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The city officials are asleep at the wheel. Blame it on remote work and pandemic as much as you want, but the reality is that the city was in decline even befor

The city officials are asleep at the wheel. Blame it on remote work and pandemic as much as you want, but the reality is that the city was in decline even before that. It is too expensive to live in the city. It is too expensive to commute to the city. It is too expensive to feed yourself in the city. Crime is rampant. Drug use and filth is everywhere. Most importantly city has been hostile to tech and business owners. None of this makes it lucrative for individuals and businesses to go there, which creates this feedback loop that makes it even worse for few that want to.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> city officials are asleep at the wheel Eh, San Francisco's voters have been drinking crazy water for some time. New developments blocked by renters. Stringent building codes and environmental reviews defended by those who think they're being compassionate to the poor. Scolding tech companies for hiring in the city and then panicking when they stop hiring in the city. This obviously isn't all of them. But it's not like this wasn't predictable over the past decade.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Yea, people love blaming (elected) city officials but NIMBYism and "Housing is an investment that should only go up in price" will eventually kill any market.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > "Housing is an investment that should only go up in price" will eventually kill any market It doesn't have to. Housing can be affordable while going up in nominal terms. Neither do I think most San Francisco homeowners think about housing supply strategically. They're pissed off about a specific view being blocked. Or construction noise. Or their area's average rent going up. (?!?) Alternatively, they're comfortable and can't imagine someone might be better off housed in worse conditions, cheaply, than struggling to make rent in a decked-out flat.
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      > It doesn't have to. Housing can be affordable while going up in nominal terms. For how long? If housing is a good investment, eventually the cost of housing will outpace the ability of new entrants to the market to afford it. If you're already "in the market", you might be OK. But if you're not, even the down payment may be completely out of reach.
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > For how long? Infinitely. Wages go up in nominal terms, too. What matters is the real housing price hovering around zero. (Slightly above, localized, is also fine if balanced by migration.)
        bombcar 4y ago
        Real "house price" for a given house should actually go down over time, because it gets older and worn down and just not quite as good as the new hotness.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > Real "house price" for a given house should actually go down over time, because it gets older House, as in structure, yes. Home, as in structure + land, probably not. Real wages are higher today than they were in the 80s [1]. One would expect some of that to filter into land value. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
        mechanical_bear 4y ago
        Most people are constantly doing upgrades to their homes, as well as maintenance.
      - JamesBarney 4y ago
        Inflation and real wage growth.
    - 4y ago
  - jfghi 4y ago
    I agree that nimbyism is harmful, however I also think that the organizations owning large portfolios of properties can generally find a way to maintain scarcity levels in the presence of additional construction.
    - JamesBarney 4y ago
      How? If you own 10% of the rental units in San Francisco, how do you enforce scarcity except by trying to prevent construction?
      - jfghi 4y ago
        I’d claim that if a person owns 10 percent they can afford to fill 9 percent of those and push up prices such that it becomes a net gain. It seems as though housing is priced on the edges of supply and demand and that a slight excess of either can shift prices for the future units being bought or rented. I once spoke with a general manager of a large hotel that explained to me how certain levels of vacancy were targeted for this reason. I feel as though the methodology would be somewhat analogous. Further, there is statistical modeling for sale that indicates what can be afforded in geographic locations. I’d claim that additional housing would be priced to what’s affordable rather than attempting to outbid the lowest listing as housing is a price-inelastic good.
        JamesBarney 4y ago
        If we in increased or decreases the number of units in San Francisco by 0.1%, i.e. added added 400 units. How much would that affect price? We can then reason backwards on what's the minimum sized landlord that would benefit from artificially restricting supply.
  - parineum 4y ago
    NIMBYism is only a problem because you aren't allowed to build anywhere but their back yards. Maybe when all of this commercial real estate dies they'll rezone/remove zoning and allow people to build where they can. Sure residents can be NIMBYs but FAANG doesn't want to have their beautiful campuses flanked by the poors either.
  - mochomocha 4y ago
    Yes, but I don't think SF is an exception here. The whole Bay Area is a NIMBY nest that looks frozen in time with infrastructure similar to what was in Europe in the 1950s. That's how my SF neighbor pays 30x less property tax than I do though, so there's that. Too much local democracy: "I don't want someone in Sacramento deciding for me" is how you end up with this expression of pure individualism, where Atherton residents who have never taken public transportation in their life can block Caltrain development used by the working mass.
    - SECProto 4y ago
      > The whole Bay Area is a NIMBY nest The whole every urban area of North America is a NIMBY nest. Pretty much every city is stuck with swathes of land zoned only for single family homes, with any density needing development agreements and land use change hearings and etc. Some cities are less geographically constrained (more sprawl is possible) or slower growing (the zoning changes can accommodate the growth) but the issue is the same everywhere.
      - midislack 4y ago
        Every property owner is NIMBY. Renters don't have to care and can just fly away.
        lotsofpulp 4y ago
        A very small percentage of renters do not have to care and can just fly away.
      - georgeecollins 4y ago
        Smart, ethical people-- like the ones here-- can be YIMBYs. Suburb I live in everyone is mad about: "McMansions" (whatever that means), multi-family homes and any development particularly apartment buildings. These people need to be shamed for their selfishness. I am a homeowner and a YIMBY. Join me!
        4y ago
  - ransom1538 4y ago
    Long time resident. There are three groups in SF: Long term renters (on rent control), renters that will leave and owners. Basically, only the long time renters and owners vote. Owners don't want any new construction. Long time renters don't want rent raised. So there you go. Nothing gets done.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    > "Housing is an investment that should only go up in price" will eventually kill any market While I do get your point, it also has been generally true, for most modern cities for a long time (excluding short term fluctuations). Prices will go up as, as long as city is desirable to live in. It holds true, long as cities don't collapse, which policies that lead to increasing prices of housing also can contribute to, by making city not desirable to live in.
