9 ms·

San Francisco is one of CA’s most conservative cities when it comes to housing

• sfrenty 6y ago
  I think it’s worth noting how this ends a city’s culture. And the issue is rents of all types. I walked by an old favorite restaurant of mine which now has a for lease sign in the window. It seems the rents in SF act as a filter only allowing longevity for certain types of restaurants: - ones that use cheap terrible ingredients and production habits with high prices - megacorp food franchises Both underpay employees. It feels like gone are the days of a person passionate about some culinary niche or ensuring their workers get a livable wage following through on that passion and filling the city with new and interesting food options. The story of the restaurant I mentioned earlier already endured the rents of 5-10 years ago by starting as a tiny place, like a coat locker at a hotel, that sat 6 but churned out quality food and soon become as known for their excellent food as their infamous waits. They were able, in a few years, to upgrade to a bigger space but now they’re gone. I’m doubtful even their original success story could happen in the same city now.
  • avalys 6y ago
    You don’t think the governor completely shutting down restaurants for months on end[1] has anything to do with that? [1] Without evidence that outdoor spread is a meaningful risk at all, I’ll add
    • knrz 6y ago
      As a Torontonian living in SF I was amazed at the high quality of produce and dismayed at the low quality of restaurant food, even at $15-$25 per meal.
      • cheriot 6y ago
        Where were you going? The SF restaurant scene is great
        • dannyw 6y ago
          Have you compared it internationally? Sydneysider here, was disappointed when I visited SF.
          • cheriot 6y ago
            Haven’t had the pleasure of visiting Sydney, but I’ve been a few places and SF is solid.
            • astrange 6y ago
              The food in Australia is actually better than SF. But it’s also better than practically anywhere else and it’s quite expensive.
          • mushbino 6y ago
            I live in SF and unfortunately, I have to agree. It's a weird city, especially when you compare it internationally. There are some amazing restaurants, but they're difficult to find and I think that probably adds to the appeal of them. I think the cost to entry in SF has a lot to do with it. If you're dropping that much money to open a restaurant here you have to make sure it appeals to the largest possible audience and that audience generally has pretty predictable boring tastes. Also, corners are more likely to be cut as far as quality of the actual ingredients. That's my take anyway, it's tough to wrap my head around even after all these years.
        • fakedang 6y ago
          Nowhere close to London or NY SF is like a foodie Frankenstein. Lots of options from around the world, none of them crafted perfectly.
          • dmode 6y ago
            Doesn't SF have the highest concentration of Michelin star restaurants ?
            • 6y ago
      • dragonwriter 6y ago
        As someone who has lived most of my life in CA (but not SF, and only for a little while on the fringes of the Bay Area), I've found that SF is almost guaranteed to disappoint if you do the meat space equivalent of pushing the “I’m feeling lucky” button, but that if you put the tiniest effort into researching options, it's pretty great.
    • Pfhreak 6y ago
      Shutting down restaurants was the right call. But it should have come with a complete shut down of rent obligations as well.
      • kelnos 6y ago
        > Shutting down restaurants was the right call. Upon what evidence do you base this assertion? My feeling is that closing indoor dining may have been a good idea, but closing outdoor dining and telling people they couldn't meet their friends (distanced) in public likely just caused people to have unsafe indoor gatherings in their homes, which is worse. I of course have no hard evidence for this either, but outdoor dining was open for months before the holiday surge without a significant uptick in case rates. That would imply that the surge was driven by the holidays, with people traveling when they shouldn't, and hosting people outside their household for holiday dinners. Neither of those things has anything to do with outdoor dining. But Newsom had to be seen to be "doing something", so here we are. > But it should have come with a complete shut down of rent obligations as well. I'm sympathetic to this idea, but landlords need to eat, too.
  • cheriot 6y ago
    Residential and commercial are completely different problems. If that restaurant tried to move locations, they'd experience the same problem as a new one opening: you start paying rent immediately and wait years for city permits and approvals before opening. When tenants can't leave, landlords can charge whatever they want. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bid-to-open-S-F-ice-cream-shop-turns-into-a-15614815.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bi... Also, ya know, covid shut downs.
    • gkop 6y ago
      Residential and commercial are closely linked within a geography. Eg, workers need somewhere to live. Eg, prop 13 applies to both residential and commercial property.
      • cheriot 6y ago
        Linked, but very different regulatory regimes. Specifically, the things discussed in the article don't apply to commercial space and have minimal bearing on restaurant rents that I was responding to.
        • gkop 6y ago
          Thanks for clarifying. May I ask, where do you stand on prop 13?
          • cheriot 6y ago
            It’s horrible, but there’s also many other things to fix
      • kelnos 6y ago
        Unfortunately many (most?) service workers have already been priced out of SF and commute from elsewhere to work, so that link isn't quite as strong.
  • tolbish 6y ago
    > It feels like gone are the days of a person passionate about some culinary niche or ensuring their workers get a livable wage following through on that passion and filling the city with new and interesting food options. They will be relegated to food trucks. Although this sounds like an issue with expensive cities in general.
