5 ms·

Although I generally agree with the sentiment of the article, I strongly disagree that we need specifically "affordable" housing. State-subsidized "below marke

Although I generally agree with the sentiment of the article, I strongly disagree that we need specifically "affordable" housing. State-subsidized "below market rate" housing that enables people with low salaries to occupy highly-demanded space is incredibly inefficient and also likely doesn't serve the interests of the people it is supposed to help. I don't see why the ability to live in San Francisco is any different than the ability to afford a BMW or a Tesla. Should the government subsidize "below market rate" luxury cars too? What would be the incentive to get an education or work hard? Personally I feel somewhat offended when there are dozens of below market rate units available and I'm actually excluded from attempting to buy them because I earn too much money. Meanwhile there are hardly any homes available for people who can afford the houses without subsidies and we bid up the houses to obscene prices due to lack of supply. Also, if the people who work in SF or other high income areas cannot afford to live there at current wages, there should be pressure on them to leave and work elsewhere. This would increase demand for their labor and drive prices up, all else being equal. (I know, there are other factors here, but those should be dealt with separately, not by adding more layers of complexity to the problem.) Further, if those workers cannot afford to rent or buy, lowering the cost of renting or buying also reduces the pressure on employers to raise their wages.

TheEzEzz 13y ago
> Should the government subsidize "below market rate" luxury cars too? People have families and lives built around geographic locations, not cars. I'm not saying we should or shouldn't subsidize housing (I lean libertarian personally), but it's disingenuous to suggest this is like the car market. What's at stake for many people is a foundational part of their lives.
- epicureanideal 13y ago
  They can build families and lives somewhere else if they can't afford to live here, right? Do people have a fundamental right to raise a family in San Francisco rather than Omaha or Austin? Are other places so horrible that we should use taxpayer money to ensure that the largest number of people possible can live in SF? And we should make it easier for the moderately low income to live here rather than people with higher income because ... why? Because people who work in technology don't deserve to raise their families here? Because despite education and hard work we really should make the ability to raise a family in a great area a random selection? I actually think the car analogy is useful. Not subsidizing housing in San Francisco does not deny people the ability to start families. They can still start them in many other fine places that they can afford. Not driving a BMW or Tesla doesn't deny people the ability to get to work. A Honda or Toyota does that just as well. NOTE: "Affordable housing" does not apply exclusively to people who have lived in the area for N years previously as far as I know, and even if it did I don't see why that would be fair. If you rent, you rent. When your lease is up, if the price goes up, that's how rent works. Also, there are already rent control policies that would serve this purpose.
  - TheEzEzz 13y ago
    You can decide to build a family anyway. It's harder to move a family, especially an extended family.
  - sophacles 13y ago
    It doesn't apply so well. It's not just about the kids you raise. It's about the fact that people's parents and grandparents and uncles and cousins live nearby. It's about friendships built over years. It's about community. What you're saying is this: Fuck those people - they don't deserve community nor the benefits of it they worked for, because they can't afford the prices you are willing to pay to kick them out (despite most of them being decent citizens with jobs and everything). It's kinda messed up. Not saying I have a solution, just pointing out a real problem.
    - epicureanideal 13y ago
      So the ability to live in San Francisco should become an inherited right? Or at least being first in line for housing? Oh, I see, your parents lived here Mr. X, so even though Mr. Y is offering more money, I'll cast that newcomer aside. He isn't one of "us", who belong here.
      - sophacles 13y ago
        Getting a little hostile aren't you? I actually flat out said I don't have a solution, so whatever the heck you are reacting to your own insecurity at something. I merely pointed out that what you propose has problems. And that your attitude is simply: anyone who can't afford it deserves to not have their lives considered. Honestly, you are saying that the only consideration people should have for one another is net worth and that interpersonal relationships are of no value, yet you are angry that your lack of those same things could be used to keep you from spending your money (suggesting value). This is a pretty strange. I do think that perhaps some consideration besides "number of dollars" should be taken in situations like this, because I don't really think a group of people should be able to so fundamentally fuck over another group because they can afford to. But those are my ethics - I value respecting people on more than money.
scoofy 13y ago
