9 ms·

I'd be so happy if some big entity (Google/Apple/YC) decided one day to relocate a big portion of their existence to a new place. That time when a city is just

by pen2l 10y ago

I'd be so happy if some big entity (Google/Apple/YC) decided one day to relocate a big portion of their existence to a new place. That time when a city is just being born, when new things new restaurants new houses are being built is so special, it would be so different from dealing with the current line of rentiers waiting to pounce on inflated rent prices.

DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
I would think that once the relocation was public knowledge, well-funded property speculators would beat potential renters to the punch, leading to the same problem all over again. The first solution that comes to mind is to legislate that certain pieces of property must be the legal primary residence of the owner.
- wbl 10y ago
  How about legalizing building? SF could easily accommodate far more people.
  - iamcasen 10y ago
    Even if it was easier to build in SF, the cost of investment is SO HUGE, that the only way to recoup it is to make it a luxury high-rise that does nothing for the non-wealthy residents of the city. Developers of new buildings absolutely do not want rents to drop, because otherwise there would be no reason to develop the area. The cost of land is extremely high.
    - refurb 10y ago
      This doesn't make sense. If I build a ton of luxury apartments and fill them with willing buyers, then won't those buyers be giving up their own housing? Overall, the total amount of housing increases which should drop prices.
      - iamcasen 10y ago
        If it costs you 500,000,000 dollars to build a building, you need to charge a certain amount of rent for the investment to pan out. Hint: it won't be cheap.
- tptacek 10y ago
  No, it wouldn't, for at least two big reasons. First: SFBA has geographical and political constraints that make housing particularly problematic. Other major US cities, and even college towns like Ann Arbor, don't have those same problems. Secondly, the Bay Area housing shortage is a phenomenon of hundreds of companies being located in the same area. No one company, even Google, could have that same impact on another metro area. You're only going to stand a chance of recreating the SFBA housing shortage (and it's a small chance) if the whole Bay Area market moves wholesale to a single new place.
  - pizzetta 10y ago
    The biggest constraint would seem to be political or specifically lack of willingness to update building codes in one of the largest cities by area in ca -SJ. Land is so very underutilized in San Jose. Its development on the surface looks more like an agglomeration of suburbs rather than a city proper. If they allowed for new code to allow density in the city of San Jose alone, it would go a good way to alleviating the housing shortage. SJ is over 3x the surface area of SF but has barely 20% more residents in that area. Imagine if they just doubled density --you'd allow for the absorption of an extra million residents. If they only upped the density by 50% they'd allow for over an extra 500,000 residents --that would alleviate the issue by itself. There is so much poorly built stock from the 60s and 70s that it would not only renew the city but it would become the undisputed powerhouse of the bay area.
    - 0x445442 10y ago
      Why not just encourage Facebook, Google et al. to move some divisions a little bit east to the San Joaquine Valley? I'm guessing the city governments of Stockton, Tracy, Fresno, Visalia would be amiable.
      - pizzetta 10y ago
        For that matter they could move up to places with better weather like Eureka or Reading. However, given that companies prefer to stay in the local scene and there is underutilized land, it would seem like something worth looking into given the demand as well as availability, if not government willingness.
- vostok 10y ago
  > The first solution that comes to mind is to legislate that certain pieces of property must be the legal primary residence of the owner. I am not sure I understand this solution. Are you saying that San Francisco's housing problems are not caused by demand that far outstrips supply? This proposal would just mean that prices stay high, but more people buy instead of rent.
- yourapostasy 10y ago