• mrosett 6y ago
  I find it strange that this article defines relaxing zoning codes as "progressive." I suppose that the author is writing for an audience that equates "progressive" and "good" but in any other context supporting strict regulation that restricts property rights isn't really "conservative."
  • almost_usual 6y ago
    Didn’t know rich gated communities were all about up-zoning.
  • throwaway9980 6y ago
    Not sure how the article is using the terms because it’s paywalled. Generally “conservative” means maintaining the status quo. You could see how “progressive” might be the opposite if that. It’s interesting when you apply the older “liberal” label which would mean generally permissive. Obviously that label makes no sense whatsoever when describing San Francisco. In this case it sounds like they are describing entrenched interests as conservative because they want to conserve the current state of affairs. They are opposed to progress. Therefore the people opposite them must be progressive.
  • cheriot 6y ago
    Wanting to keep things they way they are or go back to the way they once were is a conservative cause. Otoh, progressives pushing to allow change are motivated by environmental and social justice causes.
    • phendrenad2 6y ago
      That assumes a liberal policy has never been passed. Wanting to keep a liberal policy in place obviously isn't conservative. Seems obvious, but point is, we can't work backwards and say that if someone wants to keep something the same, that thing must be conservative. Of course, this assumes that we're talking about the usual political definitions of "conservative" vs "liberal", which more or less correspond to "right" and "left". If we're talking about "conservative" meaning "wants to status quo", then it gets really useless because the alternative is "wants to keep changing things", which isn't a political archetype that exists in reality.
• pxeboot 6y ago
  Thinking of housing markets in general, should existing residents be allowed to consider a city 'full' and ban additional housing units? Or should everybody have the right to live there, with a free market determining the price and number of new units built?
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  • cheriot 6y ago
    The place to argue about growth is in zoning for offices and industrial space. Once there are jobs and people need a place to live.. trying to push them out gets unethical quickly.
  • joe_the_user 6y ago
    Neither? I think development should be guided by a regional plan. At this point, we know that suburban development is reaching it's end of and many people want to live in dense, culturally diverse cities. The problem is that developers, left to themselves, only build super-high units and the sum-total of those won't meet needs. The solution requiring high density in development. Essentially, impose "vancouverism". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouverism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouverism
    • dannyw 6y ago
      Medium density apartments are also great. In where I live, our council approves apartment buildings up to 4 storeys (including the ground floor). It creates a village-like atmosphere.
  • woah 6y ago
    That might be an interesting theoretical question, but it in no way relates to SF. 3/4s of the city is lowish density double and single story suburban style single family homes.
• randmeerkat 6y ago
  This was actually one of the most disappointing parts of Silicon Valley for me and one of the reasons I left. The number of tech progressives I met that possessed a murderous hate of homeless people was unreal. I still can’t believe that such a wealthy area has such a fundamental problem meeting basic human needs. Not everyone can be a tech worker, but very few of the “Silicon Valley” types can imagine someone living outside of tech, and if someone wasn’t in tech they were considered subhuman.
  • apsec112 6y ago
    I think the average tech worker is very pro-housing, pro-solving homelessness, but (correctly, IMO) thinks that the existing homeless programs are wasteful and don't solve the problem with the money they already have, and (understandably) doesn't want to be constantly harassed and assaulted while they walk to the corner store. Or have their kid stab themselves with a used heroin needle while they're taking a walk outside. Or have gibberish screamed at them by someone with drug-induced psychosis while spending fifteen minutes waiting for the bus, etc. These are very unpleasant experiences and it's normal for people to not want them.
    • randmeerkat 6y ago
      I bought homeless people lunches and didn’t consider it being harassed. I didn’t know anyone who had their kid stab themselves on any needle of any sort. The only people that screamed at me were blue collar workers that hated tech workers. The worst experience in SF was the human excrement in the streets and watching it happen, but as I said, it’s amazing such a wealthy area can’t even provide such a basic service as public toilets. Edit: The tech workers that I knew very much so cared about not allowing high density housing to keep their house prices inflated.
      • jchallis 6y ago
        Wife works in pediatric infectious diseases in SF. “Community needle stick” is common enough to get its own acronym. They’re the folks that have to make sure junior doesn’t now have Hep A. Super normal.
• deleted 6y ago
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• ipnon 6y ago
  We have lost a sense of liberalism in American politics. Conservatism has drifted towards nativism and quasi white supremacy. A "liberal" in American parlance is really what would be considered a weak social democrat in Europe. I don't claim classical liberalism has all of the answers, but we've clearly driven our current illiberal housing policies off the cliff: housing markets in large American cities do not work to make housing more affordable for the general public.
  • Pfhreak 6y ago
    You may not be aware, but liberalism is a bit of an overloaded term. Some folks use it to mean liberal in the sense of 'permissive', while others use it in the more traditional political sense of 'permissive free market capitalist'. The US has plenty of the latter (and, in fact, just elected one President). I believe that there's a difference between 'Leftists' and 'Liberals' in the Democrat side of US politics, where the Leftists argue for social democracy and the Liberals argue for unity and a return to civility, coupled with a moderately regulated market economy. Some additional reading on the topic: https://theconversation.com/the-difference-between-left-and-liberal-and-why-voters-need-to-know-120273 https://theconversation.com/the-difference-between-left-and-...