As a recent nyc -> sf transplant, i think the best short term solution to making living in the bay area more affordable is to run one track of bart back and forth from 12am - 4am. SF needs a brooklyn, a real brooklyn, that you can get to when your shift at the restaurant/bar/other-service-job ends at 1am. Public infrastructure is a public good, and service industry workers can't be expected to cab it to oakland when their shifts end. Heck, the bikelane on the new bay bridge segment ends before treasure island. I could NEVER have lived in brooklyn if the non-auto infrastructure was the way it is between sf and oakland.
- lsc 13y ago
  >As a recent nyc -> sf transplant, i think the best short term solution to making living in the bay area more affordable is to run one track of bart back and forth from 12am - 4am. SF needs a brooklyn, a real brooklyn, that you can get to when your shift at the restaurant/bar/other-service-job ends at 1am. That... sounds pretty great. As a bonus, it would make public transit usable for recreational use, and probably keep a bunch of drunks off the road.
- epicureanideal 13y ago
  I also wouldn't mind if they would add some extra cars so it isn't standing room only during commute hours. How hard is it to add an extra car to an existing train? Raise my fare, I'll pay not to have to be packed in like cattle.
  - encoderer 13y ago
    If only it worked this way. Fares are already set years in advance and BART management seems to have their own ideas on how they want to spend the limited resources they have.
  - sologoub 13y ago
    I'd imagine the length of the train is limited to the shortest platform it has to support. Not from SF, so not sure if there really is room for expansion. Frequency might be another answer - run the trains closer together, but again there are limits there too.
steveklabnik 13y ago
You're ignoring the crux of the issue here. The issue is not "I want to move to San Francisco", the issue is "I've lived in this neighborhood my entire life, and now I can't afford to any longer." Let's not even get into how expensive it is to actually move, all of the complication and complexity involved in moving a family with children to a different school district, all of the paperwork that needs updated... it's nontrivial. You shouldn't be surprised when people who are currently being colonized against their will and having their entire lives thrown into upheaval without any upside are a little bit upset about it. (I live in the Mission.)
- epicureanideal 13y ago
  Perhaps the person should have bought a house instead of rented? If they're renting (I still rent) they should understand that rents go up and they may not be able to afford to live there. Let's say they can't buy. I am not indifferent to their problem, but I don't see why having lived in a place for a given length of time should mean that person has a right to live permanently in a place they can no longer afford. And I don't see why it should deny someone who can afford to live there the ability to do so.
  - steveklabnik 13y ago
    > Perhaps the person should have bought a house instead of rented? Choices like these aren't even open to people who are affected by gentrification. > And I don't see why it should deny someone who can afford to live there the ability to do so. I, personally, don't feel that those with money should be able to run roughshod over those who don't.
    - epicureanideal 13y ago
      > I, personally, don't feel that those with money should be able to run roughshod over those who don't. What other method of allocating scarce resources did you have in mind? Random selection seems less fair than high income, because income is at least somewhat correlated with producing value. I mean, if you disagree with this, you basically disagree with the free market. I agree our current market is imperfect but I don't think randomly gifting scarce housing space to people is better.
kunle 13y ago
Government subsidizes all sorts of things in all sorts of ways: Teslas/Priuses with credits, home loans with the mortgage deduction, student loans, Twitter moving to SF, and so on. Not saying these are good or bad, just indicating that subsidies are a pretty core part of our society and a case could be made for justifying or denying each. Some rationales for subsidizing affordable homes specifically: fewer slums, greater social mobility for low income families (expensive areas also tend to have good schools), more stability for the elderly (who make up an astonishingly large proportion of low income folks as they can often no longer work). A society where the raw effects of market forces were allowed to act on people would be really unpleasant (I grew up in one and have been to several) - free markets are a fantastic way to generate wealth but a poor way to ensure balanced social outcomes.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > greater social mobility for low income families (expensive areas also tend to have good schools) This is an argument for subsidizing housing out in Santa Clara county. None of the public schools in San Francisco are particularly great.
yapcguy 13y ago
> Should the government subsidize... I don't see why a poorly run bank which has made bad investments in toxic assets should be bailed out with taxpayer's money when it should be allowed to fail, with good banks picking up clients and assets and growth in market share... My point is there are few markets which are truly allowed to operate freely. If housing markets were not regulated, the uber rich would buy up every piece of real estate and then we'd all be stuffed. > we bid up the houses to obscene prices due to lack of supply. People can only bid what they can afford, and what they can afford is driven by loose lending and cheap credit. Tighten bank lending and housing prices will start falling.
