4 ms·

San Francisco grows at a positively glacial pace compared to even mature cities like London. Heck, even downtown Los Angeles rapidly outpaces SF in construction

San Francisco grows at a positively glacial pace compared to even mature cities like London. Heck, even downtown Los Angeles rapidly outpaces SF in construction. While at the same time SF arguably has more money and demand for growth then both those places by a giant margin. I wouldn't be surprised if Sacramento is adding more leasable square footage a year than SF. It's not tech that's ruined the city, it's anti-growth NIMBYs that have caused the existing real estate prices to fly off to the Moon and critical infrastructure to stall in the courts for years. If the argument is about "increased traffic" then they're simply wrong. Forcing people to drive in from El Sobrante or San Leandro because of a refusal to build more convenient housing, that's the policy that causes more traffic. Homes will be built somewhere. If it's against the carbon footprint of new construction then use carbon negative cement, have rooftop gardens, and use solar windows. We need to start transforming our cities anyway. And if the argument is against "greedy developers" then work on not for profit community housing projects built on land trusts. "Build nothing" is not a reasonable option

junkscience2017 9y ago
but NIMBYs still have not had their core claim dismissed: that new residential capacity is not being augmented with better transportation infrastructure or even schools. most NIMBYs gave up on neighborhood parks, they seem just impossible now. amusingly, even retail is being shunned (residential is build, sell and move on, which is why places like Silver Creek in San Jose only have one tiny pathetic market for 5k homes). most cities now have to force retail components on to developers if you live in the US, chances are you attended a public school built by a developer in exchange for development rights, and the school was accessible by a road also built by the developer. the park was set aside as such and not filled with homes; instead the developer paid to put in a swingset and a tennis court now developers refuse to augment transportation infrastructure or build schools (and it is illegal to decline a development due to predicted pressure on local school), and NIMBYs want to know why. all they get in response are downvotes on message boards or personal attacks thousands new rental units are going up along Lawrence Expressway in Santa Clara...but no new road capacity and no new schools, and no parks or open space at all. what kind of a community would you like to live in? in a few years the same urban professionals who are the core of the YIMBYs will be freaking out about no schools or parks, because they are going to want them.
- closeparen 9y ago
  If this is actually NIMBYs' core claim, I'm overjoyed, because it can plausibly be worked with. Building literal greenfield subdivisions is a little different from infill/intensification in a city. Where one developer is building all the homes, of course he needs to provide all the infrastructure and amenities between them, or no one will want to live there. Urban intensification is one site at a time. I hope no single developer is doing so much of the construction that it also makes sense to make him responsible for schools and transit. The whole angle of YIMBYism is to reduce landlords' pricing power through competition. So if ten different developers are operating simultaneously, who pays for what? If only there were some sort of institution for solving these coordination problems. We could call it... municipal government. If only there were some sort of mechanism for it to skim off of real estate value and use the money for public goods. We could call it... property taxes. Maybe "our side" isn't campaigning loudly enough for increasing public investements in public goods, but the support is there. What you're probably seeing pushback for is arguments like, "well, I don't see a school in this proposal for 20 condos, so get lost" and other stuff that looks like a rhetorical strategy for a decision you already made, rather than your actual objection. Road capacity is an interesting one, because people who live in dense walkable environments close to their offices need less transportation. Killing projects in SF based on their traffic/transit impacts sends their potential residents out to Walnut Creek. That's not better. EDIT: I will also add that huge multi-buildings sites developed all at once have a tendency to feel fake. There's a very real risk of uncanny valley when a developer is trying to bootstrap a neighborhood all at once. Organic, incremental growth is something we should celebrate and encourage.
  - kcorbitt 9y ago
    I'm 100% with you, but unfortunately residential property taxes aren't going to be able to cover necessary municipal infrastructure in California until we get Prop 13[0] repealed. It may have been passed with noble intentions (although from the outside it sure looks like existing property holders transparently exploiting newcomers to the area), but the net effect is a systemic underinvestment in local infrastructure since the 1970s. The YIMBYers would love to kill off Prop 13 and return to sane levels of local funding, but it's state wide and still far too politically sacred to be attacked directly. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...
cyberpunk0 9y ago
Maybe not everyone wants to be packed in areas and have their cities turn into an ugly hate-filled clone of new York City?
- kristopolous 9y ago
  That's fine! Mendocino is gorgeous and Ashland Oregon is positively stunning. Grass Valley, Bodega Bay, Eureka, Crescent City, Klamath... there's lots of profoundly wonderful low density affordable places to live. Tens of Thousands of them, the vast majority of the world in fact. But SOMA and Manhatten isn't on that list.
  - boulos 9y ago
    While I agree, your argument doesn’t hold water with affordable housing advocates. There are currently people living in the Tenderloin and SOMA who couldn’t afford it if we let developers simply build only at-market buildings. Now what?
