5 ms·
> it'll only stop when everyone says enough is enough and leaves Or, alternatively, when enough people start voting in politicians who would allow building lot
by sampo 9y ago
> it'll only stop when everyone says enough is enough and leaves
Or, alternatively, when enough people start voting in politicians who would allow building lots of new homes in central locations.
Manhattan has 3.9× the density of San Francisco. At Manhattan density, the City of San Francisco could house 2.5 million more people.
- timr 9y agoThis is such a tiresome argument. Even if you could suddenly build all of the housing required to reduce prices on a short timescale, you'd have to solve the infrastructural problems that come with it (roads and transit), and convince developers to build into a massive loss (i.e. I am a developer, and you expect me to build and finance at today's costs, and pay for it with tomorrow's lower rents). Construction is a solution that takes long amounts of time to find a lower equilibrium, because nobody knowingly finances real estate projects into a falling market. In contrast, companies can build branch offices quickly. Spread the love.
- ummonk 9y agoEven with a massive drop in rents, rents would still more than cover development costs. The limiting factor isn't the cost to construct high density housing units - it's the difficulty of getting permission to build high density housing units.
- abritinthebay 9y agoInstead lets do nothing? That is the tiresome argument.
- moultano 9y agoBuilding more housing decreases traffic as people move to shorten their commutes. Building offices without housing is what increases traffic, which is what most cities in the bay are currently doing.
- logfromblammo 9y agoIndeed. If the offices were in the same building as the homes, some of that commuter traffic even moves to the elevators and stairwells, and never leaves the site.
- bluGill 9y agoNot really. It changes things, but in the location of the new housing things get busier. The major hiways elsewhere see less traffic and the average is probably better, but the local situation needs to be fixed to handle it. Of course ideally the local situation would be everybody works within a couple blocks and so the elevators and sidewalks can handle it. Most zoning boards hate this idea though.
- moultano 9y agoIt's a classic prisoner's dilemma. If everywhere built housing, traffic would get better everywhere, but no one individually has an incentive to build it because on its own it makes traffic in the immediate vicinity worse.
- several 9y agoNot necessarily bluGill. If new housing is built across most of the city or state, there could well be less thru-traffic from the suburbs into the city. I do agree with you though that if new housing is only built in a small number of areas, those areas could very well see more traffic. A goal of SB-827 was to increase housing across the entire state, particularly near areas well served by mass transit, in the hope it would result in less people commuting by car.
- bluGill 9y agoYou are mistaking long term with short term. Short term it is impossible to build/rebuild housing. Short term that street is no longer big enough. Short term you will discover unintended consequences that don't work out for you. Long term we will (as always) re-create the entire city. Long term we will notice that the street is too busy and do something about it. Long term we might even be do something about it people not working close to their home. Long term will will figure out what the true consequences of our decisions are and make further decisions to mitigate them which in turn will result in a new set of unintended decisions.
- sampo 9y ago> Even if you could suddenly build all of the housing required to reduce prices on a short timescale, you'd have to solve the infrastructural problems that come with it The value of new multi-story units along good commute in the most expensive housing market in the world would be so high that some taxation of that profit would be more than enough to fund building the required commuter rail or subway lines and also new schools. At least in an ideal world. This is how Tokyo has funded new commuter rail lines. The increase of the land value in the new to-be-build neighborhood covers the cost of serving the neighborhood with a rail line: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2011/10/why-tokyos-privately-owned-rail-systems-work-so-well/389/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2011/10/why-tokyos-pr... But I am not sure whether California has the will and skill to tax those profits, and to direct that money for those purposes.
- d1zzy 9y agoAnd that's why we can't have nice things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- timr 9y ago"This is how Tokyo has funded new commuter rail lines." Japan also runs a massive defecit relative to GDP (~250% vs our ~100% value). They spend like drunken sailors on public infrastructure.
- sampo 9y agoLike the article explains, Tokyo's rail system is privately owned and operated.
- timr 9y agoI was talking about all of Japan, not just Tokyo. In any case, some of the lines are private, some aren't, and many were privatized after construction. The Tokyo Metro, in particular, was almost entirely built using public funds, and become "private" in 2004: "Tokyo Metro is operated by Tokyo Metro Co., Ltd. (東京地下鉄株式会社 Tōkyō Chikatetsu Kabushiki-gaisha), a private company jointly owned by the Japanese government and the Tokyo metropolitan government. The company replaced the Teito Rapid Transit Authority (帝都高速度交通営団 Teito Kōsokudo Kōtsū Eidan), commonly known as Eidan or TRTA, on April 1, 2004. TRTA was administered by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and jointly funded by the national and metropolitan governments. It was formed in 1941, although its oldest lines date back to 1927 with the opening of the Tokyo Underground Railway the same year." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Metro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Metro Most Japanese cities' subway systems are not private, and even many of the "private" train lines were built using extensive public subsidy.
- bluGill 9y agoFortunately for developers it won't be suddenly. Most land in the city is already occupied: even if the construction and banking industry could rebuild the entire city in two years it takes longer than that to get the current land owners to agree to sell their current house which works just fine for them right now. Companies only build new offices quickly because they are willing to locate to any new suburb that currently has land. Downtown areas that are already well developed might be more desirable but it takes time to get the land rights. (note they are always re-building something downtown in nearly any city, but it wasn't an overnight thing to decide to do that)
- timr 9y ago"Fortunately for developers it won't be suddenly. Most land in the city is already occupied: even if the construction and banking industry could rebuild the entire city in two years it takes longer than that to get the current land owners to agree to sell their current house which works just fine for them right now." Well, yes. That's my point: construction takes a long time to change housing prices. It's not a universal, drop-the-mic response to every debate.
- nerfhammer 9y agohow was population growth ever possible before?
- test6554 9y agoI feel like if you were to build a skyscraper full of condos and apartments in downtown SF, you could get massive rents from it. Especially if you were the only one doing it. The only problem would be if everyone was doing it. I guess nobody has the money to buy a building in downtown SF, and anybody that owns a building in downtown SF doesn't want to tear it down and lose the cashflow for a whole year or so.
- dionidium 9y agoTo forestall responses decrying "Manhattanization," remember that every borough of New York City (except Staten Island) has a higher population density than San Francisco. San Francisco could add a couple hundred thousand people if just got as dense as Queens. At Brooklyn's density, the population would double.
- sampo 9y agoAlso building like Paris (France) or Barcelona (Spain) would add 1.7 or 1.1 million people to San Francisco. Paris: 2.9× density, Barcelona: 2.2×.