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A much simpler point the author missed is that wealth doesn't exactly cause the housing shortage so much as not building houses. San Francisco has rent control
by YokoZar 13y ago
A much simpler point the author missed is that wealth doesn't exactly cause the housing shortage so much as not building houses. San Francisco has rent control, and most of the peninsula has severe zoning controls.
It would be extraordinarily profitable to build commercial buildings with dense lofted apartments in many areas of the peninsula, however they are simply prohibited by local governments. That's neither libertarian nor egalitarian.
- akgerber 13y agoMuch of the Bay Area (and California in general) housing policy is best summed up as the ol' Republican "Fuck you, got mine" with a mild environmental gloss, combined with an inability to imagine building anything other than auto-dependent suburbia.
- cpursley 13y agoOne of my first thoughts when he mentioned housing as well.
- joonix 13y agoNote that those projects would be profitable only if they were permitted in limited areas only. A broad lifting of regulation would result in sprawl, not density. Look at Houston. Everyone would avoid expensive, dense areas by building out further and further into the land, and in the Bay, there's a ton of undeveloped wooden land that developers would have no problem replacing with tract homes if they were able to do so.
- YokoZar 13y agoOf course, there is room for urban planning. But it's quite telling that none of these projects are starting even in the "downtown" areas adjacent to caltrain stops, which is exactly where you want growth to happen. If a peninsula city actually wanted to prevent sprawl, they'd build up the urban core rather than force people to commute from more permissive cities in the east bay.
- joonix 13y agoYeah, but this planning begins at a very local level. The NIMBYs are only concerned about their views being blocked and could not care less about the sprawl occurring 30 miles away.
- jacoblyles 13y agoOne of the biggest lies of progressivism is that regulation is in place to protect the poor. Rather, it usually serves vested interests.