This is an issue that I know a lot of HN readers care about and I'd encourage anyone interested to get involved. (Feel free to reach out to CA YIMBY, your local representatives, or any of the other organizations doing good work in the field.)
Bad housing policy is one of the biggest impediments to overall economic growth[1] and to individual economic opportunity[2][3] in the US. Our current restrictive policies disproportionately hurt poorer, younger, and (frequently) non-white[4] people. I really hope we can change them.
>Bad housing policy is one of the biggest impediments to overall economic growth[1] and to individual economic opportunity[2][3] in the US.
I would say it is the defining problem of our generation. The 20-30 year olds now who grew up in the bay area and aren't involved in tech have three options: Live with your parents until they die, work 40 hours a week just to feed yourself and pay the rent (split with random roommates), or move away from your entire family and support network. They live in a world where literally just being able to afford your own place is considered "bougie". It's insane. They can't even comprehend that there is a world where grown adults can live on there own and afford a respectable place to live while (gasp!) also saving for the future.
One of the biggest reasons I left the US was because I wanted:
* A decent paying job in tech
* In a neighborhood where I could walk to do things with my friends
* But my friends didn't all have astronomical salaries
* I could ride a bike without getting screamed at
* My child could ride her bike to school without getting run over by a car
* (Unrelated but while I'm at it) - I could take a true vacation or weekend and nobody would dream of asking me how they reach me on said vacation.
I don't know of a single place in the US that meets these criteria. At one point I might have said Portland but the nicer areas there are getting very, very expensive.
This is awesome to see and I really hope more companies and institutions follow suit! Building housing should be the number one issue for every politician in the Bay Area and California.
Thank you. I’m an owner and I’m a strong believer in this raising a tide that raises all boats. Lets let SF and the Bay Area become the hub of excellence. That starts with affordable housing for all who want to be here.
Thanks for taking a leadership role on this while so many others refuse to.
Larry, Sergey, Mark, Marc, Marc, and Larry all should be actively helping these efforts to make housing more affordable to their employees and those of the companies that they invest in. And they all can afford a similar contribution far more easily than you and Stripe can.
I use Stripe for my small business and it has been nothing short of incredible.
Now to hear that you're jumping into this housing crisis is absolutely amazing. It gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, if more big players get behind this movement, some REAL CHANGE might happen in California.
You guys didn't have to do this, but you're doing it because it's the right thing to do and that is awsome.
Are you concerned that the optics here of tech companies funding CA YIMBY will be bad, particularly since it is already seen as a tech employee group by opponents such as the existing low income housing advocacy groups?
I am an admirer of the YIMBY movement, but I do have an issue with the idea. You seem to be assuming that, by building more units and increasing density, normal supply/demand forces will normalize the housing market. But, and here's my issue, what incentive is there for the landlord to lower prices before everyone who can't afford the current rates leave the SF area forever? I see the possibility of a landlord bringing more units online but still charging $3-4k a month rent just because they can. I also see the possibility of possible market collusion in order to keep rents high (multiple landlords colluding with each other to maximize profit) at the continued expense of tenants. With these possibilities in mind, just building more apartments may not be enough.
I feel that the YIMBY idea is a good first step, but it is far from an end all solution.
> Our current restrictive policies disproportionately hurt poorer, younger, and (frequently) non-white[4] people.
There is massive opposition within the poorer, non-white bay area community to the political group that Stripe is funding here. CA YIMBY [EDIT: correction, should read YIMBY Action] literally shouted down minority activists who were opposed to a housing bill at a recent protest. The LA Times just published a good overview of this issue yesterday. The title: "A major California housing bill failed after opposition from the low-income residents it aimed to help. Here's how it went wrong"[1]
Money quote: "'The YIMBY movement has a white privilege problem,' said Anya Lawler, a lobbyist with the Western Center on Law & Poverty, a legal advocacy group and adversary of SB 827. 'I don't think they recognize it. They don't understand poverty. They don't understand what that's like, who our clients really are and what their lived experience is.'"
Concessions to protect low-income residents were added to the failed bill only after substantial protest from the community. Let's hope next time around, instead of just claiming to act on behalf on poorer and non-white people, they actually try listening to them.
Although generally supportive of the Yimby movement in cities and the need to increase density, I am concerned that SB 827 (and similar) will steamroll the will of voters in smaller counties where staunch opposition remains.