- babyshake 4y ago
  > New developments blocked by renters. I wonder how much of this is renters who feel they are just one IPO or acquisition away from being owners.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > wonder how much of this is renters who feel they are just one IPO or acquisition away from being owners I don't think they're the ones protesting. One, it's irrational: if a windfall is around the corner, you want prices temporarily depressed. Two, political nihilism and detachment have been fashionable among San Francisco's political middle class for a few decades now. They are more likely to be proudly refusing to vote than attending town halls, speaking to their electeds or participating in protests. (I say this with sardonic affection for dear friends.) The second point is starting to change. But culture has inertia. It will take time.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  It's fine to block new residential developments if you also block new commercial developments. Maintain a ratio of residential to commercial and you don't have housing crunches and can keep your city at the density your residents choose.
- houstonn 4y ago
  - Raptor22 4y ago
    Oh dear God, here we go...
    - akomtu 4y ago
      GP made a valid point, but there is a caveat: this will is diffused, isn't guided by reason and avoids action. If SF was a man, that man would be, technically, a schizophrenic with multiple personslities in him fighting each other. The city council simply manipulates this man.
- 0000011111 4y ago
  Maybe the poop on the street has made its way into the water supply and that is affecting the management?
- llsf 4y ago
  I guess we got the elected we voted for. Now unfortunately, we did not have much choice. Nonetheless they are supposed to plan for this city. They should recognize that NIMBism is not sustainable. The BoS needs to act swiftly and help convert most of the commercial into residential units. This could help mitigate the issue. If Wework started to not pay its property tax, maybe converting those square feet in residential condos would at least bring some property tax money.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  For real. I really don't know why people would bother opening offices there. Especially post pandemic "Investment", VCs are all around the US now and those who refuse to invest outside of city boundaries are going to have a bad time. At this point even setting shop in LA might be cheaper and give you a nicer scenery. "Talent", hire remotely for the most talent-sensitive positions. Your react app is not rocket science. The NIMBYs are right, we should stop moving there and stop paying them those extortionate rents.
- balderdash 4y ago
  I wish I could find it, but I recall some research indicating that elected officials are very good at giving voters the stuff they want (even if it’s internally inconsistent) e.g. voters want more spending on education, healthcare and don’t want cuts anywhere else + plus want less deficit spending/balanced budget = impossible, but as the politician understood that they’d rewarded for increasing spending in your important areas, and can live with you blaming for the deficit spending because hey, what you wanted wasn’t possible…
  - pc86 4y ago
    It doesn't take much "research" to arrive at "politicians will give voters what they want and pass the buck on paying it."
    - balderdash 4y ago
      Put any other way, biters will say they want a balanced budget, then when you ask them where we should increase and decrease spending, it turns out they actually didn’t want a bladed budget, and that the politicians had given them exactly why they wanted (despite protestations to the contrary)
inamberclad 4y ago
Drug use isn't associated with crime and filth until we make it so via harsh city policies. I would, however, like someone to clean the 4 different instances of poop I saw on my 3 block walk this morning.
- gfodor 4y ago
  You think drug use doesn't lead to crime?
  - malnourish 4y ago
    What crimes will drug users commit if drugs are legally available like alcohol?
    - suoduandao2 4y ago
      Alcohol might be a bad example since it does lead to lowered inhibitions and, depending on the environment, often more brawling or risky driving than would happen without it. The key here is probably the 'depending on the environment' bit. Hashish used to be closely associated with political assassinations, now... not so much. But it could be again, given the right(?) culture.
    - swearwolf 4y ago
      Evidence from Portland, which decriminalized all drugs via Measure 101, the answer is, "Whatever crimes are necessary to enable people to afford their drug of choice." Not all drugs are equal. You can't drink your way into effectively schizophrenia, but you can get there in no time with the currently available super-potent variety of meth. Some drugs completely wreck your ability to live in a way compatible with holding down a job, which means that you'll pretty quickly have to turn to crime if you want to keep doing them.
      - m0llusk 4y ago
        Is there any evidence that Measure 101 was a pivot? My limited understanding is that drugs and craziness were pervasive and on the rise in Portland well before that. The idea that criminalization controls drug use isn't clearly supported by historical evidence at this point.
brighamyoung 4y ago
100% agreed. Ben Shapiro did a pretty in-depth analysis of this on the Joe Rogan Experience.
systemvoltage 4y ago
- pcwalton 4y ago
  > Expecting downvotes still because it is criticizing progressives. The guidelines ask you not to do this.
bluejekyll 4y ago
> Crime is rampant According to the data, crime in SF is lower that it was a few years ago: https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-California.html https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-Californ... > Drug use and filth is everywhere. Voters can’t seem to wrap their head around better housing policies to get people off the street. It’s disappointing, the entire Bay Area is guilty of this.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Crime is down - but so is population. Is the decrease statistically significant after adjusting for population loss?
  - hattmall 4y ago
    Violent Crime IS low in SF. It's pushed into Oakland. Property crime is insane and artificially held low by apathy with regard to reporting and redefining offense levels.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      Also wondering how much this has to do with Shoplifting and other crimes simply being decriminalized.
      - inferiorhuman 4y ago