- epicureanideal 13y ago
  I agree with you about the toxic assets and about cheap credit, but I don't see how those interventions would encourage us to add even more interventions.
- epicureanideal 13y ago
  I also wanted to say, this is really not a conflict between the rich and the poor. What ends up happening is the truly rich can afford to live in SF easily with or without subsidies. The lower and lower-middle class end up with "affordable" (subsidized) housing. The upper-middle and upper-but-not rich get stuck in the middle with no assistance and maybe being able to afford to live in the area if they save in every other area and work themselves to poor health.
JerryBrown 13y ago
You seem pretty smart. Let me ask you a question. What happens when all the middle income and low income population leave San Francisco? Who is going to work those jobs? You don't think people are going to commute from Oakland, or farther, to San Francisco to work low paying muni or janitorial positions, do you? They will get jobs where they move.
encoderer 13y ago
If we follow your logic to its conclusion, San Francisco becomes a city of the uber rich, with the rest of the rabble scattering across the bay area. So, what would that look like.. Some thoughts.. Good luck staffing jobs at the current SF minimum wage. You want baristas and servers and bar backs? And you want them to commute into the city? You'll get some (as you do now) but enough to run all of the cities establishments? We're talking a massive number of jobs. Sure, people will do it, for the right wage. So you're seeing wage inflation that will hurt small business owners a great deal. Ethnic diversity would take a big hit. You'd see asian american and caucausions pushing out other groups that are on balance less affluent. You can easily see NIMBY taken to an even further extreme that it currently is. Commercial rents would presumably follow residential rents, further reducing low-margin businesses (like restaurants) in favor of high end retail and similar. (See: the Grove in Marina closing for this very reason). I could go on, and certainly I am not listing the positive consequences of such a transformation. But I see strength through diversification and so I can't shake the feeling that this would be a weaker, less desirable San Francisco. And if that were the case, if it truly did make it a less desirable place, well, now you have the positive feedback loop moving in the opposite direction, leading people OUT of the city until an equilibrium is found.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Your concerns are really unfounded. Manhattan is basically already the way you hypothesize (with lower-income people commuting in from the other boroughs), and it works just fine.
  - dougmccune 13y ago
    as people have pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, the transit situation in NY is an order of magnitude better than SF. I agree with the SF is to Manhattan what the greater Bay Area is to the boroughs of New York analogy. But there's a pretty massive difference when it comes to public transit.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Okay, so build better transit instead of playing stupid games to "combat gentrification."
devindotcom 13y ago
Wow! You are really out of touch!
pmiller2 13y ago
>Also, if the people who work in SF or other high income areas cannot afford to live there at current wages, there should be pressure on them to leave and work elsewhere. The problem is that people who can't afford to live where they currently live also can't afford to move.
- prodigal_erik 13y ago
  How does that happen? We used to have a lot of stuff, but hiring movers never cost anywhere near even one month's rent. Are these the same people who are half a paycheck away from disaster all the time?
malandrew 13y ago
Fully agree. I've had front-row seats to the shenanigans that are BMR housing units because my girlfriend qualifies for and has been trying to get, and the only conclusion that I can come to is that: (1) It's a "squeaky wheel gets the grease" policy (2) They are just sticking fingers in the cracks in a dam that is leaking everywhere to plug a few holes. The biggest problem with mollifying a large segment of the population with a lottery system is that it legitimizes a solution that never really solves the problem. BMR housing is typically accessible to people with 70-110% of the area's median income. For every unit, there are 100+ applicants, and those are just the ones that are aware of the program's existence. The program is also riddled with fraud, with many applicants misrepresenting their income to be eligible or adding family members to the application even when that family member isn't going to live with them in the unit. The worst effect though is that it removes many people from becoming advocates for re-zoning and building of new units. Each of those 100 people per unit now directs their time and attention towards a lottery system instead of demanding real changes from their representatives in local government. Removing those people leaves the very rich and very poor. The poor know they don't have a chance and are living hand to mouth so they won't participate at all. The rich are either well off enough to be insulated from the issue so they complain but never do anything, or the rich are the property owners extracting rent. Ultimately the only people really participating in numbers are the landlords.