Marin County, just across the bridge from San Francisco, is a good example: they have a strong history of opposition to housing development and density[1], and the overwhelming majority of Marin residents are opposed to top-down State measures to impose density requirements. This is quite different to San Francisco, where the YIMBY movement appears to have majority support (including me) and where a local jobs boom and office space increase has created a housing imbalance.
I would prefer that this is handled locally and am genuinely curious to know why the state government should be the interlocutor and arbiter?
Patrick - a strong statement indeed, kudos you guys! To to diminish from it, but even stronger statement would be for Stripe to relocate the HQ to another state, or at least to a city lake Vallejo. It may be impractical at this point, but ...
The rent control portion of sb827 may act as a deterrent to building new apartments. If you have to keep rents the same or pay 4 years rent to everyone in the building, it may be difficult to have the new, larger building pencil out.
Can I ask what do you think is the impediment to changing housing policy and how you think those impediments might be addressed? Most of these proposals and organizations lack realpolitik.
Thank you for doing this. I've always believed that the organizations employing workers in the Bay Area (and generating tax revenue for the state and municipalities) are the best suited for helping ensure that sufficient housing is built to provide affordable housing for their employees and everyone else in the Bay Area.
Thanks a lot for your work on this issue, and for your references - especially [1].
I had a conversation with a friend a week back where we tried to estimate what is the reduction in economic growth due to the lack of a sane housing policy, and am happy to see that [1] addresses this question.
Patrick, I disagree with your stance. You are looking to trade in one problem (housing prices) for more traffic, congestion and a lower quality of life.
I feel like we need avoid latching onto the simplest solution to every problem and think outside of the box on this one.
California and the Bay Area is so screwed. The Powers-that-be looked at SB827 like it was the work of lunatics, and did not engage in any of the significant concessions that were made. The bill was completely impotent at the end ... local demolition control + 4-5 story buildings. It drew no interest nor alternative proposals to actually help solve the housing crisis.
So yeah we're going to end up with middle class social housing lotteries, 1.5 hour commutes and crazy inflation of basic service costs ($3k/month child care, anyone?).
Every neighborhood can't be a wealthy enclave of SFH. There is literally no where to live in the central Bay Area on teachers salary much less a Social Security Disability paycheck. The homelessness epidemic will grow.
It's a rentier economy of land owners and the rent-controlled incumbents. How "Progressive".
Prop 13 to me seems to be at the root of all these problems.
I'm almost finished with Picketty's Capital in the 21st Century, and Prop 13 seems to be a godsend for rentiers seeking the inequality of 1900-1910.
Overturning Prop 13 isn't realistic since voters are selfish. Prop 13 has GOT to be the biggest reason behind NIMBY-ism. If the little old lady in the 3 bedroom $2M house had to pay $20K a year in taxes, she'd have sold a long time ago. But because of Prop 13, her taxes are likely less than $1K a year.
But the sick thing about Prop 13 is that it applies to landlords. You know why LA is filled with all these single-story rental properties from the 70s in prime locations? Because the taxes hardly budge, so they're paying about $1 per year per square foot in taxes. Even if they sold for the huge premium, it'd be impossible to re-invest that money into something with a higher rate of return.
It also applies to businesses. It's why you see a lot of car washes making < $1M/year sitting on land worth $20M.
We could potentially modify Prop 13 to eliminate the benefits for rental properties and have the benefits only apply to the first $1M of real estate. That'd only affect the top 5%, and only marginally.
But it could eliminate a lot of NIMBYism, I think.
So I just bought a house (condo actually) in Oakland and I have to agree.
There's a huge class of people who aren't particularly impressive, hard-working, or otherwise "deserving" in my admittedly-morally-loaded-sense of the term, who happened to buy a ton of real estate over the last 30 years, and are now earning eye-popping rates of return (20%+/year on millions of invested capital) owing to the combination of increased desire to live in city centers, and prop 13.
It's really shocking. If you look at most small towns in America, the wealthy people tend to be small business owners, successful professionals, and perhaps a few landowners. Here in the SFBA, the serious peninsula wealth is all tech (early employees and execs) and everywhere else it's landowners by a mile. Here in Oakland, restaurants are closing practically every day because this rentier class is bleeding them dry of any profit. Both directly through rents, and indirectly by the wages employees are demanding to live in an area where prevailing rents are 2-3k/month.