        Shoplifting and other crimes simply being decriminalized. Shoplifting was never (formally) decriminalized. SFPD stopped bringing anything to the DA because he was investigating and prosecuting police misconduct. Now that the mayor's installed a new DA and the new DA's disbanded the group that investigates police misconduct the police have started bringing more cases forward. Unsurprisingly the new DA is not prosecuting cases at a higher rate. https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/jenkins-removed-prosecutor-police-misconduct-homicide-trial/ https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/jenkins-removed-prosecutor-... https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/narcotics-enforcement-spike-not-jenkins-prosecutions/ https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/narcotics-enforcement-spike... https://missionlocal.org/2022/07/mayors-office-takes-hands-on-role-with-da-jenkins-documents-show/ https://missionlocal.org/2022/07/mayors-office-takes-hands-o...
evr1isnxprt 4y ago
Elites constrain candidate choice and voters are too distracted staying afloat to demand different. City officials are not expected to do better.
commandlinefan 4y ago
I suspect this will inevitably be blamed on greedy capitalist building owners, but the crazy tax assessors have some blame here, too. They value these buildings in the hundreds of millions of dollars and asses taxes based on that valuation - and that was "ok" because the building owners could extract that kind of value from the buildings by raising the rents. Now they can't - but the valuation and the taxes owed stay the same. If they hadn't tried to squeeze every last tax dollar out of the real estate market in the first place, the buildings wouldn't have become so expensive to begin with.
- mbfg 4y ago
  Yes, but there are still "greedy capitalist building owners" willing to sign up for the deal. So the taxes seems to be following supply and demand. At some point as the article claims, that may change. If/when it does, then both parties will change.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  I suspect this will inevitably be blamed on greedy capitalist building owners, but the crazy tax assessors have some blame here, too. They value these buildings in the hundreds of millions of dollars and asses taxes based on that valuation - and that was "ok" because the building owners could extract that kind of value from the buildings by raising the rents. Now they can't - but the valuation and the taxes owed stay the same. If they hadn't tried to squeeze every last tax dollar out of the real estate market in the first place, the buildings wouldn't have become so expensive to begin with. What? Prop 13 ensures that most of these office buildings are not being taxed on the market value of the property. Prop 8 ensures that tax assessments go down when the market value of the property declines. Property tax is not the primary reason rent is so expensive in San Francisco.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It's arguably part of the reason things get "stuck" as they are, because selling a property triggers revaluation. But prop 13 had no reason to apply to commercial property anyway, but good luck ever changing that.
gofreddygo 4y ago
In The city You're screwed when you rent a home or office. You're screwed when you own a home. You're screwed when you eat. You're screwed when you drink. You're screwed when you commute. You're screwed when you walk the streets. You're screwed when you (pay) park your car on the street. homeless? neglected commuters? neglected business owners? neglected public workers? neglected tourists? neglected I just don't know what sort of people the city wants ?
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Speculators?
- hattmall 4y ago
  Who is doing all the screwing??
  - bombcar 4y ago
renewiltord 4y ago
The officials are just a reflection of the populace: most of whom would rather than SF were a sleepy neighbourhood rather than the city that it is. This is exacerbated by the fact that the majority of the local populace sort of missed the bus on the boom that happened and consequently dislike that it happened at all. So they're using the tool they have: politics. FWIW, I know a lot of locals who graduated into tech or who were adjacent (EAs, front-office, etc.) and their lives are better for it, but there are lots who weren't appropriately positioned and missed the boat on the whole thing.
cpursley 4y ago
Money goes to where it's treated best and people vote with their feet. I know people thumb their nose on the state, but Florida is open for business. But the real secret is Puerto Rico and their incredible tax incentives for software companies.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- zzzeek 4y ago
  Florida is not a good environment for companies that have female employees, as due to FL's draconian anti-abortion law, state surveillance of pregnancies is now required as miscarriages past 15 weeks now need to be treated as potential homicides.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    A swing to the Right will often cause a swing to the Left. In Florida, registered Republicans lead Democrats by less than one percentage point as of August 2022, and there are more than 10M women in Florida, half the population, and only 4.5M senior citizens, less than a quarter of the population. It is my optimistic belief that DeSantis' days in politics are numbered, mostly due to his association with a certain mentally ill and criminally-inclined one-termer president, but also because his "semi-fascism" isn't really working for him either. The Republican playbook is to prevent (usually minority-member) Democrats from voting by any means necessary, but this just can't keep working successfully forever.
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      And speaking of Puerto Ricans, where do you think all the Hurricane Maria refugees went?
      - Maursault 4y ago
        At least 50K of them moved to Florida, but it's no sure bet they're Democratic votes. Neither of the two main Puerto Rican political parties fit the Democdatic-Republican binary of national politics.
ricardobayes 4y ago
I don't think it's that different to any major city anywhere on the planet. Most cities have rough areas and hotspots to avoid. My personal experience is that it's a rather nice place apart from a few streets in SOMA.
toss1 4y ago
Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded. - - Yogi Berra
thomasfl 4y ago
Companies needs people. It is the most important resource. Cities not hospitable for humans, are bad for business. Local authorities in Vienna,Austria, still has control over 25% of the real estate. This ensures that the city will be affordable for many years to come.
LatteLazy 4y ago
Cities need social services to work, because of the density of people. It is a problem when my neighbour is crazy and screams for 18h a day when we live on top of each other in a city. It isn't when we live in the middle of no where and are separated by 50miles. Only America is specifically designed to prevent any sort of social services, because people have the freedom to come into town to use those services and then leave before it's time to pay the tax for them. This is why American cities have so many issues compared to European ones. From public transport to healthcare to education to crime, American is designed to be 100% individualistic and that is incompatible with how cities work. Cities are forced to subsidise surrounding areas.
- fakethenews2022 4y ago
  Cities already make visitors pay. First there is usually a higher sales tax. Furthermore, many cities have additional taxes on lodging and entertainment. These taxes are quite substantial. Furthermore look at decaying cities in the 70s. The cities weren't subsidizing surrounding areas by providing services. Instead, many businesses and services straight moved out of cities to surrounding areas. So did many people. It was only in the 90s when cities became hip again and services sprang back up in cities. According to your notion, surrounding areas were subsidizing cities in the 70s.
