4 ms·

There so much land in the US. People don't have to live in San Fransisco. These people grew up there, they want to live in their home. You know, that emotional

by mola 6y ago

There so much land in the US. People don't have to live in San Fransisco. These people grew up there, they want to live in their home. You know, that emotional thing that money can't really explain. Sure they see the people arriving in, with huge paychecks that drive prices up, and them out as bad. Any human will, a rational agent won't.

fragmede 6y ago
For some it's a practical, not emotional. If your job is in the city, and does not allow working remotely, the choices are either commute an hour by car each way, commute for roughly as long via public transportation, or live closer to work. Hopefully with Covid forcing more sane remote work policies across the board, fewer people are forced to live somewhere they don't want to.
- imtringued 6y ago
  That's basically what happened. There is an overabundance of jobs but since there is no need to live in San Francisco the fundamental mismatch between commercial and residential property has been resolved temporarily.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Though there was mostly never a need to live in SF for a lot of the tech company jobs. Many/most were people who wanted to live in a city in the Bay Area even if their jobs were in the South Bay. I assume it's an exodus from the Bay Area generally.
epistasis 6y ago
Though this is not an uncommon view in SF at the moment, I find it horrifying. What has made SF such a great place from the 1970s to ~2010 has been its willingness to accept new people, including the strange and the weird. That's not to say that it's been a great city for everyone, the first-wave gentrifiers from the 1960s pushed out Black people from the neighborhoods they took over, like Haight Ashbury, and the downzonings they enacted over the city have greatly amplified their material wealth while keeping out those without wealthy. But for a brief 40 years before the super-constriction of supply happened, it was a welcoming place to lots of people that couldn't find homes elsewhere, because there were at least some empty places to rent out. What drives up the prices isn't that people with big salaries are there, they've always been there. What's driving up the rents is that the people with big real estate holdings have said that the people with paychecks can't build anything new. So instead of those big paychecks going to building more infrastructure and subsidized low-income housing, those big paychecks are going only to current landlords, and pushing out anybody without a big paycheck. SF housing is a game of musical chairs, and all the people that found their chair in the 1970s and 1980s easily because there were lots of empty chairs have decided that there should be no more chairs. That provincial, close-minded, and ultimately xenophobic attitude is what makes the housing market so unfair.
- bnralt 6y ago
  That's an odd point of view - you're xenophobic if you don't prioritize unending population increases above all else?
  - epistasis 6y ago
    I certainly didn't say "unending population increases" or "above all else." But if you think that building enough housing for the people means unending population increases, that's really in line with the garden variety xenophobic anti-immigrant thinking I grew up with in the Midwest. The zero-sum philosophy of a newcomer arriving meaning that a current resident loses out, or that the newcomer is "extracting" from the community rather than contributing to it, is also gaining popularity in SF, and is also a very common xenophobic trope.
    - bnralt 6y ago
      > I certainly didn't say "unending population increases" or "above all else." If you don't think that, then there's a certain density level where it's considered fine to oppose it, and there are certain things one could prioritize above population increases that could lead people to favor restrictions. Maybe some of the people favoring restrictions think the high point of density has been reached, or perhaps they favor restrictions because of what values they place above population growth. It's worth at least considering before we simply dismiss them all as xenophobic.
      - epistasis 6y ago
        Pointing out specific, xenophobic viewpoints doesn't mean dismissing everybody as xenophobic. If they have legitimate density complaints, please bring them. But I will also point out that these density complaints are even more xenophobic in origin. Density restrictions and zoning in San were invented a century ago to push the Chinese populations out of their neighborhoods. And for me, this isn't about more or less restrictions. This is about meeting the needs of the people of a city. Not just the wealthy, not just keeping buildings the same, not just the people that have lived there the longest. The needs of the entire people. Which includes people that don't yet live in the city but need access to the economic resources. So I definitely think that there should be density restrictions, but rather than maximums there should be density minimus. It should be illegal to build a single unit on a 5000 square foot lot anywhere in San Francisco. When somebody tears down a tiny Victorian, they had better replace it with many homes rather than just one. And if somebody remodels those exclusionary Pacific Heights homes, they better be adding more units, IMHO.