TheEzEzz 13y ago

> Should the government subsidize "below market rate" luxury cars too? People have families and lives built around geographic locations, not cars. I'm not saying we should or shouldn't subsidize housing (I lean libertarian personally), but it's disingenuous to suggest this is like the car market. What's at stake for many people is a foundational part of their lives.

epicureanideal 13y ago
They can build families and lives somewhere else if they can't afford to live here, right? Do people have a fundamental right to raise a family in San Francisco rather than Omaha or Austin? Are other places so horrible that we should use taxpayer money to ensure that the largest number of people possible can live in SF? And we should make it easier for the moderately low income to live here rather than people with higher income because ... why? Because people who work in technology don't deserve to raise their families here? Because despite education and hard work we really should make the ability to raise a family in a great area a random selection? I actually think the car analogy is useful. Not subsidizing housing in San Francisco does not deny people the ability to start families. They can still start them in many other fine places that they can afford. Not driving a BMW or Tesla doesn't deny people the ability to get to work. A Honda or Toyota does that just as well. NOTE: "Affordable housing" does not apply exclusively to people who have lived in the area for N years previously as far as I know, and even if it did I don't see why that would be fair. If you rent, you rent. When your lease is up, if the price goes up, that's how rent works. Also, there are already rent control policies that would serve this purpose.
- TheEzEzz 13y ago
  You can decide to build a family anyway. It's harder to move a family, especially an extended family.
- sophacles 13y ago
  It doesn't apply so well. It's not just about the kids you raise. It's about the fact that people's parents and grandparents and uncles and cousins live nearby. It's about friendships built over years. It's about community. What you're saying is this: Fuck those people - they don't deserve community nor the benefits of it they worked for, because they can't afford the prices you are willing to pay to kick them out (despite most of them being decent citizens with jobs and everything). It's kinda messed up. Not saying I have a solution, just pointing out a real problem.
  - epicureanideal 13y ago
    So the ability to live in San Francisco should become an inherited right? Or at least being first in line for housing? Oh, I see, your parents lived here Mr. X, so even though Mr. Y is offering more money, I'll cast that newcomer aside. He isn't one of "us", who belong here.
    - sophacles 13y ago
      Getting a little hostile aren't you? I actually flat out said I don't have a solution, so whatever the heck you are reacting to your own insecurity at something. I merely pointed out that what you propose has problems. And that your attitude is simply: anyone who can't afford it deserves to not have their lives considered. Honestly, you are saying that the only consideration people should have for one another is net worth and that interpersonal relationships are of no value, yet you are angry that your lack of those same things could be used to keep you from spending your money (suggesting value). This is a pretty strange. I do think that perhaps some consideration besides "number of dollars" should be taken in situations like this, because I don't really think a group of people should be able to so fundamentally fuck over another group because they can afford to. But those are my ethics - I value respecting people on more than money.

scoofy 13y ago

As a recent nyc -> sf transplant, i think the best short term solution to making living in the bay area more affordable is to run one track of bart back and forth from 12am - 4am. SF needs a brooklyn, a real brooklyn, that you can get to when your shift at the restaurant/bar/other-service-job ends at 1am. Public infrastructure is a public good, and service industry workers can't be expected to cab it to oakland when their shifts end. Heck, the bikelane on the new bay bridge segment ends before treasure island. I could NEVER have lived in brooklyn if the non-auto infrastructure was the way it is between sf and oakland.

