7 ms·

Do you have sources for these claims? I feel this narrative is often repeated on HN and it becomes kind of an echo chamber. Then I read in the SF Chronicle that

Do you have sources for these claims? I feel this narrative is often repeated on HN and it becomes kind of an echo chamber. Then I read in the SF Chronicle that there’s permitted and approved projects that developers are not moving forward with, like around the new hospital off of Van Ness, due to the “tightening of capital markets” and “soaring construction costs.”[1] Not NIMBYs or government regulations. And then I dig a little deeper into the “it’s just supply and demand, dummy” narrative and find articles that document how luxury housing development actually is associated with a rise in rents for the working class.[2] Who would have thought macroeconomics is complicated? I feel the narrative here is highly politicized around are particular market-driven philosophy, so much so that people feel comfortable posting unsourced polemics. In the spirit of HN I would like to steer us toward a real analysis of the facts in the ground. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Turns-out-SF-s-big-new-hospital-on-Van-Ness-13698405.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Turns-out-SF-s-b... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-expensive-cities-rents-fall-for-the-rich--but-rise-for-the-poor/2018/08/05/a16e5962-96a4-11e8-80e1-00e80e1fdf43_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-expensive...

ultrarunner 7y ago
Your first article attributes those quotes reasoning about the lack of construction to speculation by “neighbors”. There is also a traffic problem created in part by construction of a bus line that is 18 months overdue. It seems a bit quick to be using that as justification for SF housing policies, especially as they don’t seem to be working. Your other article is paywalled, but I imagine that tightly planned cities introducing only new luxery housing is the same general situation and would be similarly vulnerable to the very arguments you’re responding to.
- Aloha 7y ago
  How much construction does a 'bus line' take exactly?
  - BrandonM 7y ago
    I live a couple blocks away from Van Ness. Here's the project: https://www.sfcta.org/projects/van-ness-improvement-project https://www.sfcta.org/projects/van-ness-improvement-project. They're moving to dedicated bus lanes, allowing the buses to load and unload safely without blocking other traffic. As with all significant projects, they've lumped in a bunch of other maintenance that has been put off for too long, like upgrading utility lines. Construction generally blocks a lane of traffic on one side of the street, rerouting the other lanes and pedestrians, for several weeks at a time. Then they move on to the next block or to the other side of the street. Just from a layman's perspective, it seems incredibly tricky to try to construct a housing development with that going on around it. The "bus line" construction has already put additional pressure on traffic up and down Van Ness, and it's got to be very tricky to get permits for parking spots, dumpsters, and other necessities with everything else that's going on. And anyway the city could probably just come through and close everything down for weeks or months so that they can perform another stage of "bus line" construction. (I'm putting "bus line" in quotes because they haven't even really started on that part. This whole project is a pretty incredibly yak shave that's taking 5 years and hundreds of millions of dollars for a bus line.)
Aloha 7y ago
I think the onus is on you to disprove them, not just to merely question their veracity. Anyone who has built a house in any urbanized area with an highly environmental conscious outlook can tell you that building a house is difficult - I think anyone can also tell you that San Francisco has a large amount of demand - I think there would also be universal agreement that San Francisco is also basically built out. Upmarket housing tends to get built first when market demand is high, and its expensive to build in a place, because its harder to recoup the costs on cheaper housing. Without significant densification (which has proven untenable politically) no significant amount of new housing will be built - so you can pass all the affordable housing bonds in the world, but until you change the zoning (regulatory) construct - nothing will change.
- msbarnett 7y ago
  > I think the onus is on you to disprove them, not just to merely question their veracity. This generally is not how reasoned debate occurs. The onus is on the person making an assertion to provide facts supporting it, not on everyone else to disprove an unsourced claim.
  - throwaway400 7y ago
    As if it's possible that some other scenario is not at play. Do you think housing is being erected at a record pace and yet still can't keep up with demand? Is it possible that people just don't want to build in SF, because... reasons that aren't red tap?
    - msbarnett 7y ago
      I haven't made any argument one way or the other. I will point out that there is an article on the front page of HN right now in which multiple economists argue that "it's supply and demand" provides an insufficient explanation for, and solution to, the problem of affordable housing in San Francisco: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19872015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19872015 So arguing that we must accept the "it's just supply and demand" argument by acclamation with no sourcing seems flimsy. Educated minds are arguing otherwise, and providing evidence to back up their claims. It hardly seems unreasonable to expect the other side of the argument to do similar.
austenallred 7y ago
The amount of housing in the most expensive housing market in the world is going down because of lack of capital? That passes a sanity check for you? Or maybe the regulations are so insane you spend millions in legal fees before you even have a glimmer of hope and eventually say “this isn’t worth it.”
- abalone 7y ago
  See, this is what I mean. I posted sources that literally interviewed developers and researched the causes for construction delays on approved projects -- "project was approved in late 2016 as construction costs were escalating more than 10 percent a year and lenders were tightening their criteria for loans." And you responded with unsupported political talking points. Let's bring this back to a fact-based discussion, ok? That's what HN is supposed to be about.
  - jessedhillon 7y ago
    > “For-profit developers have predominantly built for the luxury and higher end of the market, leaving a glut of overpriced apartments in some cities,” said Diane Yentel, president and chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group. I can't read the chronicle article, but your wapo article is mainly just the opinions of interested people like this. For example, nowhere does it give the actual number of "luxury" units built in Seattle, SF, or Portland -- those would be important numbers if you're trying to comprehend the argument being put forward.
    - abalone 7y ago
      The Chronicle article is worth reading but you can trust me that it points to capital markets and labor shortages as holding back approved projects. Here is a deeper analysis of the Seattle market with specific housing construction figures.[1] It argues "there is no general housing shortage, that the catastrophic figures above are a product of the Great Recession and the normal lag in construction. Because the market appears to be duly responding to demand, efforts to 'free' the housing market are not as effective as efforts to shape the market toward more just ends." This is consistent with the causes cited in the SF Chronicle article that hold back approved projects, as well as the SF Business Times(!) article pointing to the 2008 recession as a cause of the labor shortage, cited previously. [1] https://www.theurbanist.org/2016/11/22/what-housing-shortage/ https://www.theurbanist.org/2016/11/22/what-housing-shortage...