by mola 6y ago

fragmede 6y ago

For some it's a practical, not emotional. If your job is in the city, and does not allow working remotely, the choices are either commute an hour by car each way, commute for roughly as long via public transportation, or live closer to work. Hopefully with Covid forcing more sane remote work policies across the board, fewer people are forced to live somewhere they don't want to.

imtringued 6y ago
That's basically what happened. There is an overabundance of jobs but since there is no need to live in San Francisco the fundamental mismatch between commercial and residential property has been resolved temporarily.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Though there was mostly never a need to live in SF for a lot of the tech company jobs. Many/most were people who wanted to live in a city in the Bay Area even if their jobs were in the South Bay. I assume it's an exodus from the Bay Area generally.

epistasis 6y ago

Though this is not an uncommon view in SF at the moment, I find it horrifying. What has made SF such a great place from the 1970s to ~2010 has been its willingness to accept new people, including the strange and the weird. That's not to say that it's been a great city for everyone, the first-wave gentrifiers from the 1960s pushed out Black people from the neighborhoods they took over, like Haight Ashbury, and the downzonings they enacted over the city have greatly amplified their material wealth while keeping out those without wealthy. But for a brief 40 years before the super-constriction of supply happened, it was a welcoming place to lots of people that couldn't find homes elsewhere, because there were at least some empty places to rent out. What drives up the prices isn't that people with big salaries are there, they've always been there. What's driving up the rents is that the people with big real estate holdings have said that the people with paychecks can't build anything new. So instead of those big paychecks going to building more infrastructure and subsidized low-income housing, those big paychecks are going only to current landlords, and pushing out anybody without a big paycheck. SF housing is a game of musical chairs, and all the people that found their chair in the 1970s and 1980s easily because there were lots of empty chairs have decided that there should be no more chairs. That provincial, close-minded, and ultimately xenophobic attitude is what makes the housing market so unfair.

bnralt 6y ago
That's an odd point of view - you're xenophobic if you don't prioritize unending population increases above all else?
- epistasis 6y ago
  I certainly didn't say "unending population increases" or "above all else." But if you think that building enough housing for the people means unending population increases, that's really in line with the garden variety xenophobic anti-immigrant thinking I grew up with in the Midwest. The zero-sum philosophy of a newcomer arriving meaning that a current resident loses out, or that the newcomer is "extracting" from the community rather than contributing to it, is also gaining popularity in SF, and is also a very common xenophobic trope.
  - bnralt 6y ago
    > I certainly didn't say "unending population increases" or "above all else." If you don't think that, then there's a certain density level where it's considered fine to oppose it, and there are certain things one could prioritize above population increases that could lead people to favor restrictions. Maybe some of the people favoring restrictions think the high point of density has been reached, or perhaps they favor restrictions because of what values they place above population growth. It's worth at least considering before we simply dismiss them all as xenophobic.
    - epistasis 6y ago
      Pointing out specific, xenophobic viewpoints doesn't mean dismissing everybody as xenophobic. If they have legitimate density complaints, please bring them. But I will also point out that these density complaints are even more xenophobic in origin. Density restrictions and zoning in San were invented a century ago to push the Chinese populations out of their neighborhoods. And for me, this isn't about more or less restrictions. This is about meeting the needs of the people of a city. Not just the wealthy, not just keeping buildings the same, not just the people that have lived there the longest. The needs of the entire people. Which includes people that don't yet live in the city but need access to the economic resources. So I definitely think that there should be density restrictions, but rather than maximums there should be density minimus. It should be illegal to build a single unit on a 5000 square foot lot anywhere in San Francisco. When somebody tears down a tiny Victorian, they had better replace it with many homes rather than just one. And if somebody remodels those exclusionary Pacific Heights homes, they better be adding more units, IMHO.