7 ms·

Crazy how of all the recommendations put forward in the article, none of them actually say what the article admits! That is, inclusionary zoning, or any other a

Crazy how of all the recommendations put forward in the article, none of them actually say what the article admits! That is, inclusionary zoning, or any other affordability mandate put on private developers, is a failure and cannot work. If you goal is to make lots of cheap subsidized housing, mandating developers to give away 30% of their profits will certainly cause a ton of other issues. We see IZ popping up everywhere because politicians get to claim they are helping the most needy without raising taxes or really asking anything from the normal citizen. In fact, we can see here that the side effects are numerous and quite scary. And yet, SF tries and tries to magically create more cheap housing by telling developers they must do xyz without any care or reason to the market realities.

lemoncucumber 8y ago
I'm not convinced that inclusionary zoning cannot work as you say. However, if it's discouraging development as much as the article suggests, I think it's clear that it's not working as it's currently implemented. I think it would be really interesting to see more government policies that are designed to be self-correcting in a way that's more akin to how markets work (or at least how they work in econ textbooks). For example, inclusionary zoning requirements could dynamically change depending on how much new housing is being built. When less is being built, requirements would go down and when a lot is being built they could go up. One would hope that this would also work well in another way: when more is being built, it's likely that housing costs are rising and so more affordable housing is needed.
- matchbok 8y ago
  Maybe. But really, any mandate is going to distort supply and push the costs to other people. What used to be taxpayer-funded housing is now market-rate housing that is funding subsidized apartments. It's really impossible to know how much housing isn't getting built or how much more expensive market-rate apartments are because of these programs. It's a hidden cost - and probably why it's so popular.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Yes, they need to straight up just build more housing. It doesn’t matter if that housing is for high-income residents or low-income residents. Every housing unit built helps make a city more affordable. https://gizmodo.com/how-building-expensive-new-housing-actually-helps-creat-1763423240 https://gizmodo.com/how-building-expensive-new-housing-actua...
- protomyth 8y ago
  Yes, they need to straight up just build more housing. Isn't it technically that they need to build massive housing that can get to the jobs in SF in a reasonable commute time? So either they need to figure out a way to get commuters into the city quickly (a mass transit solution) or they need to build a lot more housing where current single family housing is. I guess if they want the look of the city to stay the same they really need a get-them-in-and-out plan that actually works.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    I'm having technical difficulties and not readily finding a heat map. Trulia used to have one, but may have discontinued it. However, if you look at a heat map of housing prices, the entire SF Bay Area is very expensive. This is likely in part because what you are proposing is already how SF handles things: Just fob the housing issue off onto neighboring cities, not my problem. We just do crazy high paid jobs and fuck you when it comes to housing. It's part of why their homeless problem is so very bad that I have read articles about how much visitors to the city express horror to the hotel staff and even indicate "I don't ever want to come back here again!" So the odds are good that there is a real cost involved in acting like this is not their problem. I left California to find more affordable housing. I was homeless in California for some years and willing to move to find affordable housing. I moved from San Diego County to Fresno, which has much more affordable housing than most of