dahdum 7y ago
Soaring construction costs are in no small part due to government regulations and NIMBYs. Labor shortage is partly to blame, but labor is short partly because of the housing shortage. [1] [1] https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/01/24/sf-construction-costs-2nd-highest-housing-crisis.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/01/24/sf-...
- abalone 7y ago
  Actually your source says "A lack of construction workers is a legacy of the 2008 recession, when many people left the industry as development froze." I.e. a meltdown of the unregulated market was a major factor in the shortage -- again, your source. Additionally the Chronicle article I posted concerns approved projects still facing delays due to labor and tightening capital markets. That undercuts the "it's just due to NIMBYs & regulations holding up approvals" narrative.
  - shuckles 7y ago
    Regulation, in particular rules on sourcing along with uncertainty of permit timelines, are a driver for labor expenses: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/San_Francisco_Construction_Cost_Brief_-_Terner_Center_January_2018.pdf https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/San_Francisco_Cons... Intuitively, how is it that Seattle can afford to build high rises while San Francisco cannot even though the selling and rental prices of a high rise is meaningfully greater than that of Seattle? Shouldn't all that Seattle capital just move to developing in San Francisco instead?
    - abalone 7y ago
      I read your citation and it does not appear to support that claim with respect to approved projects. In fact it leads by referencing the slow rebound from the recession for skilled labor vs all the demand as the primary driver in labor costs. Where it mentions permit delays it’s only in reference to delayed projects being at a disadvantage, not approved ones. As for your second question I can only refer you what I’ve already cited on construction costs, tightening capital markets and other factors beyond mere permitting or “NIMBY” issues. Intuitively, approved projects would move forward if the math made sense.
mrep 7y ago
Not OP, but Seattle is almost as big as SF [0] (825,000 people in SF compared to 775,000 people in Seattle), Seattle has 2.5x the number of cranes up compared to SF [1] (65 cranes in Seattle compared to 26 in SF), Seattle rents have actually gone down recently because of so much new supply [2], and Seattle's average rent is only 57% of SF [3]. I'm not going to say it's just NIMBYism, but whatever they are doing, they are a prime example of what not to do. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-tops-the-nation-in-tower-cranes-for-third-straight-year-as-construction-reaches-new-peak/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-to... [2]: https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2019/01/apartment-rents-dropping-in-seattle-landlords-compete-for-tenants-as-market-cools.html https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2019/01/apartment-rents-... [3]: https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/personal-finance/highest-rent-us-cities/ https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/personal-finance/hi...
- abalone 7y ago
  Ah, thank you for the sourcing. I shall read them but I was wondering if you have a response to this critical analysis, "Seattle — A Cautionary Tale for Supply-Side Housing Advocates."[1] It notes how Seattle is often cited by deregulation advocates, but that "in spite of decades of indisputably strong development, Seattle’s share of cost-burdened renters has barely budged." And "by overbuilding housing for the wealthy, Seattle has achieved some short-term improvement in affordability for the middle class, at the expense of substantial displacement and continued upward pressure on the most vulnerable." This I think is at the heart of what in SF some call the YIMBY vs. PHIMBY[2] debate. YIMBYs tend to skew towards more privileged techie types (happy to dig up sourcing on this.. I recall the YIMBY national meeting being called overwhlemingly white). Whereas the PHIMBYs or whatever you want to call them, the deeply affordable housing advocates, see flaws in that simplistic trickle-down economics model based on lived experience in working-class neighborhoods undergoing gentrification. [1] https://knock-la.com/seattle-a-cautionary-tale-for-supply-side-housing-advocates-5b4ca5ed6d02 https://knock-la.com/seattle-a-cautionary-tale-for-supply-si... [2] https://yahbayarea.org https://yahbayarea.org or https://twitter.com/YahBayArea https://twitter.com/YahBayArea
manfredo 7y ago
> I read in the SF Chronicle that there’s permitted and approved projects that developers are not moving forward with, like around the new hospital off of Van Ness, due to the “tightening of capital markets” and “soaring construction costs.”[1] Not NIMBYs or government regulations. No doubt that construction costs exacerbate the problem. But there absolutely are people deliberately blocking housing construction. There was a proposition to outright block private housing construction in the Mission that got ~40% yes votes. For further examples, see the infamous case of the developer that wanted to replace a laundromat with an apartment building: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4 > And then I dig a little deeper into the “it’s just supply and demand, dummy” narrative and find articles that document how luxury housing development actually is associated with a rise in rents for the working class.[2] Who would have thought macroeconomics is complicated? This is a fundamentally dishonest objection. New housing is "luxury" housing because the housing market is so expensive that even 1 bedroom apartments rent for $3-4K. Blocking "luxury housing" is blocking all housing, because the market is so expensive that even the smallest units are expensive enough to be considered luxury. Seriously, even 300 sq foot studios rent for 2.5K: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/d/san-francisco-immaculate-studio-with/6885463159.html https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/d/san-francisco-immacul... Of course "luxury housing" is correlated with rising rents. When rents rise, newly constructed units get more expensive too and get pushed into the "luxury" price bracket. This is essentially a tautology, and it is not at all indicative that building more housing increases rents.
vamos_davai 7y ago
I investigated into developing in Half Moon Bay, which is zoned by San Mateo County. There's wide swathes of land up for grabs, but the county or the council forbids development unless you buy enough land and come up with a proposal. This ends up costing in $5-$10 million of undeveloped land alone (no sewage line connection and no electricity). And these lands are planned unit developments, which in practicality means homes only for the wealthy.
- chrisdhoover 7y ago
  San Mateo and Marin have always opposed development. It has given us great open spaces up 101 down 280 and along 1. Its an odd position to defend, no development in Marin and San Mateo, but increased developement in San Francisco yet thats my view
  - wbl 7y ago
    Even in the spaces that are not open space San Mateo opposes apartments.