    • ipnon 6y ago
      I tried, and apparently failed, to allude to this in my original post. The implication I tried to make is that in housing Americans should return to classical liberalism: the owner of a property has the right to do whatever they please with it, barring any activities that would impede on others general rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Building dense housing in cities with crises of housing affordability and homelessness does not impede on said liberties, in fact we could reasonably proclaim that laws forcing an oligopoly of land and home owners does infringe on the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, by making the human right to housing unattainable by significant percentages of the population. Therefore, we should consider the elimination of that regulation because it inevitably serves to restrict the supply of housing, policies such as zoning, inequitable taxation on land ownership, and selective rent freezing. These regulations are at odds with the liberties our government serves to guarantee. A simple and fair solution to the housing crisis is to make the housing markets fair, by treating all renters and homeowners the same, and by restricting their behavior only to the most minimal degree that is necessary to protect their life and liberty. Policies that engender the enrichment of the ownership class and the perpetual underclass at the expense of all others, squeeze the middle class into one or the other category, and mostly to the inferior one.
• Pfhreak 6y ago
  We need to get out of the mindset that housing should operate like a market. We need to build lots more housing, yes, but to really solve the problem for good we need to change how we think about housing. Otherwise we'll build a bit more and then rest on our laurels until the next crisis. There are practical steps we can take, today, to incentivize building more housing, such as: Eliminating parking minimums: use the building's space for people, not cars. Tax land on its ability to house. It should be a tax advantage to build houses over building a surface parking lot. Build and maintain low rise, distributed public housing. Ensure operational costs are covered, not just capital costs. Low rises are easier to maintain than big projects. Rent control -- I know this is polarizing, but I believe housing shouldn't be a constant upward pricing until you reach the limits of what the market will bear. People need live somewhere, and if we continue to turn the screws on rent, they'll have less to spend elsewhere. There are other things we could do today too, like strengthen tenants unions, improve tenant protection laws, enact right of first refusal laws that require landlords to sell to the current tenants first, and more. I know folks might disagree with me, and that's ok. I'd ask that you bring some good faith discussion rather than just downvoting and moving on. (In case it is relevant, I am a home owner in a hot real estate market.)
  • colinmhayes 6y ago
    Rent control is an interesting argument because it's clear that it lowers total surplus but there's no way to really know if lowers total utility since the the rate of surplus to utility conversion is dependent on wealth. So now we get people arguing past each other instead of with each other because their priors aren't aligned. One group wants to maximize surplus and the other utility. We need to answer that question before we can move onto the policy decisions.
    • Pfhreak 6y ago
      I think it might not be zero sum. While sometimes we have policies that maximize one for the sake of the other, not all policies will. Some will maximize both, others will minimize both. The solution likely includes some policies that will make tradeoffs (e.g. like rent control), offset by other polices that maximize surplus at the cost of utility. Yes, this means some policies will be working at cross purposes, but different people in our society will be impacted differently by those policies. (E.g. there are some folks for whom rent control means being able to live in their community at all). So it might be best to not try to chart the most efficient course from the outside, and instead accept some inefficiencies if it means making positive moves now.
• jariel 6y ago
  There is no housing crisis. On average, America has very affordable housing. The only 'crisis' is that there are a lot of people that want to life in SF. But that's not really a 'crisis'. If the residents of an area do not want to turn their city into Hong Kong or Vancouver with 100's of high rises stacked back to back, it's absolutely reasonable for them to do that. Unlike Hong Kong, California is massive and there's plenty of space. There's vast land available for fairly dense development around Morgan Hill, Santa Rosa, Sacramento - and that's where people can go if they want to live nearby. If the jobs in SF don't pay enough for people to live there, then definitely demand more pay, don't take the jobs or leave. The area is nice, but not that nice. Companies should use the opportunity to spread out a little bit.
  • diebeforei485 6y ago
    > If the residents of an area do not want [...], it's absolutely reasonable for them to do that. This is actually illegal under California law, but is rarely enforced because it requires someone (eg. the state government) to actually sue exclusionary communities in state court to get an enforcement action against them to allow more housing to be built. Because the state government hasn't been doing this, some organizations have been stepping up - https://www.yimbylaw.org https://www.yimbylaw.org
    • astrange 6y ago
      The state has actually just started an office to sue cities over HAA inspired by YIMBY Law and CARLA.
  • almost_usual 6y ago
    Inevitably when the big one hits those single family homes will be gone. Also imagine the URMs in SOMA, Chinatown, and Tenderloin to be leveled. At that point the city will need to rebuild for a large homeless population rapidly. High density earthquake resistant architecture will be the natural transition.
    • kelnos 6y ago
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• diveanon 6y ago
  SF residents have mastered championing self-felating national social causes while simultaneously ignoring actual poverty on their doorsteps. Most SF home owners are conservatives at heart who just happen to vote Democrat in national elections.