California. I've done a lot of research into housing issues for many years, starting well before I became homeless because I wanted to be an urban planner before life got in the way. I've also done a lot of research into housing options within California in specific before I threw my hands up and left the state. California has about 25% of the nation's homeless population while having only about 12% of the nation's overall population. Surveys suggest that about 90% of the homeless were residents of California prior to ending up on the street. They have more people sleeping rough than is typical of other states and, IIRC, they have more chronic homeless. There are lots of problems that grow out of that. There is a nationwide spike in Hepatitis, which can be deadly, and can be potentially traced to San Diego as its origin and potentially to the homeless population there. The CDC has kept that on the down low, so most people aren't aware of this spike and the death's associated with it. I think San Francisco and California are both making big, big mistakes in acting like this is not really a thing they need to buckle down and resolve. California is importing rich people, exporting poor people and dealing with increasingly intense crises of various sorts. I left. There probably isn't a week that goes by where I don't say (or hear from one of my sons) "Thank god, we moved to civilization. Life is so much better here." So it isn't really my problem anymore. But I think folks there who are refusing to really deal with this in some kind of effective manner are idiots, cutting their own throats.
phil248 8y ago
Is there any evidenced that the inclusionary rule is deterring private developers? Because it certainly is not in New York City.
reaperducer 8y ago
If you goal is to make lots of cheap subsidized housing, mandating developers to give away 30% of their profits will certainly cause a ton of other issues. I'm not familiar with San Francisco's "Inclusionary zoning," but in Chicago, developers are required to have 20% of their residences meet affordable housing guidelines. If the developer doesn't want to have 20% "poors" living in the building, the developer can build those units in another building within one mile. If that doesn't work, the developer can a make payment in cash to the Chicago Housing Authority and it will build the housing. This payment must be made before the developer's building permits are issued. For a typical 40-story residential skyscraper, the payment is about $2 million, and is what most developers seem to choose. Chicago still has affordability issues, but these payments aren't stopping development at all. The city continues on a high-rise residential development boom.
- matchbok 8y ago
  There is 0 proof that these mandates are not curtailing development. Sure, things are still getting built, but we have no idea what could be happening absent these mandates. This is the type of thinking that puts these failed programs into reality in the first place. "We don't immediately see anything wrong, so let's keep going". Fundamentally, it's a huge cost for developers and that money has to come from somewhere.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    There is 0 proof that these mandates are not curtailing development And there's 0 proof that these mandates are curtailing development. Why do you presume one and not the other?
    - matchbok 8y ago
      Because it's a distorted market. There has to be tradeoffs here otherwise developers would already be doing the things these laws are making them do.
CPLX 8y ago
> That is, inclusionary zoning, or any other affordability mandate put on private developers, is a failure and cannot work. We've been doing it in NYC for decades, it works just fine. Of course it only works if you understand the premise that buildings can be more than three stories tall.
- matchbok 8y ago
  Last time I checked NYC still had a massive affordability crisis.
  - CPLX 8y ago
    To some extent. It’s nothing like San Francisco. And rents in Brooklyn have actually been falling noticeably, precisely because a massive amount of new apartment stock has gone up in the last five years.

