7 ms·

When I visited SF and the valley a while back I wondered about all the low rise buildings in many areas. Homes with 2 stories max. While I think it’s an essenti

by baxtr 8y ago

When I visited SF and the valley a while back I wondered about all the low rise buildings in many areas. Homes with 2 stories max. While I think it’s an essential part of the areas’ culture I wondered why the space above is left unused. Because of geological reasons? Esthetic reasons?

kortilla 8y ago
NIMBYs stop it because they “don’t want the feel of the city to change”. That is the excuse I’ve heard in Mountain View and Palo Alto to shoot down any high density apartments.
- koboll 8y ago
  What we need is a federal law that zoning must scale with employees needed locally. You really don't want the feel of the city to change? Fine, then keep out employers.
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    I'd argue that lots of people are trying to keep out employers. See: Amazon & NYC.
- almost_usual 8y ago
  That's their excuse, the real reason is they don't want to their home they paid $1.5m+ for to depreciate.
  - zanny 8y ago
    If their homes were rezoned for skyscraper development their quarter acre that could host a hundred apartments vertically on it alone would go from 1.5m to 150m overnight. The NIMBYs are going against their own economic self interest by resisting density, they are just petrified with fear that their house is the one just outside the criticality zone where developers would buy all the land for exorbitant money to build a metro and their area would become some sort of forsaken blight or be bulldozed at "fair market rate" via eminent domain to build the infrastructure to support that density.
- TACIXAT 8y ago
  It really bothers me that homeowners here have so much influence beyond their property lines. You own a plot of land. If someone is building an apartment not on your plot of land it should be none of your business.
  - zanny 8y ago
    The behavior of NIMBYs is a microcosm reflection of why wealth inequality is so detrimental for democracy. The property owners of major metro areas have both a vested interest in defending their profitability and crowd out those who want to be residents but cannot because of barriers put up by the owner class. NIMBYs dominate SF politics because only NIMBYs can live in SF, which is exactly analogous to how business lobbyists dominate the rotunda of the Capital in DC because only multinational globalist corporations can afford to play the hardball bribes to get congress under their heel and crowd out everyone else with their money. In both cases, when a few have a ludicrous amount of money / power and everyone else is left poor, the rich silence the rest and hold all the power.
duckfruit 8y ago
Only one reason: Greed Homeowners want to see their investment appreciate, plain and simple, and will do anything and make up any justification to impede development so as to reduce supply and increase home values. Pretty much any argument, any rule, that restricts housing ("ruining neighborhood character", "affecting the historic value of the neighborhood", and in almost all cases, "environmental impact") can be understood if seen through the prism of selfishness. Never mind that people's lives are more important than obtuse feelings of 'neighborhood character', and never mind that the reason the shitty silicon valley house you bought in the 70s is worth millions only because of the blood, sweat and tears of all the people who came here and started companies and built things. As you can probably guess, I'm pretty disillusioned at probably not ever being able to ever afford a place to live in the place I call home. (And I'm a relatively well paid engineer, others have it much worse).
- almost_usual 8y ago
  This is normal for any investment, why would anyone want their investment to depreciate? I also don't understand why so many people in San Francisco want to own a home. Owning a home in San Francisco is a giant pain in the ass. Everything is ridiculously expensive once you own. These homes are 100+ years old and most need updates and earthquake retrofitting (that's $100k+). You pay an obscene amount in property taxes and have to go through the city to change nearly anything. Once you do get approved you have to find a contractor and most contractors are on giant month long waits because there aren't many in the city. It's a pain, honestly I don't understand why anyone would want to buy when you can rent and be on rent control and not worry about any of these headaches.
  - bendmorris 8y ago
    The problem is housing being treated as an investment, resulting in artificially high prices and limited supply for the people who need to live in it. We should buy housing to live in, not to extract rent from the suckers that were too late. A land value tax would help lower prices and remove the incentive to treat housing as an income source.
kamaal 8y ago
I think it is because: a. That particular area happens to have had a history of earth quakes. b. People who already have homes, think they own the view. Also known as NIMBY. c. Building new homes(like big apartment complexes with mass housing), would crash the market. Because many people have put in $1 million+ to buy a home. Imagine what happens when homes are suddenly available for $300K a piece. Those people will go bankrupt instantly. d. Rent control.
- jeffbax 8y ago
  The market won't crash. You can't physically build fast enough to do it even if all the zoning was fixed. If anything you'll temper prices or lower slightly but even if they fell a bit maybe CA'd get needed tax changes finally.