  - fakethenews2022 4y ago
    It would be like saying that Santa Clara was subsidizing San Francisco residents when those residents attend a 49ers games.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    The ways you list are fine for getting a few extra dollars our of tourists. But there nothing compared the millions who commute in and out daily to work and pay no property taxes. And that's without counting criminals or people with mental health issues or 101 other groups who travel in and become the cities problem.
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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m0llusk 4y ago
These are all small problems compared to the pension system exploding.
buss 4y ago
We can fix it, but only if we get organized. Sachin Agarwal (co-founder of Posterous) and I founded GrowSF to fix the city. We're less than two years in and already the #2 most influential voter guide in the city. We must elect pro-growth and pro-tech people who can bring competence to government. There's no other way out of this mess. We'd love your support! https://growsf.org/donate https://growsf.org/donate
- adameasterling 4y ago
  Donated! Huge fan of the voter guide!
  - buss 4y ago
    Thank you! We can only win together :)
- clolege 4y ago
  Love what you're doing! I find it curious though that your guide only endorses a single candidate, when the voters can rank multiple candidates.. Surely there are multiple candidates that stand out above the rest, and bringing attention to that set would help get better people into office?
spamizbad 4y ago
Is that really the case? Wasn't London Breed supposed to be ostensible a pragmatic centrist to solve the city's woes? During the 2020 election she ultimately backed Bloomberg after Harris dropped out.
zeruch 4y ago
"Most importantly city has been hostile to tech and business owners." You are laughable. The reason the City is in this state is because it pandered to tech firms that wanted the "coolness' without paying anything for it (and if anything, getting special dispensations for their own). They got tax breaks and perks, screwing every small local business and middle class residential tenant in sight, for big tech that didn't and doesn't care.
- diebeforei485 4y ago
  What? The only ones who got tax breaks were those who moved to Mid Market, a depressed area. Twitter was going to move out of the city when they outgrew their Folsom St office, instead they moved to Mid-Market. It's gotten a lot better now, so the tax breaks did their job.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
No it's not hostile it's just not sucking them either, you want a beautiful world-class city there's taxes, and those taxes bring things like public transport, which is the biggest draw. Yes there's drug use and filth everywhere. So understand this: they were not special snowflakes, got traumas ripped into them or badly educated or coerced into using drugs. Or, or, or, evicted. Those guys are evicted, you're sneering on them because they couldn't make that landlord totally pleased at the same time as his best friend the boss was totally pleased. Dude fucking impossible rent, like at Stanford economics class they quote $1200, no it's $4000, who knows. Like if the landlord who is a poker player essentially detects you being over a barrel who knows. Like I was talking to an activist this conversation flipped her from NIMBY to YIMBY, I told her look in Santiago there's basically no enforcement of zoning in many places, so people build really high, $200 rent in a good location. She figured they only built housing for rich people in SF, true but then those rich people move to that housing leaving behind empty housing less rich people move into, who leave behind less expensive housing, and so on. Hermit crabs. But not $4000 rent. So also those people are wretched, which you are not. Some are absurd but they suffer for their drug use not in the future every week. And their public suffering is a service to the landlord in his negotiations which he pays absolutely nothing to them for, I was telling Jonathan Ramos for being wretched on the sidewalk for everybody to treat you like you're invisible, that coercion is worth $3000 a month to the landlord rather than getting bargained down, put in an auction, having to compete against a new building going up right next door (in some neighborhoods there's less of that), the evicteds are valuable to the landlord. Landlord should pay a tax on rent to compensate them for breathing fear into tenants. Like oh my god, if I lose my job I'll get evicted, then I'll get raped! Gasp! Yeah dude people suffering, and from all over America SF takes them all in, because they can survive at night in winter there. You ever worked in construction? You ever stopped a crime? I've stopped 31, no losses, in SF in particular in Chinatown next to the Mission where all those strap-ups do all their advertising on everything about their super-cool credit cards, and advertising platforms. Yes it's cool, no it's not cool. It is super expensive. Landlord's fault really. And by now the fundamental economics of the city is messed up, though there's plenty of 4 story buildings in place of 60 story buildings. And you know? Twitter when it was a respectable business (sort of they asked for homework, make them a whole app) stedda censoring a sitting president, no matter what he said, they opened an office in the Tenderloin. I went near there, I think to the Square office which for convenience was adjacent. Dude rough neighborhood, but you gotta let the junkie get something, somewhere, like crack is due to flourine overdose, that's why there was a crack epidemic in America and not elsewhere, and black those hit hardest are very sensitive to flourine. They think it tastes like shit, so that's why they buy bottled water always--an apparently false pejorative stereotype that's true and positive--that's why they don't have every single one of their kids with some psychiatric birth defect. It's the most toxic thing there is, more than plutonium. Corrodes everything, gold even. And it causes sugar cravings, so even for the purpose of better teeth it's counterproductive. That's why there's so many busted fat people in America and not Europe, there's running water in Europe in America? Only brine. Salted on purpose, poisoned hard. Good for your teeth yeah, only reacts with teeth, no other cell, and 97% of the periodic table, literally only 3 molecules that don't react to it in the whole universe. Eh, flag for human review. Guess it's too strong, this subject. Maybe I'm a little pissed. Must be the salt.
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JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> city officials are asleep at the wheel Eh, San Francisco's voters have been drinking crazy water for some time. New developments blocked by renters. Stringent building codes and environmental reviews defended by those who think they're being compassionate to the poor. Scolding tech companies for hiring in the city and then panicking when they stop hiring in the city. This obviously isn't all of them. But it's not like this wasn't predictable over the past decade.

