5 ms·

Completely self-inflicted. Let’s make sure the rest of the US does not adopt SF policies. For that matter, west coast policies (LA, Seattle, Portland).

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jorts 5y ago
What policies are you referring to besides zoning?
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  Warm winters
  - readthenotes1 5y ago
    Like Orlando.
- davidw 5y ago
  It really is a function of housing and zoning is a big deal in those west coast cities. I found this quite convincing: https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-is-about-housing-not https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-is-about-housing-n...
  - throwaway1777 5y ago
    There’s no world in which housing gets cheap enough in nyc and sf for these unhoused people to afford it. Why can’t the unhoused move to a cheaper city like everyone else who can’t afford it here?
  - crisdux 5y ago
    What did you find convincing about that article? It seems like it takes the worst evidence to support the mental health claim, disputes them and then offers similar fallacious arguments to blame housing issues. Anecdotally, I live in a quite affordable medium sized city in the midwest, and even we have a homeless crisis and an increasingly number of homeless encampments on public property. The local government being dominated by progressives, lets these encampments continue - which previously were never permitted.
    - davidw 5y ago
      He does not dispute that mental health and drugs are problematic. He points out that they are problems everywhere, and it's the places with high housing prices that have more homelessness. Right now, the price of homes is going up everywhere, and as a consequence, I'd expect to see more homelessness everywhere. The camps may also have something to do with this, which has little to do with what local politicians do or do not want: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise It's bizarre how much people fight against this notion. You talk about not many people having Ferraris because they're expensive, and people look at you like "uh, ok, duh". But when the median price of homes is over 850,000 dollars (California), it's this BIG MYSTERY why people do not have homes.
      - throwaway1777 5y ago
        There’s been a a big change recently. McDonald’s pays $17 per hour in the Bay Area now. That’s 35k per year, almost 3k per month. Companies are trying anything to get more workers. Even in the Bay Area that is enough to stay off the street if you want to. Unless they are disabled, I have a lot less sympathy for people on the street when there are a record number of unfilled jobs.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- teknolog 5y ago
  There's a lot more than just zoning, although that might be the single biggest factor. On top of that, the permiting process is insane, takes forever (I've gone through it), and costs a lot of money. Your neighbors get a very long time to file any complaints on your proposal (which they always do, because NIMBY). It is such a painful thing that I'd rather avoid doing any more construction. CA has a lot of rules that make construction very expensive, and SF even more so (only cast iron drain pipes, because ABS is somehow not good enough in this historic city). Earthquakes are real, but forcing everybody with 5 units (I believe) to retrofit (at the same time) cost millions of dollars per property - driving up the rent. And now solar power is mandatory for new construction, and solar is great, but it does add tens of thousands per unit.
- coding123 5y ago
  Maybe start with these as possible options: Second house/vacation house (not rented): Multiply property tax by 10. Rentals (including airbnb): If mortgaged: Max the rental (monthly and daily) to 1.1x Mortgage amount + yearly property tax amount / 12. Unmortgaged: Property tax amount * 2 max per monthly income. Change the maximum amount you can sell a house to be equal to cost of materials plus 30 days of labor for 5 people. Owner builder homes can get a 60K automatic grant - everything must be verified - and limit land HOA rules that specify a minimum sized house. Make "Limited Density Owner-Built Rural Dwellings" possible in areas that are not affected by fire. Finally to make all this feasible - make junk properties illegal (noise limits + junkyard style land usage) It would solve a lot of NIMBY issues and please the YIMBYs. I have a billion other crazy ideas like this.
  - eniotna 5y ago
