14 ms·

As an outsider, the solution to the SF housing issues seem pretty simple... Vote out the NIMBY politicians and replace them with people who will change zoning l

As an outsider, the solution to the SF housing issues seem pretty simple... Vote out the NIMBY politicians and replace them with people who will change zoning laws to allow for more building. I'd assume almost no one likes the current situation unless they are a landlord.

umeshunni 10y ago
>> almost no one likes the current situation unless they are a landlord. Anyone who owns property in the city, whether they are a homeowner or a landlord, likes the current situation. For non-landlord homeowners, the current situation keeps their property values and home equity high and it ensures that the neighborhood and quality of life they bought into stays permanently stuck in time. My local Nimby group, for e.g., sends out monthly notices (e.g http://pastebin.com/0TJiV0aM http://pastebin.com/0TJiV0aM ) letting us know where the next development is, why we should protest it and sends us sample templates on how to email politicians to protest any new development. While large developers are probably able to lobby politicians, I doubt they're able to do this kind of astroturfing.
- lr 10y ago
  A lot of people who do not own (i.e., renters) in SF also do not want high rises. They feel like SF would have a long way to go before all of the foreign money runs out and those apartments would become affordable to them. In short, they don't think more building will benefit them in terms of housing, but will instead be bad for them in terms of quality of life, e.g., more people and traffic, etc.
  - honkhonkpants 10y ago
    High rises are one thing but they are not the way to solve SF's housing shortage. One 5-story building on one corner of every block in the sunset would easily relieve the shortage. Geographically speaking most of SF already suffers from poor quality of life. Except for the northeast quadrant of the city, SF is dominated by flat, boring, ugly zones of car-centered banality. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7398485,-122.5023375,3a,75y,171.61h,76.92t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s1DuoxbLQ7H7iToQ9TZGoYA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D1DuoxbLQ7H7iToQ9TZGoYA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D48.55154%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7398485,-122.5023375,3a,75y,... There's nothing in this photo worth preserving.
    - maxsilver 10y ago
      > There's nothing in this photo worth preserving. In the Midwest, if someone built that photo (exactly) it would get called a strong downtown urban design, and the builder would be praised for creating "missing middle" housing.
      - honkhonkpants 10y ago
        Well I heard there's a couple of nice towns in the midwest, like Chicago :-) Even in the most reactionary fringes of the midwest people are starting to realize that exurban sprawl isn't working. See for example http://newsok.com/article/5505468 http://newsok.com/article/5505468
        seanp2k2 10y ago
        Chicago is the best city in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin. They have nothing to compare. I'd live there except the lack of mountains, lack of an ocean (surfing doesn't work on the Great Lakes even though they're beautiful), and freezing winters + hot humid Summer's would kill me. I can't go back to that. West coast; best coast.
    - lr 10y ago
      Yes, it is a suburb inside of a city. And the inhabitants of that area of The City like it that way. The people who live in the Sunset and Richmond form very powerful political blocks, and you're going to have to do a lot to unseat their representatives on the Board of Supervisors.
      - lr 10y ago
        Maybe start-ups can convince their employees to move to the Sunset with the singular goal of voting in a pro-growth person to the Board of Supervisors. You can do this one district at a time.
        meddlepal 10y ago
  - rictic 10y ago
    How do you square the narrative "units in these high rises would be bought out by investors and so no one would get to rent them" with "these high rises would attract too many people and too much traffic to the neighborhood"
    - 3s933x7dpsh 10y ago
      +1. If the problem is that absent foreign investors are buying up all the housing stock, maybe we should make a 100 story tower on some parking lot in SOMA and sell each floor as a $5M luxurious penthouse unit with the stipulation that the buyer must reside out of the country. Boom, we just took a bunch of those foreign investors out of the market without increasing traffic and decreased the annual US trade deficit by 1% to boot. Fundamentally, if people outside the country want to buy our housing, we should be happy about that, and create jobs by building housing to meet the demand. Imagine if our reaction to Chinese demand for Buicks was to limit car manufacturing and complain that foreign investors are making Buicks unaffordable.
      - WildUtah 10y ago
        "with the stipulation that the buyer must reside out of the country." If we could prevent them from getting a visa to come at all, we could do the same thing and we wouldn't even have to build the building. Just allocate a few address numbers on ritzy street corners and sell the "buildings" to investors stashing Russian or Chinese black market cash.
        int_19h 10y ago
        Think about all the future and derivative opportunities, too... Heck, we could do high-frequency house trading!
        3s933x7dpsh 10y ago
        Of course it's an absurd analogy, there would not be much value if there is no underlying property you can make use of. But I think it illustrates the point well: if the high prices were caused by absent foreign investors, 101 would not be jammed. More realistically, investors rent out the properties they buy. So a market with tons of foreign investors spending irrationally would have an undersupply of homes to buy and corresponding oversupply of homes for rent. Renters would get a great deal and buyers would get bad ROI.
  - dcosson 10y ago
    > In short, they don't think more building will benefit them in terms of housing, but will instead be bad for them in terms of quality of life The frustrating thing about this NIMBY argument, is that it's usually presented as the progressive option, it's standing up for the people. But in reality it's often selfish - homeowners/landlords who have a lot to gain are gaining support for their cause, by getting the disenfranchised to basically decide "If I'm going to be priced out of the city anyway, I'm gonna take as many other people as I can out with me". When in reality, many of them would have a shot at not getting priced out at all with better policy (or at least a shot at making "getting priced out" not so bad, e.g. more housing supply in the city & in neighboring towns -> prices drop a little in the city -> prices drop a lot outside of the city within easy commuting distance).