ultrarunner 7y ago

Your first article attributes those quotes reasoning about the lack of construction to speculation by “neighbors”. There is also a traffic problem created in part by construction of a bus line that is 18 months overdue. It seems a bit quick to be using that as justification for SF housing policies, especially as they don’t seem to be working. Your other article is paywalled, but I imagine that tightly planned cities introducing only new luxery housing is the same general situation and would be similarly vulnerable to the very arguments you’re responding to.

Aloha 7y ago
How much construction does a 'bus line' take exactly?
- BrandonM 7y ago
  I live a couple blocks away from Van Ness. Here's the project: https://www.sfcta.org/projects/van-ness-improvement-project https://www.sfcta.org/projects/van-ness-improvement-project. They're moving to dedicated bus lanes, allowing the buses to load and unload safely without blocking other traffic. As with all significant projects, they've lumped in a bunch of other maintenance that has been put off for too long, like upgrading utility lines. Construction generally blocks a lane of traffic on one side of the street, rerouting the other lanes and pedestrians, for several weeks at a time. Then they move on to the next block or to the other side of the street. Just from a layman's perspective, it seems incredibly tricky to try to construct a housing development with that going on around it. The "bus line" construction has already put additional pressure on traffic up and down Van Ness, and it's got to be very tricky to get permits for parking spots, dumpsters, and other necessities with everything else that's going on. And anyway the city could probably just come through and close everything down for weeks or months so that they can perform another stage of "bus line" construction. (I'm putting "bus line" in quotes because they haven't even really started on that part. This whole project is a pretty incredibly yak shave that's taking 5 years and hundreds of millions of dollars for a bus line.)

