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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

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.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> What alternative solution actually fixes this, though? Lower the cost of building housing. Streamline permits, zoning, and environmental review. Publicly commit, in other words, to driving down housing prices over a decade. (Note: not land prices! That’s the compromise.) This makes it cheaper to... Build enough shelters for the transient homeless population. Now that they’re a stable problem, we can focus on the gritty bits. Fund mental-health intervention for the permanently homeless so afflicted. And there has to be an element of coercion. Leaving the mentally ill to waste on the street isn’t compassion, it’s dereliction. Fund drug-addiction intervention for the permanently homeless so afflicted. Carrot is clean places to use, seek counselling and get preventative medical care. Stick has to be arresting (and preferably transferring to clinics, not prisons) public users of hard, illicit drugs. With the above in place, encampments can be humanely cleared and/or relocated. It also lets law enforcement tackle the minority of the homeless who are threatening, violent or thieving, a minority that creates most of the problems for other San Franciscans. (Oh, and regional transit co-operation. If you make it easier for people to get around the Bay Area, they don’t have to stack up on each other. Why is the Caltrain a single trunk? Where is the network of every-fifteen-minutes ferries? Why is the BART so loud and expensive?)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- all_factz 7y ago
  I’ve lived in the SF Bay Area pretty much my whole life and I just want to say you hit the nail on the head. Do you know of any politicians who are working to make this happen? I’m pretty liberal, but I sometimes feel we live in such a bubble here that even ideas like these are a third rail...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Decade 7y ago
    Permit streamlining (in order to make affordable and supportive housing more tractable), increasing regional transit cooperation, these are projects of sub-groups of YIMBY Action. https://yimbyaction.org/join/ https://yimbyaction.org/join/
- kevingadd 7y ago
  These are all great ideas, but the point is that they don't solve the other problems at hand directly, and the problems at hand interfere with executing on these ideas. How are we going to fund mental health interventions and housing cost reductions if businesses refuse to pay taxes and housing costs keep going up? How are we going to expand on transit and cut transit costs if transit revenues are bad and high housing prices result in land values so high that the state can't buy land up to expand transit infrastructure? I'd love to see that stuff, but it's been necessary for decades and isn't happening. We can't blame it all on NIMBYs, and getting rid of them won't make it suddenly happen. Some of this is due to other state-wide and city problems, like taxpayers being unwilling to approve funding for transit and other measures, but that's not the only problem either.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> What alternative solution actually fixes this, though? Lower the cost of building housing. Streamline permits, zoning, and environmental review. Publicly commit, in other words, to driving down housing prices over a decade. (Note: not land prices! That’s the compromise.) This makes it cheaper to... Build enough shelters for the transient homeless population. Now that they’re a stable problem, we can focus on the gritty bits. Fund mental-health intervention for the permanently homeless so afflicted. And there has to be an element of coercion. Leaving the mentally ill to waste on the street isn’t compassion, it’s dereliction. Fund drug-addiction intervention for the permanently homeless so afflicted. Carrot is clean places to use, seek counselling and get preventative medical care. Stick has to be arresting (and preferably transferring to clinics, not prisons) public users of hard, illicit drugs. With the above in place, encampments can be humanely cleared and/or relocated. It also lets law enforcement tackle the minority of the homeless who are threatening, violent or thieving, a minority that creates most of the problems for other San Franciscans. (Oh, and regional transit co-operation. If you make it easier for people to get around the Bay Area, they don’t have to stack up on each other. Why is the Caltrain a single trunk? Where is the network of every-fifteen-minutes ferries? Why is the BART so loud and expensive?)

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
all_factz 7y ago
I’ve lived in the SF Bay Area pretty much my whole life and I just want to say you hit the nail on the head. Do you know of any politicians who are working to make this happen? I’m pretty liberal, but I sometimes feel we live in such a bubble here that even ideas like these are a third rail...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Decade 7y ago
  Permit streamlining (in order to make affordable and supportive housing more tractable), increasing regional transit cooperation, these are projects of sub-groups of YIMBY Action. https://yimbyaction.org/join/ https://yimbyaction.org/join/
kevingadd 7y ago
These are all great ideas, but the point is that they don't solve the other problems at hand directly, and the problems at hand interfere with executing on these ideas. How are we going to fund mental health interventions and housing cost reductions if businesses refuse to pay taxes and housing costs keep going up? How are we going to expand on transit and cut transit costs if transit revenues are bad and high housing prices result in land values so high that the state can't buy land up to expand transit infrastructure? I'd love to see that stuff, but it's been necessary for decades and isn't happening. We can't blame it all on NIMBYs, and getting rid of them won't make it suddenly happen. Some of this is due to other state-wide and city problems, like taxpayers being unwilling to approve funding for transit and other measures, but that's not the only problem either.