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This is not a black-white or other racist issue. The issue is unaffordable housing and it is a problem in many cities such as NYC where I live, not just SF. T

This is not a black-white or other racist issue. The issue is unaffordable housing and it is a problem in many cities such as NYC where I live, not just SF. The cause of the unaffordable housing is zoning restrictions that limit housing density and overuse of historic landmark status through politically induced scarcity. Using politics to induce scarcity creates an additional "economic rent" or profits above for landowners (housing and apartment owners) above what they could get in an efficient market. This is a basic concept of microeconomics: the use of politics to induce scarcity for receiving profits above what one would get in an efficient, competitive market. This "rent seeking" makes landowners like Donald Trump much wealthier than they otherwise would be in an efficient market. Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser has written extensively about this. NYTimes columnist and Economics Nobelist Paul Krugmann has written about this in his columns, and Financial Times columnist (with a masters in Economics Tim Harford) has also written about this. Another example of gaining "economic rent" or "rent-seeking" is in NYC there had been a political limit of the number of taxi medallions to 13,000. The result was a medallion market value of $1.2 million per medallion. Taxi drivers that leased cabs had to pay for use of the medallion as well as the cab, and gasoline. The result is much higher fares approved by the NYC Taxi and Licensing Commission. Then Uber/Lyft came along and the price of the medallions dropped from the $1.2 million to less than $700,000. The rent-seeking is very harmful to the economy and of course adds to the income inequalities. It is in invisible "tax" that transfers wealth from the less wealthy to the wealthy. Money that one could be spending on goods and services in an efficient housing market is instead going towards paying additional housing costs with that money ending up in the pockets of the wealthy. The race issue headline undoubtedly gets more page clicks than an article that would state that billionaires such as Donald Trump owe much of their wealth to inefficient markets resulting from the use of politics to create artificial scarcity. The solution is a simple one which is to get rid of the destructive laws that create the artificial scarcity in land use. It is upsetting to me that the NYTimes reporters appear not to understand basic economics. For more information see: Edward Glaeser: Build Big Bill (Mayor of NYC) http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1.1913739 http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1.... An on-line article about "rent seeking" and the damage to the economy (includes land use restrictions) http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-rent-seeking-is-too-damn-high/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-rent-seeking-is-too-... This book is a very fun read: Tim Harford: The Undercover Economist https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199926514 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199926514

tzs 10y ago
> This is not a black-white or other racist issue. > The issue is unaffordable housing and it is a problem in many cities such as NYC where I live, not just SF. Yet NYC is 23% black. If the issue is unaffordable housing, why did it almost eliminate black people from San Francisco but had had little effect on the number of black people in NYC? (The black percentage of NYC has gone down a little over the past 20 years, as has the white percentage, but this is because of a large growth in the NYC asian population over that time and a significant growth in the hispanic population).
- davidf18 10y ago
  tl;dr : NYC is much larger than SF, and there are more affordable neighborhoods. "Bed-Stuy, Inwood, and Crown Heights bottom out the rankings, with prices per square foot between $488 and $503. These more affordable neighborhoods of New York bring up an important distinction between the two cities. While New York does boast a high price per square foot in many neighborhoods, it still has the benefit of density that San Francisco does not. San Francisco is simply a less dense city, with less inventory, so its rapid price growth has more effectively pulled many city neighborhoods into a relatively narrow, expensive price range. "There aren't as many affordable neighborhoods there as there had been," Valhouli says. "By comparison, New York City is a larger city with a broader price range and still more opportunities at the more affordable end of the market."" http://ny.curbed.com/2016/6/27/12040004/nyc-vs-san-francisco-housing-prices http://ny.curbed.com/2016/6/27/12040004/nyc-vs-san-francisco... Blacks (and other low-income people) are being squeezed out of SF because the politicians have made the zoning laws to squeeze them out. To me and my friends, diversity, both racial and economic, is important. To the politicians of SF, not so. If this were important to citizens of SF, they'd elect politicians that fixed the housing problem by removing the deliberate attempt to make housing more expensive. It costs no money, just a vote to fix the zoning laws and the price of housing will drop as supply increases (as the Edward Glaeser article explains).

tzs 10y ago

> This is not a black-white or other racist issue. > The issue is unaffordable housing and it is a problem in many cities such as NYC where I live, not just SF. Yet NYC is 23% black. If the issue is unaffordable housing, why did it almost eliminate black people from San Francisco but had had little effect on the number of black people in NYC? (The black percentage of NYC has gone down a little over the past 20 years, as has the white percentage, but this is because of a large growth in the NYC asian population over that time and a significant growth in the hispanic population).

davidf18 10y ago
tl;dr : NYC is much larger than SF, and there are more affordable neighborhoods. "Bed-Stuy, Inwood, and Crown Heights bottom out the rankings, with prices per square foot between $488 and $503. These more affordable neighborhoods of New York bring up an important distinction between the two cities. While New York does boast a high price per square foot in many neighborhoods, it still has the benefit of density that San Francisco does not. San Francisco is simply a less dense city, with less inventory, so its rapid price growth has more effectively pulled many city neighborhoods into a relatively narrow, expensive price range. "There aren't as many affordable neighborhoods there as there had been," Valhouli says. "By comparison, New York City is a larger city with a broader price range and still more opportunities at the more affordable end of the market."" http://ny.curbed.com/2016/6/27/12040004/nyc-vs-san-francisco-housing-prices http://ny.curbed.com/2016/6/27/12040004/nyc-vs-san-francisco... Blacks (and other low-income people) are being squeezed out of SF because the politicians have made the zoning laws to squeeze them out. To me and my friends, diversity, both racial and economic, is important. To the politicians of SF, not so. If this were important to citizens of SF, they'd elect politicians that fixed the housing problem by removing the deliberate attempt to make housing more expensive. It costs no money, just a vote to fix the zoning laws and the price of housing will drop as supply increases (as the Edward Glaeser article explains).