- SilasX 10y ago
  Astroturfing is when they send out of a bunch of professional advocacy designed to look "grassroots" in the sense of "just ordinary people who care about the issue". I don't see how "a legit neighborhood group asking residents to contact their officials" fits that model; why do you say it's astroturfing?
  - baddox 10y ago
    I thought the key ingredient of astroturfing is the concealment of the source of the message. The idea is to make a centralized effort appear to not be centralized. I would say that providing templates to contact public officials would qualify as astroturfing. And yes, I would extend that attribution to many advocacy groups whose proposals I agree with.
    - SilasX 10y ago
      It may seem similar enough, but that does not seem to match the standard usage[1], in which the critical ingredient is the false impression of pre-existing grassroots consensus. Telling the existing John/Jane Q. Public, who already agrees with you on the issue, to actually do something based on that agreement, is just regular activism and doesn't connote the "aha! caught you" aura of an astroturfing allegation. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#Definition
  - azernik 10y ago
    I think he's trying to say it's not astroturfing - ie that is too large-scale for that. Thereby preempting dismissal of this anecdotal evidence.
- resu_nimda 10y ago
  Quoting the linked notice: It is bad enough that the recent monster home epidemic is consuming every inch of a lot up to its maximum permissible limit to build supersized single-family homes. This legislation, in effect, enables the trend for a monster-home-plus-in-law at the cost of further eroding our mid-block open space that is a community resource providing residents with light, air, privacy, visual relief, and a much-needed psychological comfort zone. I've never actually seen words like these penned, in favor of NIMBYism. SF is experiencing a "monster home epidemic"??? This is legitimately disgusting.
  - pauloday 10y ago
    I don't know that it's an "epidemic", but houses are certainly getting bigger in the US[1]. I can see why a block filled with yards/gardens and small buildings is preferable to a block filled with large buildings and not much else. This just seems like a newsletter for people who care about things like that enough to participate in their local government. I doubt I'd personally agree with many of their stances, but I really can't see how it's "legitimately disgusting". [1]: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-06-02/business/chi-average-home-size-sets-new-record-20140603_1_home-size-home-builders-new-record http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-06-02/business/chi-a...
    - resu_nimda 10y ago
      This just seems like a newsletter for people who care about things like that enough to participate in their local government. For other cities/locales you may be right, but in SF, it just seems offensive. We all know what the consensus epidemic is in the Bay Area, and attempting to use that word to imply that these poor landowners are being encroached upon is something I find reprehensible. Their "epidemic" is a trifling concern compared to what some are going through. I can see why a block filled with yards/gardens and small buildings is preferable to a block filled with large buildings and not much else. There are plenty of places in the country where you can find that. When very wealthy people stubbornly want to hold onto that in the middle of one of the most dense metro areas in the country, while people are being pushed out of their homes and homeless fill the streets, yeah I find it disgusting for them to talk about preserving their "much-needed psychological comfort zone." They can move out to the country if they really want all that stuff, they can afford it, not everyone can.
- jdavis703 10y ago
  I think the answer to this is the city should do all the land acquisition/architecture/engineering/environmental impact research/planning approval, and then offer that completed package for developers to bid on. This will make it much easier for developers to build projects as they'll not have to worry about paying these up-front costs only to have the city reject their proposals, while still allowing voters to ensure truly terrible projects aren't built. Surely there must be downsides to this approach, what are they?
- ctack 10y ago
  Not to say I'm in favour of NIMBYism, but if SF had to have a serious, rustbelt scale economic downturn in the future then lack of overdevelopment would be a positive thing.
branchless 10y ago
Exist and they will lend. The solution is land value tax.
- whyenot 10y ago
  So you are suggesting repealing proposition 13? Good luck with that!
- aetherson 10y ago
  Figuring out the land value as opposed to the improvement value of a piece of improved property is an essentially impossible problem.
  - kiba 10y ago
    Economists recommend it all the time, even while noting their problems. You can't go wrong with what the experts seem to agree on, right?
ethanbond 10y ago
Simple != easy
pyb 10y ago
... or a homeowner, or a rent controlled tenant, etc. Politicians are NIMBY only because they know voters are.
bronson 10y ago
Or a homeowner.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
woodchuck64 10y ago
Wealthy voters secretly like the situation but pay lip-service to economic inequality concerns because they know nothing major can come of it. Poor voters are voting for the red herring of rent control while being slowly gentrified out of town.
- kbenson 10y ago
  That's a fairly harsh interpretation. A slightly different interpretation with the same result is that wealthy individuals benefit, and enjoy the benefits current system while understanding that it's broken and unfair. It doesn't have to be lip-service.
whyenot 10y ago
> As an outsider The problem is that "NIMBY politicians" are elected by NIMBY residents. If you are a homeowner, or live in a rent controlled apartment, SF is a fantastic place and there is little incentive to get rid of zoning laws. To fundamentally change the rental market in SF, you need to craft an argument that convinces these voters to change their minds. The "hey, lets get rid of zoning laws so we can build tons of apartments so more people can live here" argument may make sense if you don't live in SF, but if you are already living there, and vote in SF elections, in many cases, it's not going to be very convincing.