I wouldn't even be mad about this except that they're using bad government policy to line their pockets, and they're just shameless about it. It boils my blood. These people are just leeching off of the huge south bay productivity engines (Google, facebook, Apple, etc) and taking a pound of flesh by restricting supply of a necessary good. Their entire livelihood rests with the stubbornness of execs at the big tech companies to stay here and put up with it. These companies end up paying exorbitant salaries just so that this rentier class can line their pockets with what would otherwise be shareholder profit or personal income of employees.
You can substitute "Bay Area" with many of the major centers in the US at this point - Seattle, LA, Denver, Austin all have the same issues, they're just a few years behind the Bay. We need fixes to zoning and development rules and tax laws, they help cities be more liveable as it will help everyone. Cities overseas have figured this out, to some degree - rent as a % of income is lower in both Europe and Asia, generally, and it's a lot easier to build effective mass transit when housing densities are a bit higher. The single family home is one of the worst things to happen to the US, and it's slowly killing us with traffic and spiraling housing prices.
To say the final bill was impotent is unfair. It still removed parking requirements within 1/4 mile of transit stops and reduced it 0.5 automobiles elsewhere. It exempted projects from density maximums and some FAR maximums.
In effect, it would've converted a lot of the Bay Area's SFH into much denser condominiums.
Best thing a tech company can do to solve CA housing crisis is let workers who desire to do so work remotely from other states without taking a pay cut (beyond actual reduction in productivity, if any). Market forces will take care of the rest.
The effect will be many-fold:
- Increase in employee satisfaction and quality of life. Those who leave will have a much lower cost of living and can enjoy the extra money. Those who stay here will be here because it's worth the money to them.
- Lower real estate costs for employer.
- Reduction in employment and resulting housing demand in California.
- Increase in tech populations in other areas leading to networking effects and economies of scale, making them more attractive to work at, further reducing housing demand in CA.
- Better distribution of tech talent and benefits in the country, reducing anti-tech resentment and political backlash.
- Loss of (tens of?) thousands of dollars in income and sales tax revenue for CA, per employee, imposing a real fiscal cost for not implementing housing supply friendly policies, and creating proper political incentives.
- Loss of demand for local businesses and services, leading to a negative feedback loop to reduce local opposition to increasing housing supply.
- Opportunities for tech and other businesses that embrace and help facilitate remote work.
- Tech companies being closer to average people, aware and solving their real world problems instead of SF techies' scooter and/or food delivery needs.
Stuffing more employees into the Bay Area and throwing a few bucks to YIMBY is not a serious solution, it's a fig leaf.
In this day and age, it is beyond my comprehension why anyone would choose waste a major part of their day in long commutes, pay extortionate amounts to rent and be bound to a single location. Most coders are way more productive away from the usual hassle of office space and politics.
Housing a persistent issue that comes up a lot on HN. It seems to me that as tech-workers, we feel the guilt associated with economic pressure adversely affecting the civic-environment we coexist in but strangely feel that it is inappropriate (inconvenient?) to take part in the political machinery that addresses these tragedy-of-the-commons-type problems.
Perhaps there is a collective disillusion with how slow building civic-consensus is (i.e. too much bureaucracy). For those who may feel this way, I strongly encourage your support of political action groups like YIMBY. They provide a low-cost way for you to associate yourself with a group of people focused on trying to fix NIMBY forces within the housing market.
I think more people discussing housing on HN are angry at the entrenched, intractable housing and local government cartel that is making housing so expensive. Tech workers are paid well, but a) home ownership is lower in CA + NY, b) home ownership is lower in big cities, c) home ownership skews older to begin with and that has been increasing over time, d) HN skews young and is largely people in big cities, so it's safe to assume that lots of readers are sending a big chunk of that big fat tech money to a landlord.
The housing fight is largely older, wealthier, entrenched, long-term owners vs younger newcomers who haven't been able to put down roots. It's no surprise that it has been a political rout.
I wish the YIMBYs well. The numbers could be on their side but the structure of the political contest is not.
I'm all for YIMBYism, but it's framed in a couple ways that I often disagree with.
