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Either build more housing, remove rent control or have SF no longer be appealing. Those are the only options to stop rental increases. Anything else is artifici

Either build more housing, remove rent control or have SF no longer be appealing. Those are the only options to stop rental increases. Anything else is artificial and doomed to fail by introducing flawed mechanisms to try and subvert the most natural process there is (Supply/Demand) SF seems like one of the only places on earth where the general mindset is "I have a absolute human right to live in San Francisco". Good luck trying that attitude in Aspen or Greenwich. The bottom line is that so long as SF is one of the most desirable places in the US to live, people are going to flock here and capitalism will take over (SURPRISE) Its really just simple supply and demand. There is a lot of people wanting to live in SF (demand) and lots of low paying tenants who dont move causing little vacancies (supply). The end result is astronomical prices.

johnward 13y ago
and one of the reason everyone wants to move to the bay area is that there are so many damn jobs. Sure housing is cheap is hell where I live in Ohio but you can't get a job to pay for it.
ganeumann 13y ago
Well come on, it's a little more complicated than that. Where you live is not just a simple commodity to you, it's your home. Having lived through the complete gentrification (Disneyfication) of Manhattan I found that, despite being of the Liberal bent, it was hard to see old neighborhoods disappear, look around at nice neighborhoods and realize a good percentage of the apartments are owned by people who are in them only a few days a year, and watch as the interesting fringe stuff (i.e. The Hat) was replaced by the interesting mega-expensive stuff (i.e. Per Se.) It feels bad to become an outcast in your own land, even though that kind of thing does not come into play in Liberal thought. I don't think that some people asking for some other solution than pure supply-and-demand is untoward. Understanding how they feel: that their home (meaning both the place they live in and their neighborhood) might be more important to them than most other things. There's a certain amount of suffering we cause them with our exercise of simple capitalism. While we can't measure pain in dollars and cents, that doesn't mean we shouldn't care about it. Not everything should be measured in dollars and capitalism is not the only moral system, nor is it inevitable. I don't have answers (well, actually, I have plenty of opinions on answers but none that are radically different than any other answers already given) but I also don't think that the brou-ha-ha is useless: it's always useful to have these discussions. The end result of this kind of public pressure is often compromise.

johnward 13y ago

and one of the reason everyone wants to move to the bay area is that there are so many damn jobs. Sure housing is cheap is hell where I live in Ohio but you can't get a job to pay for it.

ganeumann 13y ago

Well come on, it's a little more complicated than that. Where you live is not just a simple commodity to you, it's your home. Having lived through the complete gentrification (Disneyfication) of Manhattan I found that, despite being of the Liberal bent, it was hard to see old neighborhoods disappear, look around at nice neighborhoods and realize a good percentage of the apartments are owned by people who are in them only a few days a year, and watch as the interesting fringe stuff (i.e. The Hat) was replaced by the interesting mega-expensive stuff (i.e. Per Se.) It feels bad to become an outcast in your own land, even though that kind of thing does not come into play in Liberal thought. I don't think that some people asking for some other solution than pure supply-and-demand is untoward. Understanding how they feel: that their home (meaning both the place they live in and their neighborhood) might be more important to them than most other things. There's a certain amount of suffering we cause them with our exercise of simple capitalism. While we can't measure pain in dollars and cents, that doesn't mean we shouldn't care about it. Not everything should be measured in dollars and capitalism is not the only moral system, nor is it inevitable. I don't have answers (well, actually, I have plenty of opinions on answers but none that are radically different than any other answers already given) but I also don't think that the brou-ha-ha is useless: it's always useful to have these discussions. The end result of this kind of public pressure is often compromise.