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Demand is not inexhaustible, just pent up. On the other hand, there is a lot of pent-up demand and market YIMBYs are certainly in denial about just how much bui

by cwp 8y ago

Demand is not inexhaustible, just pent up. On the other hand, there is a lot of pent-up demand and market YIMBYs are certainly in denial about just how much building it would take to satisfy that demand. It would involve tremendous upheaval. Traffic would get worse. Many people would be evicted and have to find new housing before rents come down. Many people would find themselves underwater on their mortgages. We'd have to improve water/sewer/electric/gas infrastructure. We'd have to spend billions on transit. It would take at least 25 years. I would love to see that happen, but it won't. Too many people are too invested in the status quo. Instead, they'll make SF so unattractive to tech workers that they'll leave. As you say, they're more invested in the tech industry than SF.

abalone 8y ago
I think we’re saying some of the same things, but I’d argue the term “pent up” is not really the best fit for the condition of price inelasticity. That usually is the result of some extraordinary event. Boomtown economics qualify. We’re creating some of the most valuable companies here and are still in the thick of it. That’s just enormous demand for SF housing from all over the country and world. Any affordable housing for the service industry would be dirt cheap for tech industry workers. If SF was dirt cheap again and the tech boom was still underway, who in the industry wouldn’t move here or start their next company here? That’s how deep the demand goes. That creates price inelastic conditions. It’s Economics 101 for those who actually paid attention. If we want a vibrant restaurant scene moving forward, or housing for teachers and homeless and whatnot, we need to look beyond just building more market rate supply. There needs to be means tested and/or price controlled housing for the working class (or homeless, etc), and that’s where the market YIMBYs and affordable housing activists come to blows. That doesn’t equate to making SF unattractive to tech at all. Marc Benioff came around on a local issue here about funding housing for the homeless (prop c). He saw it as an existential threat to Salesforce. Maybe Salesforce is just a more mature (longer term) company than most startups. But he saw that homelessness was actually threatening their bottom line in SF.. in addition to being this huge moral imperative. It’s kind of the same thing with restaurants and that type of quality of life: you can optimize for lowest taxes and maximum housing for tech workers, or you can see the longer term macroeconomic picture.
- closeparen 8y ago
  We fund new means tested housing as a percentage of new market rate housing. People who want to substantially increase the availability of either type have aligned interests here: as much development as possible. In my experience, affordable housing activists want to make sure that if development happens it's price-controlled, but are fine with zero or a token level of development. It's the YIMBYs who are pushing for volume/scale for all kinds of projects. That's where the blows come. Percentage vs. quantity.
  - abalone 8y ago
    This is a false dichotomy. I call BS on your “fine with zero development” claim based on your “experience.” The most development in SF has happened in Jane Kim’s district who is a leading affordable housing activist. Under inelastic pricing conditions simply building more market rate housing alone will not alleviate the crisis of the working class. The only solution is to build and protect affordable housing.
    - closeparen 8y ago
      It's not a false dichotomy because it's not a dichotomy. Getting more housing of either type requires building more of both types. We don't build market rate housing alone, we build it in projects that are 10-25% price-controlled. Concerns about "simply building more market rate housing alone" are irrelevant here. What gets us more price controlled housing is more market rate housing. The question is not which type we will build, but how much, and where. All San Francisco, including District 6, saw a net growth of 4,441 housing units in 2017 [0]. It needed more like 10-20x that just to tread water. So effectively zero. The battleground now is to increase the zoned capacity across the board, so that net-new hybrid housing stock has somewhere to go at scale. [0] https://sf.curbed.com/2018/4/17/17247340/san-francisco-housing-inventory-2017-2018-new-construction https://sf.curbed.com/2018/4/17/17247340/san-francisco-housi...
      - abalone 8y ago
        “Percentage vs quantity” is explicitly a dichotomy and you misrepresent what affordable housing activists are comfortable with. We can agree that height limits are an opportunity to negotiate for affordable housing. I’d further suggest we prefer development in neighborhoods with less rent controlled housing so as to minimize the impact on existing affordable housing.

by cwp 8y ago

abalone 8y ago

I think we’re saying some of the same things, but I’d argue the term “pent up” is not really the best fit for the condition of price inelasticity. That usually is the result of some extraordinary event. Boomtown economics qualify. We’re creating some of the most valuable companies here and are still in the thick of it. That’s just enormous demand for SF housing from all over the country and world. Any affordable housing for the service industry would be dirt cheap for tech industry workers. If SF was dirt cheap again and the tech boom was still underway, who in the industry wouldn’t move here or start their next company here? That’s how deep the demand goes. That creates price inelastic conditions. It’s Economics 101 for those who actually paid attention. If we want a vibrant restaurant scene moving forward, or housing for teachers and homeless and whatnot, we need to look beyond just building more market rate supply. There needs to be means tested and/or price controlled housing for the working class (or homeless, etc), and that’s where the market YIMBYs and affordable housing activists come to blows. That doesn’t equate to making SF unattractive to tech at all. Marc Benioff came around on a local issue here about funding housing for the homeless (prop c). He saw it as an existential threat to Salesforce. Maybe Salesforce is just a more mature (longer term) company than most startups. But he saw that homelessness was actually threatening their bottom line in SF.. in addition to being this huge moral imperative. It’s kind of the same thing with restaurants and that type of quality of life: you can optimize for lowest taxes and maximum housing for tech workers, or you can see the longer term macroeconomic picture.

closeparen 8y ago
We fund new means tested housing as a percentage of new market rate housing. People who want to substantially increase the availability of either type have aligned interests here: as much development as possible. In my experience, affordable housing activists want to make sure that if development happens it's price-controlled, but are fine with zero or a token level of development. It's the YIMBYs who are pushing for volume/scale for all kinds of projects. That's where the blows come. Percentage vs. quantity.
- abalone 8y ago
  This is a false dichotomy. I call BS on your “fine with zero development” claim based on your “experience.” The most development in SF has happened in Jane Kim’s district who is a leading affordable housing activist. Under inelastic pricing conditions simply building more market rate housing alone will not alleviate the crisis of the working class. The only solution is to build and protect affordable housing.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    It's not a false dichotomy because it's not a dichotomy. Getting more housing of either type requires building more of both types. We don't build market rate housing alone, we build it in projects that are 10-25% price-controlled. Concerns about "simply building more market rate housing alone" are irrelevant here. What gets us more price controlled housing is more market rate housing. The question is not which type we will build, but how much, and where. All San Francisco, including District 6, saw a net growth of 4,441 housing units in 2017 [0]. It needed more like 10-20x that just to tread water. So effectively zero. The battleground now is to increase the zoned capacity across the board, so that net-new hybrid housing stock has somewhere to go at scale. [0] https://sf.curbed.com/2018/4/17/17247340/san-francisco-housing-inventory-2017-2018-new-construction https://sf.curbed.com/2018/4/17/17247340/san-francisco-housi...
    - abalone 8y ago
      “Percentage vs quantity” is explicitly a dichotomy and you misrepresent what affordable housing activists are comfortable with. We can agree that height limits are an opportunity to negotiate for affordable housing. I’d further suggest we prefer development in neighborhoods with less rent controlled housing so as to minimize the impact on existing affordable housing.