First, I actually doubt that loosening zoning restrictions to allow multi apartment dwellings will harm owners of SFR properties. It'll change the neighborhood, and may lower housing costs per square foot of living space. I personally thing that it it's done properly, SF will be a more interesting place (outside of SF, I've lived in NY and Paris, and the denser places were nicer and more interesting to me).
The other thing is... well, NY (Manhattan) and Paris (left bank) are also the only places I've lived that are more expensive than SF. And the higher density neighborhoods in SF are among the most expensive per square foot.
I think a YIMBY SF could well turn out to be more interesting, more livable, and, more expensive. More density might just amplify network effects and create even more economic activity.
This is why I do think that for affordable housing, we really do need a first class light rail and subway, like Paris and New York (and a few others). Just building density isn't going to do it.
More and more young people come to CA to start their careers, but then take the experience (and ability to command high salaries) and move to a cheaper state. We're eroding our talent pool with the crazy high cost of living. The area will just become full of transient college grads.
YIMBY:
Build more housing and higher density in desirable places (places next to transit, places close to work). This will raise rents in areas that are more desirable (to market rates) and lower rents overall as there is more supply in the city. This will also deplete supply of rent-controlled buildings as it becomes profitable to demolish old buildings.
NIMBY:
Preserve the right of people already living in a neighborhood to continue living there. Obviously as a "desirable" area gets more residents and buildings, it will displace some existing residents. Keep in mind this doesn't specifically mean poor people (it is not a requirement to be poor to get rent control), but inevitably some of those residents will not be wealthy enough to continue staying in the same area due to simply market dynamics. They most likely will have to move to a slightly less desirable area. But since more housing is built, they most likely will not have to move that far. While new developments will cater to the higher income people, older housing will be vacated for lower income people.
The problem is without letting the market build housing where it makes senses (economically), which is in desirable areas, housing doesn't get built at all. Overall this hurts the whole economy as it increases average housing prices everywhere (while lowering average housing prices in desirable places), and makes it hard for people that weren't lucky enough to be in an area to have affordable housing.
Feels inappropriate for a payments processor to wade into general political fights. Stripe is becoming the backbone for payments processing and should strive to stay above politics.
What are peoples longterm views on the viability of just expanding housing? The view currently seems to be that prices are so high, so if we enable x more housing units to be built, prices could come down. This might be true, but in the longrun housing prices are high because it's a desirable area to live in and they'll inextricably skyrocket back on up as those x become entrenched and now a new 2x want in.
Take Hong Kong as the extreme example of this issue. It's currently the 4th most densely populated area in the world with 7.4 million people spread around 427 square miles. But that density didn't solve anything as its economic desirability remains high and it is also one of the most expensive areas in the world. The same was true of Tokyo decades ago when Japan was the effective technological leader of the world - the main reason housing is somewhat affordable there now is because they've gone through decades of recession and decline.
Anyhow, I'm not sure if I'm missing something here because I think this issue is fairly self evident, but seems rarely discussed.
California is already is the state with the largest population by a long way. Sure you could squeeze a few more million into the bay area but SF has geographic restrictions, esp with water. Surely it would be smarter to encourage more tech firms to move to places where there is more space, like Denver, Chicago, Austin. Basically anywhere off the coasts. Just give on on SF already.
As economic opportunity becomes further concentrated in urban areas this issue will only become more significant. Tech companies have a strong incentive to combat malignant housing policy in cities like SF so that they can continue to attract talent. Stripe is doing a great thing here and I hope other companies follow suit.
Startups could further help this issue by hiring remote and/or setting up shops in low cost areas. (I have no clue if Stripe does this already.) The only reason for startups to be in high tax, high cost SFBA is to raise money. Once you hit escape velocity there’s no reason to stay.
If you believe housing prices are a core problem to the growth of your business why continue to grow in the bay area rather than try and move to a less expensive region of the country?
Massive growth in the SF housing supply is just politically infeasible at this time, a million dollar donation won't change that.
With all due respect to the people who think this is _the_ defining issue of our generation, I think you are wrong. Climate change is the biggest issue of our generation, period.
[+] [-] pc|8 years ago|reply
This is an issue that I know a lot of HN readers care about and I'd encourage anyone interested to get involved. (Feel free to reach out to CA YIMBY, your local representatives, or any of the other organizations doing good work in the field.)