- coenhyde 10y ago
  I think the best argument for building more is to keep SF weird. A lot of people are sad SF has changed so radically; become less artsy. These same people argue against building up, in the misguided notion that it will destroy their lovely city. But imo what's destroying SF is not high rises but anyone on a sub $100k salary has to live somewhere else. It's becoming a mono culture. And at the end of the day bitching about all the tech people isn't going to solve the problem because you can't tell people where they can and can not live.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    Well eventually it's going to have a real problem if service workers can't afford to live there. What are they going to do, pay maids and janitors $30/hour to entice them to commute 4 hours a day? There's lots of places where the real estate values are very high, and poorer people are completely priced out of the area. Those places don't have a problem with that, because districts where lower-income people can live aren't all that far away, so it's not that big a deal for service workers to commute so they can work in or near there (as maids, housekeepers etc. for the rich people, or at the local businesses like restaurants located conveniently to those rich people). The problem in SF is that it's geographically bound, and all the surrounding areas also have very high real estate values, so service workers who don't live in one of the rent-controlled places have to commute from very far away. I think eventually, this is going to be a self-correcting problem if the NIMBYs prevent any new development. Pretty soon, it's going to suck living in SF because you won't be able to go out to eat there, you won't be able to buy any groceries there, you won't be able to hire a housekeeper there, etc. It'll be like living way out in the country, but you'll be surrounded by neighbors. Personally, I think they should probably outlaw rent control (it'd probably have to be done at the state level). That's probably enabling SF to maintain itself this way, by giving lower-income people a place to live nearby. Eliminate rent control and those rents will go through the roof, pricing them all out of the city. Then the landowning residents can suffer without any services.
omegaham 10y ago
The current system screws over newcomers in favor of longtime residents. Rent control and Prop 13 mean that if you've been living in SF for a couple of decades, you're paying bargain-basement prices for either rent or property tax. Asking people to vote against their interests doesn't work very well.
- tomschlick 10y ago
  It also screws over people making less than 100k who can't afford a 4k/mo 1br apartment.
  - omegaham 10y ago
    If they're newcomers, yes. If they're long-time residents, they're paying $800 a month for that exact same $4k/mo apartment. You're basically asking the long-time residents to vote for measures that will detract from the San Francisco-ness of SF and won't benefit them at all. This is why the NIMBY groups are so powerful. The only way that you're going to beat them is by getting enough newcomers who can overpower said NIMBY folks in municipal elections. That's going to take a long time to happen.
cmurf 10y ago
Umm, the NIMBY politician is being voted in by NIMBY voters. It's not just landlords, it's any homeowner. It's the people looking to move to SF or upgrade within SF. Do you have another idea?
wpietri 10y ago
Your theory here is that there is a one-way relationship between supply and demand, but that's not the case. Increasing supply pushed down on prices, but that can increase demand, sustaining high prices. That's especially important during a boom (or bubble, depending on your view). With the rise in prices, many companies are finally looking at putting offices elsewhere, or allowing more remote work. Building more housing would have only dropped prices if the pace of building outstripped the tech sector's ability to create jobs, which is prodigious. At a recent SF CTO conference, a number of speakers talked up non-SF options, something I wasn't hearing 5-10 years ago. As to who likes the status quo, you ignore that "more building" here mostly means "tear down existing buildings and build bigger ones". That is a gain for the people moving in to the eventual new units. But it's a clear loss for the people forced to move, and a disruption of existing communities. I have yet to meet a SF "build more" advocate so committed that they tore down their own home and replaced it more units.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
The real solution is don't live in SF. Seriously. From what I read here on HN, SF is pretty messed up. So, if someone doesn't want to live somewhere messed up, don't go there to begin with. One can't move near an airport and complain about the noise.
- dpark 10y ago
  > From what I read here on HN, SF is pretty messed up. You probably shouldn't base your impression of SF entirely on the negative articles you read on HN. SF has some serious issues, but it also has a lot going for it. Namely, the job opportunities if you're in tech are great. The weather is great. Lots of the area is beautiful. It's a liberal area (great if that fits your views), including being LGBT-friendly. It's got some great culture if you're in tech. The biggest problem with SF seems to be housing affordability, and that's frankly not a huge problem for 6-figure earners (not the way it is for the real middle class), despite all the self-pity. 6-figure earners in the bay can afford housing, even if they can't afford what they want to own. > So, if someone doesn't want to live somewhere messed up, don't go there to begin with. This isn't helpful for the nearly million people who already live in SF or the millions who live in the surrounding areas.
  - amyjess 10y ago
    > It's got some great culture if you're in tech. Honestly, I find the culture of Silicon Valley's tech industry to be utterly degenerate. Even if the area was affordable, I wouldn't live or work there in large part because SV puts me off. I work in tech, I'm LGBT myself (multiple letters of LGBT at that), and the Dallas area is pretty much everything I want in a city. I honestly don't get why the Bay Area doesn't just expand outward. Sure, you can't go farther west because there's an ocean in the way, but what's stopping it from sprawling north, south, and east? I'm from Dallas, which has experienced booming growth for as far back as I can remember, and we've kept housing prices down without sacrificing suburban culture by simply expanding outwards. Nobody cares that none of the expansion is in Dallas proper; the locals here see each suburb as neighborhoods, not separate cities (albeit, neighborhoods with their own street signage and lane markings, but still). Not just housing; workplaces are moving outwards too. Hell, right now, I live in the burbs, and my workplace is in a suburb that's even farther away from Downtown from where I live.