pixl97 4y ago
Yea, people love blaming (elected) city officials but NIMBYism and "Housing is an investment that should only go up in price" will eventually kill any market.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > "Housing is an investment that should only go up in price" will eventually kill any market It doesn't have to. Housing can be affordable while going up in nominal terms. Neither do I think most San Francisco homeowners think about housing supply strategically. They're pissed off about a specific view being blocked. Or construction noise. Or their area's average rent going up. (?!?) Alternatively, they're comfortable and can't imagine someone might be better off housed in worse conditions, cheaply, than struggling to make rent in a decked-out flat.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    > It doesn't have to. Housing can be affordable while going up in nominal terms. For how long? If housing is a good investment, eventually the cost of housing will outpace the ability of new entrants to the market to afford it. If you're already "in the market", you might be OK. But if you're not, even the down payment may be completely out of reach.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > For how long? Infinitely. Wages go up in nominal terms, too. What matters is the real housing price hovering around zero. (Slightly above, localized, is also fine if balanced by migration.)
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Real "house price" for a given house should actually go down over time, because it gets older and worn down and just not quite as good as the new hotness.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > Real "house price" for a given house should actually go down over time, because it gets older House, as in structure, yes. Home, as in structure + land, probably not. Real wages are higher today than they were in the 80s [1]. One would expect some of that to filter into land value. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
        mechanical_bear 4y ago
        Most people are constantly doing upgrades to their homes, as well as maintenance.
    - JamesBarney 4y ago
      Inflation and real wage growth.
  - 4y ago
- jfghi 4y ago
  I agree that nimbyism is harmful, however I also think that the organizations owning large portfolios of properties can generally find a way to maintain scarcity levels in the presence of additional construction.
  - JamesBarney 4y ago
    How? If you own 10% of the rental units in San Francisco, how do you enforce scarcity except by trying to prevent construction?
    - jfghi 4y ago
      I’d claim that if a person owns 10 percent they can afford to fill 9 percent of those and push up prices such that it becomes a net gain. It seems as though housing is priced on the edges of supply and demand and that a slight excess of either can shift prices for the future units being bought or rented. I once spoke with a general manager of a large hotel that explained to me how certain levels of vacancy were targeted for this reason. I feel as though the methodology would be somewhat analogous. Further, there is statistical modeling for sale that indicates what can be afforded in geographic locations. I’d claim that additional housing would be priced to what’s affordable rather than attempting to outbid the lowest listing as housing is a price-inelastic good.
      - JamesBarney 4y ago
        If we in increased or decreases the number of units in San Francisco by 0.1%, i.e. added added 400 units. How much would that affect price? We can then reason backwards on what's the minimum sized landlord that would benefit from artificially restricting supply.
- parineum 4y ago
  NIMBYism is only a problem because you aren't allowed to build anywhere but their back yards. Maybe when all of this commercial real estate dies they'll rezone/remove zoning and allow people to build where they can. Sure residents can be NIMBYs but FAANG doesn't want to have their beautiful campuses flanked by the poors either.
- mochomocha 4y ago
  Yes, but I don't think SF is an exception here. The whole Bay Area is a NIMBY nest that looks frozen in time with infrastructure similar to what was in Europe in the 1950s. That's how my SF neighbor pays 30x less property tax than I do though, so there's that. Too much local democracy: "I don't want someone in Sacramento deciding for me" is how you end up with this expression of pure individualism, where Atherton residents who have never taken public transportation in their life can block Caltrain development used by the working mass.
  - SECProto 4y ago
    > The whole Bay Area is a NIMBY nest The whole every urban area of North America is a NIMBY nest. Pretty much every city is stuck with swathes of land zoned only for single family homes, with any density needing development agreements and land use change hearings and etc. Some cities are less geographically constrained (more sprawl is possible) or slower growing (the zoning changes can accommodate the growth) but the issue is the same everywhere.
    - midislack 4y ago
      Every property owner is NIMBY. Renters don't have to care and can just fly away.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        A very small percentage of renters do not have to care and can just fly away.
    - georgeecollins 4y ago
      Smart, ethical people-- like the ones here-- can be YIMBYs. Suburb I live in everyone is mad about: "McMansions" (whatever that means), multi-family homes and any development particularly apartment buildings. These people need to be shamed for their selfishness. I am a homeowner and a YIMBY. Join me!
      - 4y ago
- ransom1538 4y ago
  Long time resident. There are three groups in SF: Long term renters (on rent control), renters that will leave and owners. Basically, only the long time renters and owners vote. Owners don't want any new construction. Long time renters don't want rent raised. So there you go. Nothing gets done.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  > "Housing is an investment that should only go up in price" will eventually kill any market While I do get your point, it also has been generally true, for most modern cities for a long time (excluding short term fluctuations). Prices will go up as, as long as city is desirable to live in. It holds true, long as cities don't collapse, which policies that lead to increasing prices of housing also can contribute to, by making city not desirable to live in.
babyshake 4y ago
> New developments blocked by renters. I wonder how much of this is renters who feel they are just one IPO or acquisition away from being owners.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > wonder how much of this is renters who feel they are just one IPO or acquisition away from being owners I don't think they're the ones protesting. One, it's irrational: if a windfall is around the corner, you want prices temporarily depressed. Two, political nihilism and detachment have been fashionable among San Francisco's political middle class for a few decades now. They are more likely to be proudly refusing to vote than attending town halls, speaking to their electeds or participating in protests. (I say this with sardonic affection for dear friends.) The second point is starting to change. But culture has inertia. It will take time.
colechristensen 4y ago
It's fine to block new residential developments if you also block new commercial developments. Maintain a ratio of residential to commercial and you don't have housing crunches and can keep your city at the density your residents choose.
houstonn 4y ago
- Raptor22 4y ago
  Oh dear God, here we go...
  - akomtu 4y ago
    GP made a valid point, but there is a caveat: this will is diffused, isn't guided by reason and avoids action. If SF was a man, that man would be, technically, a schizophrenic with multiple personslities in him fighting each other. The city council simply manipulates this man.
0000011111 4y ago
Maybe the poop on the street has made its way into the water supply and that is affecting the management?
llsf 4y ago
I guess we got the elected we voted for. Now unfortunately, we did not have much choice. Nonetheless they are supposed to plan for this city. They should recognize that NIMBism is not sustainable. The BoS needs to act swiftly and help convert most of the commercial into residential units. This could help mitigate the issue. If Wework started to not pay its property tax, maybe converting those square feet in residential condos would at least bring some property tax money.
raverbashing 4y ago
For real. I really don't know why people would bother opening offices there. Especially post pandemic "Investment", VCs are all around the US now and those who refuse to invest outside of city boundaries are going to have a bad time. At this point even setting shop in LA might be cheaper and give you a nicer scenery. "Talent", hire remotely for the most talent-sensitive positions. Your react app is not rocket science. The NIMBYs are right, we should stop moving there and stop paying them those extortionate rents.
balderdash 4y ago
I wish I could find it, but I recall some research indicating that elected officials are very good at giving voters the stuff they want (even if it’s internally inconsistent) e.g. voters want more spending on education, healthcare and don’t want cuts anywhere else + plus want less deficit spending/balanced budget = impossible, but as the politician understood that they’d rewarded for increasing spending in your important areas, and can live with you blaming for the deficit spending because hey, what you wanted wasn’t possible…
- pc86 4y ago
  It doesn't take much "research" to arrive at "politicians will give voters what they want and pass the buck on paying it."
  - balderdash 4y ago
    Put any other way, biters will say they want a balanced budget, then when you ask them where we should increase and decrease spending, it turns out they actually didn’t want a bladed budget, and that the politicians had given them exactly why they wanted (despite protestations to the contrary)