Bad housing policy is one of the biggest impediments to overall economic growth[1] and to individual economic opportunity[2][3] in the US. Our current restrictive policies disproportionately hurt poorer, younger, and (frequently) non-white[4] people. I really hope we can change them.
[1] https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/chang-tai.hsieh/research/gr...
[2] https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/83656/...
[3] From the Obama administration: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images...
[4] https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segreg...
[+] [-] aphextron|8 years ago|reply
I would say it is the defining problem of our generation. The 20-30 year olds now who grew up in the bay area and aren't involved in tech have three options: Live with your parents until they die, work 40 hours a week just to feed yourself and pay the rent (split with random roommates), or move away from your entire family and support network. They live in a world where literally just being able to afford your own place is considered "bougie". It's insane. They can't even comprehend that there is a world where grown adults can live on there own and afford a respectable place to live while (gasp!) also saving for the future.
[+] [-] davidw|8 years ago|reply
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/back-againbend-oregon-matt-ab...
The articles and book you cite are excellent ones, and I'd highly recommend them to anyone interested in this issue.
I have a bunch more here, too: https://bendyimby.com/2017/06/12/yimby-reading/
[+] [-] CalRobert|8 years ago|reply
* A decent paying job in tech
* In a neighborhood where I could walk to do things with my friends
* But my friends didn't all have astronomical salaries
* I could ride a bike without getting screamed at
* My child could ride her bike to school without getting run over by a car
* (Unrelated but while I'm at it) - I could take a true vacation or weekend and nobody would dream of asking me how they reach me on said vacation.
I don't know of a single place in the US that meets these criteria. At one point I might have said Portland but the nicer areas there are getting very, very expensive.
[+] [-] marcell|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eanzenberg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghein|8 years ago|reply
Larry, Sergey, Mark, Marc, Marc, and Larry all should be actively helping these efforts to make housing more affordable to their employees and those of the companies that they invest in. And they all can afford a similar contribution far more easily than you and Stripe can.
[+] [-] rubicon33|8 years ago|reply
I use Stripe for my small business and it has been nothing short of incredible.
Now to hear that you're jumping into this housing crisis is absolutely amazing. It gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, if more big players get behind this movement, some REAL CHANGE might happen in California.
You guys didn't have to do this, but you're doing it because it's the right thing to do and that is awsome.
So I just want to extend a sincere thank you.
[+] [-] Eridrus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|8 years ago|reply
Is anyone pursuing that?
[+] [-] dabockster|8 years ago|reply
I feel that the YIMBY idea is a good first step, but it is far from an end all solution.
[+] [-] abalone|8 years ago|reply
There is massive opposition within the poorer, non-white bay area community to the political group that Stripe is funding here. CA YIMBY [EDIT: correction, should read YIMBY Action] literally shouted down minority activists who were opposed to a housing bill at a recent protest. The LA Times just published a good overview of this issue yesterday. The title: "A major California housing bill failed after opposition from the low-income residents it aimed to help. Here's how it went wrong"[1]
Money quote: "'The YIMBY movement has a white privilege problem,' said Anya Lawler, a lobbyist with the Western Center on Law & Poverty, a legal advocacy group and adversary of SB 827. 'I don't think they recognize it. They don't understand poverty. They don't understand what that's like, who our clients really are and what their lived experience is.'"
Concessions to protect low-income residents were added to the failed bill only after substantial protest from the community. Let's hope next time around, instead of just claiming to act on behalf on poorer and non-white people, they actually try listening to them.
[1] http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-housing-bill-failu...
[+] [-] mceoin|8 years ago|reply
Although generally supportive of the Yimby movement in cities and the need to increase density, I am concerned that SB 827 (and similar) will steamroll the will of voters in smaller counties where staunch opposition remains.
Marin County, just across the bridge from San Francisco, is a good example: they have a strong history of opposition to housing development and density[1], and the overwhelming majority of Marin residents are opposed to top-down State measures to impose density requirements. This is quite different to San Francisco, where the YIMBY movement appears to have majority support (including me) and where a local jobs boom and office space increase has created a housing imbalance.
I would prefer that this is handled locally and am genuinely curious to know why the state government should be the interlocutor and arbiter?
1. http://rebelsdocumentary.org/
[+] [-] ilyaeck|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dawsmik|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foobarqux|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flaque|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ummonk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slobotron|8 years ago|reply
0: http://theknowledgeproject.libsyn.com/earning-your-stripes-m...