lsc 13y ago
>As a recent nyc -> sf transplant, i think the best short term solution to making living in the bay area more affordable is to run one track of bart back and forth from 12am - 4am. SF needs a brooklyn, a real brooklyn, that you can get to when your shift at the restaurant/bar/other-service-job ends at 1am. That... sounds pretty great. As a bonus, it would make public transit usable for recreational use, and probably keep a bunch of drunks off the road.
epicureanideal 13y ago
I also wouldn't mind if they would add some extra cars so it isn't standing room only during commute hours. How hard is it to add an extra car to an existing train? Raise my fare, I'll pay not to have to be packed in like cattle.
- encoderer 13y ago
  If only it worked this way. Fares are already set years in advance and BART management seems to have their own ideas on how they want to spend the limited resources they have.
- sologoub 13y ago
  I'd imagine the length of the train is limited to the shortest platform it has to support. Not from SF, so not sure if there really is room for expansion. Frequency might be another answer - run the trains closer together, but again there are limits there too.

steveklabnik 13y ago

You're ignoring the crux of the issue here. The issue is not "I want to move to San Francisco", the issue is "I've lived in this neighborhood my entire life, and now I can't afford to any longer." Let's not even get into how expensive it is to actually move, all of the complication and complexity involved in moving a family with children to a different school district, all of the paperwork that needs updated... it's nontrivial. You shouldn't be surprised when people who are currently being colonized against their will and having their entire lives thrown into upheaval without any upside are a little bit upset about it. (I live in the Mission.)

epicureanideal 13y ago
Perhaps the person should have bought a house instead of rented? If they're renting (I still rent) they should understand that rents go up and they may not be able to afford to live there. Let's say they can't buy. I am not indifferent to their problem, but I don't see why having lived in a place for a given length of time should mean that person has a right to live permanently in a place they can no longer afford. And I don't see why it should deny someone who can afford to live there the ability to do so.
- steveklabnik 13y ago
  > Perhaps the person should have bought a house instead of rented? Choices like these aren't even open to people who are affected by gentrification. > And I don't see why it should deny someone who can afford to live there the ability to do so. I, personally, don't feel that those with money should be able to run roughshod over those who don't.
  - epicureanideal 13y ago
    > I, personally, don't feel that those with money should be able to run roughshod over those who don't. What other method of allocating scarce resources did you have in mind? Random selection seems less fair than high income, because income is at least somewhat correlated with producing value. I mean, if you disagree with this, you basically disagree with the free market. I agree our current market is imperfect but I don't think randomly gifting scarce housing space to people is better.

kunle 13y ago

Government subsidizes all sorts of things in all sorts of ways: Teslas/Priuses with credits, home loans with the mortgage deduction, student loans, Twitter moving to SF, and so on. Not saying these are good or bad, just indicating that subsidies are a pretty core part of our society and a case could be made for justifying or denying each. Some rationales for subsidizing affordable homes specifically: fewer slums, greater social mobility for low income families (expensive areas also tend to have good schools), more stability for the elderly (who make up an astonishingly large proportion of low income folks as they can often no longer work). A society where the raw effects of market forces were allowed to act on people would be really unpleasant (I grew up in one and have been to several) - free markets are a fantastic way to generate wealth but a poor way to ensure balanced social outcomes.

rayiner 13y ago
> greater social mobility for low income families (expensive areas also tend to have good schools) This is an argument for subsidizing housing out in Santa Clara county. None of the public schools in San Francisco are particularly great.

yapcguy 13y ago

> Should the government subsidize... I don't see why a poorly run bank which has made bad investments in toxic assets should be bailed out with taxpayer's money when it should be allowed to fail, with good banks picking up clients and assets and growth in market share... My point is there are few markets which are truly allowed to operate freely. If housing markets were not regulated, the uber rich would buy up every piece of real estate and then we'd all be stuffed. > we bid up the houses to obscene prices due to lack of supply. People can only bid what they can afford, and what they can afford is driven by loose lending and cheap credit. Tighten bank lending and housing prices will start falling.

epicureanideal 13y ago
I agree with you about the toxic assets and about cheap credit, but I don't see how those interventions would encourage us to add even more interventions.
epicureanideal 13y ago
I also wanted to say, this is really not a conflict between the rich and the poor. What ends up happening is the truly rich can afford to live in SF easily with or without subsidies. The lower and lower-middle class end up with "affordable" (subsidized) housing. The upper-middle and upper-but-not rich get stuck in the middle with no assistance and maybe being able to afford to live in the area if they save in every other area and work themselves to poor health.

