Fix my city for me

Great Debates
1

I live in San Francisco. You’ve all heard about the cost of housing here. The main reason, in my opinion, is that housing stock is very low compared to the demand - one regional government body estimated that the gap between supply and demand is 100,000 units (something between 10% and 15% of current stock). SF is fairly unique as a city, in that there is zero room to expand except to the south, and the peninsula is already pretty well built up and only slightly less expensive than the city. New housing construction pretty much has to fill in existing neighborhoods, making them more densely populated.

SF has a pretty good public transportation infrastructure, but it is often very crowded and unpleasant to use. They need to run more frequently, I’m not sure why they don’t except for the cost of the additional buses/streetcars, and the cost of the labor to run them. The city wants developers to build multi-housing units with relatively little parking, as they are trying to get people out of their cars. The result is that the new residents park on the street, which infuriates the existing neighborhood. The result of that is that neighborhoods tend to put every roadblock they can think of in the way of new projects.

The mayor has recently issued a very thorough directive to city agencies to streamline the permitting process for housing projects, which may help with one part of the problem. There was also a recent state bill to reduce restrictions on in-law type units for single-family homes. This was over a year ago and little seems to have change on that front. There are laws about percentage of “affordable” units associated with any new housing project. This patently doesn’t work.

So there is a deep tension between the need to increase housing density, and the desire of current residents not to lose the character and livability of their neighborhoods. Also there is a gap between the city’s desire to reduce dependence on private vehicles and the ability of public transportation to keep up with current demand, let alone the demand increase stemming from an increased population. The problems are way more complex than I can outline in one or a dozen posts, but I think these two are among the most difficult issues. The city’s current path of becoming an enclave for the rich is not sustainable.

What perspectives are we missing? Where are the fresh ideas?

2

Well, I was recently in Hong Kong, which has similar issues with respect to housing shortages on limited land. The solution there: High rise apartment buildings. Huge ones. Enormous ones. Innumerable ones. Fifty, sixty stories high. Covering the city.
I don’t know if San Francisco would go for that.

3

Same for Manhattan. This is something that SF doesn’t seem to want, and probably doesn’t have the infrastructure to support.

I should mention that most SF single family homes are built on 25x100 lots with zero lot lines (i.e. the houses abut each other, no outside passage from front to back yards). I presume this was an attempt to squeeze as many of these as possible into the available space, one that goes back many decades. So the problem was recognized even then, but this is no longer enough.

4

What problem are you trying to solve for?

There is plenty of housing in SF if you have enough money. Is the problem there is not enough that people can afford?

5

I guess we have a related issue in London where one industry (finance here, not IT) distorts the market, at least before you reach the outer suburbs.

tbh, I think London is saved somewhat by having entirely mixed housing stock - social housing and £million properties next to each other. Yet you still see reports of 50% of police commuting into the central areas, and similar numbers for hospital staff and teachers. We haven’t lost the diversity that’s vital to social well being and cohesion and it looks like policy now recognises that importance.

In the USA the only example I’m aware of to try and limit the effect you’re seeing is Seattle, which I believe either has or is trying to put in place rent restrictions and high minimum wages.

6

Well, we could always try making San Francisco a less desireable place to live. Increase crime levels dramatically, reduce services, maybe paint the bridge an ugly shade of green. But considering that people using the streets and subways as open sewers doesn’t seem to deter anyone, I’m not even sure that would work.

I manage solely because of rent control. Not only am I trapped in a tiny apartment, with absolutely no leverage to have my landlord make improvements, but I live in fear that something will happen to force me out. Even so, I don’t want to see the city become a dense mass of high rises. I already dislike the Salesforce Tower.

7

Encourage tourists to loudly describe how much they like it here in “Frisco”.

8

I don’t know much about how rent control works in San Francisco, but I’d like to learn more. Is rent control not one of the reasons for the housing shortage?

9

Not really. It would be very much simpler if Google moved HQ to Detriot.

10

Well, that’s the only reason, actually. That is how prices are set.

San Francisco is four times more densely populated than Toronto, almost twice as densely populated as Chicago, and in fact more desnsely populated than any North American city I can be bothered to look up except New York. The high housing prices are, in fact, the solution; they keep demand to live in San Francisco in check, and are the reason the city’s population has not grown very much.

Actually that’s an entirely sustainable future. It may not be one people WANT, but it’s a plausible direction to go.

Speaking as a resident of a huge metropolitan area, I can assure you that there are no answers that will make everyone happy. There are some clearly stupid things a city could do, but for the most part the decisions here aren’t simply “Good” or “bad.” They’re good for some people and not others. If you want San Francisco to remain at its current population, reduce housing permits and let escalating prices drive demand down. That will make existing residents, property owners, and rich people happy, but will piss off everyone else. If you want ordinary schmoes to be able to move into SF, allow permits for high density housing, let green spaces be used for housing, and spend more on public transit. That will make middle class and working class people happy, but will piss off existing residents and rich people.

