4 ms·

Well, obviously people who already own apartments nearby don't want values of their own ones - mostly purchased on mortgage - to fall, because it could ruin the

Well, obviously people who already own apartments nearby don't want values of their own ones - mostly purchased on mortgage - to fall, because it could ruin their retirement. Within the democratic society, there is no fix for this problem.

sdhgaiojfsa 9y ago
The other democratic societies who have solved this problem seem to belie your claim. The issue here is that the unit of democracy for this problem is too local.
- anovikov 9y ago
  Simple fix: even MORE strict zoning and ban of private ownership on individual apartments. They all will be owner by the city itself and rented out. Basically, back to Soviet Union.
  - sdhgaiojfsa 9y ago
    That is a bad idea. The Soviet Union was a shitty place to live, and its economic policies were disastrous. As I pointed out in the comment you're replying to, this problem has already been well-solved by simply expanding the locus of control for zoning so that the interests served by it are more global.
    - anovikov 9y ago
      That's what i meant. Sacking democracy and market economy to fix these things is an overkill and there is hardly a better way. European cities try to fix it in a half-Commie way: try to keep as many apartment buildings in public property and lease them subsidized, with rental contracts dating from early post-WWII days and passed as inheritance. Same thing: keep the place to incumbents - only with no ability to cash out.
mattlondon 9y ago
I'm not sure a few extra apartments in a city of thousands and thousands is going to reduce the value of anything nearby by any appreciable amount? Got any data about it? From my experience in London prices just keep on going up and up (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-house-price-index-hpi-for-january-2017 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-house-price-index-hpi-...) despite adding more and more (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/house-prices/london-house-building-set-plummet-half-sales-dwindle/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/house-prices/london-hous...) apart from more recently, but that is due to brexit - for years and years prior to brexit the prices just kept on going up despite new blocks of apartments being built everywhere they could find an old petrol station or pub or old school or house-with-unusually-large-garden they could knock down and replace with a block of 30-40 apartments. There may obviously wider economic factors going in to this - i.e. construction because prices are going up, but I suspect SF will be very similar in this regard.
- Atheros 9y ago
  > I'm not sure a few extra apartments in a city of thousands and thousands is going to reduce the value of anything nearby by any appreciable amount? No shit it won't. We need vastly more housing. But you're just being defeatist if your attitude is to give up if you are unable to construct enough to get prices to drop. You are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
  - mattlondon 9y ago
    My attitude is not to give up. Of course there needs to be more housing built. The problem is, where do you build? Sounds like in this article there is a prime spot that is redeveloping a brownfield site - fine. But eventually you start running out of space. Eventually you need to build elsewhere - you cant simply just keep on piling more and more and more and density into a city. There is already a trend in London of literally piling on more density by adding additional floors to existing apartment buildings (https://www.theguardian.com/money/2000/may/21/observercashsection.theobserver1 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2000/may/21/observercashse...). How many times can you build on-top of an existing building? Eventually the amount of land runs out, especially in a tiny little mini-city like SF. I think it is when density gets "too high" that the NIMBY problems start to kick in - e.g. in my area in inner-outer-London on-street parking space is already super-competitive and local services like doctors and the tube are already super-busy, yet then we got a proposed development of adding 6000 (six thousand!) 2-and-3 bed apartments with zero parking spaces allocated, and absolutely zero money or effort going into improving the local infrastructure - no new schools, no new doctors, no new libraries, no new bus stops/routes, no new improvements to tube stations. You cant just add 12,000-18,000 new people into a local area and expect no one to own a car or need to go to the doctors etc etc. It is this kind of density-overload that understandably gets people pissed off. In the UK, the effort needs to go beyond just building more and more and more AND MORE apartments in London, but to also include persuading employers to not be in London and investing in decent infrastructure elsewhere where there is space. I suspect it is the same for SF and a lot of employers in the valley. The employers say they are there because the talent is there, and the talent say they are there because the employees are there. Someone needs to make the first move.
Atheros 9y ago
A national land value tax would fix it. The tax could be phased in slowly so that property prices have time to adjust downward. When it costs NIMBYs money to NIMBY they'll eventually stop.