    - ajmurmann 9y ago
      So it's our responsibility to make sure they can stay put in a highly desirable place? I'm more then happy to contribute to make sure people have a roof over their head, are well fed and educated. I'm not willing to support people staying put where they are. That's regardless of the case being like her someone blocking potential prime real estate or like elsewhere people staying in dying communities where there are no opportunities.
      - boulos 9y ago
        I'm not espousing this view. I'm simply pointing out that the folks that are actually active in submitting their opinions to the planning department and planning commission mainly block new development by making this argument. There was a lot of panic when the city supervisors started tweaking the required percentage of below market rate (BMR) housing, and even suggested they might no longer allow the fee payment mechanism (instead of having 20% of units as BMR, contribute a similar dollar amount to an affordable housing fund). I personally think the microhousing projects (funded by those payments) have the most promise, but I worry that it's a repeat of The Projects from the 50s and 60s.
boulos 9y ago
I think the (ongoing!) tale of 75 Howard [1] makes for a good exemplar of the challenge of building in San Francisco. tl;dr: It’s a very fancy building replacing a parking garage on the waterfront, so a well-meaning contingent have been trying to stop them because they’d prefer affordable housing. The YIMBY perspective would be “Who cares what they pay for housing? Let ‘em build.” There’s lots of stuff that gets people riled up. The distinction between San Francisco and places that move ahead regardless is the set of decisions in the 70s and 80s to give the public a say in basically any development. Whether that’s your living space being plunged into darkness or a demand for affordable housing, you can bring your concerns to the planning department and planning commission (mostly in person, sadly). The Planning Department and Commission are woefully understaffed, underfunded, and in an awkward position. The Board of Supervisors can overturn their decision at a moments notice, and thanks again to the conflicting desires of the loudest folks per district (hello Telegraph Hill!), it’s easy to see how they have to be conservative and move at a glacial pace if they want things to stick. The one bright spot, is that thanks to some of the neighborhood plans in SOMA though (which then serve as “the overall community clearly believes X”), thousands of units were built in the last few years finally making a dent in the downtown market. Sadly, we seem to be going backwards with the so-called “Central SOMA Plan” which due to some lobbying now calls for something like 50000 people worth of offices and maybe 7000 people of housing. FWIW, transit studies are required of all large projects because of CEQA unless I’m mistaken. Most of them are garbage though, and see above about the planning department being understaffed and generally outgunned. [1] http://www.socketsite.com/archives/tag/75-howard http://www.socketsite.com/archives/tag/75-howard
sytelus 9y ago
> It's anti-growth NIMBYs who have caused SF real estate prices to fly off to the Moon. It's tech companies who keep insisting that they must have their headquaters in SF. Even YC who should care about giving their founders maximum runway insist to force them upon valley and bleed money on rents while eating ramen. Why? Software does not have any need or reason to be only built in the valley. Sure, you come to valley to hire, get funding but then you should leave! Run away to cheaper places and work from there! There are large number of people in SV exceedingly frustrated by home prices, school situation and commute and they will be more then happy to move out to Austin or wherever else. In fact I would say doing a startup these days in SV is almost brain dead. You would burn too much of your funding in high salaries, office rents and all kind of taxes. Virtually every talented person I know outside of valley does not want to move in to valley because of CoL. If you are startup in valley you are closing door to large pool of these talent while exposing yourself to local talent that is actually non-existent at startup level salaries and have huge attrition anyway.
- rsj_hn 9y ago
  Very few tech companies have their HQ in SF. Of the top 100 tech companies in the valley, only Salesforce has their HQ in SF. Apple, Cisco, Oracle, Intel, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Adobe, Ebay, they all have HQs in the peninsula south of SF. But they all open engineering offices in SF because that's where many (not all) of the engineering talent wants to live. People want to live in SF, and as tech skills are in demand, companies open up offices in locations that make it easier to attract talent. If anything, I see companies trying to hire outside of SF and promote other offices in lower cost areas -- e.g. Adobe in Utah. Over time, the rising cost of living will at some point drive people to want to live elsewhere, and then companies will be under less pressure to purchase expensive office space in SF. But believe me, it's not some irrational desire to make less money that causes tech companies to "insist" on leasing office space in the SF market rather than in the cheaper markets in other parts of the bay. The real problem here is that programming is driven by the young, and they generally don't have the same demand for cheap housing as those who are starting families. Generally speaking, people move out of SF when they have kids and are looking for good schools and more affordable housing. So I guess the cost of providing the more expensive office space for the cheaper (younger) worker works out for tech. So what you need is a sea change in the desirability of living in SF on the part of the younger/cheaper recruits that tech companies need. This is just a business decision at the end of the day.