Aloha 7y ago

I think the onus is on you to disprove them, not just to merely question their veracity. Anyone who has built a house in any urbanized area with an highly environmental conscious outlook can tell you that building a house is difficult - I think anyone can also tell you that San Francisco has a large amount of demand - I think there would also be universal agreement that San Francisco is also basically built out. Upmarket housing tends to get built first when market demand is high, and its expensive to build in a place, because its harder to recoup the costs on cheaper housing. Without significant densification (which has proven untenable politically) no significant amount of new housing will be built - so you can pass all the affordable housing bonds in the world, but until you change the zoning (regulatory) construct - nothing will change.

msbarnett 7y ago
> I think the onus is on you to disprove them, not just to merely question their veracity. This generally is not how reasoned debate occurs. The onus is on the person making an assertion to provide facts supporting it, not on everyone else to disprove an unsourced claim.
- throwaway400 7y ago
  As if it's possible that some other scenario is not at play. Do you think housing is being erected at a record pace and yet still can't keep up with demand? Is it possible that people just don't want to build in SF, because... reasons that aren't red tap?
  - msbarnett 7y ago
    I haven't made any argument one way or the other. I will point out that there is an article on the front page of HN right now in which multiple economists argue that "it's supply and demand" provides an insufficient explanation for, and solution to, the problem of affordable housing in San Francisco: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19872015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19872015 So arguing that we must accept the "it's just supply and demand" argument by acclamation with no sourcing seems flimsy. Educated minds are arguing otherwise, and providing evidence to back up their claims. It hardly seems unreasonable to expect the other side of the argument to do similar.

austenallred 7y ago

The amount of housing in the most expensive housing market in the world is going down because of lack of capital? That passes a sanity check for you? Or maybe the regulations are so insane you spend millions in legal fees before you even have a glimmer of hope and eventually say “this isn’t worth it.”

abalone 7y ago
See, this is what I mean. I posted sources that literally interviewed developers and researched the causes for construction delays on approved projects -- "project was approved in late 2016 as construction costs were escalating more than 10 percent a year and lenders were tightening their criteria for loans." And you responded with unsupported political talking points. Let's bring this back to a fact-based discussion, ok? That's what HN is supposed to be about.
- jessedhillon 7y ago
  > “For-profit developers have predominantly built for the luxury and higher end of the market, leaving a glut of overpriced apartments in some cities,” said Diane Yentel, president and chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group. I can't read the chronicle article, but your wapo article is mainly just the opinions of interested people like this. For example, nowhere does it give the actual number of "luxury" units built in Seattle, SF, or Portland -- those would be important numbers if you're trying to comprehend the argument being put forward.
  - abalone 7y ago
    The Chronicle article is worth reading but you can trust me that it points to capital markets and labor shortages as holding back approved projects. Here is a deeper analysis of the Seattle market with specific housing construction figures.[1] It argues "there is no general housing shortage, that the catastrophic figures above are a product of the Great Recession and the normal lag in construction. Because the market appears to be duly responding to demand, efforts to 'free' the housing market are not as effective as efforts to shape the market toward more just ends." This is consistent with the causes cited in the SF Chronicle article that hold back approved projects, as well as the SF Business Times(!) article pointing to the 2008 recession as a cause of the labor shortage, cited previously. [1] https://www.theurbanist.org/2016/11/22/what-housing-shortage/ https://www.theurbanist.org/2016/11/22/what-housing-shortage...

dahdum 7y ago

Soaring construction costs are in no small part due to government regulations and NIMBYs. Labor shortage is partly to blame, but labor is short partly because of the housing shortage. [1] [1] https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/01/24/sf-construction-costs-2nd-highest-housing-crisis.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/01/24/sf-...

abalone 7y ago
Actually your source says "A lack of construction workers is a legacy of the 2008 recession, when many people left the industry as development froze." I.e. a meltdown of the unregulated market was a major factor in the shortage -- again, your source. Additionally the Chronicle article I posted concerns approved projects still facing delays due to labor and tightening capital markets. That undercuts the "it's just due to NIMBYs & regulations holding up approvals" narrative.
- shuckles 7y ago
  Regulation, in particular rules on sourcing along with uncertainty of permit timelines, are a driver for labor expenses: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/San_Francisco_Construction_Cost_Brief_-_Terner_Center_January_2018.pdf https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/San_Francisco_Cons... Intuitively, how is it that Seattle can afford to build high rises while San Francisco cannot even though the selling and rental prices of a high rise is meaningfully greater than that of Seattle? Shouldn't all that Seattle capital just move to developing in San Francisco instead?
  - abalone 7y ago
    I read your citation and it does not appear to support that claim with respect to approved projects. In fact it leads by referencing the slow rebound from the recession for skilled labor vs all the demand as the primary driver in labor costs. Where it mentions permit delays it’s only in reference to delayed projects being at a disadvantage, not approved ones. As for your second question I can only refer you what I’ve already cited on construction costs, tightening capital markets and other factors beyond mere permitting or “NIMBY” issues. Intuitively, approved projects would move forward if the math made sense.