inamberclad 4y ago

Drug use isn't associated with crime and filth until we make it so via harsh city policies. I would, however, like someone to clean the 4 different instances of poop I saw on my 3 block walk this morning.

gfodor 4y ago
You think drug use doesn't lead to crime?
- malnourish 4y ago
  What crimes will drug users commit if drugs are legally available like alcohol?
  - suoduandao2 4y ago
    Alcohol might be a bad example since it does lead to lowered inhibitions and, depending on the environment, often more brawling or risky driving than would happen without it. The key here is probably the 'depending on the environment' bit. Hashish used to be closely associated with political assassinations, now... not so much. But it could be again, given the right(?) culture.
  - swearwolf 4y ago
    Evidence from Portland, which decriminalized all drugs via Measure 101, the answer is, "Whatever crimes are necessary to enable people to afford their drug of choice." Not all drugs are equal. You can't drink your way into effectively schizophrenia, but you can get there in no time with the currently available super-potent variety of meth. Some drugs completely wreck your ability to live in a way compatible with holding down a job, which means that you'll pretty quickly have to turn to crime if you want to keep doing them.
    - m0llusk 4y ago
      Is there any evidence that Measure 101 was a pivot? My limited understanding is that drugs and craziness were pervasive and on the rise in Portland well before that. The idea that criminalization controls drug use isn't clearly supported by historical evidence at this point.

brighamyoung 4y ago

100% agreed. Ben Shapiro did a pretty in-depth analysis of this on the Joe Rogan Experience.

systemvoltage 4y ago

pcwalton 4y ago
> Expecting downvotes still because it is criticizing progressives. The guidelines ask you not to do this.

bluejekyll 4y ago

> Crime is rampant According to the data, crime in SF is lower that it was a few years ago: https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-California.html https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-Californ... > Drug use and filth is everywhere. Voters can’t seem to wrap their head around better housing policies to get people off the street. It’s disappointing, the entire Bay Area is guilty of this.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Crime is down - but so is population. Is the decrease statistically significant after adjusting for population loss?
- hattmall 4y ago
  Violent Crime IS low in SF. It's pushed into Oakland. Property crime is insane and artificially held low by apathy with regard to reporting and redefining offense levels.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Also wondering how much this has to do with Shoplifting and other crimes simply being decriminalized.
    - inferiorhuman 4y ago
      Shoplifting and other crimes simply being decriminalized. Shoplifting was never (formally) decriminalized. SFPD stopped bringing anything to the DA because he was investigating and prosecuting police misconduct. Now that the mayor's installed a new DA and the new DA's disbanded the group that investigates police misconduct the police have started bringing more cases forward. Unsurprisingly the new DA is not prosecuting cases at a higher rate. https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/jenkins-removed-prosecutor-police-misconduct-homicide-trial/ https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/jenkins-removed-prosecutor-... https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/narcotics-enforcement-spike-not-jenkins-prosecutions/ https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/narcotics-enforcement-spike... https://missionlocal.org/2022/07/mayors-office-takes-hands-on-role-with-da-jenkins-documents-show/ https://missionlocal.org/2022/07/mayors-office-takes-hands-o...

