7 ms·

Let's Get Organized and Fix Housing Affordability in San Francisco

38 points by zt 11y ago

roblooman 11y ago
Here is an IDEA, shipping container housing, infinatley modular and to boot much cheaper, by almost half to 3 quarters the cost....i have been doing designs of these type of home for fun and you know what, i love them, not to mention the fact if i wanted i could pack em up and put them anywhere else, its not that we should seriously consider the change to the environment of San fran, for which i am sure there is merit in some cases, but why not make a location that can conform to your needs and then build how you want to build, live how you want to live, in a place that welcomes you... food for thought
- davidw 11y ago
  It sounds cool, but it turns out it's probably not a winning idea: http://marketurbanism.com/2016/02/02/return-to-sender-housing-affordability-and-the-shipping-container-non-solution/ http://marketurbanism.com/2016/02/02/return-to-sender-housin...
- Johnny555 11y ago
  Adding more low-density shipping container housing to SF doesn't seem like a solution to the housing problem. If people are happy living in a 200 sq ft shipping container, then it'd be much more space efficient to build more high rise micro-condo buildings.
guimarin 11y ago
This really isn't rocket science or difficult. Everyone thinks this is a hard-complex problem, it is not. This is a hard simple problem. (easy-hard; simple-complex) 1. Upzone SOMA district to 12 stories. 2. Remove requirement that buildings over 50yrs old in SOMA need to pass the historic building committee.
- jamespitts 11y ago
  It is true, we simply do need more units. And any way can seem like the way to go. But aren't these suggestions a bit like in the late 90s when you would just add more beefy servers to a really slow web site? Even if these ideas would add the required 100,000 units to the market, how do you deal with the politics of making these two changes happen? The housing shortage / underbuilding crisis is actually a wicked problem. Before throwing solutions onto the wall, we should understand its beastly nature better.
  - guimarin 11y ago
    The difference is that servers don't self organize, they are static. People on the other hand make things happen. Relatively few small changes have outsized impacts because our current status quo is so optimized for the existing ruleset.
- Johnny555 11y ago
  Simple solutions are never simple in real life. SF has a complicated review process that basically lets neighbors hold up permit approval indefinitely with appeals. Whether good or bad, it's there. Shadow laws are also in place and would need to be changed. Changing a low to mid density neighborhood into a high density 12 story building neighborhood means a lot more than just removing height limits. Sufficient parks and retail/commercial space need to exist to ensure good quality of life, no one wants to live in a neighborhood full of condos & apartments and little else. Likewise, there needs to be sufficient transit, SF Muni is already bursting at the seams, add a high density neighborhood without adding transit, and no one will be able to get out of the neighborhood. Building high density housing is important but it's a lot harder than just removing a height limit.
  - sdenton4 11y ago
    Right. That's why the vote needs to be gotten out: If the rules are a problem, you need to change the rules. We live in a democracy, and there's a process for that. Get people on the council who want to change the rules and the rules will change.
HillaryBriss 11y ago
Building more housing per se is only one of the problems. A lot of quality of life problems will crop up as density rises. With that realization, calls for a "grand unified growth plan" and the corresponding environmental impact studies will surface. And that will take ... t .. i .. m ... e ... The whole movement hits a wall.
- siculars 11y ago
  Re. "quality of life problems", how about not being able to afford to live in SF? Does that qualify? If you don't like density or problems that arise due to density, don't live in dense places. There are plenty of less dense places. Here's a radical idea: build tall buildings. Tokyo sits on a fault. They manage to build tall buildings.
  - zepto 11y ago
    Yes - tall buildings are why Tokyo is so affordable. /s
    - patio11 11y ago
      Tall buildings [+] are why Tokyo is so affordable. I live in the 2nd hottest neighborhood in the city. You can rent an apartment within 4 blocks of me, tomorrow, for $800 a month, and you'd have many choices. If you were willing to live further out or in a less prestigious neighborhood you could trade up on size, too. [+] Tokyo is very much not monolithically tall buildings. I live in a 45 story highrise; less than 25 meters away there exists single-family housing and 3 story apartments. The average density is pretty high, though -- here in Meguro it is about 2.5x SF's citywide (50k people per square mile vs 20k).
      - Johnny555 11y ago
        Effective transit is what makes tall buildings in Tokyo work. SF would need to invest tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in transit in order to make Tokyo style densities work. Just digging out the sides of Embarcadero station to allow two-sided boarding for BART is projected to cost a billion dollars.
jamespitts 11y ago
Count me in. This will be a long struggle, one which starts with understanding the difficult territory. One recent and significant gain in the fight is the notion that the city must measure the economic impact of underbuilding: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11424532/mark-farrel-housing http://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11424532/mark-farrel-housing