    > Change the maximum amount you can sell a house to be equal to cost of materials plus 30 days of labor for 5 people. That's a terrible idea, who will construct anything if there is no money to be made? You don't fix those kinds of problems by price fixing, let the free market take care of the supply/demand issue. Unfortunately, the bay area is far from a free market when it comes to housing.
    - coding123 5y ago
      They're just ideas - maybe apply a federal grant to the builder of 60k for each house they make. :shrug: The problem with market rate is for homes is that it turns one person's ability to be homed into another person's extraneous income flip.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- phlakaton 5y ago
  Consider the cluster of policies that just resulted in the 469 Stevenson St project, alluded to in the article, getting axed. As I understand it: * The project had been before the Planning Commission for at least a year. * The project had completed an final Environmental Impact Report that had been approved by the Planning Committee. Another regulatory hurdle of questionable value for a mid-city development. * An advocacy group, Yerba Buena Neighborhood Consortium, apparently run by a local affordable housing ownership group called TODCO, had their lawyers file an appeal to the Board of Supes opposing certification of the EIR. What could have been a pro-forma approval is now another potential place for roadblock. * The environmental reasons? Millenium Tower FUD, gentrification, and shadows on a nearby mid-city plaza. The scope of EIRs has apparently gotten massive if gentrification is included. (Whether a Nordstrom valet parking lot better serves the local low-income community than actual housing with an affordable housing carve-out is another question.) * The Board of Supes reverses the Planning Commission's approval. Back to the drawing board. Or... if you want to _sell_ that property you can't do anything with, I'm sure there's a local property owner that will take it off your hands if the price is low enough. ;-) We see here multiple stages way beyond zoning where a housing project can get torpedoed, and that these extra stages have grown in scope to cover just about anything local property owners might want to object to. And that's not even considering San Francisco's Discretionary Review process, which gives local groups even _more_ opportunities to delay or kill your project if they don't like it.
kgwgk 5y ago
Wouldn't the adoption of those policies in the rest of the US alleviate the issue in SF? (I imagine many homeless people who is going to SF would be going/staying elsewhere in that case, maybe I'm wrong about that.)
- generalizations 5y ago
  Or, it would just put the rest of the US in the same situation as SF. Doubling down isn't the reasonable response here. I think it should better be considered a failed experiment.
- mlindner 5y ago
  Homelessness is also assisted by climate. It's impossible to die of exposure in San Francisco.
nemothekid 5y ago
>Let’s make sure the rest of the US does not adopt SF policies. The rest of the US decided to just ship the homeless west. What could the west coast do other than throw them in the ocean?
- generalizations 5y ago
  They tried shipping them east. Didn't really work.
  - b0tzzzzzzman 5y ago
    And South West .. But that is a nice island
- president 5y ago
  Let them stay on the streets but at least they could try prosecuting the ones that break laws (assault, theft, hard drugs) instead of letting them run rampant on the streets.
  - nemothekid 5y ago
    What do you do after prosecuting them? Issue them a fine? They are homeless. Throw them in jail? Then you are just housing them with extra steps. That's more expensive then just simply housing them; if the bay area won't build housing, why would the bay area expand prisons?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - president 5y ago
      It's mainly about deterrence. Right now, crime is happening because criminals understand there is lax enforcement.
- rendall 5y ago
  > The rest of the US decided to just ship the homeless west. [citation needed]
throwaway19937 5y ago
Many social problems in west coast cities are self-inflicted but there's also the 9th circuit's Martin v. Boise decision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise). It prevents criminalizing public camping unless there's shelter space for everyone. Edited to fix link, thanks!
- ggreer 5y ago
  Your link is parsed incorrectly by HN, causing it to be a 404. The actual link is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise While I understand the logic of the courts, this decision has absolutely ruined public parks in much of the western US.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jorts 5y ago