JerryBrown 13y ago

You seem pretty smart. Let me ask you a question. What happens when all the middle income and low income population leave San Francisco? Who is going to work those jobs? You don't think people are going to commute from Oakland, or farther, to San Francisco to work low paying muni or janitorial positions, do you? They will get jobs where they move.

encoderer 13y ago

If we follow your logic to its conclusion, San Francisco becomes a city of the uber rich, with the rest of the rabble scattering across the bay area. So, what would that look like.. Some thoughts.. Good luck staffing jobs at the current SF minimum wage. You want baristas and servers and bar backs? And you want them to commute into the city? You'll get some (as you do now) but enough to run all of the cities establishments? We're talking a massive number of jobs. Sure, people will do it, for the right wage. So you're seeing wage inflation that will hurt small business owners a great deal. Ethnic diversity would take a big hit. You'd see asian american and caucausions pushing out other groups that are on balance less affluent. You can easily see NIMBY taken to an even further extreme that it currently is. Commercial rents would presumably follow residential rents, further reducing low-margin businesses (like restaurants) in favor of high end retail and similar. (See: the Grove in Marina closing for this very reason). I could go on, and certainly I am not listing the positive consequences of such a transformation. But I see strength through diversification and so I can't shake the feeling that this would be a weaker, less desirable San Francisco. And if that were the case, if it truly did make it a less desirable place, well, now you have the positive feedback loop moving in the opposite direction, leading people OUT of the city until an equilibrium is found.

rayiner 13y ago
Your concerns are really unfounded. Manhattan is basically already the way you hypothesize (with lower-income people commuting in from the other boroughs), and it works just fine.
- dougmccune 13y ago
  as people have pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, the transit situation in NY is an order of magnitude better than SF. I agree with the SF is to Manhattan what the greater Bay Area is to the boroughs of New York analogy. But there's a pretty massive difference when it comes to public transit.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Okay, so build better transit instead of playing stupid games to "combat gentrification."

devindotcom 13y ago

Wow! You are really out of touch!

pmiller2 13y ago

>Also, if the people who work in SF or other high income areas cannot afford to live there at current wages, there should be pressure on them to leave and work elsewhere. The problem is that people who can't afford to live where they currently live also can't afford to move.

prodigal_erik 13y ago
How does that happen? We used to have a lot of stuff, but hiring movers never cost anywhere near even one month's rent. Are these the same people who are half a paycheck away from disaster all the time?

malandrew 13y ago

Fully agree. I've had front-row seats to the shenanigans that are BMR housing units because my girlfriend qualifies for and has been trying to get, and the only conclusion that I can come to is that: (1) It's a "squeaky wheel gets the grease" policy (2) They are just sticking fingers in the cracks in a dam that is leaking everywhere to plug a few holes. The biggest problem with mollifying a large segment of the population with a lottery system is that it legitimizes a solution that never really solves the problem. BMR housing is typically accessible to people with 70-110% of the area's median income. For every unit, there are 100+ applicants, and those are just the ones that are aware of the program's existence. The program is also riddled with fraud, with many applicants misrepresenting their income to be eligible or adding family members to the application even when that family member isn't going to live with them in the unit. The worst effect though is that it removes many people from becoming advocates for re-zoning and building of new units. Each of those 100 people per unit now directs their time and attention towards a lottery system instead of demanding real changes from their representatives in local government. Removing those people leaves the very rich and very poor. The poor know they don't have a chance and are living hand to mouth so they won't participate at all. The rich are either well off enough to be insulated from the issue so they complain but never do anything, or the rich are the property owners extracting rent. Ultimately the only people really participating in numbers are the landlords.