It’s simply the nature of a large city that there are competing interests and opinions as to what the city should be. You cannot get 800,000 people to agree on what the city’s layout, character, and priorities should be, and it’s made doubly difficult by the fact that in terms of area, San Francisco is small. (Toronto, the city I live nearby, has three times the people… but twelve times the space, and almost all of it is flat land easily built on.)

11

I heard it was raining hard in “Frisco”. That’s not the kind of thing that’s gonna make my night.

12

Get rid of rent control.

Loosen zoning and ignore the pleas of the privileged who want to maintain the “character” of their neighborhood.

Eliminate all street parking inside the city limits. Eliminate parking lots. Nothing but busses and cabs/uber and trolleys.

13

Granted it was many years ago but I was told that London’s finance industry does distort the outer suburban housing markets. Those lower-ranked people with their mere 5-figure bonuses use those bonuses as deposits for buildings in places like Luton.

14

London also has a housing issue. The population has been growing steadily but not enough homes are being built. The existing housing stock is of poor quality and rents are very high.

The reasons for this are many. One is ideological and dates from the Thatcher years when neo-liberal policies were popular. Rent controls were abolished, the most common rental contract is for six months with one month notice of termination on either side. A landlord looking to profit from an increasing rental market, simply gives the tenants notice to quit, then remarkets the property with a substantial rental hike.

The supply of housing has failed to match the growing population for the last couple of decades, ever since the city boroughs were prevented from building public housing. The theory was the private developers would take up the slack, but that has not happened. Private developers are a quite fond of projects that act as investments for foreign buyers and they actively market their properties overseas. London property has become an executive marketing product. Lots of luxury apartments, that are often empty.

In addition to that, there has been a steady erosion of the amount of social housing available for those on modest incomes as a result of a policy of allowing public tenants to buy their home at a discount - ‘right to buy’ laws.

If you own a property, you can find comfort in the fact that the value of their asset goes up year after year. Many people became paper millionaires. People tend to regard their property ownership as their pension. Though there is also a huge amount of mortgage debt and if interest rates start to go up, a lot of people will see their monthly mortgage payments increase substantially.

On the other hand if you don’t own a property the barriers to ownership grow ever larger, as do rents. For any young person or someone doing an important, but modestly paid job, the only solution is to move out of London and face a long, expensive commute into town each day. Though London seems to be able to find enough money for public transport projects to move a million people in and out of the city each day.

Because of the balance between voters who benefit and others do not, the property issue is ‘voter neutral’ and none of the political parties over the past couple of decades have really seen it as a priority. The population density of London is actually quite low for a major city and the public parks and open spaces are an asset that has long been protected.

London has a lot of lessons on what NOT to do when it comes to providing housing. I hope one day, a government will come along that fixes this problem.:o

15

Not even close, not in the Financial District. The Muni busses there are amazingly empty, empty!, during the afternoon rush hour. The streets there are jam packed with Ubers, while many streets have empty lanes that are painted as dedicated for busses and taxis – they’re empty because taxis are almost nonexistent now, and when there’s a bus, it is empty. The lanes are wasted. The Financial District and adjacent SOMA streets are absolute gridlock, and car drivers lean on their horns in futility, it’s like Manhattan.

The public transportation is poorly planned and underutilized.

16

Does the geology support going the other way, thirty stories down, with flatscreen Tv’s you would never know you did not have an ocean front view.

17

One thing that has long baffled me about San Francisco is the state of development in areas around the Sunset. It is generally jam-packed with houses that are like $1.3 million for around 1,500 square feet, and frankly an awful lot of them have been rode hard and put up wet. And it’s the biggest chunk of city in the City.

It is so blindingly obvious to me that those areas need to be built up. Bye-bye, blocks with 50 small houses on them. Hello, five story buildings with condos and a few stores at ground level. It seriously could not be that hard to add many thousands of homes over the next ten years.

But it’s San Francisco, so even if they were built, there’s a dozen other problems. Like a decent chance that the one kid an average family may have would have to go to school in North Beach, maybe an hour’s drive away, because the idea of having kids in the same neighborhood go to the same school is generally rejected.

18

Please explain how this would positively affect the availability of housing.

Is every existing homeowner and renter “privileged”? Perhaps mixed-use non-zoning on every block would reduce the desire of people to live in the city.

How long would it take, and how many low-income elderly would be home-bound, before the buses and streetcars would be able to catch up to the need? I can tell you there is nothing within walking distance of my house, and the nearest bus is 1/4 mile away. But again, this would make the city less desirable to live in, which I suppose will act to lessen the upward pressure on property values.

I’m not sure turning the city into a shithole is quite the solution I was hoping for.

19

In an earthquake zone on the coast? You could drown in your own living room.

20

If you’re right, then it will fix itself. But why is it not sustainable?