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Imagine you're a municipality like San Francisco. You control all of the zoning regulations, and many of the permitting requirements. You have a AA+ credit rati

Imagine you're a municipality like San Francisco. You control all of the zoning regulations, and many of the permitting requirements. You have a AA+ credit rating, and even in today's higher rate environment, you can borrow billions of dollars at 6%. You already own oodles of land. You can build to whatever height you want within reason, because you control the zoning, and you even control many of the ordinances that allow citizens to block development (though certainly not all, like CEQA and NEPA). So you have lots of lands to build on, and what you build is largely in your control. Construction costs in San Francisco are sky-high, at $440 sq ft. But people will happily pay you $40/sq foot per year for housing, probably for 75 years. How is this not the easiest decision in the world? Create a housing development agency, become a permanent developer, and landlord. Never stop building. Put proper incentives in place, so that employees at the agency can partake in the profits, incentivizing them to be efficient. Never stop doing this. You might not be great at this at first, but fifty years later you will be.

samman 4y ago
Another factor to consider is that there may also be significant infrastructure upgrades required to support the increase in population, and costs might increase dramatically when you consider increased water usage in an already drought stricken region.
Tiktaalik 4y ago
> How is this not the easiest decision in the world? Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want more people to near to them so they vote against any and all change. Welp! This is why higher orders of government need to step in to "force" municipalities to enact some of these sorts of policy changes you describe. This gives the local municipalities cover to enact the good policies that the selfish rich would kill at the ballot box.
- orangecat 4y ago
  Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want more people to near to them so they vote against any and all change. Yes, combined with useful idiot "anti-gentrification" activists who have convinced themselves that the concept of supply and demand is a capitalist myth.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - laidoffamazon 4y ago
    I’ve just become negatively polarized into supporting gentrification at this point. Seems like the alternative is crime ridden, blighted cities without amenities.
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      Well yes, but why "negatively polarized"? Gentrification is just a somewhat derogatory word for "amenities that attract people to want to live in the area". It doesn't have to mean increased prices; that will depend on how easy it is to build real-estate there. A place can be perfectly "gentrified" in the amenities sense and be just a quaint, high-density town or neighborhood with average or even low housing costs.
      - laidoffamazon 4y ago
        I agree, that’s what I support it to be!
  - jmoak3 4y ago
    Useful idiot is a great term for this. It's ironic that the same people who want to prevent gentrification are the actual "bootlickers" after all. I ended up leaving San Francisco over this sort of stuff to go to my hometown with a cheaper cost of living. Here in Louisville, we have fewer things going on than most metros. Yet every time a new apartment complex comes up a good amount of people scream bloody murder that it will raise rents unless 30% of it is marked "below market rate". This causes developers to spend their time building elsewhere, so that new options don't emerge to drive down rents. The city is objectively less wealthy than most other metros in the USA. Nobody has ever said "stop farming, all that food is allowing more people to live, and now food is more expensive", yet they will repeat it time and time again with housing. Instead they correctly think, "farm more, if we get more people on Earth they can help us farm even more food. Also we can finally have enough people to have doctors." Funny enough my state has 80% of the doctors per capita that California has, and 60% of the doctors per capita that New York has[1]. It's very frustrating to see people here fighting to stunt growth, and force their own young out to nearby cities with more open minds that let people make choices. For example, the state is debating between prioritizing poorly allocated pensions and lowering our tax rate. We're currently committed to lowering the income tax from 5% to 0% over 10 years but it's continually framed as theft to benefit the wealthy by opponents. Meanwhile Tennessee and Texas continue to have a 0% income tax and take our children and new businesses. The limited job market + wages and new business formations here reflect this. Everyone thinks of Kentucky as a poor state - people don't know we have one of the higher tax rates as well. The only thing these anti-growthers are accomplishing is making sure the same elites who made these people's lives meek stay relatively powerful by upholding the very structures that enrich the elites. Maybe the elites are the ones driving the conversation? I know I'm soapboxing here but wealth, a clean environment, ample jobs, and the ability for your own children to make a living in your region is as much a choice as anything else in this life. I'm thankful that San Francisco chose to let jobs develop there, but sad they chose not to allow me to settle there. I proudly work remotely for a CA company, and hope other states can copy the choices CA made to allow businesses and workers to flourish, and learn from their mistakes which are currently sending them away. If you choose to stop chaining your neighbor good things will flow. [1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/this-state-has-the-most-physicians-per-capita.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/this-state-h...
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  No, just average people, who built the community over time into something desirable, that were promised with zoning laws that it would be the type of community (single family homes, etc) that they wanted, and that then dedicated the majority of their lifetime earning power to purchase a home there. There are how many acres of land in this country? Why do you have a right to overrule the will of people in one comparatively small community to force that community to be something else, in the name of affordable housing, when there is so much land available elsewhere? You want it, build it, commit your life to it, like they did in paying so much of their lifetime income into their family home. If we were a tiny island country you might have an argument, but there is soooo much land in this country, arbitrarily picking one small area because that is where you want to be is not a right.