junkscience2017 9y ago

but NIMBYs still have not had their core claim dismissed: that new residential capacity is not being augmented with better transportation infrastructure or even schools. most NIMBYs gave up on neighborhood parks, they seem just impossible now. amusingly, even retail is being shunned (residential is build, sell and move on, which is why places like Silver Creek in San Jose only have one tiny pathetic market for 5k homes). most cities now have to force retail components on to developers if you live in the US, chances are you attended a public school built by a developer in exchange for development rights, and the school was accessible by a road also built by the developer. the park was set aside as such and not filled with homes; instead the developer paid to put in a swingset and a tennis court now developers refuse to augment transportation infrastructure or build schools (and it is illegal to decline a development due to predicted pressure on local school), and NIMBYs want to know why. all they get in response are downvotes on message boards or personal attacks thousands new rental units are going up along Lawrence Expressway in Santa Clara...but no new road capacity and no new schools, and no parks or open space at all. what kind of a community would you like to live in? in a few years the same urban professionals who are the core of the YIMBYs will be freaking out about no schools or parks, because they are going to want them.

closeparen 9y ago
If this is actually NIMBYs' core claim, I'm overjoyed, because it can plausibly be worked with. Building literal greenfield subdivisions is a little different from infill/intensification in a city. Where one developer is building all the homes, of course he needs to provide all the infrastructure and amenities between them, or no one will want to live there. Urban intensification is one site at a time. I hope no single developer is doing so much of the construction that it also makes sense to make him responsible for schools and transit. The whole angle of YIMBYism is to reduce landlords' pricing power through competition. So if ten different developers are operating simultaneously, who pays for what? If only there were some sort of institution for solving these coordination problems. We could call it... municipal government. If only there were some sort of mechanism for it to skim off of real estate value and use the money for public goods. We could call it... property taxes. Maybe "our side" isn't campaigning loudly enough for increasing public investements in public goods, but the support is there. What you're probably seeing pushback for is arguments like, "well, I don't see a school in this proposal for 20 condos, so get lost" and other stuff that looks like a rhetorical strategy for a decision you already made, rather than your actual objection. Road capacity is an interesting one, because people who live in dense walkable environments close to their offices need less transportation. Killing projects in SF based on their traffic/transit impacts sends their potential residents out to Walnut Creek. That's not better. EDIT: I will also add that huge multi-buildings sites developed all at once have a tendency to feel fake. There's a very real risk of uncanny valley when a developer is trying to bootstrap a neighborhood all at once. Organic, incremental growth is something we should celebrate and encourage.
- kcorbitt 9y ago
  I'm 100% with you, but unfortunately residential property taxes aren't going to be able to cover necessary municipal infrastructure in California until we get Prop 13[0] repealed. It may have been passed with noble intentions (although from the outside it sure looks like existing property holders transparently exploiting newcomers to the area), but the net effect is a systemic underinvestment in local infrastructure since the 1970s. The YIMBYers would love to kill off Prop 13 and return to sane levels of local funding, but it's state wide and still far too politically sacred to be attacked directly. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...

cyberpunk0 9y ago

Maybe not everyone wants to be packed in areas and have their cities turn into an ugly hate-filled clone of new York City?

kristopolous 9y ago
That's fine! Mendocino is gorgeous and Ashland Oregon is positively stunning. Grass Valley, Bodega Bay, Eureka, Crescent City, Klamath... there's lots of profoundly wonderful low density affordable places to live. Tens of Thousands of them, the vast majority of the world in fact. But SOMA and Manhatten isn't on that list.
- boulos 9y ago
  While I agree, your argument doesn’t hold water with affordable housing advocates. There are currently people living in the Tenderloin and SOMA who couldn’t afford it if we let developers simply build only at-market buildings. Now what?
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    So it's our responsibility to make sure they can stay put in a highly desirable place? I'm more then happy to contribute to make sure people have a roof over their head, are well fed and educated. I'm not willing to support people staying put where they are. That's regardless of the case being like her someone blocking potential prime real estate or like elsewhere people staying in dying communities where there are no opportunities.
    - boulos 9y ago
      I'm not espousing this view. I'm simply pointing out that the folks that are actually active in submitting their opinions to the planning department and planning commission mainly block new development by making this argument. There was a lot of panic when the city supervisors started tweaking the required percentage of below market rate (BMR) housing, and even suggested they might no longer allow the fee payment mechanism (instead of having 20% of units as BMR, contribute a similar dollar amount to an affordable housing fund). I personally think the microhousing projects (funded by those payments) have the most promise, but I worry that it's a repeat of The Projects from the 50s and 60s.