  - kamaal 8y ago
    Yes, something like this will happen in and close to SF, like till Palo Alto may be. But if you allow building high rise apartments, places far enough from SF will see a good fall in prices. Then you can build fast enough in those places given the demand for homes at those prices. Beyond all this once its clear that you can get decent accommodation for $300K, spending $1.5 million for the same becomes stupid. Sure people will buy McMansions and homes in cul-de-sac as a badge of prestige. But anybody with a brain, and knows that money is better spent on saving up for retirement will look the other way go stay in the $300K flat. You would stay in the same if you rented, anyway.
- tathougies 8y ago
  > That particular area happens to have had a history of earth quakes. This is not an excuse. High rises that are well designed are perfectly safe in earthquakes (safer than single family homes often times). Other major cities in earthquake areas (like Tokyo) do not have this problem.
paulddraper 8y ago
There are many reasons some people do not prefer urban areas: aesthetics, crime, pollution, homelessness, noise. And many people in SF (especially if they have lived their a while; i.e. property owners) are not thrilled that their home is changing.
betadreamer 8y ago
Law prohibits a lot of places to built it. I remember Palo Alto had some condition. In SF, I think it doesn't have a good foundation to build tall building. It's either that or the architect here is not great. The slanting, sinking high-end building terrifies me. https://www.businessinsider.com/is-millennium-tower-safe-still-leaning-sinking-2017-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/is-millennium-tower-safe-sti...
nradov 8y ago
SF's infrastructure was never designed for high density. They can't just add homes by themselves. That would overwhelm the roads, sewers, electrical grid, schools, public services, etc. Those things all must be upgraded before adding more housing, otherwise the city will start to resemble a shantytown. The infrastructure upgrades will be tremendously expensive and in many cases would have to be done as huge capital projects rather than incrementally. There is little funding or political will to undertake such projects. The root cause was a failure of urban planning decades ago. Now SF leaders and residents have to deal with reality as it exists today rather than what it ought to have been with better foresight.
- zanny 8y ago
  > There is little funding or political will to undertake such projects. It really sounds ludicrously obscene that the city with the highest average income per person in the world can't "afford" to do things that third world countries have done to multi-millennia old cities histories spanning much larger footprints with way more people involved and way less money in the economy. If SF wanted to develop into the proper metropolis it should have been since the 90s there is ample money flowing through the Bay Area to pay for it. You just need the political willpower to make it happen, which may be rarer than flying pigs.
  - nradov 8y ago
    What is the basis for assuming that SF should have been a proper metropolis? Many of the residents seem to disagree. (I don't live there and have no particular opinion on the issue.)
KorematsuFred 8y ago
To find the answers to this you need to jump into the rabbit hole of corruption, low cost housing and zoning laws. Yes, people are greedy but then that is true for every single town in USA. It is only in SF bay area that housing is so expensive. It is possible to build a high rise building but such a project needs to be approved by local town which they won't. They will put unreasonable restrictions in terms of parking spaces, open spaces etc. These laws prevent building anything bigger. There is a deeper rot of corruption called "low cost housing". There are several organizations that will deliberately litigate any new project, run it into ground and once the developer has lost a lot of money they will buy it cheap for so called low cost housing. To give a real world example a laundramat owner in SF who made ton of profit had pity on the housing need of the city and out of his good heart decided to demolish the laundramat and build housing instead. He has been harassed, the corrupt city admin declared his building historic monument in order to prevent him from redoing it. All the while he lost money and paid property taxes. [1] As of today it takes around 2 years to get all the necessary permissions for any kind of construction project. Most developers have turned their back on the city. See this interview with one of the builders. [2] Third part is large empty patches of land that are for some reason not being brought under development. Look at google maps and you will notice there is plenty of land in Fremont, Santa Cruz mountains, Palo alto etc. where mountains can be demolished, new housing units created. But wont happen because of over zealus environmentalists. [1] https://reason.com/archives/2019/03/19/the-most-contested-apartment-b https://reason.com/archives/2019/03/19/the-most-contested-ap... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfIjDGF_YYQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfIjDGF_YYQ

by baxtr 8y ago

kortilla 8y ago

NIMBYs stop it because they “don’t want the feel of the city to change”. That is the excuse I’ve heard in Mountain View and Palo Alto to shoot down any high density apartments.