matt_wulfeck 11y ago
Build the hyper loop between Portland and San Francisco and prices will plummet. I bet it would be a lot cheaper than building more houses too!
- aetherson 11y ago
  Even at hyperloop speeds (and even assuming hyperloops would work exactly as advertised), Portland is too far away for convenient commuting to SF.
- calbear81 11y ago
  You wouldn't need to go that far to have a huge impact. High speed rail or hyper loop between SF and Tracy would open up the Central Valley and its vast expanses of open land.
benzofuran 11y ago
Why not implement a massive property tax hike for non-owner occupied units - with exemptions for apartment complexes & other properties designed as rentals? Something along the lines of 15x the property tax for units not owner occupied for at least 2/3 of the year / ownership period (if less than a year).
- dkopi 11y ago
  Tax hikes aren't a way to lower housing costs. You don't make something cheaper by taxing it.
  - benzofuran 11y ago
    If the tax disincentivizes boomers from buying real estate at asinine prices and then seeking rents to pay the resulting mortgages as an alternative to the stock market, then that should make property cheaper as it reduces the demand.
    - dkopi 11y ago
      In a market with limited supply, taxing homes for rent will raise rents to cover the additional taxes. You don't solve a supply problem by adding taxes. If anything, that will reduce the supply even more.
      - Grishnakh 11y ago
        No, you need to massively jack up taxes to increase supply, and it will work. But you don't jack up taxes on homes for rent, you jack them up on the homes that aren't for rent: houses which are just sitting unoccupied. The taxes will encourage the owners to either rent them out or simply sell them off to someone who will (or who will at least live there). That increases supply.
  - Johnny555 11y ago
    Yeah, I didn't get his logic, landlords don't pay property taxes, tenants do (though the tax benefit goes to the landlord). Raising the cost to landlords in an sellers market like SF is just going to drive up rents - and Landlords will certainly be able to pass through their higher costs even to rent controlled tenants.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Can we please have a moratorium on San Francisco article submissions? I really wish it would just slide off into the ocean at this point.
- bdcravens 11y ago
  But if you're a real hacker, then you work in San Francisco. /s
- Johnny555 11y ago
  I think a large percentage of readers here live in the bay area, and there are lots of strong feelings about housing in SF and the Bay Area in general so these articles will keep coming.
  - davidw 11y ago
    It's undeniably a big issue in many parts of the US - especially the "booming" ones. Here in Oregon, we're getting tons of 'refugees' from California who, in turn, drive up prices here. It's also a huge issue for anyone working for a startup in that area, especially for those who are no longer young and single and thus require a bit more in terms of their housing.
- you_eeeeeediot 11y ago
  ... but what about all the poor like-minded "progressive" people who, in mid-conversation, fart, bend over and inhale before resuming?
  - dang 11y ago
    Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
bdcravens 11y ago
Start moving high paying jobs elsewhere.
Animats 11y ago
Just in: SF housing prices dropping.[1] Wait until a few of the big overvalued startups tank (looking at you, Twitter) and the bubble will be over. [1] http://fortune.com/2016/04/15/san-francisco-housing-prices-drop/ http://fortune.com/2016/04/15/san-francisco-housing-prices-d...
pessimizer 11y ago
Leave. You all work on the internet. The main reason you moved there in the 90s is 1) because it was pretty and pleasant, and the culture was eccentric and liberal, and 2) because Willie Brown was unbelievably friendly to rezoning everything to accommodate you at the expense of the diverse people who used to be able to afford to live there. Now, astonishingly, the wealthy libertarian line is that the problem is that they won't let you continue doing it until the place looks like a giant housing project. SROs that can be slotted in by crane are hailed as a technological innovation. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-S-F-s-live-work-development-boom-began-3272818.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-S-F-s-live-work-de... "Manhattanization" is definitely a good word for it, because Manhattan is a cultural wasteland where no one interesting can afford to live, where the wealthy moved in the 80s because it was filled with interesting people.
entee 11y ago
Voting in primaries is the single most important thing anyone can do do improve the political situation not just in SF but in the country writ large. As the article states, there's a large majority of the population in favor of relatively sensible rational policies. And where two sides disagree, there's a large majority in favor of sensible compromise. Only the most hardcore partisans and ideologues are intransigent. And yet only the most hardcore partisans and ideologues vote in primaries. In today's gerrymandered and politically segregated world, primaries are the only elections that matter in many places. Solution: everyone should vote in primaries. TLDR: Vote in primaries or the crazies win.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tomjacobs 11y ago
How about we do something about it today? Instead of waiting for new apartments to be built, we make better use of existing apartments: https://medium.com/@TomPJacobs/what-housing-crisis-3c0568a5dd44 https://medium.com/@TomPJacobs/what-housing-crisis-3c0568a5d...