mrep 7y ago

Not OP, but Seattle is almost as big as SF [0] (825,000 people in SF compared to 775,000 people in Seattle), Seattle has 2.5x the number of cranes up compared to SF [1] (65 cranes in Seattle compared to 26 in SF), Seattle rents have actually gone down recently because of so much new supply [2], and Seattle's average rent is only 57% of SF [3]. I'm not going to say it's just NIMBYism, but whatever they are doing, they are a prime example of what not to do. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-tops-the-nation-in-tower-cranes-for-third-straight-year-as-construction-reaches-new-peak/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-to... [2]: https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2019/01/apartment-rents-dropping-in-seattle-landlords-compete-for-tenants-as-market-cools.html https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2019/01/apartment-rents-... [3]: https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/personal-finance/highest-rent-us-cities/ https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/personal-finance/hi...

abalone 7y ago
Ah, thank you for the sourcing. I shall read them but I was wondering if you have a response to this critical analysis, "Seattle — A Cautionary Tale for Supply-Side Housing Advocates."[1] It notes how Seattle is often cited by deregulation advocates, but that "in spite of decades of indisputably strong development, Seattle’s share of cost-burdened renters has barely budged." And "by overbuilding housing for the wealthy, Seattle has achieved some short-term improvement in affordability for the middle class, at the expense of substantial displacement and continued upward pressure on the most vulnerable." This I think is at the heart of what in SF some call the YIMBY vs. PHIMBY[2] debate. YIMBYs tend to skew towards more privileged techie types (happy to dig up sourcing on this.. I recall the YIMBY national meeting being called overwhlemingly white). Whereas the PHIMBYs or whatever you want to call them, the deeply affordable housing advocates, see flaws in that simplistic trickle-down economics model based on lived experience in working-class neighborhoods undergoing gentrification. [1] https://knock-la.com/seattle-a-cautionary-tale-for-supply-side-housing-advocates-5b4ca5ed6d02 https://knock-la.com/seattle-a-cautionary-tale-for-supply-si... [2] https://yahbayarea.org https://yahbayarea.org or https://twitter.com/YahBayArea https://twitter.com/YahBayArea

manfredo 7y ago

> I read in the SF Chronicle that there’s permitted and approved projects that developers are not moving forward with, like around the new hospital off of Van Ness, due to the “tightening of capital markets” and “soaring construction costs.”[1] Not NIMBYs or government regulations. No doubt that construction costs exacerbate the problem. But there absolutely are people deliberately blocking housing construction. There was a proposition to outright block private housing construction in the Mission that got ~40% yes votes. For further examples, see the infamous case of the developer that wanted to replace a laundromat with an apartment building: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4 > And then I dig a little deeper into the “it’s just supply and demand, dummy” narrative and find articles that document how luxury housing development actually is associated with a rise in rents for the working class.[2] Who would have thought macroeconomics is complicated? This is a fundamentally dishonest objection. New housing is "luxury" housing because the housing market is so expensive that even 1 bedroom apartments rent for $3-4K. Blocking "luxury housing" is blocking all housing, because the market is so expensive that even the smallest units are expensive enough to be considered luxury. Seriously, even 300 sq foot studios rent for 2.5K: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/d/san-francisco-immaculate-studio-with/6885463159.html https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/d/san-francisco-immacul... Of course "luxury housing" is correlated with rising rents. When rents rise, newly constructed units get more expensive too and get pushed into the "luxury" price bracket. This is essentially a tautology, and it is not at all indicative that building more housing increases rents.

vamos_davai 7y ago

I investigated into developing in Half Moon Bay, which is zoned by San Mateo County. There's wide swathes of land up for grabs, but the county or the council forbids development unless you buy enough land and come up with a proposal. This ends up costing in $5-$10 million of undeveloped land alone (no sewage line connection and no electricity). And these lands are planned unit developments, which in practicality means homes only for the wealthy.

chrisdhoover 7y ago
San Mateo and Marin have always opposed development. It has given us great open spaces up 101 down 280 and along 1. Its an odd position to defend, no development in Marin and San Mateo, but increased developement in San Francisco yet thats my view
- wbl 7y ago
  Even in the spaces that are not open space San Mateo opposes apartments.