lemoncucumber 8y ago

I'm not convinced that inclusionary zoning cannot work as you say. However, if it's discouraging development as much as the article suggests, I think it's clear that it's not working as it's currently implemented. I think it would be really interesting to see more government policies that are designed to be self-correcting in a way that's more akin to how markets work (or at least how they work in econ textbooks). For example, inclusionary zoning requirements could dynamically change depending on how much new housing is being built. When less is being built, requirements would go down and when a lot is being built they could go up. One would hope that this would also work well in another way: when more is being built, it's likely that housing costs are rising and so more affordable housing is needed.

matchbok 8y ago
Maybe. But really, any mandate is going to distort supply and push the costs to other people. What used to be taxpayer-funded housing is now market-rate housing that is funding subsidized apartments. It's really impossible to know how much housing isn't getting built or how much more expensive market-rate apartments are because of these programs. It's a hidden cost - and probably why it's so popular.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Yes, they need to straight up just build more housing. It doesn’t matter if that housing is for high-income residents or low-income residents. Every housing unit built helps make a city more affordable. https://gizmodo.com/how-building-expensive-new-housing-actually-helps-creat-1763423240 https://gizmodo.com/how-building-expensive-new-housing-actua...

protomyth 8y ago
Yes, they need to straight up just build more housing. Isn't it technically that they need to build massive housing that can get to the jobs in SF in a reasonable commute time? So either they need to figure out a way to get commuters into the city quickly (a mass transit solution) or they need to build a lot more housing where current single family housing is. I guess if they want the look of the city to stay the same they really need a get-them-in-and-out plan that actually works.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I'm having technical difficulties and not readily finding a heat map. Trulia used to have one, but may have discontinued it. However, if you look at a heat map of housing prices, the entire SF Bay Area is very expensive. This is likely in part because what you are proposing is already how SF handles things: Just fob the housing issue off onto neighboring cities, not my problem. We just do crazy high paid jobs and fuck you when it comes to housing. It's part of why their homeless problem is so very bad that I have read articles about how much visitors to the city express horror to the hotel staff and even indicate "I don't ever want to come back here again!" So the odds are good that there is a real cost involved in acting like this is not their problem. I left California to find more affordable housing. I was homeless in California for some years and willing to move to find affordable housing. I moved from San Diego County to Fresno, which has much more affordable housing than most of California. I've done a lot of research into housing issues for many years, starting well before I became homeless because I wanted to be an urban planner before life got in the way. I've also done a lot of research into housing options within California in specific before I threw my hands up and left the state. California has about 25% of the nation's homeless population while having only about 12% of the nation's overall population. Surveys suggest that about 90% of the homeless were residents of California prior to ending up on the street. They have more people sleeping rough than is typical of other states and, IIRC, they have more chronic homeless. There are lots of problems that grow out of that. There is a nationwide spike in Hepatitis, which can be deadly, and can be potentially traced to San Diego as its origin and potentially to the homeless population there. The CDC has kept that on the down low, so most people aren't aware of this spike and the death's associated with it. I think San Francisco and California are both making big, big mistakes in acting like this is not really a thing they need to buckle down and resolve. California is importing rich people, exporting poor people and dealing with increasingly intense crises of various sorts. I left. There probably isn't a week that goes by where I don't say (or hear from one of my sons) "Thank god, we moved to civilization. Life is so much better here." So it isn't really my problem anymore. But I think folks there who are refusing to really deal with this in some kind of effective manner are idiots, cutting their own throats.

phil248 8y ago

Is there any evidenced that the inclusionary rule is deterring private developers? Because it certainly is not in New York City.

reaperducer 8y ago

If you goal is to make lots of cheap subsidized housing, mandating developers to give away 30% of their profits will certainly cause a ton of other issues. I'm not familiar with San Francisco's "Inclusionary zoning," but in Chicago, developers are required to have 20% of their residences meet affordable housing guidelines. If the developer doesn't want to have 20% "poors" living in the building, the developer can build those units in another building within one mile. If that doesn't work, the developer can a make payment in cash to the Chicago Housing Authority and it will build the housing. This payment must be made before the developer's building permits are issued. For a typical 40-story residential skyscraper, the payment is about $2 million, and is what most developers seem to choose. Chicago still has affordability issues, but these payments aren't stopping development at all. The city continues on a high-rise residential development boom.

matchbok 8y ago
There is 0 proof that these mandates are not curtailing development. Sure, things are still getting built, but we have no idea what could be happening absent these mandates. This is the type of thinking that puts these failed programs into reality in the first place. "We don't immediately see anything wrong, so let's keep going". Fundamentally, it's a huge cost for developers and that money has to come from somewhere.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  There is 0 proof that these mandates are not curtailing development And there's 0 proof that these mandates are curtailing development. Why do you presume one and not the other?
  - matchbok 8y ago
    Because it's a distorted market. There has to be tradeoffs here otherwise developers would already be doing the things these laws are making them do.

CPLX 8y ago

> That is, inclusionary zoning, or any other affordability mandate put on private developers, is a failure and cannot work. We've been doing it in NYC for decades, it works just fine. Of course it only works if you understand the premise that buildings can be more than three stories tall.

matchbok 8y ago
Last time I checked NYC still had a massive affordability crisis.
- CPLX 8y ago
  To some extent. It’s nothing like San Francisco. And rents in Brooklyn have actually been falling noticeably, precisely because a massive amount of new apartment stock has gone up in the last five years.