  - CogitoCogito 4y ago
    > No, just average people, who built the community over time into something desirable, that were promised with zoning laws that it would be the type of community (single family homes, etc) that they wanted, and that then dedicated the majority of their lifetime earning power to purchase a home there. No one was promised that the zoning laws wouldn't someday change. Maybe what's really needed is a complete repeal of proposition 13. If homeowners want to block local development leading to increasing housing costs, they can at least pay for it in their taxes.
    - nradov 4y ago
      You are welcome to put a repeal of Proposition 13 on the next ballot. All it takes is a $2000 fee and some signed petitions. https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/how-qualify-initiative https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/how-qualify...
      - CogitoCogito 4y ago
        Frankly that's a waste of time. People are are all too happy not paying their fair share of taxes and will fight hard to preserve that inequity. The clearly correct approach is for the state to continue its current path of overruling local zoning ordinances and to allow increases in density against the will of local homeowners.
- majormajor 4y ago
  > Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want more people to near to them so they vote against any and all change. Sometimes poor established renters also don't want change. In the 20th century a lot of cities grew practically 'out of nowhere'. Why has that stopped? That's a great pressure relief valve and gets new buyers/renters out of a vicious feedback loop caused by the tendency of already cash-or-property-rich people to concentrate resources. "The opportunity/jobs are there" is historically the answer, for millennia of cities. But does it have to be that forever? In the 20th century US, there were a lot of explicit government interventions and such that caused things like the defense industry to sprawl across countless different states and counterbalance it. What would that look like in a post-2020 world?
  - novok 4y ago
    Cities out of nowhere do exist in function in the USA, there are plenty of cities where people can buy for cheap. New settlements get started due to something unique about the place, be it ports, resources, trade route nexuses, and so on. The USA was a frontier and thus these cities were established. You'll notice in western europe you don't see many new towns either for 100s of years, because it's frontier was settled long time ago. People want to live in SF because of the effective social networks that develop there and access to it's labor market. Cities are essentially representations of different labor markets, and labor markets in specific places develop because there is something unique about the place, or they seed crystal into a form of 'labor black hole' as a new industry develops.
    - majormajor 4y ago
      Sure, but we explicitly tried to counter those forces in the US, including through government policy to build industry in areas where it wasn't before. Moving the defense industry to be less-concentrated in Los Angeles was deliberate and wasn't moving to "frontier" towns. It was moving to towns that were created for one purpose but had been somewhat "skipped over" after that in favor of the biggest cities. I think it's probably worth trying to incentivize that more today. It still happens organically some (big companies moving HQs out of expensive areas, for instance), but probably could stand to happen more.
- ejb999 4y ago
  >>This is why higher orders of government need to step in to "force" municipalities to enact some of these sorts of policy changes you describe. The people that live there, don't want their city/neighborhood to change in a certain way, so people that don't live there should force them to do it? Why are people that aren't even voters in that location have a say at all?
  - supersour 4y ago
    The state has an interest in keeping its cities economically healthy, perhaps more than the city government itself which is focused on appeasing citizens with its delivery of police/recreation services. The state government can act more dynamically since it has a wider voter base to consider, including those who would like to live in the city but are pushed out. The Valley must maintain some level of competitiveness with other city hubs, else the techxodus worsens and California loses a large portion of their economy and tax revenue. This is an existential threat to California, and the residents of the valley will lose out in the long run.
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      > This is an existential threat to California… California was doing just fine when I was a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s. No doubt it’ll be doing just fine when the tech bros take their ball and go home. There’s absolutely nothing in California that is essential for the tech industry but plenty to offer that turned it into an economic powerhouse before that time. Pretty depressing that the only way I could possibly permanently move back to the land of my birth is in a casket.
  - fxleach 4y ago
    It's not "their" city/neighbourhood. It existed before them and it will exist after. What gives someone a right to move in and create laws to make it harder for other people to do the same thing they did? I understand they actually have that right, it's just shitty to have that kind of mindset.
    - 4y ago
jeffbee 4y ago
The government is run by and for the benefit of the established land owners and they don't want housing, they want excess returns. Simple.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > government is run by and for the benefit of the established land owners Do San Francisco’s renters fail to turn out to vote? (Serious question.)
  - akavi 4y ago
    I don't know about SF in particular, but nationwide, yes, renters turn out to vote at a far lower rate than homeowners[0] (67% vs 49%) [0] https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/renter-voting-preferences https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/renter-voting-prefere...
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > nationwide, yes, renters turn out to vote at a far lower rate than homeowners Wider than I expected. Thank you. Asking because in New York, renters turn out, and that drives policy outcomes. (They’re also less likely to think supply and demand is a myth.)