38 points by zt 11y ago

Here is an IDEA, shipping container housing, infinatley modular and to boot much cheaper, by almost half to 3 quarters the cost....i have been doing designs of these type of home for fun and you know what, i love them, not to mention the fact if i wanted i could pack em up and put them anywhere else, its not that we should seriously consider the change to the environment of San fran, for which i am sure there is merit in some cases, but why not make a location that can conform to your needs and then build how you want to build, live how you want to live, in a place that welcomes you... food for thought

davidw 11y ago
It sounds cool, but it turns out it's probably not a winning idea: http://marketurbanism.com/2016/02/02/return-to-sender-housing-affordability-and-the-shipping-container-non-solution/ http://marketurbanism.com/2016/02/02/return-to-sender-housin...
Johnny555 11y ago
Adding more low-density shipping container housing to SF doesn't seem like a solution to the housing problem. If people are happy living in a 200 sq ft shipping container, then it'd be much more space efficient to build more high rise micro-condo buildings.

guimarin 11y ago

This really isn't rocket science or difficult. Everyone thinks this is a hard-complex problem, it is not. This is a hard simple problem. (easy-hard; simple-complex) 1. Upzone SOMA district to 12 stories. 2. Remove requirement that buildings over 50yrs old in SOMA need to pass the historic building committee.

jamespitts 11y ago
It is true, we simply do need more units. And any way can seem like the way to go. But aren't these suggestions a bit like in the late 90s when you would just add more beefy servers to a really slow web site? Even if these ideas would add the required 100,000 units to the market, how do you deal with the politics of making these two changes happen? The housing shortage / underbuilding crisis is actually a wicked problem. Before throwing solutions onto the wall, we should understand its beastly nature better.
- guimarin 11y ago
  The difference is that servers don't self organize, they are static. People on the other hand make things happen. Relatively few small changes have outsized impacts because our current status quo is so optimized for the existing ruleset.
Johnny555 11y ago
Simple solutions are never simple in real life. SF has a complicated review process that basically lets neighbors hold up permit approval indefinitely with appeals. Whether good or bad, it's there. Shadow laws are also in place and would need to be changed. Changing a low to mid density neighborhood into a high density 12 story building neighborhood means a lot more than just removing height limits. Sufficient parks and retail/commercial space need to exist to ensure good quality of life, no one wants to live in a neighborhood full of condos & apartments and little else. Likewise, there needs to be sufficient transit, SF Muni is already bursting at the seams, add a high density neighborhood without adding transit, and no one will be able to get out of the neighborhood. Building high density housing is important but it's a lot harder than just removing a height limit.
- sdenton4 11y ago
  Right. That's why the vote needs to be gotten out: If the rules are a problem, you need to change the rules. We live in a democracy, and there's a process for that. Get people on the council who want to change the rules and the rules will change.

HillaryBriss 11y ago

Building more housing per se is only one of the problems. A lot of quality of life problems will crop up as density rises. With that realization, calls for a "grand unified growth plan" and the corresponding environmental impact studies will surface. And that will take ... t .. i .. m ... e ... The whole movement hits a wall.

siculars 11y ago
Re. "quality of life problems", how about not being able to afford to live in SF? Does that qualify? If you don't like density or problems that arise due to density, don't live in dense places. There are plenty of less dense places. Here's a radical idea: build tall buildings. Tokyo sits on a fault. They manage to build tall buildings.
- zepto 11y ago
  Yes - tall buildings are why Tokyo is so affordable. /s
  - patio11 11y ago
    Tall buildings [+] are why Tokyo is so affordable. I live in the 2nd hottest neighborhood in the city. You can rent an apartment within 4 blocks of me, tomorrow, for $800 a month, and you'd have many choices. If you were willing to live further out or in a less prestigious neighborhood you could trade up on size, too. [+] Tokyo is very much not monolithically tall buildings. I live in a 45 story highrise; less than 25 meters away there exists single-family housing and 3 story apartments. The average density is pretty high, though -- here in Meguro it is about 2.5x SF's citywide (50k people per square mile vs 20k).
    - Johnny555 11y ago
      Effective transit is what makes tall buildings in Tokyo work. SF would need to invest tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in transit in order to make Tokyo style densities work. Just digging out the sides of Embarcadero station to allow two-sided boarding for BART is projected to cost a billion dollars.

jamespitts 11y ago

Count me in. This will be a long struggle, one which starts with understanding the difficult territory. One recent and significant gain in the fight is the notion that the city must measure the economic impact of underbuilding: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11424532/mark-farrel-housing http://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11424532/mark-farrel-housing

matt_wulfeck 11y ago

Build the hyper loop between Portland and San Francisco and prices will plummet. I bet it would be a lot cheaper than building more houses too!