koboll 8y ago
What we need is a federal law that zoning must scale with employees needed locally. You really don't want the feel of the city to change? Fine, then keep out employers.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  I'd argue that lots of people are trying to keep out employers. See: Amazon & NYC.
almost_usual 8y ago
That's their excuse, the real reason is they don't want to their home they paid $1.5m+ for to depreciate.
- zanny 8y ago
  If their homes were rezoned for skyscraper development their quarter acre that could host a hundred apartments vertically on it alone would go from 1.5m to 150m overnight. The NIMBYs are going against their own economic self interest by resisting density, they are just petrified with fear that their house is the one just outside the criticality zone where developers would buy all the land for exorbitant money to build a metro and their area would become some sort of forsaken blight or be bulldozed at "fair market rate" via eminent domain to build the infrastructure to support that density.
TACIXAT 8y ago
It really bothers me that homeowners here have so much influence beyond their property lines. You own a plot of land. If someone is building an apartment not on your plot of land it should be none of your business.
- zanny 8y ago
  The behavior of NIMBYs is a microcosm reflection of why wealth inequality is so detrimental for democracy. The property owners of major metro areas have both a vested interest in defending their profitability and crowd out those who want to be residents but cannot because of barriers put up by the owner class. NIMBYs dominate SF politics because only NIMBYs can live in SF, which is exactly analogous to how business lobbyists dominate the rotunda of the Capital in DC because only multinational globalist corporations can afford to play the hardball bribes to get congress under their heel and crowd out everyone else with their money. In both cases, when a few have a ludicrous amount of money / power and everyone else is left poor, the rich silence the rest and hold all the power.

duckfruit 8y ago

Only one reason: Greed Homeowners want to see their investment appreciate, plain and simple, and will do anything and make up any justification to impede development so as to reduce supply and increase home values. Pretty much any argument, any rule, that restricts housing ("ruining neighborhood character", "affecting the historic value of the neighborhood", and in almost all cases, "environmental impact") can be understood if seen through the prism of selfishness. Never mind that people's lives are more important than obtuse feelings of 'neighborhood character', and never mind that the reason the shitty silicon valley house you bought in the 70s is worth millions only because of the blood, sweat and tears of all the people who came here and started companies and built things. As you can probably guess, I'm pretty disillusioned at probably not ever being able to ever afford a place to live in the place I call home. (And I'm a relatively well paid engineer, others have it much worse).

almost_usual 8y ago
This is normal for any investment, why would anyone want their investment to depreciate? I also don't understand why so many people in San Francisco want to own a home. Owning a home in San Francisco is a giant pain in the ass. Everything is ridiculously expensive once you own. These homes are 100+ years old and most need updates and earthquake retrofitting (that's $100k+). You pay an obscene amount in property taxes and have to go through the city to change nearly anything. Once you do get approved you have to find a contractor and most contractors are on giant month long waits because there aren't many in the city. It's a pain, honestly I don't understand why anyone would want to buy when you can rent and be on rent control and not worry about any of these headaches.
- bendmorris 8y ago
  The problem is housing being treated as an investment, resulting in artificially high prices and limited supply for the people who need to live in it. We should buy housing to live in, not to extract rent from the suckers that were too late. A land value tax would help lower prices and remove the incentive to treat housing as an income source.

kamaal 8y ago

I think it is because: a. That particular area happens to have had a history of earth quakes. b. People who already have homes, think they own the view. Also known as NIMBY. c. Building new homes(like big apartment complexes with mass housing), would crash the market. Because many people have put in $1 million+ to buy a home. Imagine what happens when homes are suddenly available for $300K a piece. Those people will go bankrupt instantly. d. Rent control.

