6 ms·

I remember reading article about San Francisco being the "mercenary city": Young professionals come here, live in tiny apartments, get big tech wages for a coup

I remember reading article about San Francisco being the "mercenary city": Young professionals come here, live in tiny apartments, get big tech wages for a couple of years, then move somewhere more affordable. With the remote situation, people are getting out of SF faster than ever. Won't this bill drive up the price of a single family home while driving down the price of multifamily homes? But the dream for most American families is to settle down in a single family home. And so even if this bill lowers rent, won't it actually push more senior tech workers to look elsewhere for their eventual long term home, making the region more "mercenary" than ever?

WaxProlix 5y ago
I wonder how many people will go from "I can afford a single family house in SF" to "I cannot afford a single family house in SF" as a result of this bill.
- freshpots 5y ago
  I think you have it backwards. More housing reduces housing pressure and prices.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  Aren’t many of the single family houses currently occupied by people flatsharing, which would be better served by other types of housing?
- kelnos 5y ago
  Who cares? If you are dead-set on a single family house, you probably shouldn't move to a dense, urban area. SFHs are incredibly inefficient uses of land, and that only makes sense where land is more plentiful and in lower demand. SFHs in Manhattan easily go for over $2k per square foot, or even a lot more (just found one listed on Zillow for $5k/sqft). No one seriously complains about that, because "wasting" space in an urban area should cost you. Sure, most of Manhattan is a lot more dense than most of SF, but given demand here, expecting affordable SFHs is unrealistic already.
gnopgnip 5y ago
Allowing multifamily homes to be built means people that want multifamily homes can have them. The other 98% of the land won't face the same pressure and it can bring down prices for everyone.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Exactly. If people actually want single family homes that's what they will pay money for. If they want multifamily homes then let them have them. America is supposed to be this mecca of the mythical "free market" but as soon as it's about land suddenly those rules don't matter at all. Supply and demand don't matter. The freedom of choosing what you want doesn't matter. Instead, the local residents abuse the government to force their way of life onto other people who disagree with it.
poopypoopington 5y ago
Your comment makes no sense. Building more housing means that housing costs will go down, making it way more likely that you WILL "be able to afford a single family home -- the American dream when you settle down..."
- anonuser123456 5y ago
  The bill will likely make single family residences more expensive. Since single family residences will now compete for multifamily, and multifamily uses land so much more efficiently, multifamily development will be able to outbid single family construction. Not that this is a problem. The goal of housing policy is to house people, not give a certain fraction of the population exactly what they want and telling everyone else ‘sucks to be you, I got mine’
  - imtringued 5y ago
    Ah yes, the free market of home owners forcing their wishes upon everyone else. Housing demand and supply isn't something to be decided by individuals, instead by a special group of interests that must tell you what you want and what should be available.
xxpor 5y ago
How can you not see the cognitive dissonance in your own comment? The reason why everyone lives in tiny apartments and then moves to a cheaper area is SF is largely covered by single family homes, and building anything else is subject to so much process it drives costs up to the moon!
kelnos 5y ago
I think the "mercenary" bit is (aside from being exaggerated) not really the point. My view on this is that if you want to live in a dense, urban area, you should have to pay a premium to live in a single family home, because SFHs are incredibly inefficient uses of land in that kind of environment. Suburbs, sure, SFHs all over, and that's expected. But not in a city. The goal of less restrictive zoning like this is that we see more in-law units and 2-, 3-, and 4-plexes cropping up all over (some/many of these replacing existing single family homes). While that may increase the cost of SFHs, the average cost of homes in general will go down, because you'll have greater supply to meet demand. And they don't have to be "tiny apartments", either. I do think this is a bit overblown; it's not like I see SF's Outer Sunset converting any significant amount of housing stock to duplexes and 4-plexes any time soon (or ever), and I expect residents will (unfortunately) still have other non-zoning-related tools at their disposal to fight development plans they don't like. A UC Berkeley study (referenced and quoted elsewhere on this post) expects this measure to only increase the statewide housing stock by around 700k units. That's not nothing, but if they expected a significant number of SFHs to get torn down and replaced by multi-unit buildings, that number would be a good order of magnitude higher.