  You're contending with some very intractable land use and land economics issues, and effectively addressing them will be very difficult without addressing some of these issues, like preferential access to capital over many other asset classes, preferential terms, preferential tax treatment, preferential infrastructure treatment, etc. This doesn't even start to get into the fact that out of all asset classes, property is an extremely common and popular asset class held and upholds a substantial portion of the wealth of most of the political class around the world. Legislating against property as wealth goes directly against their personal financial interests. Practical solutions that have a hope of actually taking effect within the next 2-3 years must be deployable without the aid of legislation. One way to mitigate speculators is to put up a credible threat that you (the company) wield the ability to unilaterally and virtually overnight make their speculation worthless. If you are able to structure a company town such that it is Google-level amenities and infrastructure attractive and physically entirely self-contained (even water sourcing, water treatment, energy generation, recycling/waste management, schools, parks, restaurants, and retail shops, etc., are part of the company town), then demonstrate the capability to move everything at a moment's notice within a month or two and leave behind just bare foundation ties, then after the first such move that bankrupts the speculators that call the company's bluff, future speculators will find it extraordinarily difficult to secure loans to speculate with. Lots and lots of details I'm leaving out, and this wouldn't be without its problems and challenges, but if you really want to slice the Gordian Knot of high property prices inflating employee compensation, then it will take an outside-the-box action of this magnitude to do so.
maxsilver 10y ago
> I'd be so happy if some big entity (Google/Apple/YC) decided one day to relocate a big portion of their existence to a new place. That's already been tried -- unfortunately, it just moves the problem to the new place. Housing costs rise sharply following wherever you move the company. It's the same exact problem, moved to a new place and hurting new groups of people. (See Portland, Seattle, Denver for examples)
- deathanatos 10y ago
  No doubt bringing in tech workers will likely cause prices will rise, but will they rise to the current SF levels? If they don't, assuming that the pay also doesn't drop too much, then it might be worth it for some individuals, no? Glancing at Denver, downtown 1 bedroom ~700 sq ft apartments seem to run ~$1500/mo. That's ~$500/mo cheaper than way out in the suburbs of SF; and in my experience at least $1000/mo cheaper than SF itself. And the Denver area has houses for less than $1M, so home ownership might even be an option, whereas in the Bay it's been rendered all but a pipe dream.
  - maxsilver 10y ago
    > but will they rise to the current SF levels? Once you include salaries in the inclusion, it could be worse than SF. For example, Michigan's urban apartments are already often more expensive than Seattle (when measured as percent of median income needed to cover average urban rents). The sticker prices are vastly misleading because many folks get SF-level triple-figure salaries, and can pull those anywhere in the world. They can shop across entire housing markets. They see a $600k condo in say, Milwaukee, and think "wow, that would be so cheap (on my San Francisco salary)". But 99% of regular people can't do any of that, they have to afford local housing using local wages. And regular people still need housing just as much as developers do. A $600k house might as well cost 6-million dollars, because they are both equally impossible to ever afford for a regular person. > If they don't, assuming that the pay also doesn't drop too much, then it might be worth it for some individuals, no? For a few individuals, yes absolutely. When we promote this idea of "fix housing affordability by spreading the problem everywhere", we do alleviate a little bit of pain for technology workers and give them a shot of home ownership (which is great). But we do this at the expense of permanently hurting housing availability for a huge swath of other people -- something vitally important, but often gets overlooked when people talk about housing by hyper-focusing on just San Francisco's problem, and ignoring the crisis happening in all of the other cities nationwide.
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by pen2l 10y ago