aetherson 10y ago
San Francisco is the second-densest large city in the United States (after NYC). It is denser than the Tokyo Metropolis (which, note, is not the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, which is less dense yet). (NYC density: 10,831 people/km^2. SF density: 7,152 people/km^2. Tokyo density: 6,200 people/km^2) Adding enough additional units to the city to make major changes to its affordability is not just a quick change to zoning laws. It's not just that there are height restrictions. If you made a quick change to height restrictions, you'd still find high density projects are expensive to build and prone to being blocked by the various other obstacles to building that a high-regulation city like SF has. And also, creating and funding big building projects takes time -- and there's a lot of pent-up demand for SF. AND, if you did add tens of thousands of new dwelling units in SF in the traditionally less-dense areas of the city, you'd totally overwhelm the already struggling transport infrastructure of the city in those areas (and I have no idea about other infrastructure. Could the sewers handle this?). Should we still lower the restrictions on infill development in SF? Yes. The restrictions are well past the reasonable. Will that in a short period of time make a major change to the affordability of the city? Not unless you hand-wave away the entire reality of SF.
- kurthr 10y ago
  Population density in "Tokyo" is much higher than you describe at 15k/km2 on average with many wards of 300-500k persons that are OVER 20k/km2. The Tokyo Metropolis includes Yokohama which is 30km away (it's like including all of Marin/San Mateo/Oakland), while the Met Area you describe would be like the whole Bay Area down to San Jose and halfway to Sacramento. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo Seoul, HK, Beijing are similar and I think India has much higher densities still. Population densities in many parts of the world are much higher than SF. I could take a picture out of my window right now of a block of ~200x30story apartment blocks right next to each other standing like soldiers. It's not rare. Do I want that for SF? No, but the density isn't that extreme... unless you're talking about total $ borrowing power of the individuals involved.
  - WildUtah 10y ago
    Tokyo's built-up area has population density near 150 (in persons/hectare, the SI unit of population density). It's nearly the same in the central wards and in the outer suburbs. Tokyo achieves that density with almost no one living in buildings over five stories high and the vast majority in free-standing single family homes under four stories. San Francisco County, not including any suburbs, averages around 90, excluding big open spaces like the Presidio. The Bay Area is closer to 30, just in built-up areas, not including parks and open space. Manhattan is about 500 and Paris 300. Gp, of course, has fallen into the trap of including open space in his calculations. Most metro statistical aggregates include a lot of surrounding farmland, ocean, and parks and don't reflect density experienced by residents or development intensity on available land.
alexandercrohde 10y ago
As an insider (resident), that's the "solution" if you only look at 1 variable in this huge equation. I think we should ask why people still want to live here when it costs so much. Yes jobs are part of it. But the other fact is that 30 story apartment complexes have negative externalities. Unique, historical victorians are part of what makes this city special (and parks), and if we let them be replaced with apartment complexes it'd destroy a piece of this city's appeal.
xanadohnt 10y ago
I just moved myself, wife, and toddler out of Cole Valley to Seattle. We had to leave because - you guessed it - cost of living. My position is head of engineering for a small SaaS company. I make a _very_ healthy living by any standard yet couldn't afford to stay in SF with a family. It's bitter sweet; the bay area is absolutely amazing. But Seattle is a very close second and we're happy we can afford a comfortable life here. Now my point - We became members of the the Cole Valley neighborhood association and the only involvement my wife and I had was reading the monthly newsletter. The newsletter's tone and NIMBYism was astounding! Laughably-so that it was a constant source of jokes and conversation. My wife and me kept returning to how, for she and I, that perspective was shortsighted; we believe that attitude actively works against protecting the very thing that makes the city great - diversity in arts, culture, and food & beverage. If NIMBYism truly prevailed this would all go away to a homogenous super-elite. ... but maybe that's the goal. :(
Mz 10y ago
I seriously doubt it is that simple. We have lows and policies at both the federal and state level that impact the price of housing. They have a different impact on both individuals and on housing in cities versus smaller towns or rural areas. Trying to "correct" for what federal and state laws and policies do the housing situation in a specific location is quite burdensome. In order to fix some of what goes on in San Francisco, you would need to figure out the impact of those federal and state laws and policies and see if, realistically, anything can be done to counter them at the local level or if you would need to fight them at the state and/or federal level to have any hope of resolving the situation. Just because the problem is obvious in San Francisco and significantly impacting the locals does not remotely mean it originates there and can be solved there.
mtviewdave 10y ago
As an outsider, the solution to the SF housing issues seem pretty simple Complex problems often look simple from a distance. That doesn't mean they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10884840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10884840
rsync 10y ago
"As an outsider, the solution to the SF housing issues seem pretty simple... Vote out the NIMBY politicians and replace them with people who will change zoning laws to allow for more building." You are correct - that is the solution. However, voting for the opposite is also the solution and is an equally valid expression, and result, of democracy. Sometimes democracy delivers results we dislike.

