6 ms·

What a completely unexpected consequence of the restrictions on office space, spearheaded by John Elberling of TODCO. /s He is now trying to make office space

by Decade 7y ago

What a completely unexpected consequence of the restrictions on office space, spearheaded by John Elberling of TODCO. /s He is now trying to make office space even more restricted, and his allies are working to reduce office space alternatively by raising the fees on office construction. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-Mayor-SoMa-nonprofit-clash-over-office-growth-14541749.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-Mayor-SoMa-n... https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2019/10/22/sf-moves-forward-with-controversial-jobs-housing.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2019/10/22/sf-... (More about John Elberling: http://sfbamo.com/news/tenants-in-todco-property-allege-abuse-neglect-and-intimidation/ http://sfbamo.com/news/tenants-in-todco-property-allege-abus...) San Francisco prevents office space from being abundant and cheap, and therefore the office jobs are being moved to counties with even worse jobs-housing balance, turning San Francisco into a bedroom community for (the richer individuals working in) the peninsula.

abalone 7y ago
> working to reduce office space That's a rather uncharitable characterization. SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction. We already have way too few houses, especially low-income housing.[1] Which is what makes Stripe's move here particularly low integrity: they'll have all the housing impact on SF without paying any of the corporate taxes. From your own source: "A separate economic feasibility study from the City's Office of Economic and Workforce Development found that a range of office projects are 'currently infeasible,' even without a city fee increase. The study did contend that an improvement in market conditions could make a modest fee increase viable." [1] https://hoodline.com/2019/10/report-sf-adding-equal-numbers-of-high-and-low-wage-jobs-but-not-nearly-enough-low-wage-housing https://hoodline.com/2019/10/report-sf-adding-equal-numbers-...
- austhrow743 7y ago
  >SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction If that was the case wouldn't a tax by number of employees be what to push through?
  - abalone 7y ago
    It actually used to be that way (payroll tax) until the tech industry pushed through the gross receipts tax. But taxing office square footage is also a reasonable approximation for headcount.
    - hinkley 7y ago
      It isn’t. This encourages companies to pack people in like sardines. I’ve worked, for instance, in two or three offices that were right as the OSHA limits for bathrooms per capita (I’m still pretty sure Amazon was in violation). These are not pleasant working environments.
- nindalf 7y ago
  > SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction And also making the assumption that only people who work in San Fransisco will live in San Fransisco? Because those Stripe employees who live in SF right now are likely not going to change their apartments. They'll continue living where they are, except now SF now longer benefits from the taxes that Stripe would otherwise have paid.
  - abalone 7y ago
    That's exactly why this tax dodge is such a low integrity move for Stripe. All their SF employees will remain in SF, but Stripe won't pay the corporate taxes to offset their impact on the housing market, transit infrastructure, etc.
    - sharpneli 7y ago
      Doesn’t SF have some kind of municipal tax that the employees pay? I work in a different city where I live. But pay ~20% municipal tax (not US) that pays for infra etc that I use.
      - refurb 7y ago
        The employees who continue living in SF would continue to pay property taxes (through rent or directly) and sales taxes.
        sharpneli 7y ago
        Yeah. So they would pay for their impact, assuming the amount is enough. Here municipal tax income is ridiculously higher than the corporate tax for municipalities. But the reason is that a corporation does not require healthcare, the person who lives in a municipality does and receives it from their own municipality etc.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    What alternative solution actually fixes this, though? All you can really do is build more housing (to fix housing undersupply caused by the excess office space) and limit growth of office space (to prevent the imbalance from getting worse). The fact that companies can open up offices somewhere else shouldn't be very surprising, and it shouldn't be shocking that people will choose to live where they already live unless their commute gets too long and they can afford to move. I just don't see what you expect SF leadership to do about this that doesn't fit into the two categories I mentioned, other than give up.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  A law or regulation relying on corporate integrity in order to work well is a law or regulation that is poorly constructed.
- graeme 7y ago
  SF'a govt is the cause of lack of housing construction: they forbid it. And they've ended up with an endless number of one off, inefficient policies to try to address the problem this has created without addressing the actual cause of the problem.
- Decade 7y ago
  > That's a rather uncharitable characterization. SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction. I’m a San Francisco native. I’ve learned to be uncharitable when it comes to the Board of Supervisors. They are masters of saying one thing and doing another. Increasing the fees on office space is going to make even more projects infeasible, which would lead to fewer offices being constructed. Which, in their minds, will justify the fees. For the longest time, the self-styled “anti-corporate” faction in San Francisco politics have said that the cap on office space construction that Elberling helped to pass back in 1986 is not a real burden because so few offices have been built that the cap has rarely been the limiting factor. Limiting offices in San Francisco isn’t even going to help with the jobs-housing imbalance. As we see here, the limited office supply in San Francisco is driving companies to move to other Bay Area cities that don’t pretend to care about the jobs-housing imbalance. The workers still need somewhere to live, and many of them will live in San Francisco. But instead of using our extensive investment in transit to downtown San Francisco, they will use the more limited transit and freeways going to the outskirts of South City. Enough with this every-county-for-itself race to the bottom. If the San Francisco supervisors were serious about the jobs-housing balance, they would not be making offices harder to build in San Francisco. They would be ceding local control of land use to a regional authority, in exchange for the rest of the Bay Area counties ceding their control, too, so that we could build an integrated and equitable region. Solve the jobs-housing imbalance for the whole region by building a lot more homes. https://cayimby.org https://cayimby.org
- m0llusk 7y ago
  South SF office parks are carefully managed medium to high density facilities while South SF residential land is mostly restricted single family zoning locked up hard by prop. 13. The burden to make room is clearly with residents.
jeffFrom18F 7y ago
I hope Stripe and similar companies that are mostly SF-based plan on more expansion to San Jose. There is an article practically every day in the Mercury News about some new office or residential site that is coming soon.