boulos 9y ago

I think the (ongoing!) tale of 75 Howard [1] makes for a good exemplar of the challenge of building in San Francisco. tl;dr: It’s a very fancy building replacing a parking garage on the waterfront, so a well-meaning contingent have been trying to stop them because they’d prefer affordable housing. The YIMBY perspective would be “Who cares what they pay for housing? Let ‘em build.” There’s lots of stuff that gets people riled up. The distinction between San Francisco and places that move ahead regardless is the set of decisions in the 70s and 80s to give the public a say in basically any development. Whether that’s your living space being plunged into darkness or a demand for affordable housing, you can bring your concerns to the planning department and planning commission (mostly in person, sadly). The Planning Department and Commission are woefully understaffed, underfunded, and in an awkward position. The Board of Supervisors can overturn their decision at a moments notice, and thanks again to the conflicting desires of the loudest folks per district (hello Telegraph Hill!), it’s easy to see how they have to be conservative and move at a glacial pace if they want things to stick. The one bright spot, is that thanks to some of the neighborhood plans in SOMA though (which then serve as “the overall community clearly believes X”), thousands of units were built in the last few years finally making a dent in the downtown market. Sadly, we seem to be going backwards with the so-called “Central SOMA Plan” which due to some lobbying now calls for something like 50000 people worth of offices and maybe 7000 people of housing. FWIW, transit studies are required of all large projects because of CEQA unless I’m mistaken. Most of them are garbage though, and see above about the planning department being understaffed and generally outgunned. [1] http://www.socketsite.com/archives/tag/75-howard http://www.socketsite.com/archives/tag/75-howard

sytelus 9y ago

> It's anti-growth NIMBYs who have caused SF real estate prices to fly off to the Moon. It's tech companies who keep insisting that they must have their headquaters in SF. Even YC who should care about giving their founders maximum runway insist to force them upon valley and bleed money on rents while eating ramen. Why? Software does not have any need or reason to be only built in the valley. Sure, you come to valley to hire, get funding but then you should leave! Run away to cheaper places and work from there! There are large number of people in SV exceedingly frustrated by home prices, school situation and commute and they will be more then happy to move out to Austin or wherever else. In fact I would say doing a startup these days in SV is almost brain dead. You would burn too much of your funding in high salaries, office rents and all kind of taxes. Virtually every talented person I know outside of valley does not want to move in to valley because of CoL. If you are startup in valley you are closing door to large pool of these talent while exposing yourself to local talent that is actually non-existent at startup level salaries and have huge attrition anyway.

rsj_hn 9y ago
Very few tech companies have their HQ in SF. Of the top 100 tech companies in the valley, only Salesforce has their HQ in SF. Apple, Cisco, Oracle, Intel, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Adobe, Ebay, they all have HQs in the peninsula south of SF. But they all open engineering offices in SF because that's where many (not all) of the engineering talent wants to live. People want to live in SF, and as tech skills are in demand, companies open up offices in locations that make it easier to attract talent. If anything, I see companies trying to hire outside of SF and promote other offices in lower cost areas -- e.g. Adobe in Utah. Over time, the rising cost of living will at some point drive people to want to live elsewhere, and then companies will be under less pressure to purchase expensive office space in SF. But believe me, it's not some irrational desire to make less money that causes tech companies to "insist" on leasing office space in the SF market rather than in the cheaper markets in other parts of the bay. The real problem here is that programming is driven by the young, and they generally don't have the same demand for cheap housing as those who are starting families. Generally speaking, people move out of SF when they have kids and are looking for good schools and more affordable housing. So I guess the cost of providing the more expensive office space for the cheaper (younger) worker works out for tech. So what you need is a sea change in the desirability of living in SF on the part of the younger/cheaper recruits that tech companies need. This is just a business decision at the end of the day.