DoofusOfDeath 10y ago

I would think that once the relocation was public knowledge, well-funded property speculators would beat potential renters to the punch, leading to the same problem all over again. The first solution that comes to mind is to legislate that certain pieces of property must be the legal primary residence of the owner.

wbl 10y ago
How about legalizing building? SF could easily accommodate far more people.
- iamcasen 10y ago
  Even if it was easier to build in SF, the cost of investment is SO HUGE, that the only way to recoup it is to make it a luxury high-rise that does nothing for the non-wealthy residents of the city. Developers of new buildings absolutely do not want rents to drop, because otherwise there would be no reason to develop the area. The cost of land is extremely high.
  - refurb 10y ago
    This doesn't make sense. If I build a ton of luxury apartments and fill them with willing buyers, then won't those buyers be giving up their own housing? Overall, the total amount of housing increases which should drop prices.
    - iamcasen 10y ago
      If it costs you 500,000,000 dollars to build a building, you need to charge a certain amount of rent for the investment to pan out. Hint: it won't be cheap.
tptacek 10y ago
No, it wouldn't, for at least two big reasons. First: SFBA has geographical and political constraints that make housing particularly problematic. Other major US cities, and even college towns like Ann Arbor, don't have those same problems. Secondly, the Bay Area housing shortage is a phenomenon of hundreds of companies being located in the same area. No one company, even Google, could have that same impact on another metro area. You're only going to stand a chance of recreating the SFBA housing shortage (and it's a small chance) if the whole Bay Area market moves wholesale to a single new place.
- pizzetta 10y ago
  The biggest constraint would seem to be political or specifically lack of willingness to update building codes in one of the largest cities by area in ca -SJ. Land is so very underutilized in San Jose. Its development on the surface looks more like an agglomeration of suburbs rather than a city proper. If they allowed for new code to allow density in the city of San Jose alone, it would go a good way to alleviating the housing shortage. SJ is over 3x the surface area of SF but has barely 20% more residents in that area. Imagine if they just doubled density --you'd allow for the absorption of an extra million residents. If they only upped the density by 50% they'd allow for over an extra 500,000 residents --that would alleviate the issue by itself. There is so much poorly built stock from the 60s and 70s that it would not only renew the city but it would become the undisputed powerhouse of the bay area.
  - 0x445442 10y ago
    Why not just encourage Facebook, Google et al. to move some divisions a little bit east to the San Joaquine Valley? I'm guessing the city governments of Stockton, Tracy, Fresno, Visalia would be amiable.
    - pizzetta 10y ago
      For that matter they could move up to places with better weather like Eureka or Reading. However, given that companies prefer to stay in the local scene and there is underutilized land, it would seem like something worth looking into given the demand as well as availability, if not government willingness.
vostok 10y ago
> The first solution that comes to mind is to legislate that certain pieces of property must be the legal primary residence of the owner. I am not sure I understand this solution. Are you saying that San Francisco's housing problems are not caused by demand that far outstrips supply? This proposal would just mean that prices stay high, but more people buy instead of rent.
yourapostasy 10y ago
You're contending with some very intractable land use and land economics issues, and effectively addressing them will be very difficult without addressing some of these issues, like preferential access to capital over many other asset classes, preferential terms, preferential tax treatment, preferential infrastructure treatment, etc. This doesn't even start to get into the fact that out of all asset classes, property is an extremely common and popular asset class held and upholds a substantial portion of the wealth of most of the political class around the world. Legislating against property as wealth goes directly against their personal financial interests. Practical solutions that have a hope of actually taking effect within the next 2-3 years must be deployable without the aid of legislation. One way to mitigate speculators is to put up a credible threat that you (the company) wield the ability to unilaterally and virtually overnight make their speculation worthless. If you are able to structure a company town such that it is Google-level amenities and infrastructure attractive and physically entirely self-contained (even water sourcing, water treatment, energy generation, recycling/waste management, schools, parks, restaurants, and retail shops, etc., are part of the company town), then demonstrate the capability to move everything at a moment's notice within a month or two and leave behind just bare foundation ties, then after the first such move that bankrupts the speculators that call the company's bluff, future speculators will find it extraordinarily difficult to secure loans to speculate with. Lots and lots of details I'm leaving out, and this wouldn't be without its problems and challenges, but if you really want to slice the Gordian Knot of high property prices inflating employee compensation, then it will take an outside-the-box action of this magnitude to do so.

maxsilver 10y ago

> I'd be so happy if some big entity (Google/Apple/YC) decided one day to relocate a big portion of their existence to a new place. That's already been tried -- unfortunately, it just moves the problem to the new place. Housing costs rise sharply following wherever you move the company. It's the same exact problem, moved to a new place and hurting new groups of people. (See Portland, Seattle, Denver for examples)

deathanatos 10y ago
No doubt bringing in tech workers will likely cause prices will rise, but will they rise to the current SF levels? If they don't, assuming that the pay also doesn't drop too much, then it might be worth it for some individuals, no? Glancing at Denver, downtown 1 bedroom ~700 sq ft apartments seem to run ~$1500/mo. That's ~$500/mo cheaper than way out in the suburbs of SF; and in my experience at least $1000/mo cheaper than SF itself. And the Denver area has houses for less than $1M, so home ownership might even be an option, whereas in the Bay it's been rendered all but a pipe dream.
- maxsilver 10y ago
  > but will they rise to the current SF levels? Once you include salaries in the inclusion, it could be worse than SF. For example, Michigan's urban apartments are already often more expensive than Seattle (when measured as percent of median income needed to cover average urban rents). The sticker prices are vastly misleading because many folks get SF-level triple-figure salaries, and can pull those anywhere in the world. They can shop across entire housing markets. They see a $600k condo in say, Milwaukee, and think "wow, that would be so cheap (on my San Francisco salary)". But 99% of regular people can't do any of that, they have to afford local housing using local wages. And regular people still need housing just as much as developers do. A $600k house might as well cost 6-million dollars, because they are both equally impossible to ever afford for a regular person. > If they don't, assuming that the pay also doesn't drop too much, then it might be worth it for some individuals, no? For a few individuals, yes absolutely. When we promote this idea of "fix housing affordability by spreading the problem everywhere", we do alleviate a little bit of pain for technology workers and give them a shot of home ownership (which is great). But we do this at the expense of permanently hurting housing availability for a huge swath of other people -- something vitally important, but often gets overlooked when people talk about housing by hyper-focusing on just San Francisco's problem, and ignoring the crisis happening in all of the other cities nationwide.

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deleted 10y ago

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