evr1isnxprt 4y ago

Elites constrain candidate choice and voters are too distracted staying afloat to demand different. City officials are not expected to do better.

commandlinefan 4y ago

I suspect this will inevitably be blamed on greedy capitalist building owners, but the crazy tax assessors have some blame here, too. They value these buildings in the hundreds of millions of dollars and asses taxes based on that valuation - and that was "ok" because the building owners could extract that kind of value from the buildings by raising the rents. Now they can't - but the valuation and the taxes owed stay the same. If they hadn't tried to squeeze every last tax dollar out of the real estate market in the first place, the buildings wouldn't have become so expensive to begin with.

mbfg 4y ago
Yes, but there are still "greedy capitalist building owners" willing to sign up for the deal. So the taxes seems to be following supply and demand. At some point as the article claims, that may change. If/when it does, then both parties will change.
inferiorhuman 4y ago
I suspect this will inevitably be blamed on greedy capitalist building owners, but the crazy tax assessors have some blame here, too. They value these buildings in the hundreds of millions of dollars and asses taxes based on that valuation - and that was "ok" because the building owners could extract that kind of value from the buildings by raising the rents. Now they can't - but the valuation and the taxes owed stay the same. If they hadn't tried to squeeze every last tax dollar out of the real estate market in the first place, the buildings wouldn't have become so expensive to begin with. What? Prop 13 ensures that most of these office buildings are not being taxed on the market value of the property. Prop 8 ensures that tax assessments go down when the market value of the property declines. Property tax is not the primary reason rent is so expensive in San Francisco.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It's arguably part of the reason things get "stuck" as they are, because selling a property triggers revaluation. But prop 13 had no reason to apply to commercial property anyway, but good luck ever changing that.

gofreddygo 4y ago

In The city You're screwed when you rent a home or office. You're screwed when you own a home. You're screwed when you eat. You're screwed when you drink. You're screwed when you commute. You're screwed when you walk the streets. You're screwed when you (pay) park your car on the street. homeless? neglected commuters? neglected business owners? neglected public workers? neglected tourists? neglected I just don't know what sort of people the city wants ?

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Speculators?
hattmall 4y ago
Who is doing all the screwing??
- bombcar 4y ago

renewiltord 4y ago

The officials are just a reflection of the populace: most of whom would rather than SF were a sleepy neighbourhood rather than the city that it is. This is exacerbated by the fact that the majority of the local populace sort of missed the bus on the boom that happened and consequently dislike that it happened at all. So they're using the tool they have: politics. FWIW, I know a lot of locals who graduated into tech or who were adjacent (EAs, front-office, etc.) and their lives are better for it, but there are lots who weren't appropriately positioned and missed the boat on the whole thing.

cpursley 4y ago

Money goes to where it's treated best and people vote with their feet. I know people thumb their nose on the state, but Florida is open for business. But the real secret is Puerto Rico and their incredible tax incentives for software companies.

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zzzeek 4y ago
Florida is not a good environment for companies that have female employees, as due to FL's draconian anti-abortion law, state surveillance of pregnancies is now required as miscarriages past 15 weeks now need to be treated as potential homicides.
- Maursault 4y ago
  A swing to the Right will often cause a swing to the Left. In Florida, registered Republicans lead Democrats by less than one percentage point as of August 2022, and there are more than 10M women in Florida, half the population, and only 4.5M senior citizens, less than a quarter of the population. It is my optimistic belief that DeSantis' days in politics are numbered, mostly due to his association with a certain mentally ill and criminally-inclined one-termer president, but also because his "semi-fascism" isn't really working for him either. The Republican playbook is to prevent (usually minority-member) Democrats from voting by any means necessary, but this just can't keep working successfully forever.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    And speaking of Puerto Ricans, where do you think all the Hurricane Maria refugees went?
    - Maursault 4y ago
      At least 50K of them moved to Florida, but it's no sure bet they're Democratic votes. Neither of the two main Puerto Rican political parties fit the Democdatic-Republican binary of national politics.

ricardobayes 4y ago

I don't think it's that different to any major city anywhere on the planet. Most cities have rough areas and hotspots to avoid. My personal experience is that it's a rather nice place apart from a few streets in SOMA.

toss1 4y ago

Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded. - - Yogi Berra

thomasfl 4y ago

Companies needs people. It is the most important resource. Cities not hospitable for humans, are bad for business. Local authorities in Vienna,Austria, still has control over 25% of the real estate. This ensures that the city will be affordable for many years to come.