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
        By and large, poorer people vote less than wealthy people. It is harder to vote in america as a poorer person in many areas, arguably on purpose.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > harder to vote in america as a poorer person in many areas, arguably on purpose Is this true in San Francisco?
aschearer 4y ago
Theoretically, sure. In reality, people have invested a lot of money in housing and want to preserve that investment. I recall a time in Seattle where the mayor and city council proposed removing most of the zoning restrictions in the city. Within weeks course was reversed[1]. Personally, I think it was a good proposal, but it's hard to convince homeowners to give an inch. While I think that's bad for society, I can't blame people for looking out for one of their largest investments. [1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/mayor-murray-withdraws-proposal-to-allow-more-density-in-single-family-zones/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/mayor-mur...
tinyspacewizard 4y ago
If you're a benevolent dictator then it's easy and obvious. But there are powerful vested interests and elections to win.
- jollyllama 4y ago
  This; the landlords will destroy you if you dare to try this.
  - JamesBarney 4y ago
    Judging from what I've seen of SF politics its much more homeowners, who have far more power, than landlords.
    - t-writescode 4y ago
      A landlord is, by definition, a homeowner.
      - dnissley 4y ago
        In this case the commenter is specifically referring to the class of people who own a home they live in.
        tinyspacewizard 4y ago
        owner-occupier is the usual term
      - hyuuu 4y ago
        i think they are completely separate? landlord: may or may not own a home, but have a property to rent out, may it be a residential or commercial like a warehouse. They may not even own the home they live in, which is surprisingly very typical to cut cost and deploy money in other ways. homeowner: own the property they reside in.
- geodel 4y ago
dionidium 4y ago
Yeah, the thing I always say about the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco is like, look, if you can't figure out how to gain from an influx of wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality, nerdy tech workers, then that's really on you. What a gift! Any city would be lucky to have that "problem." You have to actively work to make that a negative (by, say, refusing to allow almost any new housing for literally decades). The consequences of that decision are fairly obvious and straightforward and they've by now been explained to everybody 50 times, but this is the path these cities choose anyway! It's their choice and it's what they keep choosing. Cities like San Francisco have said clearly, firmly, and repeatedly: "we would rather suffer a housing crisis than allow the city to change too rapidly." At this point what else can you say in response?
- fnimick 4y ago
  > the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco The people who are complaining about this are not the same people who are restricting housing access. A similar dynamic happens in Boston, where people are resentful of gentrifiers, and I can't blame them. They're not the ones voting to block housing, it's the already rich people in the area who do that.
  - xxpor 4y ago
    No, it's both. There's an unholy alliance between the two.
    - fnimick 4y ago
      Why would renters want property values (and therefore rents) to go up due to a lack of supply?
      - raincom 4y ago
        People who live in rent-controlled apartments seem to be against gentrification, as they end up losing their rent-controlled apartments for new construction.
kupopuffs 4y ago
Because there's more to governing than the cost/benefit analysis of the business of landlording More homes means more people means more headaches, without proper planning. You'll need to build infrastructure and steadily govern your rising population. Not impossible, but definitely more overhead. And surely all your building will lower the price of housing around the area, thus making you and your fellow rich San Francisco friends, less rich.
avelis 4y ago
They would in theory never run out of development projects for 20+ years. Many large cities could fall into this category as well. The pressure to not piss off homeowners is atrocious.
SoftTalker 4y ago
Sounds like you're proposing government run high-rise housing projects. Can you name any that are not dangerous, crime-ridden hellholes?
- muzz 4y ago
  Geneva Towers. Oh wait, that was so dangerous they literally had to tear it down.
- wffurr 4y ago
  Venice
- BirdieNZ 4y ago
  Singapore
- scarmig 4y ago
  Singapore.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  Singapore, but only because it targets the middle class and results in ownership. Poorer Singaporeans are in a different system of smaller rentals (still public housing).
r00fus 4y ago
> Imagine you're a municipality like San Francisco. I couldn't get past this because the analogy breaks down already. SF as a polity is not controlled by one person or single department. The power is highly decentralized (the Board of Supervisors hold most of the keys). Thus, even if you have someone who can make sweeping changes, likelihood is they'd never get elected in such a setup (or if they do, be able to effect change).
- AaronM 4y ago
  Even if they could make sweeping changes, the local homeowners would drag those new developments to court for 25 years
  - novok 4y ago
    The BoS & electorate create laws, bureaucracies, structures and courts that would create those 25 year court cases in the first place. The properly allocated elected set of judges, supervisors, mayor and DAs can make most of those disappear in the first place by changing the law, how the government runs and how the courts run and rule on cases, complete with prioritizing court cases for the few they don't have a choice in getting rid of to make them get through the system quickly.
    - jjav 4y ago
      > The BoS & electorate create laws, bureaucracies, structures and courts that would create those 25 year court cases in the first place. The properly allocated elected set of judges, supervisors, mayor and DAs can make most of those disappear in the first place by changing the law, how the government runs and how the courts run and rule on cases, complete with prioritizing court cases for the few they don't have a choice in getting rid of to make them get through the system quickly. Let's say they do that. All the branches of SF government collude to make or remove laws as needed to eliminate all obstacles to permenently buidling more. Who will be satisfied? What would happen to the city as everyone flees such authoritarian approach?