WaxProlix 5y ago

I wonder how many people will go from "I can afford a single family house in SF" to "I cannot afford a single family house in SF" as a result of this bill.

freshpots 5y ago
I think you have it backwards. More housing reduces housing pressure and prices.
yoz-y 5y ago
Aren’t many of the single family houses currently occupied by people flatsharing, which would be better served by other types of housing?
kelnos 5y ago
Who cares? If you are dead-set on a single family house, you probably shouldn't move to a dense, urban area. SFHs are incredibly inefficient uses of land, and that only makes sense where land is more plentiful and in lower demand. SFHs in Manhattan easily go for over $2k per square foot, or even a lot more (just found one listed on Zillow for $5k/sqft). No one seriously complains about that, because "wasting" space in an urban area should cost you. Sure, most of Manhattan is a lot more dense than most of SF, but given demand here, expecting affordable SFHs is unrealistic already.

gnopgnip 5y ago

Allowing multifamily homes to be built means people that want multifamily homes can have them. The other 98% of the land won't face the same pressure and it can bring down prices for everyone.

imtringued 5y ago
Exactly. If people actually want single family homes that's what they will pay money for. If they want multifamily homes then let them have them. America is supposed to be this mecca of the mythical "free market" but as soon as it's about land suddenly those rules don't matter at all. Supply and demand don't matter. The freedom of choosing what you want doesn't matter. Instead, the local residents abuse the government to force their way of life onto other people who disagree with it.

poopypoopington 5y ago

Your comment makes no sense. Building more housing means that housing costs will go down, making it way more likely that you WILL "be able to afford a single family home -- the American dream when you settle down..."

anonuser123456 5y ago
The bill will likely make single family residences more expensive. Since single family residences will now compete for multifamily, and multifamily uses land so much more efficiently, multifamily development will be able to outbid single family construction. Not that this is a problem. The goal of housing policy is to house people, not give a certain fraction of the population exactly what they want and telling everyone else ‘sucks to be you, I got mine’
- imtringued 5y ago
  Ah yes, the free market of home owners forcing their wishes upon everyone else. Housing demand and supply isn't something to be decided by individuals, instead by a special group of interests that must tell you what you want and what should be available.

xxpor 5y ago

How can you not see the cognitive dissonance in your own comment? The reason why everyone lives in tiny apartments and then moves to a cheaper area is SF is largely covered by single family homes, and building anything else is subject to so much process it drives costs up to the moon!

kelnos 5y ago

I think the "mercenary" bit is (aside from being exaggerated) not really the point. My view on this is that if you want to live in a dense, urban area, you should have to pay a premium to live in a single family home, because SFHs are incredibly inefficient uses of land in that kind of environment. Suburbs, sure, SFHs all over, and that's expected. But not in a city. The goal of less restrictive zoning like this is that we see more in-law units and 2-, 3-, and 4-plexes cropping up all over (some/many of these replacing existing single family homes). While that may increase the cost of SFHs, the average cost of homes in general will go down, because you'll have greater supply to meet demand. And they don't have to be "tiny apartments", either. I do think this is a bit overblown; it's not like I see SF's Outer Sunset converting any significant amount of housing stock to duplexes and 4-plexes any time soon (or ever), and I expect residents will (unfortunately) still have other non-zoning-related tools at their disposal to fight development plans they don't like. A UC Berkeley study (referenced and quoted elsewhere on this post) expects this measure to only increase the statewide housing stock by around 700k units. That's not nothing, but if they expected a significant number of SFHs to get torn down and replaced by multi-unit buildings, that number would be a good order of magnitude higher.