I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but are you kidding me with this?
So do you have any idea how to move forward to improve things for people like you? To get the density necessary we probably don’t need high-rises, just more blocks of apartments that are maybe 7-10 stories tall.
The rest of your post, which I didn’t quote, have some very good points. But I wanted to respond to this, respecting having SF continue to move towards being an enclave for the rich. Question: where do the working people live? Why would they continue to work here if they have to commute for over an hour to get here, and can find jobs closer to their homes? How do you have a city of any kind with no working people in it? Where Manhattan has multiple subway lines to affordable housing less than an hour away, we have BART, which is already overcrowded and unreliable. One track each way under the bay. Nothing at all to the North Bay area. Not just retail clerks and waiters, but teachers, police and fire people, are all being priced out of livable distances from SF.
This makes sense on one hand. On several other hands, it’s hard to see how to tear down all those individual houses and replace them with condo or apartment blocks short of eminent domain and “urban renewal,” a term with such residual odium in SF after what was done in the Fillmore neighborhood in the 60’s and 70’s that it will never fly. You are asking individual homeowners to give up what they have and possibly trade it for a condo, with all its attendant annoyances, for “the good of the city.” Would you?
It’s a legit question, both yours and mine I think. Essentially I see it as a market issue. If you have money, you can live there. If not, you can’t. That doesn’t seem like a problem to me. Where demand is high due to high paying jobs, great weather, culture, etc. and supply is low, it’s going to be expensive. I don’t operate under the assumption that people have any particular claim to live in a place, so if it’s too expensive, then that’s how it goes.
What I’m asking is, what is the problem, not enough housing, too expensive, bad transportation? Terrible homelessness? Each has their own solutions but with tradeoffs.
This is only because what counts as the city of San Francisco is geographically small. For example, Chicago is 235 square miles, Toronto is 240, while San Francisco is only 50. If you compare city cores then Chicago and Toronto will be denser.
I also don’t see this as a problem. If they can’t find people to do these jobs, they need to raise the wages until they can. If people are doing these jobs, then no problem. People can choose to increase their commute for 1-3 hours to get higher pay if they want to. The moment the supply of people who are willing to do that goes down below sustainable levels, then the wage will rise to meet the need.
No, I think he is saying allow that type of development, and lots of people will sell to developers on their own. They’ll either buy up, or take their money and move elsewhere. But if the zoning is too restrictive, then developers aren’t going to buy.
No, I would take my fair market value check and buy a new house elsewhere.
And for the idea of getting rid of rent control, it makes total sense from an economics perspective. Given lots of demand and little supply, prices generally rise to meet an equilibrium where supply and demand are balanced. With rent control, people have a strong disincentive to ever leave their rent controlled apartment, sharply limiting turnover and basically creating a more fucked is market that strongly favors long time residents and strongly disfavoring people looking for a place to live. Rent control also has other impacts, like limiting owners’ investment to improve properties.
Ending rent control might establish a new equilibrium of prices, as the losers (who are now renting far below market rates) would be forced to move or downsize, meaning supply of housing would go up, which constitutes downward force on market prices.
I don’t believe for a second that SF will end rent control, though I believe they have tried to tinker with in over the last decade or so.
FWIW, the idea that rent control makes things worse appears to be a widely shared opinion among economists.
As a bit of historical perspective, my mom owned a business based in Mountain View, a ways south of SF. Circa 1990, when the federal minimum wage was $3.80 she ran ads for entry level workers for her company. The requirements were a high school diploma, valid driver’s license with clean history and at least a bit of mechanical aptitude as the company installed and maintained security, fire and gate systems for buildings and communities. She was offering $15/hr to start with full bennies and got zero hits.
Even earlier than that, circa early '80s, a one bedroom apartment barely big enough to swing a short tailed cat in, located in Foster City (reclaimed landfill area built out into the Bay, and a reasonable commute distance into the City proper) rented for $2K a month with waiting lists for apartments.
I would think that a business with a lot of employees would find it cheaper in the long run to just move out of the Bay Area entirely–just going a hundred miles into the Central Valley means a much larger prospective employee pool, infinitely cheaper real estate for business and employees and way less congestion and PITA factor. I think that’s a much more likely outcome than the residents of SF allowing a substantial increase in density in the city center.
I don’t have much in the way of solutions, but I suspect sooner or later the irresistable force will meet the immovable obstacle and it’s anyone’s guess how it will all shake out.
Yes. Some major companies are moving out of SF proper due to costs. Uber, Pandora are already based in nearby Oakland which is cheaper and can pull from the same employee base. Blue Shield long based in SF has announced plans to leave to Oakland as well. AAA Insurance moved out of SF to a nearby suburb.