aetherson 11y ago
Even at hyperloop speeds (and even assuming hyperloops would work exactly as advertised), Portland is too far away for convenient commuting to SF.
calbear81 11y ago
You wouldn't need to go that far to have a huge impact. High speed rail or hyper loop between SF and Tracy would open up the Central Valley and its vast expanses of open land.

benzofuran 11y ago

Why not implement a massive property tax hike for non-owner occupied units - with exemptions for apartment complexes & other properties designed as rentals? Something along the lines of 15x the property tax for units not owner occupied for at least 2/3 of the year / ownership period (if less than a year).

dkopi 11y ago
Tax hikes aren't a way to lower housing costs. You don't make something cheaper by taxing it.
- benzofuran 11y ago
  If the tax disincentivizes boomers from buying real estate at asinine prices and then seeking rents to pay the resulting mortgages as an alternative to the stock market, then that should make property cheaper as it reduces the demand.
  - dkopi 11y ago
    In a market with limited supply, taxing homes for rent will raise rents to cover the additional taxes. You don't solve a supply problem by adding taxes. If anything, that will reduce the supply even more.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      No, you need to massively jack up taxes to increase supply, and it will work. But you don't jack up taxes on homes for rent, you jack them up on the homes that aren't for rent: houses which are just sitting unoccupied. The taxes will encourage the owners to either rent them out or simply sell them off to someone who will (or who will at least live there). That increases supply.
- Johnny555 11y ago
  Yeah, I didn't get his logic, landlords don't pay property taxes, tenants do (though the tax benefit goes to the landlord). Raising the cost to landlords in an sellers market like SF is just going to drive up rents - and Landlords will certainly be able to pass through their higher costs even to rent controlled tenants.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

Can we please have a moratorium on San Francisco article submissions? I really wish it would just slide off into the ocean at this point.

bdcravens 11y ago
But if you're a real hacker, then you work in San Francisco. /s
Johnny555 11y ago
I think a large percentage of readers here live in the bay area, and there are lots of strong feelings about housing in SF and the Bay Area in general so these articles will keep coming.
- davidw 11y ago
  It's undeniably a big issue in many parts of the US - especially the "booming" ones. Here in Oregon, we're getting tons of 'refugees' from California who, in turn, drive up prices here. It's also a huge issue for anyone working for a startup in that area, especially for those who are no longer young and single and thus require a bit more in terms of their housing.
you_eeeeeediot 11y ago
... but what about all the poor like-minded "progressive" people who, in mid-conversation, fart, bend over and inhale before resuming?
- dang 11y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

bdcravens 11y ago

Start moving high paying jobs elsewhere.

Animats 11y ago

Just in: SF housing prices dropping.[1] Wait until a few of the big overvalued startups tank (looking at you, Twitter) and the bubble will be over. [1] http://fortune.com/2016/04/15/san-francisco-housing-prices-drop/ http://fortune.com/2016/04/15/san-francisco-housing-prices-d...

pessimizer 11y ago

Leave. You all work on the internet. The main reason you moved there in the 90s is 1) because it was pretty and pleasant, and the culture was eccentric and liberal, and 2) because Willie Brown was unbelievably friendly to rezoning everything to accommodate you at the expense of the diverse people who used to be able to afford to live there. Now, astonishingly, the wealthy libertarian line is that the problem is that they won't let you continue doing it until the place looks like a giant housing project. SROs that can be slotted in by crane are hailed as a technological innovation. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-S-F-s-live-work-development-boom-began-3272818.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-S-F-s-live-work-de... "Manhattanization" is definitely a good word for it, because Manhattan is a cultural wasteland where no one interesting can afford to live, where the wealthy moved in the 80s because it was filled with interesting people.

entee 11y ago

Voting in primaries is the single most important thing anyone can do do improve the political situation not just in SF but in the country writ large. As the article states, there's a large majority of the population in favor of relatively sensible rational policies. And where two sides disagree, there's a large majority in favor of sensible compromise. Only the most hardcore partisans and ideologues are intransigent. And yet only the most hardcore partisans and ideologues vote in primaries. In today's gerrymandered and politically segregated world, primaries are the only elections that matter in many places. Solution: everyone should vote in primaries. TLDR: Vote in primaries or the crazies win.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tomjacobs 11y ago

How about we do something about it today? Instead of waiting for new apartments to be built, we make better use of existing apartments: https://medium.com/@TomPJacobs/what-housing-crisis-3c0568a5dd44 https://medium.com/@TomPJacobs/what-housing-crisis-3c0568a5d...