umeshunni 10y ago

>> almost no one likes the current situation unless they are a landlord. Anyone who owns property in the city, whether they are a homeowner or a landlord, likes the current situation. For non-landlord homeowners, the current situation keeps their property values and home equity high and it ensures that the neighborhood and quality of life they bought into stays permanently stuck in time. My local Nimby group, for e.g., sends out monthly notices (e.g http://pastebin.com/0TJiV0aM http://pastebin.com/0TJiV0aM ) letting us know where the next development is, why we should protest it and sends us sample templates on how to email politicians to protest any new development. While large developers are probably able to lobby politicians, I doubt they're able to do this kind of astroturfing.

lr 10y ago
A lot of people who do not own (i.e., renters) in SF also do not want high rises. They feel like SF would have a long way to go before all of the foreign money runs out and those apartments would become affordable to them. In short, they don't think more building will benefit them in terms of housing, but will instead be bad for them in terms of quality of life, e.g., more people and traffic, etc.
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  High rises are one thing but they are not the way to solve SF's housing shortage. One 5-story building on one corner of every block in the sunset would easily relieve the shortage. Geographically speaking most of SF already suffers from poor quality of life. Except for the northeast quadrant of the city, SF is dominated by flat, boring, ugly zones of car-centered banality. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7398485,-122.5023375,3a,75y,171.61h,76.92t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s1DuoxbLQ7H7iToQ9TZGoYA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D1DuoxbLQ7H7iToQ9TZGoYA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D48.55154%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7398485,-122.5023375,3a,75y,... There's nothing in this photo worth preserving.
  - maxsilver 10y ago
    > There's nothing in this photo worth preserving. In the Midwest, if someone built that photo (exactly) it would get called a strong downtown urban design, and the builder would be praised for creating "missing middle" housing.
    - honkhonkpants 10y ago
      Well I heard there's a couple of nice towns in the midwest, like Chicago :-) Even in the most reactionary fringes of the midwest people are starting to realize that exurban sprawl isn't working. See for example http://newsok.com/article/5505468 http://newsok.com/article/5505468
      - seanp2k2 10y ago
        Chicago is the best city in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin. They have nothing to compare. I'd live there except the lack of mountains, lack of an ocean (surfing doesn't work on the Great Lakes even though they're beautiful), and freezing winters + hot humid Summer's would kill me. I can't go back to that. West coast; best coast.
  - lr 10y ago
    Yes, it is a suburb inside of a city. And the inhabitants of that area of The City like it that way. The people who live in the Sunset and Richmond form very powerful political blocks, and you're going to have to do a lot to unseat their representatives on the Board of Supervisors.
    - lr 10y ago
      Maybe start-ups can convince their employees to move to the Sunset with the singular goal of voting in a pro-growth person to the Board of Supervisors. You can do this one district at a time.
      - meddlepal 10y ago
- rictic 10y ago
  How do you square the narrative "units in these high rises would be bought out by investors and so no one would get to rent them" with "these high rises would attract too many people and too much traffic to the neighborhood"
  - 3s933x7dpsh 10y ago
    +1. If the problem is that absent foreign investors are buying up all the housing stock, maybe we should make a 100 story tower on some parking lot in SOMA and sell each floor as a $5M luxurious penthouse unit with the stipulation that the buyer must reside out of the country. Boom, we just took a bunch of those foreign investors out of the market without increasing traffic and decreased the annual US trade deficit by 1% to boot. Fundamentally, if people outside the country want to buy our housing, we should be happy about that, and create jobs by building housing to meet the demand. Imagine if our reaction to Chinese demand for Buicks was to limit car manufacturing and complain that foreign investors are making Buicks unaffordable.
    - WildUtah 10y ago
      "with the stipulation that the buyer must reside out of the country." If we could prevent them from getting a visa to come at all, we could do the same thing and we wouldn't even have to build the building. Just allocate a few address numbers on ritzy street corners and sell the "buildings" to investors stashing Russian or Chinese black market cash.
      - int_19h 10y ago
        Think about all the future and derivative opportunities, too... Heck, we could do high-frequency house trading!
      - 3s933x7dpsh 10y ago
        Of course it's an absurd analogy, there would not be much value if there is no underlying property you can make use of. But I think it illustrates the point well: if the high prices were caused by absent foreign investors, 101 would not be jammed. More realistically, investors rent out the properties they buy. So a market with tons of foreign investors spending irrationally would have an undersupply of homes to buy and corresponding oversupply of homes for rent. Renters would get a great deal and buyers would get bad ROI.
- dcosson 10y ago
  > In short, they don't think more building will benefit them in terms of housing, but will instead be bad for them in terms of quality of life The frustrating thing about this NIMBY argument, is that it's usually presented as the progressive option, it's standing up for the people. But in reality it's often selfish - homeowners/landlords who have a lot to gain are gaining support for their cause, by getting the disenfranchised to basically decide "If I'm going to be priced out of the city anyway, I'm gonna take as many other people as I can out with me". When in reality, many of them would have a shot at not getting priced out at all with better policy (or at least a shot at making "getting priced out" not so bad, e.g. more housing supply in the city & in neighboring towns -> prices drop a little in the city -> prices drop a lot outside of the city within easy commuting distance).
SilasX 10y ago
Astroturfing is when they send out of a bunch of professional advocacy designed to look "grassroots" in the sense of "just ordinary people who care about the issue". I don't see how "a legit neighborhood group asking residents to contact their officials" fits that model; why do you say it's astroturfing?
- baddox 10y ago
  I thought the key ingredient of astroturfing is the concealment of the source of the message. The idea is to make a centralized effort appear to not be centralized. I would say that providing templates to contact public officials would qualify as astroturfing. And yes, I would extend that attribution to many advocacy groups whose proposals I agree with.
  - SilasX 10y ago
    It may seem similar enough, but that does not seem to match the standard usage[1], in which the critical ingredient is the false impression of pre-existing grassroots consensus. Telling the existing John/Jane Q. Public, who already agrees with you on the issue, to actually do something based on that agreement, is just regular activism and doesn't connote the "aha! caught you" aura of an astroturfing allegation. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#Definition
- azernik 10y ago
  I think he's trying to say it's not astroturfing - ie that is too large-scale for that. Thereby preempting dismissal of this anecdotal evidence.
resu_nimda 10y ago
Quoting the linked notice: It is bad enough that the recent monster home epidemic is consuming every inch of a lot up to its maximum permissible limit to build supersized single-family homes. This legislation, in effect, enables the trend for a monster-home-plus-in-law at the cost of further eroding our mid-block open space that is a community resource providing residents with light, air, privacy, visual relief, and a much-needed psychological comfort zone. I've never actually seen words like these penned, in favor of NIMBYism. SF is experiencing a "monster home epidemic"??? This is legitimately disgusting.
- pauloday 10y ago
  I don't know that it's an "epidemic", but houses are certainly getting bigger in the US[1]. I can see why a block filled with yards/gardens and small buildings is preferable to a block filled with large buildings and not much else. This just seems like a newsletter for people who care about things like that enough to participate in their local government. I doubt I'd personally agree with many of their stances, but I really can't see how it's "legitimately disgusting". [1]: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-06-02/business/chi-average-home-size-sets-new-record-20140603_1_home-size-home-builders-new-record http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-06-02/business/chi-a...
  - resu_nimda 10y ago
    This just seems like a newsletter for people who care about things like that enough to participate in their local government. For other cities/locales you may be right, but in SF, it just seems offensive. We all know what the consensus epidemic is in the Bay Area, and attempting to use that word to imply that these poor landowners are being encroached upon is something I find reprehensible. Their "epidemic" is a trifling concern compared to what some are going through. I can see why a block filled with yards/gardens and small buildings is preferable to a block filled with large buildings and not much else. There are plenty of places in the country where you can find that. When very wealthy people stubbornly want to hold onto that in the middle of one of the most dense metro areas in the country, while people are being pushed out of their homes and homeless fill the streets, yeah I find it disgusting for them to talk about preserving their "much-needed psychological comfort zone." They can move out to the country if they really want all that stuff, they can afford it, not everyone can.
jdavis703 10y ago
I think the answer to this is the city should do all the land acquisition/architecture/engineering/environmental impact research/planning approval, and then offer that completed package for developers to bid on. This will make it much easier for developers to build projects as they'll not have to worry about paying these up-front costs only to have the city reject their proposals, while still allowing voters to ensure truly terrible projects aren't built. Surely there must be downsides to this approach, what are they?
ctack 10y ago
Not to say I'm in favour of NIMBYism, but if SF had to have a serious, rustbelt scale economic downturn in the future then lack of overdevelopment would be a positive thing.