      - 4y ago
ROTMetro 4y ago
Ah yes, government housing blocks. What worked so well in the past, why did it ever go out of style, I forget?
thefounder 4y ago
Ok but why do all the people need to live in city center? There is enough housing/land, just not in "prime" location.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  It's an issue with the zoning laws. Back when it became illegal to ban black people from your neighborhood the next best thing was to ban the kind of housing that black people could afford. So the only place where it's legal to put the kind of housing that addresses the problem is in the city centers which were already established and therefore out of scope for the zoning restrictions. (more on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc)
iwanttocomment 4y ago
What a goofy statement. How much land does San Francisco truly own that isn't already used for an essential purpose? Are you encouraging them to turn the parks or schools into housing? That's not going to make SF an attractive community. Are you encouraging them to use eminent domain to out existing single-family homeowners? That's really not going to go well. Assuming that you raze the parks and schools and seize single-family homes to build high-density rentals as you suggest, the average life span in the US is 77 years. Assuming people still leave the house at 18, that's 59 years of renting... if those people choose not to buy elsewhere, given that you've razed the parks and the schools. I don't think you understand how hamstrung San Francisco is in regards to the amount of available land it could actually develop.
tick_tock_tick 4y ago
The city government doesn't want to solve the issue.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  That means the citizens don't want to solve it.
paxys 4y ago
The city of San Francisco isn't some independent entity. It is made up of people, a lot of whom already own houses and/or don't want higher buildings and more neighbors and/or don't want to be in the business of building and managing housing. If you think about individual incentives rather than what is right and wrong then it makes perfect sense.
rr888 4y ago
> But people will happily pay you $40/sq foot per year for housing, Some, but most families couldn't afford it.
janalsncm 4y ago
I am one of those tech workers that moved to the Bay Area. The chance of me living here in 20 years is essentially zero. The governments here were granted a golden era of prosperity and have mostly squandered it. Trillions of dollars have been minted here, but you wouldn’t know it just by driving around. Public services are abysmal. Horrible public transportation. In another 20 years if the winds shift to some other place in the country/world people will look back at Silicon Valley and ask how it could manage not to thrive, and the inescapable answer is greed and incompetence.
- lapama 4y ago
  [flagged]
lapama 4y ago
[flagged]
reader_x 4y ago
A municipality is run by a group of individuals elected by other individuals, whereas you have framed your housing policy proposal as if pitching to a dictator. Imagining how we might govern unfettered by frustrating negotiations with others is fun but dangerous.
mindover 4y ago
Right - just build more housing. Forget about failing utilities, packed roads, overwhelmed social services, crowded schools! Just build more skyscrapers and move half of the country to SF so that we can all drown in shit together. This oversimplification that we just need to build more houses is amusing. SF is a tiny city, stuffing more people here won’t resolve many of the problems that already make life here difficult. And no, it won’t lower rent by much: SF doesn’t exist in a vacuum, more people will move here and will keep rent as high as before.
- pzone 4y ago
  You just have to look at Tokyo and Taipei. It is possible for cities to grow without soaring rents as long as you build lots of housing for everyone. We’re not just talking about the tiny San Francisco city proper, we’re talking about the whole Bay Area, as well as the rest of the state. You’re right that fixing housing won’t fix everything, but more problems than you think are caused by high housing prices, particularly crime and homelessness. https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/ https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...
  - mindover 4y ago
    But... San Franciscans don't want to live in a city like Tokyo or Taipei. Who would benefit from this changing city with taller buildings? Not many San Franciscans want that, so newcomers? I am not convinced either. People love the Bay and move here because of what it is, not because of what it is not. The complaints that I am hearing most often are about public transport, crime, street cleaning, social services. Not about having small buildings in SF.
acchow 4y ago
There is no single coordinated entity making all the decisions. In reality, there are dozens of self-interested groups which have no interest in solving homelessness and just want to stop every kind of development for all kinds of different reasons. There is also the homeless-industrial complex which has a lot to lose if you solve homelessness
TheRealNGenius 4y ago
[dead]
thelastgallon 4y ago
I doubt they will be constructed at $440/sft. S.F. is spending $1.7 million on one public toilet: https://archive.ph/hDumb https://archive.ph/hDumb Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33268748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33268748
- TrackerFF 4y ago
  In all fairness, that's a $20k in construction costs, and $1680000 in consulting / contractors / planning / various other fees
snapplebobapple 4y ago
You don't have to do any of that other than change the zoning/permitting/building process (which you would need to do for your plan above as well otherwise you won't be building much of anything). The problem in San fran isn't lack of builders or even lack of labor to build. The problem in san fran is the government forcing the process to permit and build something to multi year approaching decade timelines (if it is even approved). Basically all they have to do is set some basic, reasonable rules (heights, setbacks, etc) that, if you stay within them, you get your permit in a month or two the problem would be 70% solved within a decade. They might have to rezone some of san fran to allow denser building construction (with the same fast tracked permit described above) to get to 100% but that is literally it. They aren't doing it because the nimbys like the system the way it is (and the increased house value windfall it has given them).