Lots of other pockets of businesses in the Bay Area are competing, and all the nearby real estate is reacting. Oakland, San Jose already was gigantic, Fremont, Dublin, all are growing quite quickly.
As I answered to another poster, the biggest problem for a city where you have to be upper middle class to afford to live there is how do we get relatively low-wage people to work in a city that is too expensive for them to live in and where affordable housing is just too far away? There is not enough housing for affordable housing to happen naturally; building below-market-rate housing doesn’t really seem to work for very many people, not enough units get built. Geography means that commuting from affordable locations is pretty horrible.
I also don’t assume that anyone has any claim to live here. There is homelessness, but I don’t believe that very much of it is caused by high home prices, especially the most stubborn kind of homelessness, those who refuse to be helped. Public transportation is a problem for which blame is rife but solutions available are few.
What I see is that possible solutions to a lot of these problems end up stepping on the toes of a lot of current residents, including the rich and influential. There seems to be little agreement here on even what direction to pursue. “Housing prices are too high, but I don’t want to see a huge increase in population density.” “There isn’t enough parking, but there are too many cars clogging the streets.” People don’t seem to see the contradictions nor to understand pretty simple causality. Everyone complains without offering real solutions, and if solutions are offered they complain about those.
Yes, this is a problem, but one that the market will address. If there aren’t enough available workers at a given wage, then either the business will raise the wage, will move, or will fold. That’s what is supposed to happen. Yes people will commute from ungodly places like when I worked in Oakland and had people commuting from Manteca, but that’s for them to decide.
So if you didn’t want to leave the city, for whatever reasons, that’s just tough for you?
Regarding rent control: I agree with a lot of that, but there would certainly be a transition problem. For example, there are a lot of retired folks who have lived in their apartment for many years and can only afford to continue here due to rent control. It makes for very bad PR for politicians when these folks get kicked out and have to move someplace where they don’t know anyone. It’s not just 22-year-old baristas who need a cheap place to live. I wonder if it would help to just exempt new rental units from rent control?
Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that your approach is adopted. At the top you have the rich, who can afford to get whatever they want at whatever price is charged. If a coffee shop (almost certainly a chain shop, quirky one-offs wouldn’t stand much of a chance there) needs to charge $10 for a cup of coffee so it can pay a livable wage, the rich won’t blink at that. So the barista can afford a place to live not killingly far away, but she can’t afford to buy anything in the city, so she spends all her money near home. Most of the existing shops and retail businesses would then cater mostly to the rich.
That sounds like a very sterile place to live. No artists or musicians, or people who live other kinds of non-standard lives. The rich, I suppose, can find their cultural enrichment pretty much wherever they want. Those of the middle class who still live here won’t get much of that except what’s available through the internet.
When I compare that vision against one of a high-density city with infrastructure that supports the population, I know which one I would choose, even if I were rich.
I think we can build those same blocks of condos or apartments in other places in the city. There are a few undeveloped areas (currently Mission Rock is being built on one, and Balboa Reservoir is another one) where actual communities with denser housing can be built. Also you don’t have to build buildings that take up a whole block, three or four lots that include a corner can house 100 units to replace the four houses.
I guess what I’m saying is that the idea of bulldozing entire blocks of families’ homes, seized by force, in order to put up huge buildings of apartments and condos is the sort of government run amok idea that gives redevelopment a bad name.
As a preference, sure I think that’s valid. It’s cyclical as far as I can tell. When things swing too far to one side, the market will correct and people will move, or wages will rise. Look at SOMA - that place used to be …not exactly a wasteland, but nothing cool went on down there except some dance clubs, and I can’t remember what else. After the earthquake where some of the freeway exits closed, the area kind of went unused. Now, it’s bustling. Super high rents (10K/month for a 2 bedroom flat at the Infinity?) nearby jobs, etc.
On the other hand, you have major companies moving out of SF because the rents are too high. It’s not sterile - it’s just really really expensive.
There is one thing worse than rent control and that is no rent control.
Without an affordable rental market, people on modest incomes are forced out of the city and then employers find it difficult to recruit the workers they need. Teachers, hospital workers, transport workers, policemen, cleaners, security guards, office workers. These people need somewhere to live and it is not practical to push them out of town and meet excessive commuting costs. Someone has to do this work for the city to function and they need to live near their work.
So if SF had even stricter rent control - say a $500 cap on one bedroom apartments - do you suppose the overall economic situation in the city would stay the same, improve, or get worse?