jeffbax 8y ago
The market won't crash. You can't physically build fast enough to do it even if all the zoning was fixed. If anything you'll temper prices or lower slightly but even if they fell a bit maybe CA'd get needed tax changes finally.
- kamaal 8y ago
  Yes, something like this will happen in and close to SF, like till Palo Alto may be. But if you allow building high rise apartments, places far enough from SF will see a good fall in prices. Then you can build fast enough in those places given the demand for homes at those prices. Beyond all this once its clear that you can get decent accommodation for $300K, spending $1.5 million for the same becomes stupid. Sure people will buy McMansions and homes in cul-de-sac as a badge of prestige. But anybody with a brain, and knows that money is better spent on saving up for retirement will look the other way go stay in the $300K flat. You would stay in the same if you rented, anyway.
tathougies 8y ago
> That particular area happens to have had a history of earth quakes. This is not an excuse. High rises that are well designed are perfectly safe in earthquakes (safer than single family homes often times). Other major cities in earthquake areas (like Tokyo) do not have this problem.

paulddraper 8y ago

There are many reasons some people do not prefer urban areas: aesthetics, crime, pollution, homelessness, noise. And many people in SF (especially if they have lived their a while; i.e. property owners) are not thrilled that their home is changing.

betadreamer 8y ago

Law prohibits a lot of places to built it. I remember Palo Alto had some condition. In SF, I think it doesn't have a good foundation to build tall building. It's either that or the architect here is not great. The slanting, sinking high-end building terrifies me. https://www.businessinsider.com/is-millennium-tower-safe-still-leaning-sinking-2017-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/is-millennium-tower-safe-sti...

nradov 8y ago

SF's infrastructure was never designed for high density. They can't just add homes by themselves. That would overwhelm the roads, sewers, electrical grid, schools, public services, etc. Those things all must be upgraded before adding more housing, otherwise the city will start to resemble a shantytown. The infrastructure upgrades will be tremendously expensive and in many cases would have to be done as huge capital projects rather than incrementally. There is little funding or political will to undertake such projects. The root cause was a failure of urban planning decades ago. Now SF leaders and residents have to deal with reality as it exists today rather than what it ought to have been with better foresight.

zanny 8y ago
> There is little funding or political will to undertake such projects. It really sounds ludicrously obscene that the city with the highest average income per person in the world can't "afford" to do things that third world countries have done to multi-millennia old cities histories spanning much larger footprints with way more people involved and way less money in the economy. If SF wanted to develop into the proper metropolis it should have been since the 90s there is ample money flowing through the Bay Area to pay for it. You just need the political willpower to make it happen, which may be rarer than flying pigs.
- nradov 8y ago
  What is the basis for assuming that SF should have been a proper metropolis? Many of the residents seem to disagree. (I don't live there and have no particular opinion on the issue.)

KorematsuFred 8y ago

To find the answers to this you need to jump into the rabbit hole of corruption, low cost housing and zoning laws. Yes, people are greedy but then that is true for every single town in USA. It is only in SF bay area that housing is so expensive. It is possible to build a high rise building but such a project needs to be approved by local town which they won't. They will put unreasonable restrictions in terms of parking spaces, open spaces etc. These laws prevent building anything bigger. There is a deeper rot of corruption called "low cost housing". There are several organizations that will deliberately litigate any new project, run it into ground and once the developer has lost a lot of money they will buy it cheap for so called low cost housing. To give a real world example a laundramat owner in SF who made ton of profit had pity on the housing need of the city and out of his good heart decided to demolish the laundramat and build housing instead. He has been harassed, the corrupt city admin declared his building historic monument in order to prevent him from redoing it. All the while he lost money and paid property taxes. [1] As of today it takes around 2 years to get all the necessary permissions for any kind of construction project. Most developers have turned their back on the city. See this interview with one of the builders. [2] Third part is large empty patches of land that are for some reason not being brought under development. Look at google maps and you will notice there is plenty of land in Fremont, Santa Cruz mountains, Palo alto etc. where mountains can be demolished, new housing units created. But wont happen because of over zealus environmentalists. [1] https://reason.com/archives/2019/03/19/the-most-contested-apartment-b https://reason.com/archives/2019/03/19/the-most-contested-ap... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfIjDGF_YYQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfIjDGF_YYQ