samman 4y ago

Another factor to consider is that there may also be significant infrastructure upgrades required to support the increase in population, and costs might increase dramatically when you consider increased water usage in an already drought stricken region.

Tiktaalik 4y ago

> How is this not the easiest decision in the world? Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want more people to near to them so they vote against any and all change. Welp! This is why higher orders of government need to step in to "force" municipalities to enact some of these sorts of policy changes you describe. This gives the local municipalities cover to enact the good policies that the selfish rich would kill at the ballot box.

orangecat 4y ago
Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want more people to near to them so they vote against any and all change. Yes, combined with useful idiot "anti-gentrification" activists who have convinced themselves that the concept of supply and demand is a capitalist myth.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- laidoffamazon 4y ago
  I’ve just become negatively polarized into supporting gentrification at this point. Seems like the alternative is crime ridden, blighted cities without amenities.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    Well yes, but why "negatively polarized"? Gentrification is just a somewhat derogatory word for "amenities that attract people to want to live in the area". It doesn't have to mean increased prices; that will depend on how easy it is to build real-estate there. A place can be perfectly "gentrified" in the amenities sense and be just a quaint, high-density town or neighborhood with average or even low housing costs.
    - laidoffamazon 4y ago
      I agree, that’s what I support it to be!
- jmoak3 4y ago
  Useful idiot is a great term for this. It's ironic that the same people who want to prevent gentrification are the actual "bootlickers" after all. I ended up leaving San Francisco over this sort of stuff to go to my hometown with a cheaper cost of living. Here in Louisville, we have fewer things going on than most metros. Yet every time a new apartment complex comes up a good amount of people scream bloody murder that it will raise rents unless 30% of it is marked "below market rate". This causes developers to spend their time building elsewhere, so that new options don't emerge to drive down rents. The city is objectively less wealthy than most other metros in the USA. Nobody has ever said "stop farming, all that food is allowing more people to live, and now food is more expensive", yet they will repeat it time and time again with housing. Instead they correctly think, "farm more, if we get more people on Earth they can help us farm even more food. Also we can finally have enough people to have doctors." Funny enough my state has 80% of the doctors per capita that California has, and 60% of the doctors per capita that New York has[1]. It's very frustrating to see people here fighting to stunt growth, and force their own young out to nearby cities with more open minds that let people make choices. For example, the state is debating between prioritizing poorly allocated pensions and lowering our tax rate. We're currently committed to lowering the income tax from 5% to 0% over 10 years but it's continually framed as theft to benefit the wealthy by opponents. Meanwhile Tennessee and Texas continue to have a 0% income tax and take our children and new businesses. The limited job market + wages and new business formations here reflect this. Everyone thinks of Kentucky as a poor state - people don't know we have one of the higher tax rates as well. The only thing these anti-growthers are accomplishing is making sure the same elites who made these people's lives meek stay relatively powerful by upholding the very structures that enrich the elites. Maybe the elites are the ones driving the conversation? I know I'm soapboxing here but wealth, a clean environment, ample jobs, and the ability for your own children to make a living in your region is as much a choice as anything else in this life. I'm thankful that San Francisco chose to let jobs develop there, but sad they chose not to allow me to settle there. I proudly work remotely for a CA company, and hope other states can copy the choices CA made to allow businesses and workers to flourish, and learn from their mistakes which are currently sending them away. If you choose to stop chaining your neighbor good things will flow. [1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/this-state-has-the-most-physicians-per-capita.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/this-state-h...
ROTMetro 4y ago
No, just average people, who built the community over time into something desirable, that were promised with zoning laws that it would be the type of community (single family homes, etc) that they wanted, and that then dedicated the majority of their lifetime earning power to purchase a home there. There are how many acres of land in this country? Why do you have a right to overrule the will of people in one comparatively small community to force that community to be something else, in the name of affordable housing, when there is so much land available elsewhere? You want it, build it, commit your life to it, like they did in paying so much of their lifetime income into their family home. If we were a tiny island country you might have an argument, but there is soooo much land in this country, arbitrarily picking one small area because that is where you want to be is not a right.
- CogitoCogito 4y ago
  > No, just average people, who built the community over time into something desirable, that were promised with zoning laws that it would be the type of community (single family homes, etc) that they wanted, and that then dedicated the majority of their lifetime earning power to purchase a home there. No one was promised that the zoning laws wouldn't someday change. Maybe what's really needed is a complete repeal of proposition 13. If homeowners want to block local development leading to increasing housing costs, they can at least pay for it in their taxes.
  - nradov 4y ago
    You are welcome to put a repeal of Proposition 13 on the next ballot. All it takes is a $2000 fee and some signed petitions. https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/how-qualify-initiative https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/how-qualify...
    - CogitoCogito 4y ago
      Frankly that's a waste of time. People are are all too happy not paying their fair share of taxes and will fight hard to preserve that inequity. The clearly correct approach is for the state to continue its current path of overruling local zoning ordinances and to allow increases in density against the will of local homeowners.
majormajor 4y ago
> Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want more people to near to them so they vote against any and all change. Sometimes poor established renters also don't want change. In the 20th century a lot of cities grew practically 'out of nowhere'. Why has that stopped? That's a great pressure relief valve and gets new buyers/renters out of a vicious feedback loop caused by the tendency of already cash-or-property-rich people to concentrate resources. "The opportunity/jobs are there" is historically the answer, for millennia of cities. But does it have to be that forever? In the 20th century US, there were a lot of explicit government interventions and such that caused things like the defense industry to sprawl across countless different states and counterbalance it. What would that look like in a post-2020 world?
- novok 4y ago
  Cities out of nowhere do exist in function in the USA, there are plenty of cities where people can buy for cheap. New settlements get started due to something unique about the place, be it ports, resources, trade route nexuses, and so on. The USA was a frontier and thus these cities were established. You'll notice in western europe you don't see many new towns either for 100s of years, because it's frontier was settled long time ago. People want to live in SF because of the effective social networks that develop there and access to it's labor market. Cities are essentially representations of different labor markets, and labor markets in specific places develop because there is something unique about the place, or they seed crystal into a form of 'labor black hole' as a new industry develops.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    Sure, but we explicitly tried to counter those forces in the US, including through government policy to build industry in areas where it wasn't before. Moving the defense industry to be less-concentrated in Los Angeles was deliberate and wasn't moving to "frontier" towns. It was moving to towns that were created for one purpose but had been somewhat "skipped over" after that in favor of the biggest cities. I think it's probably worth trying to incentivize that more today. It still happens organically some (big companies moving HQs out of expensive areas, for instance), but probably could stand to happen more.
ejb999 4y ago
>>This is why higher orders of government need to step in to "force" municipalities to enact some of these sorts of policy changes you describe. The people that live there, don't want their city/neighborhood to change in a certain way, so people that don't live there should force them to do it? Why are people that aren't even voters in that location have a say at all?
- supersour 4y ago
  The state has an interest in keeping its cities economically healthy, perhaps more than the city government itself which is focused on appeasing citizens with its delivery of police/recreation services. The state government can act more dynamically since it has a wider voter base to consider, including those who would like to live in the city but are pushed out. The Valley must maintain some level of competitiveness with other city hubs, else the techxodus worsens and California loses a large portion of their economy and tax revenue. This is an existential threat to California, and the residents of the valley will lose out in the long run.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    > This is an existential threat to California… California was doing just fine when I was a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s. No doubt it’ll be doing just fine when the tech bros take their ball and go home. There’s absolutely nothing in California that is essential for the tech industry but plenty to offer that turned it into an economic powerhouse before that time. Pretty depressing that the only way I could possibly permanently move back to the land of my birth is in a casket.
- fxleach 4y ago
  It's not "their" city/neighbourhood. It existed before them and it will exist after. What gives someone a right to move in and create laws to make it harder for other people to do the same thing they did? I understand they actually have that right, it's just shitty to have that kind of mindset.
  - 4y ago