[+] [-] gajjanag|8 years ago|reply
I had a conversation with a friend a week back where we tried to estimate what is the reduction in economic growth due to the lack of a sane housing policy, and am happy to see that [1] addresses this question.
[+] [-] CalRobert|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neom|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WillPostForFood|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starik36|8 years ago|reply
I feel like we need avoid latching onto the simplest solution to every problem and think outside of the box on this one.
[+] [-] jakelarkin|8 years ago|reply
So yeah we're going to end up with middle class social housing lotteries, 1.5 hour commutes and crazy inflation of basic service costs ($3k/month child care, anyone?).
Every neighborhood can't be a wealthy enclave of SFH. There is literally no where to live in the central Bay Area on teachers salary much less a Social Security Disability paycheck. The homelessness epidemic will grow.
It's a rentier economy of land owners and the rent-controlled incumbents. How "Progressive".
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|8 years ago|reply
I'm almost finished with Picketty's Capital in the 21st Century, and Prop 13 seems to be a godsend for rentiers seeking the inequality of 1900-1910.
Overturning Prop 13 isn't realistic since voters are selfish. Prop 13 has GOT to be the biggest reason behind NIMBY-ism. If the little old lady in the 3 bedroom $2M house had to pay $20K a year in taxes, she'd have sold a long time ago. But because of Prop 13, her taxes are likely less than $1K a year.
But the sick thing about Prop 13 is that it applies to landlords. You know why LA is filled with all these single-story rental properties from the 70s in prime locations? Because the taxes hardly budge, so they're paying about $1 per year per square foot in taxes. Even if they sold for the huge premium, it'd be impossible to re-invest that money into something with a higher rate of return.
It also applies to businesses. It's why you see a lot of car washes making < $1M/year sitting on land worth $20M.
We could potentially modify Prop 13 to eliminate the benefits for rental properties and have the benefits only apply to the first $1M of real estate. That'd only affect the top 5%, and only marginally.
But it could eliminate a lot of NIMBYism, I think.
[+] [-] eldavido|8 years ago|reply
There's a huge class of people who aren't particularly impressive, hard-working, or otherwise "deserving" in my admittedly-morally-loaded-sense of the term, who happened to buy a ton of real estate over the last 30 years, and are now earning eye-popping rates of return (20%+/year on millions of invested capital) owing to the combination of increased desire to live in city centers, and prop 13.
It's really shocking. If you look at most small towns in America, the wealthy people tend to be small business owners, successful professionals, and perhaps a few landowners. Here in the SFBA, the serious peninsula wealth is all tech (early employees and execs) and everywhere else it's landowners by a mile. Here in Oakland, restaurants are closing practically every day because this rentier class is bleeding them dry of any profit. Both directly through rents, and indirectly by the wages employees are demanding to live in an area where prevailing rents are 2-3k/month.
I wouldn't even be mad about this except that they're using bad government policy to line their pockets, and they're just shameless about it. It boils my blood. These people are just leeching off of the huge south bay productivity engines (Google, facebook, Apple, etc) and taking a pound of flesh by restricting supply of a necessary good. Their entire livelihood rests with the stubbornness of execs at the big tech companies to stay here and put up with it. These companies end up paying exorbitant salaries just so that this rentier class can line their pockets with what would otherwise be shareholder profit or personal income of employees.
[+] [-] tomkarlo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sloreti|8 years ago|reply
In effect, it would've converted a lot of the Bay Area's SFH into much denser condominiums.
[+] [-] senseamp|8 years ago|reply
The effect will be many-fold:
- Increase in employee satisfaction and quality of life. Those who leave will have a much lower cost of living and can enjoy the extra money. Those who stay here will be here because it's worth the money to them.
- Lower real estate costs for employer.
- Reduction in employment and resulting housing demand in California.
- Increase in tech populations in other areas leading to networking effects and economies of scale, making them more attractive to work at, further reducing housing demand in CA.
- Better distribution of tech talent and benefits in the country, reducing anti-tech resentment and political backlash.
- Loss of (tens of?) thousands of dollars in income and sales tax revenue for CA, per employee, imposing a real fiscal cost for not implementing housing supply friendly policies, and creating proper political incentives.