branchless 10y ago

Exist and they will lend. The solution is land value tax.

whyenot 10y ago
So you are suggesting repealing proposition 13? Good luck with that!
aetherson 10y ago
Figuring out the land value as opposed to the improvement value of a piece of improved property is an essentially impossible problem.
- kiba 10y ago
  Economists recommend it all the time, even while noting their problems. You can't go wrong with what the experts seem to agree on, right?

ethanbond 10y ago

Simple != easy

pyb 10y ago

... or a homeowner, or a rent controlled tenant, etc. Politicians are NIMBY only because they know voters are.

bronson 10y ago

Or a homeowner.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

woodchuck64 10y ago

Wealthy voters secretly like the situation but pay lip-service to economic inequality concerns because they know nothing major can come of it. Poor voters are voting for the red herring of rent control while being slowly gentrified out of town.

kbenson 10y ago
That's a fairly harsh interpretation. A slightly different interpretation with the same result is that wealthy individuals benefit, and enjoy the benefits current system while understanding that it's broken and unfair. It doesn't have to be lip-service.

whyenot 10y ago

> As an outsider The problem is that "NIMBY politicians" are elected by NIMBY residents. If you are a homeowner, or live in a rent controlled apartment, SF is a fantastic place and there is little incentive to get rid of zoning laws. To fundamentally change the rental market in SF, you need to craft an argument that convinces these voters to change their minds. The "hey, lets get rid of zoning laws so we can build tons of apartments so more people can live here" argument may make sense if you don't live in SF, but if you are already living there, and vote in SF elections, in many cases, it's not going to be very convincing.