What policies are you referring to besides zoning?

Rebelgecko 5y ago
Warm winters
- readthenotes1 5y ago
  Like Orlando.
davidw 5y ago
It really is a function of housing and zoning is a big deal in those west coast cities. I found this quite convincing: https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-is-about-housing-not https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-is-about-housing-n...
- throwaway1777 5y ago
  There’s no world in which housing gets cheap enough in nyc and sf for these unhoused people to afford it. Why can’t the unhoused move to a cheaper city like everyone else who can’t afford it here?
- crisdux 5y ago
  What did you find convincing about that article? It seems like it takes the worst evidence to support the mental health claim, disputes them and then offers similar fallacious arguments to blame housing issues. Anecdotally, I live in a quite affordable medium sized city in the midwest, and even we have a homeless crisis and an increasingly number of homeless encampments on public property. The local government being dominated by progressives, lets these encampments continue - which previously were never permitted.
  - davidw 5y ago
    He does not dispute that mental health and drugs are problematic. He points out that they are problems everywhere, and it's the places with high housing prices that have more homelessness. Right now, the price of homes is going up everywhere, and as a consequence, I'd expect to see more homelessness everywhere. The camps may also have something to do with this, which has little to do with what local politicians do or do not want: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise It's bizarre how much people fight against this notion. You talk about not many people having Ferraris because they're expensive, and people look at you like "uh, ok, duh". But when the median price of homes is over 850,000 dollars (California), it's this BIG MYSTERY why people do not have homes.
    - throwaway1777 5y ago
      There’s been a a big change recently. McDonald’s pays $17 per hour in the Bay Area now. That’s 35k per year, almost 3k per month. Companies are trying anything to get more workers. Even in the Bay Area that is enough to stay off the street if you want to. Unless they are disabled, I have a lot less sympathy for people on the street when there are a record number of unfilled jobs.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
teknolog 5y ago
There's a lot more than just zoning, although that might be the single biggest factor. On top of that, the permiting process is insane, takes forever (I've gone through it), and costs a lot of money. Your neighbors get a very long time to file any complaints on your proposal (which they always do, because NIMBY). It is such a painful thing that I'd rather avoid doing any more construction. CA has a lot of rules that make construction very expensive, and SF even more so (only cast iron drain pipes, because ABS is somehow not good enough in this historic city). Earthquakes are real, but forcing everybody with 5 units (I believe) to retrofit (at the same time) cost millions of dollars per property - driving up the rent. And now solar power is mandatory for new construction, and solar is great, but it does add tens of thousands per unit.
coding123 5y ago
Maybe start with these as possible options: Second house/vacation house (not rented): Multiply property tax by 10. Rentals (including airbnb): If mortgaged: Max the rental (monthly and daily) to 1.1x Mortgage amount + yearly property tax amount / 12. Unmortgaged: Property tax amount * 2 max per monthly income. Change the maximum amount you can sell a house to be equal to cost of materials plus 30 days of labor for 5 people. Owner builder homes can get a 60K automatic grant - everything must be verified - and limit land HOA rules that specify a minimum sized house. Make "Limited Density Owner-Built Rural Dwellings" possible in areas that are not affected by fire. Finally to make all this feasible - make junk properties illegal (noise limits + junkyard style land usage) It would solve a lot of NIMBY issues and please the YIMBYs. I have a billion other crazy ideas like this.
- eniotna 5y ago
  > Change the maximum amount you can sell a house to be equal to cost of materials plus 30 days of labor for 5 people. That's a terrible idea, who will construct anything if there is no money to be made? You don't fix those kinds of problems by price fixing, let the free market take care of the supply/demand issue. Unfortunately, the bay area is far from a free market when it comes to housing.
  - coding123 5y ago
    They're just ideas - maybe apply a federal grant to the builder of 60k for each house they make. :shrug: The problem with market rate is for homes is that it turns one person's ability to be homed into another person's extraneous income flip.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
phlakaton 5y ago
Consider the cluster of policies that just resulted in the 469 Stevenson St project, alluded to in the article, getting axed. As I understand it: * The project had been before the Planning Commission for at least a year. * The project had completed an final Environmental Impact Report that had been approved by the Planning Committee. Another regulatory hurdle of questionable value for a mid-city development. * An advocacy group, Yerba Buena Neighborhood Consortium, apparently run by a local affordable housing ownership group called TODCO, had their lawyers file an appeal to the Board of Supes opposing certification of the EIR. What could have been a pro-forma approval is now another potential place for roadblock. * The environmental reasons? Millenium Tower FUD, gentrification, and shadows on a nearby mid-city plaza. The scope of EIRs has apparently gotten massive if gentrification is included. (Whether a Nordstrom valet parking lot better serves the local low-income community than actual housing with an affordable housing carve-out is another question.) * The Board of Supes reverses the Planning Commission's approval. Back to the drawing board. Or... if you want to _sell_ that property you can't do anything with, I'm sure there's a local property owner that will take it off your hands if the price is low enough. ;-) We see here multiple stages way beyond zoning where a housing project can get torpedoed, and that these extra stages have grown in scope to cover just about anything local property owners might want to object to. And that's not even considering San Francisco's Discretionary Review process, which gives local groups even _more_ opportunities to delay or kill your project if they don't like it.

kgwgk 5y ago

Wouldn't the adoption of those policies in the rest of the US alleviate the issue in SF? (I imagine many homeless people who is going to SF would be going/staying elsewhere in that case, maybe I'm wrong about that.)

generalizations 5y ago
Or, it would just put the rest of the US in the same situation as SF. Doubling down isn't the reasonable response here. I think it should better be considered a failed experiment.
mlindner 5y ago
Homelessness is also assisted by climate. It's impossible to die of exposure in San Francisco.

nemothekid 5y ago

>Let’s make sure the rest of the US does not adopt SF policies. The rest of the US decided to just ship the homeless west. What could the west coast do other than throw them in the ocean?

generalizations 5y ago
They tried shipping them east. Didn't really work.
- b0tzzzzzzman 5y ago
  And South West .. But that is a nice island
president 5y ago
Let them stay on the streets but at least they could try prosecuting the ones that break laws (assault, theft, hard drugs) instead of letting them run rampant on the streets.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  What do you do after prosecuting them? Issue them a fine? They are homeless. Throw them in jail? Then you are just housing them with extra steps. That's more expensive then just simply housing them; if the bay area won't build housing, why would the bay area expand prisons?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - president 5y ago
    It's mainly about deterrence. Right now, crime is happening because criminals understand there is lax enforcement.
rendall 5y ago
> The rest of the US decided to just ship the homeless west. [citation needed]

throwaway19937 5y ago

Many social problems in west coast cities are self-inflicted but there's also the 9th circuit's Martin v. Boise decision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise). It prevents criminalizing public camping unless there's shelter space for everyone. Edited to fix link, thanks!

ggreer 5y ago
Your link is parsed incorrectly by HN, causing it to be a 404. The actual link is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise While I understand the logic of the courts, this decision has absolutely ruined public parks in much of the western US.