by Decade 7y ago

abalone 7y ago

> working to reduce office space That's a rather uncharitable characterization. SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction. We already have way too few houses, especially low-income housing.[1] Which is what makes Stripe's move here particularly low integrity: they'll have all the housing impact on SF without paying any of the corporate taxes. From your own source: "A separate economic feasibility study from the City's Office of Economic and Workforce Development found that a range of office projects are 'currently infeasible,' even without a city fee increase. The study did contend that an improvement in market conditions could make a modest fee increase viable." [1] https://hoodline.com/2019/10/report-sf-adding-equal-numbers-of-high-and-low-wage-jobs-but-not-nearly-enough-low-wage-housing https://hoodline.com/2019/10/report-sf-adding-equal-numbers-...

austhrow743 7y ago
>SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction If that was the case wouldn't a tax by number of employees be what to push through?
- abalone 7y ago
  It actually used to be that way (payroll tax) until the tech industry pushed through the gross receipts tax. But taxing office square footage is also a reasonable approximation for headcount.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    It isn’t. This encourages companies to pack people in like sardines. I’ve worked, for instance, in two or three offices that were right as the OSHA limits for bathrooms per capita (I’m still pretty sure Amazon was in violation). These are not pleasant working environments.
nindalf 7y ago
> SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction And also making the assumption that only people who work in San Fransisco will live in San Fransisco? Because those Stripe employees who live in SF right now are likely not going to change their apartments. They'll continue living where they are, except now SF now longer benefits from the taxes that Stripe would otherwise have paid.
- abalone 7y ago
  That's exactly why this tax dodge is such a low integrity move for Stripe. All their SF employees will remain in SF, but Stripe won't pay the corporate taxes to offset their impact on the housing market, transit infrastructure, etc.
  - sharpneli 7y ago
    Doesn’t SF have some kind of municipal tax that the employees pay? I work in a different city where I live. But pay ~20% municipal tax (not US) that pays for infra etc that I use.
    - refurb 7y ago
      The employees who continue living in SF would continue to pay property taxes (through rent or directly) and sales taxes.
      - sharpneli 7y ago
        Yeah. So they would pay for their impact, assuming the amount is enough. Here municipal tax income is ridiculously higher than the corporate tax for municipalities. But the reason is that a corporation does not require healthcare, the person who lives in a municipality does and receives it from their own municipality etc.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  What alternative solution actually fixes this, though? All you can really do is build more housing (to fix housing undersupply caused by the excess office space) and limit growth of office space (to prevent the imbalance from getting worse). The fact that companies can open up offices somewhere else shouldn't be very surprising, and it shouldn't be shocking that people will choose to live where they already live unless their commute gets too long and they can afford to move. I just don't see what you expect SF leadership to do about this that doesn't fit into the two categories I mentioned, other than give up.
maxerickson 7y ago
A law or regulation relying on corporate integrity in order to work well is a law or regulation that is poorly constructed.
graeme 7y ago
SF'a govt is the cause of lack of housing construction: they forbid it. And they've ended up with an endless number of one off, inefficient policies to try to address the problem this has created without addressing the actual cause of the problem.
Decade 7y ago
> That's a rather uncharitable characterization. SF is just trying to tie jobs to adequate housing construction. I’m a San Francisco native. I’ve learned to be uncharitable when it comes to the Board of Supervisors. They are masters of saying one thing and doing another. Increasing the fees on office space is going to make even more projects infeasible, which would lead to fewer offices being constructed. Which, in their minds, will justify the fees. For the longest time, the self-styled “anti-corporate” faction in San Francisco politics have said that the cap on office space construction that Elberling helped to pass back in 1986 is not a real burden because so few offices have been built that the cap has rarely been the limiting factor. Limiting offices in San Francisco isn’t even going to help with the jobs-housing imbalance. As we see here, the limited office supply in San Francisco is driving companies to move to other Bay Area cities that don’t pretend to care about the jobs-housing imbalance. The workers still need somewhere to live, and many of them will live in San Francisco. But instead of using our extensive investment in transit to downtown San Francisco, they will use the more limited transit and freeways going to the outskirts of South City. Enough with this every-county-for-itself race to the bottom. If the San Francisco supervisors were serious about the jobs-housing balance, they would not be making offices harder to build in San Francisco. They would be ceding local control of land use to a regional authority, in exchange for the rest of the Bay Area counties ceding their control, too, so that we could build an integrated and equitable region. Solve the jobs-housing imbalance for the whole region by building a lot more homes. https://cayimby.org https://cayimby.org
m0llusk 7y ago
South SF office parks are carefully managed medium to high density facilities while South SF residential land is mostly restricted single family zoning locked up hard by prop. 13. The burden to make room is clearly with residents.

jeffFrom18F 7y ago

I hope Stripe and similar companies that are mostly SF-based plan on more expansion to San Jose. There is an article practically every day in the Mercury News about some new office or residential site that is coming soon.