coenhyde 10y ago
I think the best argument for building more is to keep SF weird. A lot of people are sad SF has changed so radically; become less artsy. These same people argue against building up, in the misguided notion that it will destroy their lovely city. But imo what's destroying SF is not high rises but anyone on a sub $100k salary has to live somewhere else. It's becoming a mono culture. And at the end of the day bitching about all the tech people isn't going to solve the problem because you can't tell people where they can and can not live.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  Well eventually it's going to have a real problem if service workers can't afford to live there. What are they going to do, pay maids and janitors $30/hour to entice them to commute 4 hours a day? There's lots of places where the real estate values are very high, and poorer people are completely priced out of the area. Those places don't have a problem with that, because districts where lower-income people can live aren't all that far away, so it's not that big a deal for service workers to commute so they can work in or near there (as maids, housekeepers etc. for the rich people, or at the local businesses like restaurants located conveniently to those rich people). The problem in SF is that it's geographically bound, and all the surrounding areas also have very high real estate values, so service workers who don't live in one of the rent-controlled places have to commute from very far away. I think eventually, this is going to be a self-correcting problem if the NIMBYs prevent any new development. Pretty soon, it's going to suck living in SF because you won't be able to go out to eat there, you won't be able to buy any groceries there, you won't be able to hire a housekeeper there, etc. It'll be like living way out in the country, but you'll be surrounded by neighbors. Personally, I think they should probably outlaw rent control (it'd probably have to be done at the state level). That's probably enabling SF to maintain itself this way, by giving lower-income people a place to live nearby. Eliminate rent control and those rents will go through the roof, pricing them all out of the city. Then the landowning residents can suffer without any services.

omegaham 10y ago

The current system screws over newcomers in favor of longtime residents. Rent control and Prop 13 mean that if you've been living in SF for a couple of decades, you're paying bargain-basement prices for either rent or property tax. Asking people to vote against their interests doesn't work very well.

tomschlick 10y ago
It also screws over people making less than 100k who can't afford a 4k/mo 1br apartment.
- omegaham 10y ago
  If they're newcomers, yes. If they're long-time residents, they're paying $800 a month for that exact same $4k/mo apartment. You're basically asking the long-time residents to vote for measures that will detract from the San Francisco-ness of SF and won't benefit them at all. This is why the NIMBY groups are so powerful. The only way that you're going to beat them is by getting enough newcomers who can overpower said NIMBY folks in municipal elections. That's going to take a long time to happen.

cmurf 10y ago

Umm, the NIMBY politician is being voted in by NIMBY voters. It's not just landlords, it's any homeowner. It's the people looking to move to SF or upgrade within SF. Do you have another idea?

wpietri 10y ago

Your theory here is that there is a one-way relationship between supply and demand, but that's not the case. Increasing supply pushed down on prices, but that can increase demand, sustaining high prices. That's especially important during a boom (or bubble, depending on your view). With the rise in prices, many companies are finally looking at putting offices elsewhere, or allowing more remote work. Building more housing would have only dropped prices if the pace of building outstripped the tech sector's ability to create jobs, which is prodigious. At a recent SF CTO conference, a number of speakers talked up non-SF options, something I wasn't hearing 5-10 years ago. As to who likes the status quo, you ignore that "more building" here mostly means "tear down existing buildings and build bigger ones". That is a gain for the people moving in to the eventual new units. But it's a clear loss for the people forced to move, and a disruption of existing communities. I have yet to meet a SF "build more" advocate so committed that they tore down their own home and replaced it more units.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

The real solution is don't live in SF. Seriously. From what I read here on HN, SF is pretty messed up. So, if someone doesn't want to live somewhere messed up, don't go there to begin with. One can't move near an airport and complain about the noise.

dpark 10y ago
> From what I read here on HN, SF is pretty messed up. You probably shouldn't base your impression of SF entirely on the negative articles you read on HN. SF has some serious issues, but it also has a lot going for it. Namely, the job opportunities if you're in tech are great. The weather is great. Lots of the area is beautiful. It's a liberal area (great if that fits your views), including being LGBT-friendly. It's got some great culture if you're in tech. The biggest problem with SF seems to be housing affordability, and that's frankly not a huge problem for 6-figure earners (not the way it is for the real middle class), despite all the self-pity. 6-figure earners in the bay can afford housing, even if they can't afford what they want to own. > So, if someone doesn't want to live somewhere messed up, don't go there to begin with. This isn't helpful for the nearly million people who already live in SF or the millions who live in the surrounding areas.
- amyjess 10y ago
  > It's got some great culture if you're in tech. Honestly, I find the culture of Silicon Valley's tech industry to be utterly degenerate. Even if the area was affordable, I wouldn't live or work there in large part because SV puts me off. I work in tech, I'm LGBT myself (multiple letters of LGBT at that), and the Dallas area is pretty much everything I want in a city. I honestly don't get why the Bay Area doesn't just expand outward. Sure, you can't go farther west because there's an ocean in the way, but what's stopping it from sprawling north, south, and east? I'm from Dallas, which has experienced booming growth for as far back as I can remember, and we've kept housing prices down without sacrificing suburban culture by simply expanding outwards. Nobody cares that none of the expansion is in Dallas proper; the locals here see each suburb as neighborhoods, not separate cities (albeit, neighborhoods with their own street signage and lane markings, but still). Not just housing; workplaces are moving outwards too. Hell, right now, I live in the burbs, and my workplace is in a suburb that's even farther away from Downtown from where I live.