LatteLazy 4y ago

Cities need social services to work, because of the density of people. It is a problem when my neighbour is crazy and screams for 18h a day when we live on top of each other in a city. It isn't when we live in the middle of no where and are separated by 50miles. Only America is specifically designed to prevent any sort of social services, because people have the freedom to come into town to use those services and then leave before it's time to pay the tax for them. This is why American cities have so many issues compared to European ones. From public transport to healthcare to education to crime, American is designed to be 100% individualistic and that is incompatible with how cities work. Cities are forced to subsidise surrounding areas.

fakethenews2022 4y ago
Cities already make visitors pay. First there is usually a higher sales tax. Furthermore, many cities have additional taxes on lodging and entertainment. These taxes are quite substantial. Furthermore look at decaying cities in the 70s. The cities weren't subsidizing surrounding areas by providing services. Instead, many businesses and services straight moved out of cities to surrounding areas. So did many people. It was only in the 90s when cities became hip again and services sprang back up in cities. According to your notion, surrounding areas were subsidizing cities in the 70s.
- fakethenews2022 4y ago
  It would be like saying that Santa Clara was subsidizing San Francisco residents when those residents attend a 49ers games.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  The ways you list are fine for getting a few extra dollars our of tourists. But there nothing compared the millions who commute in and out daily to work and pay no property taxes. And that's without counting criminals or people with mental health issues or 101 other groups who travel in and become the cities problem.
  - 4y ago

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m0llusk 4y ago

These are all small problems compared to the pension system exploding.

buss 4y ago

We can fix it, but only if we get organized. Sachin Agarwal (co-founder of Posterous) and I founded GrowSF to fix the city. We're less than two years in and already the #2 most influential voter guide in the city. We must elect pro-growth and pro-tech people who can bring competence to government. There's no other way out of this mess. We'd love your support! https://growsf.org/donate https://growsf.org/donate

adameasterling 4y ago
Donated! Huge fan of the voter guide!
- buss 4y ago
  Thank you! We can only win together :)
clolege 4y ago
Love what you're doing! I find it curious though that your guide only endorses a single candidate, when the voters can rank multiple candidates.. Surely there are multiple candidates that stand out above the rest, and bringing attention to that set would help get better people into office?

spamizbad 4y ago

Is that really the case? Wasn't London Breed supposed to be ostensible a pragmatic centrist to solve the city's woes? During the 2020 election she ultimately backed Bloomberg after Harris dropped out.

zeruch 4y ago

"Most importantly city has been hostile to tech and business owners." You are laughable. The reason the City is in this state is because it pandered to tech firms that wanted the "coolness' without paying anything for it (and if anything, getting special dispensations for their own). They got tax breaks and perks, screwing every small local business and middle class residential tenant in sight, for big tech that didn't and doesn't care.

diebeforei485 4y ago
What? The only ones who got tax breaks were those who moved to Mid Market, a depressed area. Twitter was going to move out of the city when they outgrew their Folsom St office, instead they moved to Mid-Market. It's gotten a lot better now, so the tax breaks did their job.

daniel-cussen 4y ago

No it's not hostile it's just not sucking them either, you want a beautiful world-class city there's taxes, and those taxes bring things like public transport, which is the biggest draw. Yes there's drug use and filth everywhere. So understand this: they were not special snowflakes, got traumas ripped into them or badly educated or coerced into using drugs. Or, or, or, evicted. Those guys are evicted, you're sneering on them because they couldn't make that landlord totally pleased at the same time as his best friend the boss was totally pleased. Dude fucking impossible rent, like at Stanford economics class they quote $1200, no it's $4000, who knows. Like if the landlord who is a poker player essentially detects you being over a barrel who knows. Like I was talking to an activist this conversation flipped her from NIMBY to YIMBY, I told her look in Santiago there's basically no enforcement of zoning in many places, so people build really high, $200 rent in a good location. She figured they only built housing for rich people in SF, true but then those rich people move to that housing leaving behind empty housing less rich people move into, who leave behind less expensive housing, and so on. Hermit crabs. But not $4000 rent. So also those people are wretched, which you are not. Some are absurd but they suffer for their drug use not in the future every week. And their public suffering is a service to the landlord in his negotiations which he pays absolutely nothing to them for, I was telling Jonathan Ramos for being wretched on the sidewalk for everybody to treat you like you're invisible, that coercion is worth $3000 a month to the landlord rather than getting bargained down, put in an auction, having to compete against a new building going up right next door (in some neighborhoods there's less of that), the evicteds are valuable to the landlord. Landlord should pay a tax on rent to compensate them for breathing fear into tenants. Like oh my god, if I lose my job I'll get evicted, then I'll get raped! Gasp! Yeah dude people suffering, and from all over America SF takes them all in, because they can survive at night in winter there. You ever worked in construction? You ever stopped a crime? I've stopped 31, no losses, in SF in particular in Chinatown next to the Mission where all those strap-ups do all their advertising on everything about their super-cool credit cards, and advertising platforms. Yes it's cool, no it's not cool. It is super expensive. Landlord's fault really. And by now the fundamental economics of the city is messed up, though there's plenty of 4 story buildings in place of 60 story buildings. And you know? Twitter when it was a respectable business (sort of they asked for homework, make them a whole app) stedda censoring a sitting president, no matter what he said, they opened an office in the Tenderloin. I went near there, I think to the Square office which for convenience was adjacent. Dude rough neighborhood, but you gotta let the junkie get something, somewhere, like crack is due to flourine overdose, that's why there was a crack epidemic in America and not elsewhere, and black those hit hardest are very sensitive to flourine. They think it tastes like shit, so that's why they buy bottled water always--an apparently false pejorative stereotype that's true and positive--that's why they don't have every single one of their kids with some psychiatric birth defect. It's the most toxic thing there is, more than plutonium. Corrodes everything, gold even. And it causes sugar cravings, so even for the purpose of better teeth it's counterproductive. That's why there's so many busted fat people in America and not Europe, there's running water in Europe in America? Only brine. Salted on purpose, poisoned hard. Good for your teeth yeah, only reacts with teeth, no other cell, and 97% of the periodic table, literally only 3 molecules that don't react to it in the whole universe. Eh, flag for human review. Guess it's too strong, this subject. Maybe I'm a little pissed. Must be the salt.

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