4 ms·

"I'm sure there are cases where this isn't true, but as a general rule, any opposition to new housing in SF concedes ground to wealthy owners at the expense of

by timr 11y ago

"I'm sure there are cases where this isn't true, but as a general rule, any opposition to new housing in SF concedes ground to wealthy owners at the expense of working-class renters." You're missing a few critically important pieces of context: 1) The city of SF gives developers two options for the low-income housing set-aside -- they can make a percentage of their units low income, or they can contribute a percentage of the project cost to a city-wide fund. 2) Developers hate both of these options, but they far prefer the latter one (donate to a fund), since it's a fixed cost. 3) Because the city is in competition with these same private developers for land, the low-income housing fund is at a significant disadvantage when it comes to actually building low-income housing. IIRC, the city has only built a few projects in the last decade. 4) As a result of 1-3, most of the community resistance to new construction ends up being about forcing developers to choose the first option (i.e. actually building low-income units). They use the only political leverage they have to compel this choice: the planning process. 5) Many/most skirmishes about permitting get characterized as "NIMBY opposition", when in reality, they're about low-income housing set-asides. It's just easy to point to the zero-influence yahoos who show up to any public meeting, and mischaracterize them as the source of the problem, so developers do this. Basically what I'm saying is: unless compelled, there's no situation in SF where developers build anything other than luxury units. There's no ROI otherwise; land is too expensive. And they won't build new luxury units into a down market, either, for the same reasons. Low-income housing requirements are the only way this stuff happens. So I'll turn your question around on you: name one US market that has successfully lowered real estate prices via construction. Even in places canonically held up as examples (e.g. Houston), affordability is maintained by sprawl...which is not an option for San Francisco. For the exact economic reasons you've cited, nobody buys or builds real estate that they know will lose value. That's the fundamental problem with the "build out of it" argument.

tptacek 11y ago
If building continues at the clip it has for the past 10 years, what do you think is going to happen to the SF real estate market? What I think will happen is that it will be owned almost entirely by wealthy people.
- timr 11y ago
  It's already owned entirely by wealthy people. That ship sailed a long time ago. Ripping down tenements and replacing them with luxury condos doesn't do anything to solve that problem. If you ask me, the best we can do now is improve regional transit to make SF look more like Manhattan, and fight to hold on to whatever low-income property remains on the SF peninsula in the meantime.
  - pzone 11y ago
    You keep arguing against allowing construction because you don't see it as actually lowering housing prices. I don't think adding, say, 1000 units of affordable housing will lower housing prices in SF, but I don't see a reason to be politically opposed to such a proposal. Isn't the fact that it will ease the pressure on continue housing price increases reason enough to allow more development?
    - timr 11y ago
      Point to the place where I argue against allowing construction. I'm making a more nuanced point: indiscriminate high-end construction doesn't help, and that's what you get in SF without the kind of planning that people in this debate like to call "NIMBYism". I'd personally love it if someone were to build 1000 units of affordable housing. The thing is, nobody is gonna do that unless they're forced to do it -- in this town, it takes years of fighting to get a fraction of that number built (for example: NEMA phase II had 52 'affordable' units built, out of a total of 489. Those other 437 units have some of the highest rents in San Francisco.) http://sfist.com/2013/11/18/middle_class_screwed_in_current_hou.php http://sfist.com/2013/11/18/middle_class_screwed_in_current_...
      - davidw 11y ago
        Actually, if you could build 1000 units of really high end housing in place of, say, 100 units of average, low-density housing, it would still help, because it lessens the pressure on some of the existing housing. That's the point, to increase the supply.
davidw 11y ago
> Even in places canonically held up as examples (e.g. Houston), affordability is maintained by sprawl...which is not an option for San Francisco. We do possess the technology to build higher buildings, rather than simply create sprawl. Housing is expensive enough in SF that said technology could be profitably employed. This is especially important to consider in much of silicon valley, which has very few high buildings and not much density. Adding more housing is probably not going to drastically drop prices, but it'll certainly help contain price increases.
- timr 11y ago
  Silicon valley is about 60 minutes south of San Francisco by any mode of transportation convenient to low-income people. It's also a different government. So while I agree that there should be more high-density construction in, say, Mountain View, it's a different discussion. As for higher buildings: I'm not going to argue that we shouldn't raise building heights in SF. I'm just saying that developers aren't going to voluntarily make any of those tall buildings cheaper than market rate. They also won't build more space than they know they can make a comfortable profit on, at current prices. Again, name a city in the US where construction has lowered real estate prices. Developers don't have any natural incentive to do that.
  - davidw 11y ago
    > Developers don't have any natural incentive to do that. Unless they're colluding, they'll keep building if it's profitable to do so. And there's a lot of margin for that in SF, especially if they get rid of some of the big obstacles. There are various articles about 'filtering' and how it's not happening in cities like SF. Here's one - there are probably better ones: http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/02/19/what-liberals-dont-get-about-affordable-housing-filtering/#64e9b90356c9 http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/02/19/what-liber... I know SV is a separate entity (entities, actually), but it's obviously very closely related. People in the US are going to have to figure out density sooner or later. This stuff has knock-on effects all up and down the west coast. Lots of people move here to Bend to escape the bay area, and are driving up local prices...