jeffbee 4y ago

The government is run by and for the benefit of the established land owners and they don't want housing, they want excess returns. Simple.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> government is run by and for the benefit of the established land owners Do San Francisco’s renters fail to turn out to vote? (Serious question.)
- akavi 4y ago
  I don't know about SF in particular, but nationwide, yes, renters turn out to vote at a far lower rate than homeowners[0] (67% vs 49%) [0] https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/renter-voting-preferences https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/renter-voting-prefere...
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > nationwide, yes, renters turn out to vote at a far lower rate than homeowners Wider than I expected. Thank you. Asking because in New York, renters turn out, and that drives policy outcomes. (They’re also less likely to think supply and demand is a myth.)
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      By and large, poorer people vote less than wealthy people. It is harder to vote in america as a poorer person in many areas, arguably on purpose.
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > harder to vote in america as a poorer person in many areas, arguably on purpose Is this true in San Francisco?

aschearer 4y ago

Theoretically, sure. In reality, people have invested a lot of money in housing and want to preserve that investment. I recall a time in Seattle where the mayor and city council proposed removing most of the zoning restrictions in the city. Within weeks course was reversed[1]. Personally, I think it was a good proposal, but it's hard to convince homeowners to give an inch. While I think that's bad for society, I can't blame people for looking out for one of their largest investments. [1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/mayor-murray-withdraws-proposal-to-allow-more-density-in-single-family-zones/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/mayor-mur...