- Loss of demand for local businesses and services, leading to a negative feedback loop to reduce local opposition to increasing housing supply.
- Opportunities for tech and other businesses that embrace and help facilitate remote work.
- Tech companies being closer to average people, aware and solving their real world problems instead of SF techies' scooter and/or food delivery needs.
Stuffing more employees into the Bay Area and throwing a few bucks to YIMBY is not a serious solution, it's a fig leaf.
[+] [-] pascalxus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mavdi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Endama|8 years ago|reply
Perhaps there is a collective disillusion with how slow building civic-consensus is (i.e. too much bureaucracy). For those who may feel this way, I strongly encourage your support of political action groups like YIMBY. They provide a low-cost way for you to associate yourself with a group of people focused on trying to fix NIMBY forces within the housing market.
[+] [-] pchristensen|8 years ago|reply
The housing fight is largely older, wealthier, entrenched, long-term owners vs younger newcomers who haven't been able to put down roots. It's no surprise that it has been a political rout.
I wish the YIMBYs well. The numbers could be on their side but the structure of the political contest is not.
[+] [-] maym86|8 years ago|reply
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/03/14/bay-area-cities-...
[+] [-] geebee|8 years ago|reply
First, I actually doubt that loosening zoning restrictions to allow multi apartment dwellings will harm owners of SFR properties. It'll change the neighborhood, and may lower housing costs per square foot of living space. I personally thing that it it's done properly, SF will be a more interesting place (outside of SF, I've lived in NY and Paris, and the denser places were nicer and more interesting to me).
The other thing is... well, NY (Manhattan) and Paris (left bank) are also the only places I've lived that are more expensive than SF. And the higher density neighborhoods in SF are among the most expensive per square foot.
I think a YIMBY SF could well turn out to be more interesting, more livable, and, more expensive. More density might just amplify network effects and create even more economic activity.
This is why I do think that for affordable housing, we really do need a first class light rail and subway, like Paris and New York (and a few others). Just building density isn't going to do it.
[+] [-] davidw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|8 years ago|reply
Here is a good interview with him where he lays out some of his opinions on amongst other things the problem with NIMBY.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-7DIv3AU1o
[+] [-] dangjc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrischen|8 years ago|reply
YIMBY: Build more housing and higher density in desirable places (places next to transit, places close to work). This will raise rents in areas that are more desirable (to market rates) and lower rents overall as there is more supply in the city. This will also deplete supply of rent-controlled buildings as it becomes profitable to demolish old buildings.
NIMBY: Preserve the right of people already living in a neighborhood to continue living there. Obviously as a "desirable" area gets more residents and buildings, it will displace some existing residents. Keep in mind this doesn't specifically mean poor people (it is not a requirement to be poor to get rent control), but inevitably some of those residents will not be wealthy enough to continue staying in the same area due to simply market dynamics. They most likely will have to move to a slightly less desirable area. But since more housing is built, they most likely will not have to move that far. While new developments will cater to the higher income people, older housing will be vacated for lower income people.
The problem is without letting the market build housing where it makes senses (economically), which is in desirable areas, housing doesn't get built at all. Overall this hurts the whole economy as it increases average housing prices everywhere (while lowering average housing prices in desirable places), and makes it hard for people that weren't lucky enough to be in an area to have affordable housing.
[+] [-] dang|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mobilefriendly|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TangoTrotFox|8 years ago|reply
Take Hong Kong as the extreme example of this issue. It's currently the 4th most densely populated area in the world with 7.4 million people spread around 427 square miles. But that density didn't solve anything as its economic desirability remains high and it is also one of the most expensive areas in the world. The same was true of Tokyo decades ago when Japan was the effective technological leader of the world - the main reason housing is somewhat affordable there now is because they've gone through decades of recession and decline.
Anyhow, I'm not sure if I'm missing something here because I think this issue is fairly self evident, but seems rarely discussed.
[+] [-] rb808|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway84742|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luminaobscura|8 years ago|reply
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These are the kind of people Square is supporting: racist, ageist developer shills.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/sb-827-rallies-end-yimbys-shouting...
[+] [-] abvdasker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rajacombinator|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zjaffee|8 years ago|reply
Massive growth in the SF housing supply is just politically infeasible at this time, a million dollar donation won't change that.
[+] [-] syndacks|8 years ago|reply