5 ms·

How about those other cities build the housing that SF won’t? There nothing stopping them. And those cities could benefit from the new high income residents. Ho

How about those other cities build the housing that SF won’t? There nothing stopping them. And those cities could benefit from the new high income residents. How can “we should all be poorer” be a good solution to high housing prices? There’s always the supply side of the equation and people need to live somewhere.

arebop 4y ago
It takes many months to develop new housing in the U.S. Even when you have local political support, there's a lot of custom manual work and so forth. It's also very hard to find examples of long-term successful large-scale (town-scale) growth. So we can't just move substantial fractions of people from our largest cities to mid or small-sized cities in a matter of months or years (and get satisfactory results). Undoubtedly NIMBY forces around the U.S. are partly to blame, but the Covid/WFH exodus is surely the more important factor at this point in time.
- foogazi 4y ago
  > It takes many months to develop new housing in the U.S. Applies to SF and SV too - and to the other citied
salmonfamine 4y ago
Yes, they should build more. But again, that's just pushing the core problem away from SF (one of the most notable cities in the US for over a century, with a history of economic booms and high migration) to what was until recently a large-ish college town known as a haven for slackers. Having lived in one of those cities as a low-income resident, a medium-income resident, and now a high-income resident, I assure you that the high income residents do much less for these cities than any other group. And no, taxes do not make up for it.
- stone-monkey 4y ago
  Those same reasons you listed why other cities can't fix the problem also apply to San Francisco. Despite being world famous, San Francisco is quite provincial - nothing like NYC. Their population doesn't even break a million, and it's also geographically limited - the infamous "7x7" miles. Mass migration has affected San Francisco in the same way it has for your city - many high income earners coming in from other states/countries to get a job at a startup or Google/Facebook/Apple etc. These people from other cities are complaining about getting a small fraction of San Francisco's outflows - Why would SF be able to handle it better than your city, when they've had the same problem you're having, multiplied by 10?
hotpotamus 4y ago
Would you encourage your children to go into a homebuilding trade? Which is the kind of question I think about when I wonder who is supposed to build all the houses.

arebop 4y ago

It takes many months to develop new housing in the U.S. Even when you have local political support, there's a lot of custom manual work and so forth. It's also very hard to find examples of long-term successful large-scale (town-scale) growth. So we can't just move substantial fractions of people from our largest cities to mid or small-sized cities in a matter of months or years (and get satisfactory results). Undoubtedly NIMBY forces around the U.S. are partly to blame, but the Covid/WFH exodus is surely the more important factor at this point in time.

foogazi 4y ago
> It takes many months to develop new housing in the U.S. Applies to SF and SV too - and to the other citied

salmonfamine 4y ago

Yes, they should build more. But again, that's just pushing the core problem away from SF (one of the most notable cities in the US for over a century, with a history of economic booms and high migration) to what was until recently a large-ish college town known as a haven for slackers. Having lived in one of those cities as a low-income resident, a medium-income resident, and now a high-income resident, I assure you that the high income residents do much less for these cities than any other group. And no, taxes do not make up for it.

stone-monkey 4y ago
Those same reasons you listed why other cities can't fix the problem also apply to San Francisco. Despite being world famous, San Francisco is quite provincial - nothing like NYC. Their population doesn't even break a million, and it's also geographically limited - the infamous "7x7" miles. Mass migration has affected San Francisco in the same way it has for your city - many high income earners coming in from other states/countries to get a job at a startup or Google/Facebook/Apple etc. These people from other cities are complaining about getting a small fraction of San Francisco's outflows - Why would SF be able to handle it better than your city, when they've had the same problem you're having, multiplied by 10?

hotpotamus 4y ago

Would you encourage your children to go into a homebuilding trade? Which is the kind of question I think about when I wonder who is supposed to build all the houses.