tinyspacewizard 4y ago

If you're a benevolent dictator then it's easy and obvious. But there are powerful vested interests and elections to win.

jollyllama 4y ago
This; the landlords will destroy you if you dare to try this.
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  Judging from what I've seen of SF politics its much more homeowners, who have far more power, than landlords.
  - t-writescode 4y ago
    A landlord is, by definition, a homeowner.
    - dnissley 4y ago
      In this case the commenter is specifically referring to the class of people who own a home they live in.
      - tinyspacewizard 4y ago
        owner-occupier is the usual term
    - hyuuu 4y ago
      i think they are completely separate? landlord: may or may not own a home, but have a property to rent out, may it be a residential or commercial like a warehouse. They may not even own the home they live in, which is surprisingly very typical to cut cost and deploy money in other ways. homeowner: own the property they reside in.
geodel 4y ago

dionidium 4y ago

Yeah, the thing I always say about the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco is like, look, if you can't figure out how to gain from an influx of wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality, nerdy tech workers, then that's really on you. What a gift! Any city would be lucky to have that "problem." You have to actively work to make that a negative (by, say, refusing to allow almost any new housing for literally decades). The consequences of that decision are fairly obvious and straightforward and they've by now been explained to everybody 50 times, but this is the path these cities choose anyway! It's their choice and it's what they keep choosing. Cities like San Francisco have said clearly, firmly, and repeatedly: "we would rather suffer a housing crisis than allow the city to change too rapidly." At this point what else can you say in response?

fnimick 4y ago
> the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco The people who are complaining about this are not the same people who are restricting housing access. A similar dynamic happens in Boston, where people are resentful of gentrifiers, and I can't blame them. They're not the ones voting to block housing, it's the already rich people in the area who do that.
- xxpor 4y ago
  No, it's both. There's an unholy alliance between the two.
  - fnimick 4y ago
    Why would renters want property values (and therefore rents) to go up due to a lack of supply?
    - raincom 4y ago
      People who live in rent-controlled apartments seem to be against gentrification, as they end up losing their rent-controlled apartments for new construction.

kupopuffs 4y ago

Because there's more to governing than the cost/benefit analysis of the business of landlording More homes means more people means more headaches, without proper planning. You'll need to build infrastructure and steadily govern your rising population. Not impossible, but definitely more overhead. And surely all your building will lower the price of housing around the area, thus making you and your fellow rich San Francisco friends, less rich.

avelis 4y ago

They would in theory never run out of development projects for 20+ years. Many large cities could fall into this category as well. The pressure to not piss off homeowners is atrocious.

SoftTalker 4y ago

Sounds like you're proposing government run high-rise housing projects. Can you name any that are not dangerous, crime-ridden hellholes?

muzz 4y ago
Geneva Towers. Oh wait, that was so dangerous they literally had to tear it down.
wffurr 4y ago
Venice
BirdieNZ 4y ago
Singapore
scarmig 4y ago
Singapore.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
Singapore, but only because it targets the middle class and results in ownership. Poorer Singaporeans are in a different system of smaller rentals (still public housing).

r00fus 4y ago

> Imagine you're a municipality like San Francisco. I couldn't get past this because the analogy breaks down already. SF as a polity is not controlled by one person or single department. The power is highly decentralized (the Board of Supervisors hold most of the keys). Thus, even if you have someone who can make sweeping changes, likelihood is they'd never get elected in such a setup (or if they do, be able to effect change).

AaronM 4y ago
Even if they could make sweeping changes, the local homeowners would drag those new developments to court for 25 years
- novok 4y ago
  The BoS & electorate create laws, bureaucracies, structures and courts that would create those 25 year court cases in the first place. The properly allocated elected set of judges, supervisors, mayor and DAs can make most of those disappear in the first place by changing the law, how the government runs and how the courts run and rule on cases, complete with prioritizing court cases for the few they don't have a choice in getting rid of to make them get through the system quickly.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > The BoS & electorate create laws, bureaucracies, structures and courts that would create those 25 year court cases in the first place. The properly allocated elected set of judges, supervisors, mayor and DAs can make most of those disappear in the first place by changing the law, how the government runs and how the courts run and rule on cases, complete with prioritizing court cases for the few they don't have a choice in getting rid of to make them get through the system quickly. Let's say they do that. All the branches of SF government collude to make or remove laws as needed to eliminate all obstacles to permenently buidling more. Who will be satisfied? What would happen to the city as everyone flees such authoritarian approach?
    - 4y ago

ROTMetro 4y ago

Ah yes, government housing blocks. What worked so well in the past, why did it ever go out of style, I forget?

thefounder 4y ago

Ok but why do all the people need to live in city center? There is enough housing/land, just not in "prime" location.