aetherson 10y ago

San Francisco is the second-densest large city in the United States (after NYC). It is denser than the Tokyo Metropolis (which, note, is not the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, which is less dense yet). (NYC density: 10,831 people/km^2. SF density: 7,152 people/km^2. Tokyo density: 6,200 people/km^2) Adding enough additional units to the city to make major changes to its affordability is not just a quick change to zoning laws. It's not just that there are height restrictions. If you made a quick change to height restrictions, you'd still find high density projects are expensive to build and prone to being blocked by the various other obstacles to building that a high-regulation city like SF has. And also, creating and funding big building projects takes time -- and there's a lot of pent-up demand for SF. AND, if you did add tens of thousands of new dwelling units in SF in the traditionally less-dense areas of the city, you'd totally overwhelm the already struggling transport infrastructure of the city in those areas (and I have no idea about other infrastructure. Could the sewers handle this?). Should we still lower the restrictions on infill development in SF? Yes. The restrictions are well past the reasonable. Will that in a short period of time make a major change to the affordability of the city? Not unless you hand-wave away the entire reality of SF.

kurthr 10y ago
Population density in "Tokyo" is much higher than you describe at 15k/km2 on average with many wards of 300-500k persons that are OVER 20k/km2. The Tokyo Metropolis includes Yokohama which is 30km away (it's like including all of Marin/San Mateo/Oakland), while the Met Area you describe would be like the whole Bay Area down to San Jose and halfway to Sacramento. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo Seoul, HK, Beijing are similar and I think India has much higher densities still. Population densities in many parts of the world are much higher than SF. I could take a picture out of my window right now of a block of ~200x30story apartment blocks right next to each other standing like soldiers. It's not rare. Do I want that for SF? No, but the density isn't that extreme... unless you're talking about total $ borrowing power of the individuals involved.
- WildUtah 10y ago
  Tokyo's built-up area has population density near 150 (in persons/hectare, the SI unit of population density). It's nearly the same in the central wards and in the outer suburbs. Tokyo achieves that density with almost no one living in buildings over five stories high and the vast majority in free-standing single family homes under four stories. San Francisco County, not including any suburbs, averages around 90, excluding big open spaces like the Presidio. The Bay Area is closer to 30, just in built-up areas, not including parks and open space. Manhattan is about 500 and Paris 300. Gp, of course, has fallen into the trap of including open space in his calculations. Most metro statistical aggregates include a lot of surrounding farmland, ocean, and parks and don't reflect density experienced by residents or development intensity on available land.

alexandercrohde 10y ago

As an insider (resident), that's the "solution" if you only look at 1 variable in this huge equation. I think we should ask why people still want to live here when it costs so much. Yes jobs are part of it. But the other fact is that 30 story apartment complexes have negative externalities. Unique, historical victorians are part of what makes this city special (and parks), and if we let them be replaced with apartment complexes it'd destroy a piece of this city's appeal.

xanadohnt 10y ago

I just moved myself, wife, and toddler out of Cole Valley to Seattle. We had to leave because - you guessed it - cost of living. My position is head of engineering for a small SaaS company. I make a _very_ healthy living by any standard yet couldn't afford to stay in SF with a family. It's bitter sweet; the bay area is absolutely amazing. But Seattle is a very close second and we're happy we can afford a comfortable life here. Now my point - We became members of the the Cole Valley neighborhood association and the only involvement my wife and I had was reading the monthly newsletter. The newsletter's tone and NIMBYism was astounding! Laughably-so that it was a constant source of jokes and conversation. My wife and me kept returning to how, for she and I, that perspective was shortsighted; we believe that attitude actively works against protecting the very thing that makes the city great - diversity in arts, culture, and food & beverage. If NIMBYism truly prevailed this would all go away to a homogenous super-elite. ... but maybe that's the goal. :(

Mz 10y ago

I seriously doubt it is that simple. We have lows and policies at both the federal and state level that impact the price of housing. They have a different impact on both individuals and on housing in cities versus smaller towns or rural areas. Trying to "correct" for what federal and state laws and policies do the housing situation in a specific location is quite burdensome. In order to fix some of what goes on in San Francisco, you would need to figure out the impact of those federal and state laws and policies and see if, realistically, anything can be done to counter them at the local level or if you would need to fight them at the state and/or federal level to have any hope of resolving the situation. Just because the problem is obvious in San Francisco and significantly impacting the locals does not remotely mean it originates there and can be solved there.

mtviewdave 10y ago

As an outsider, the solution to the SF housing issues seem pretty simple Complex problems often look simple from a distance. That doesn't mean they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10884840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10884840

rsync 10y ago

"As an outsider, the solution to the SF housing issues seem pretty simple... Vote out the NIMBY politicians and replace them with people who will change zoning laws to allow for more building." You are correct - that is the solution. However, voting for the opposite is also the solution and is an equally valid expression, and result, of democracy. Sometimes democracy delivers results we dislike.