by timr 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago

If building continues at the clip it has for the past 10 years, what do you think is going to happen to the SF real estate market? What I think will happen is that it will be owned almost entirely by wealthy people.

timr 11y ago
It's already owned entirely by wealthy people. That ship sailed a long time ago. Ripping down tenements and replacing them with luxury condos doesn't do anything to solve that problem. If you ask me, the best we can do now is improve regional transit to make SF look more like Manhattan, and fight to hold on to whatever low-income property remains on the SF peninsula in the meantime.
- pzone 11y ago
  You keep arguing against allowing construction because you don't see it as actually lowering housing prices. I don't think adding, say, 1000 units of affordable housing will lower housing prices in SF, but I don't see a reason to be politically opposed to such a proposal. Isn't the fact that it will ease the pressure on continue housing price increases reason enough to allow more development?
  - timr 11y ago
    Point to the place where I argue against allowing construction. I'm making a more nuanced point: indiscriminate high-end construction doesn't help, and that's what you get in SF without the kind of planning that people in this debate like to call "NIMBYism". I'd personally love it if someone were to build 1000 units of affordable housing. The thing is, nobody is gonna do that unless they're forced to do it -- in this town, it takes years of fighting to get a fraction of that number built (for example: NEMA phase II had 52 'affordable' units built, out of a total of 489. Those other 437 units have some of the highest rents in San Francisco.) http://sfist.com/2013/11/18/middle_class_screwed_in_current_hou.php http://sfist.com/2013/11/18/middle_class_screwed_in_current_...
    - davidw 11y ago
      Actually, if you could build 1000 units of really high end housing in place of, say, 100 units of average, low-density housing, it would still help, because it lessens the pressure on some of the existing housing. That's the point, to increase the supply.

davidw 11y ago

> Even in places canonically held up as examples (e.g. Houston), affordability is maintained by sprawl...which is not an option for San Francisco. We do possess the technology to build higher buildings, rather than simply create sprawl. Housing is expensive enough in SF that said technology could be profitably employed. This is especially important to consider in much of silicon valley, which has very few high buildings and not much density. Adding more housing is probably not going to drastically drop prices, but it'll certainly help contain price increases.

timr 11y ago
Silicon valley is about 60 minutes south of San Francisco by any mode of transportation convenient to low-income people. It's also a different government. So while I agree that there should be more high-density construction in, say, Mountain View, it's a different discussion. As for higher buildings: I'm not going to argue that we shouldn't raise building heights in SF. I'm just saying that developers aren't going to voluntarily make any of those tall buildings cheaper than market rate. They also won't build more space than they know they can make a comfortable profit on, at current prices. Again, name a city in the US where construction has lowered real estate prices. Developers don't have any natural incentive to do that.
- davidw 11y ago
  > Developers don't have any natural incentive to do that. Unless they're colluding, they'll keep building if it's profitable to do so. And there's a lot of margin for that in SF, especially if they get rid of some of the big obstacles. There are various articles about 'filtering' and how it's not happening in cities like SF. Here's one - there are probably better ones: http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/02/19/what-liberals-dont-get-about-affordable-housing-filtering/#64e9b90356c9 http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/02/19/what-liber... I know SV is a separate entity (entities, actually), but it's obviously very closely related. People in the US are going to have to figure out density sooner or later. This stuff has knock-on effects all up and down the west coast. Lots of people move here to Bend to escape the bay area, and are driving up local prices...