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I will respond to the one factual claim buried in all the emotional outrage. Let's look at the 2021 American Community Survey. How long someone has lived in a

by rsj_hn 4y ago

I will respond to the one factual claim buried in all the emotional outrage. Let's look at the 2021 American Community Survey. How long someone has lived in a unit is called "tenure". You want to look at tenure for renters, which is this table: https://data.census.gov/table?q=san+francisco&t=Owner/Renter+(Tenure) https://data.census.gov/table?q=san+francisco&t=Owner/Renter... Here is the data: Renter occupied: 427300 Moved in 2019 or later 170948 Moved in 2015 to 2018 70878 Moved in 2010 to 2014 64753 Moved in 2000 to 2009 71281 Moved in 1990 to 1999 31614 Moved in 1989 or earlier 17826 What we see is that 40% of renters lived in their unit for 2 years or less. About 17% lived in their units for between 3-6 years. 15% lived in their unit for 7-11 years. 28% lived in their unit for 12 or more years. Therefore it's clearly false that 40% of renters have lived in their unit for 10 or more years. Let's compare with the corresponding table for owner occupied housing, and you see the difference: Owner occupied: 370695 Moved in 2019 or later 48657 Moved in 2015 to 2018 50381 Moved in 2010 to 2014 53299 Moved in 2000 to 2009 91120 Moved in 1990 to 1999 63382 Moved in 1989 or earlier 63856 Here, the smallest category is 2 years or less, and the the largest is 12-21 years. Yes, there are renters that are long term and have comparable roots (not 40%, but 28%). But they are a sufficiently small minority of renters that they are comfortably and easily outvoted by owners, which is why the city council reflects the views of owners and not renters. Even though SF has more renters than owners, if you restrict yourself to the population that has tenure longer than 2 years, then owners outnumber renters 322K to 256K.

jeffbee 4y ago
FYI your link doesn't go directly to the specific table you are using, which I believe is B25026. I am using S2502.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  Yes, B25026 has this data. Thanks for pointing out that the link doesn't go directly there, links to these SPAs often don't work well. FYI, S2502 is not the right table to use because it is looking at housing units rather than people, whereas you want to measure people. So if there is a apartment that is owner occupied and rents out a room to a tenant, then this is an owner occupied unit for purposes of S2502. This also applies to in-laws. Again, I'm not saying all renters are transient. There is certainly a core of renters -- I think 28% or 1/3 is a good estimate. That is, from living in SF for a while and spending a lot of time with this data, I'd say a good 1/3 of renters in SF are just there for a couple of years to have fun and will move out quickly. They have no roots at all. 1/3 are a bit in the middle, where they think they have roots but decide to leave when they have children or get married and the realities of family life in SF hit them. 1/3 are all in. So even though you have a 60-40 split in terms of renters/owners, the actual split of people who care about zoning and local issues is heavily in favor of owners. This is why the city council is constituted as it is. It's not voter suppression. It's not dirty tricks. It's just reflecting the demands of the population that cares about these issues. That's why you have things like crazy shadow ordinances preventing tall buildings from being built, or why the 8 Washington debacle happened.

by rsj_hn 4y ago

jeffbee 4y ago

FYI your link doesn't go directly to the specific table you are using, which I believe is B25026. I am using S2502.

rsj_hn 4y ago
Yes, B25026 has this data. Thanks for pointing out that the link doesn't go directly there, links to these SPAs often don't work well. FYI, S2502 is not the right table to use because it is looking at housing units rather than people, whereas you want to measure people. So if there is a apartment that is owner occupied and rents out a room to a tenant, then this is an owner occupied unit for purposes of S2502. This also applies to in-laws. Again, I'm not saying all renters are transient. There is certainly a core of renters -- I think 28% or 1/3 is a good estimate. That is, from living in SF for a while and spending a lot of time with this data, I'd say a good 1/3 of renters in SF are just there for a couple of years to have fun and will move out quickly. They have no roots at all. 1/3 are a bit in the middle, where they think they have roots but decide to leave when they have children or get married and the realities of family life in SF hit them. 1/3 are all in. So even though you have a 60-40 split in terms of renters/owners, the actual split of people who care about zoning and local issues is heavily in favor of owners. This is why the city council is constituted as it is. It's not voter suppression. It's not dirty tricks. It's just reflecting the demands of the population that cares about these issues. That's why you have things like crazy shadow ordinances preventing tall buildings from being built, or why the 8 Washington debacle happened.