is built in SOMA, there is one less "Up and Coming Apartment in The Mission" that gets taken up by a rich techie.
The rich are going to move to the city whether we like it or not. They have the resources, they can buy out whatever place they choose. The only choice we have to make is whether to build housing for them or to just let them displace existing residents.
What about the part where it said, "low-income neighborhoods with a lot of new construction have witnessed about half the displacement of similar neighborhoods that haven't added much new housing"?
In other words, building more market-rate housing in a neighborhood helps keep that neighborhood's low-income families from getting displaced. Or, to put it another way, the poor are better off when we build housing for the rich (than when we don't build housing for anyone).
Everyone (myself included) cries about house prices, yet I believe there are many many truly beautiful small cities and towns where you have great internet access, safety and amazingly affordable housing. People just needs to have the guts to move to these places and recruit friends and family and like minded folks to join them.
This is hat my wife and I did. We left California for Indiana. We left Indiana for Tennessee. Each time we took our jobs with us. She spent the last 6 years working as a principle engineer for an aerospace company from home. I work in marketing.
Since we moved here 4 more friends have joined us out here in the country. The only thing we really lack is true high speed fat bandwidth. But that an be worked around as well.
You seem to be forgetting that there are no jobs in those places. Affordable housing isn't worth jack when the only job you can get there is working at Walmart, because there aren't any software development jobs there (for instance).
The other problem is that if you're a young professional, you may very well be single. Moving to a small city or town means you will not get a date, unless you want to date some overweight, uneducated woman who has 4 kids and talks about Jesus and guns all the time. If you're on this site, that probably isn't the right demographic for you. You'd have better luck moving to a foreign country; rural and urban America are that different these days.
I heard they(I don't know who--irs? Banks?) are trying verify the money to buy this Realestate is made legally. I don't know how they are going to pull this off. I think it's just posturing.
A few weeks ago, in order to buy any Realestate in the States, all it took was a phone call to the seller's Realtor.
Some mob/drug dealer/corrupt politician guy where-ever, "Hay, by me tat apartment complex in the old U. S. Of A.". Done deal!
(I've always felt you should have to be a citizen of a country in order to buy that land.)
A housing crisis is pretty much always caused by government policies. It would be perfectly possible to build a satellite town up to 50 miles outside a major agglomeration connected by a high-speed transport link, such as a highway or train. People would live up to an hour from their work places. Housing units costing between 15 000 - 20 000 should be affordable even for the very poor. It is important, of course, to make sure that there is enough local retail and entertainment, but that is just a question of not regulating it out of existence. Without heavy-handed government intervention, it would emerge spontaneously. None of this would be economically a problem. The reason why it does not happen, is government interventionism. Seriously, there does not exist a problem in the world that is not made worse by governments.
Somehow, I get the feeling you believe that during a wartime shortage, the government says, "Okay, everyone who's already been using the thing in question gets to keep using it forever." But that's not how it works.
In actual wartime, the item in question gets rationed. To the extent that the metaphor could even apply to housing, it would work like this: "There's a shortage of San Francisco housing. First, the military gets what it needs. If there's anything left, you have to share with everyone else. No hoarding. Each citizen will get a book of 5 ration tickets per year. Each ticket entitles you to spend one week in San Francisco housing. Some tickets will only be valid in even-numbered months; some, odd-numbered."
It's rough when the rich own numerous suites they rarely dwell in. They have to give some middle-class loner a basement apartment with discounted rent to meet occupant requirements. Yea, that'll help.
You know, it makes sense to me that increasing supply should drive down demand and hence prices. But I frankly don't care.
The entire piece reads like an excuse to not do things for the poor. How about we actually do things FOR THE POOR instead of tossing them scraps from the tables of the rich?
The language in this is Orwellian. She talks about how new construction is needed and how people are stopping it. Then she points to examples where people are not stopping it, just not letting developers do whatever they want (the dangerous junk developers build near me is insane), then she goes back to saying we need more housing.
No working class housing groups are trying to stop new buildings. They're just asking for the same things groups like these have asked for almost a century.
Article translation: "Hack employee of the Washington Post Co. says wealthy parasite developers and trustafarian transplants should ignore everything long time, mostly working class black people want, they don't matter". Well why not, that's the same message we've been hearing in this election campaign all year.
[+] [-] mc32|10 years ago|reply
The politics in SF are weird. Many politicians do superficially irrational things --they look good on the surface, but in effect they are detrimental. On the bright side, the mayors themselves have been rational about attracting business and bringing in development.
If you listen to KQED and their local reporters, it's like they'd like to have SF frozen in time in 1992. As if they'd rather it go down the way of Detroit rather than it become an economic center on the Pacific with the effects they bring ("gentrification" population moves, etc.) They want to eat their cake and have it too. And I understand it. It's very attractive. Let's have a great economy BUT let's have it so all other things stay the same, no disruption, no changes to neighborhoods, etc. Not even China can pull that off. Especially when SF proper is all but 49sq mi. But if we will it that way hard enough...
[+] [-] jacobolus|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmason|10 years ago|reply
Poor civic planning, racism and the loss of jobs to non-union Southern plants all paid a part in Detroit's population dropping by two thirds over a fifty year span.
I read a great book over Christmas, Once in a great city by David Maraniss, which covered Detroit at its peak from 1962-1964. Wayne State actually pretty accurately predicted the city's future then but the report was ignored by those in a position to stem its decline.