sdhgaiojfsa 9y ago

The other democratic societies who have solved this problem seem to belie your claim. The issue here is that the unit of democracy for this problem is too local.

anovikov 9y ago
Simple fix: even MORE strict zoning and ban of private ownership on individual apartments. They all will be owner by the city itself and rented out. Basically, back to Soviet Union.
- sdhgaiojfsa 9y ago
  That is a bad idea. The Soviet Union was a shitty place to live, and its economic policies were disastrous. As I pointed out in the comment you're replying to, this problem has already been well-solved by simply expanding the locus of control for zoning so that the interests served by it are more global.
  - anovikov 9y ago
    That's what i meant. Sacking democracy and market economy to fix these things is an overkill and there is hardly a better way. European cities try to fix it in a half-Commie way: try to keep as many apartment buildings in public property and lease them subsidized, with rental contracts dating from early post-WWII days and passed as inheritance. Same thing: keep the place to incumbents - only with no ability to cash out.

mattlondon 9y ago

I'm not sure a few extra apartments in a city of thousands and thousands is going to reduce the value of anything nearby by any appreciable amount? Got any data about it? From my experience in London prices just keep on going up and up (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-house-price-index-hpi-for-january-2017 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-house-price-index-hpi-...) despite adding more and more (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/house-prices/london-house-building-set-plummet-half-sales-dwindle/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/house-prices/london-hous...) apart from more recently, but that is due to brexit - for years and years prior to brexit the prices just kept on going up despite new blocks of apartments being built everywhere they could find an old petrol station or pub or old school or house-with-unusually-large-garden they could knock down and replace with a block of 30-40 apartments. There may obviously wider economic factors going in to this - i.e. construction because prices are going up, but I suspect SF will be very similar in this regard.

Atheros 9y ago
> I'm not sure a few extra apartments in a city of thousands and thousands is going to reduce the value of anything nearby by any appreciable amount? No shit it won't. We need vastly more housing. But you're just being defeatist if your attitude is to give up if you are unable to construct enough to get prices to drop. You are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
- mattlondon 9y ago
  My attitude is not to give up. Of course there needs to be more housing built. The problem is, where do you build? Sounds like in this article there is a prime spot that is redeveloping a brownfield site - fine. But eventually you start running out of space. Eventually you need to build elsewhere - you cant simply just keep on piling more and more and more and density into a city. There is already a trend in London of literally piling on more density by adding additional floors to existing apartment buildings (https://www.theguardian.com/money/2000/may/21/observercashsection.theobserver1 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2000/may/21/observercashse...). How many times can you build on-top of an existing building? Eventually the amount of land runs out, especially in a tiny little mini-city like SF. I think it is when density gets "too high" that the NIMBY problems start to kick in - e.g. in my area in inner-outer-London on-street parking space is already super-competitive and local services like doctors and the tube are already super-busy, yet then we got a proposed development of adding 6000 (six thousand!) 2-and-3 bed apartments with zero parking spaces allocated, and absolutely zero money or effort going into improving the local infrastructure - no new schools, no new doctors, no new libraries, no new bus stops/routes, no new improvements to tube stations. You cant just add 12,000-18,000 new people into a local area and expect no one to own a car or need to go to the doctors etc etc. It is this kind of density-overload that understandably gets people pissed off. In the UK, the effort needs to go beyond just building more and more and more AND MORE apartments in London, but to also include persuading employers to not be in London and investing in decent infrastructure elsewhere where there is space. I suspect it is the same for SF and a lot of employers in the valley. The employers say they are there because the talent is there, and the talent say they are there because the employees are there. Someone needs to make the first move.

Atheros 9y ago

A national land value tax would fix it. The tax could be phased in slowly so that property prices have time to adjust downward. When it costs NIMBYs money to NIMBY they'll eventually stop.