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
It's an issue with the zoning laws. Back when it became illegal to ban black people from your neighborhood the next best thing was to ban the kind of housing that black people could afford. So the only place where it's legal to put the kind of housing that addresses the problem is in the city centers which were already established and therefore out of scope for the zoning restrictions. (more on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc)

iwanttocomment 4y ago

What a goofy statement. How much land does San Francisco truly own that isn't already used for an essential purpose? Are you encouraging them to turn the parks or schools into housing? That's not going to make SF an attractive community. Are you encouraging them to use eminent domain to out existing single-family homeowners? That's really not going to go well. Assuming that you raze the parks and schools and seize single-family homes to build high-density rentals as you suggest, the average life span in the US is 77 years. Assuming people still leave the house at 18, that's 59 years of renting... if those people choose not to buy elsewhere, given that you've razed the parks and the schools. I don't think you understand how hamstrung San Francisco is in regards to the amount of available land it could actually develop.

tick_tock_tick 4y ago

The city government doesn't want to solve the issue.

wolverine876 4y ago
That means the citizens don't want to solve it.

paxys 4y ago

The city of San Francisco isn't some independent entity. It is made up of people, a lot of whom already own houses and/or don't want higher buildings and more neighbors and/or don't want to be in the business of building and managing housing. If you think about individual incentives rather than what is right and wrong then it makes perfect sense.

rr888 4y ago

> But people will happily pay you $40/sq foot per year for housing, Some, but most families couldn't afford it.

janalsncm 4y ago

I am one of those tech workers that moved to the Bay Area. The chance of me living here in 20 years is essentially zero. The governments here were granted a golden era of prosperity and have mostly squandered it. Trillions of dollars have been minted here, but you wouldn’t know it just by driving around. Public services are abysmal. Horrible public transportation. In another 20 years if the winds shift to some other place in the country/world people will look back at Silicon Valley and ask how it could manage not to thrive, and the inescapable answer is greed and incompetence.

lapama 4y ago
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lapama 4y ago

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reader_x 4y ago

A municipality is run by a group of individuals elected by other individuals, whereas you have framed your housing policy proposal as if pitching to a dictator. Imagining how we might govern unfettered by frustrating negotiations with others is fun but dangerous.

mindover 4y ago

Right - just build more housing. Forget about failing utilities, packed roads, overwhelmed social services, crowded schools! Just build more skyscrapers and move half of the country to SF so that we can all drown in shit together. This oversimplification that we just need to build more houses is amusing. SF is a tiny city, stuffing more people here won’t resolve many of the problems that already make life here difficult. And no, it won’t lower rent by much: SF doesn’t exist in a vacuum, more people will move here and will keep rent as high as before.

pzone 4y ago
You just have to look at Tokyo and Taipei. It is possible for cities to grow without soaring rents as long as you build lots of housing for everyone. We’re not just talking about the tiny San Francisco city proper, we’re talking about the whole Bay Area, as well as the rest of the state. You’re right that fixing housing won’t fix everything, but more problems than you think are caused by high housing prices, particularly crime and homelessness. https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/ https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...
- mindover 4y ago
  But... San Franciscans don't want to live in a city like Tokyo or Taipei. Who would benefit from this changing city with taller buildings? Not many San Franciscans want that, so newcomers? I am not convinced either. People love the Bay and move here because of what it is, not because of what it is not. The complaints that I am hearing most often are about public transport, crime, street cleaning, social services. Not about having small buildings in SF.

acchow 4y ago

There is no single coordinated entity making all the decisions. In reality, there are dozens of self-interested groups which have no interest in solving homelessness and just want to stop every kind of development for all kinds of different reasons. There is also the homeless-industrial complex which has a lot to lose if you solve homelessness

TheRealNGenius 4y ago

[dead]

thelastgallon 4y ago

I doubt they will be constructed at $440/sft. S.F. is spending $1.7 million on one public toilet: https://archive.ph/hDumb https://archive.ph/hDumb Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33268748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33268748

TrackerFF 4y ago
In all fairness, that's a $20k in construction costs, and $1680000 in consulting / contractors / planning / various other fees

snapplebobapple 4y ago

You don't have to do any of that other than change the zoning/permitting/building process (which you would need to do for your plan above as well otherwise you won't be building much of anything). The problem in San fran isn't lack of builders or even lack of labor to build. The problem in san fran is the government forcing the process to permit and build something to multi year approaching decade timelines (if it is even approved). Basically all they have to do is set some basic, reasonable rules (heights, setbacks, etc) that, if you stay within them, you get your permit in a month or two the problem would be 70% solved within a decade. They might have to rezone some of san fran to allow denser building construction (with the same fast tracked permit described above) to get to 100% but that is literally it. They aren't doing it because the nimbys like the system the way it is (and the increased house value windfall it has given them).