[+] [-] xivzgrev|10 years ago|reply
My biggest issue is the highway theory - build more lanes, commute time is shorter, more people drive, purpose defeated. Here build more market rate housing, prices fall, more people move in that would have loved elesewhere in bay area, prices rise. Purpose defeated.
I like projects that include percentage of units to be affordable, rent control, and programs to build on surplus public land for affordable housing.
Beyond that not sure what else they can do. At end of day government only has so much they can subsidize. Unless they start building homes underground or on the bay...
[+] [-] eli_gottlieb|10 years ago|reply
It's like? I thought that was exactly what they wanted.
[+] [-] timr|10 years ago|reply
This is not surprising to anyone who follows real estate. There's no such thing as "a market for housing" -- there are several markets, each moving more-or-less independently, based on the net worth of the participants involved. A drop in the prices of units in the Millenium Tower doesn't have much of an impact on the rent of a pre-war hovel in the Mission.
The reason that the author doesn't understand this is because there's a latent correlation at play: the communities with the most high-end construction tend to have the most construction overall. But in a city like SF, where all of the new construction would be high-end (if so allowed), all bets are off.
Observing that properties become cheaper as they age is also silly. There are some properties that become cheaper as they age, but there aren't many of them, say, in Pac Heights.
[1] http://wolfstreet.com/2015/11/08/san-franciscos-luxury-condo... [2] http://sfist.com/2015/11/09/at_high_end_sfs_housing_market_f...
[+] [-] zach|10 years ago|reply
http://www.lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3345#Technical_App...
Also, the measure is not whether available housing is getting more expensive, but whether low-income households are being displaced.
[+] [-] jimrandomh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gradstudent|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|10 years ago|reply
Source: http://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/05/25/new-york-times-make...
Also, I should note that, contrary to popular belief, there's not much new luxury housing in the Mission. In fact, there's not much new housing in the Mission at any economic level. In 2014 (the last year for which data is available), there were a grand total of 74 units built in the entire Mission. Not 74 buildings. 74 units.
Source: http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/publications_reports/20...
[+] [-] jimrandomh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kincardine|10 years ago|reply
The poor are better off when there isn't a housing shortage, because (surprise, surprise) the rich aren't the ones who are going to be forced out.
[+] [-] raldi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|10 years ago|reply
Like when you go to the grocery store before a holiday, many people will tend to buy the leftovers [constrained stock] they normally would not buy --so it is with housing.
[+] [-] pennyless|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stale2002|10 years ago|reply
For every "Rich Person Condo" that is built in SOMA, there is one less "Up and Coming Apartment in The Mission" that gets taken up by a rich techie.
The rich are going to move to the city whether we like it or not. They have the resources, they can buy out whatever place they choose. The only choice we have to make is whether to build housing for them or to just let them displace existing residents.
[+] [-] raldi|10 years ago|reply
In other words, building more market-rate housing in a neighborhood helps keep that neighborhood's low-income families from getting displaced. Or, to put it another way, the poor are better off when we build housing for the rich (than when we don't build housing for anyone).
[+] [-] rokhayakebe|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SteveGerencser|10 years ago|reply
Since we moved here 4 more friends have joined us out here in the country. The only thing we really lack is true high speed fat bandwidth. But that an be worked around as well.
[+] [-] Grishnakh|10 years ago|reply
The other problem is that if you're a young professional, you may very well be single. Moving to a small city or town means you will not get a date, unless you want to date some overweight, uneducated woman who has 4 kids and talks about Jesus and guns all the time. If you're on this site, that probably isn't the right demographic for you. You'd have better luck moving to a foreign country; rural and urban America are that different these days.
[+] [-] myohan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotty79|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marincounty|10 years ago|reply
A few weeks ago, in order to buy any Realestate in the States, all it took was a phone call to the seller's Realtor.
Some mob/drug dealer/corrupt politician guy where-ever, "Hay, by me tat apartment complex in the old U. S. Of A.". Done deal!
(I've always felt you should have to be a citizen of a country in order to buy that land.)
[+] [-] gizi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xivzgrev|10 years ago|reply
And there may be some hope - marin and Sonoma counties just built a train. http://main.sonomamarintrain.org/
[+] [-] jsprogrammer|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GFK_of_xmaspast|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reality_czech|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rahim00|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rahim00|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] pennyless|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] swehner|10 years ago|reply
How about using international data?
[+] [-] staunch|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CyberDildonics|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|10 years ago|reply
In actual wartime, the item in question gets rationed. To the extent that the metaphor could even apply to housing, it would work like this: "There's a shortage of San Francisco housing. First, the military gets what it needs. If there's anything left, you have to share with everyone else. No hoarding. Each citizen will get a book of 5 ration tickets per year. Each ticket entitles you to spend one week in San Francisco housing. Some tickets will only be valid in even-numbered months; some, odd-numbered."
[+] [-] transfire|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _cudgel|10 years ago|reply
The entire piece reads like an excuse to not do things for the poor. How about we actually do things FOR THE POOR instead of tossing them scraps from the tables of the rich?
[+] [-] xtqctz|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] obrero|10 years ago|reply
No working class housing groups are trying to stop new buildings. They're just asking for the same things groups like these have asked for almost a century.
Article translation: "Hack employee of the Washington Post Co. says wealthy parasite developers and trustafarian transplants should ignore everything long time, mostly working class black people want, they don't matter". Well why not, that's the same message we've been hearing in this election campaign all year.
[+] [-] raldi|10 years ago|reply
Ahem:
http://www.savethemission.org/save_the_mission_district_yes_...