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God reading about the San Fran housing market just makes me angry. Only 376k housing units? WTF! And 172k of them are rent controlled? WTF! What a clusterfuck

God reading about the San Fran housing market just makes me angry. Only 376k housing units? WTF! And 172k of them are rent controlled? WTF! What a clusterfuck.

pyrophane 12y ago
And then there are places like Mountain View and Cupertino that were happy to have companies headquarter there but then refused to allow new housing to be built for the workers, putting even more pressure on SF to pick up the slack. I was not aware the numbers were that bleak. Is that total housing units or just rental units?
- jackowayed 12y ago
  Looks like total units: http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.htm http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.... Though I was actually surprised it was so high. That's units, not bedrooms, and it's only a city of ~800k people. I guess there's a lot of 1-person households to bring down the average despite all the families and twenty-somethings in 2-4 bedroom units with at least as many inhabitants as bedrooms.
- ulfw 12y ago
  Well, no one forced said companies to set ground there. Especially when a ton of their employees don't even want to live near Mountain View, Cupertino or Menlo Park and thus have to be bused for an hour+ from SF. Jus' saying ;)
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    This The US is vast, but of course, let's cram all the technology workers in a tight corner of a bay and densify that to the max. Grow Out. Of course, SF is a "city", not the kind of city that's part of an urban sprawl like the others. Maybe that's what other cities should start doing. That and quality public transport (not only Google Bus)
    - chillingeffect 12y ago
      I dream of building a city in an otherwise-empty part of the U.S., one built around electric bike paths (and hell Segways lol), with bicycle and pedestrian paths and lightweight rail moving around the heavy stuff. Cars and trucks and trains can be on the perimeter and in several large arteries.
tn13 12y ago
As a new immigrant to US and Bay Area I am totally amused to see that there is so much vacant land everywhere and yet so little housing. Dont see why cupertino, MV, Sunnyvale cant have 10 floored housing complexes.
- djloche 12y ago
  There is a fear of earthquakes destroying property and lives in California.
  - patio11 12y ago
    Please point Californians who think this at a photo of Tokyo.
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      Fears are often not rational, and such fears do play a minor role in feelings against certain structures in California. Talk to some people for a while and it comes up. Having said that, it's not the main driver preventing development in the Bay Area. Citizens with money, influence, and established interests want lower-density development, and so that's what exists.
    - davidw 12y ago
      Or photos of the very much intact skyscrapers in downtown San Francisco after the 1989 earthquake.
    - djloche 12y ago
      For whatever the reasons - the Japanese government decided that opportunities of building taller buildings outweighs the risks involved. Both California and Japan have a long history of earthquakes and know the danger involved. When you look at the numbers, more people have died due to earthquakes in Japan than in California. Prime example: CA 1994 Northridge earthquake (6.7 magnitude, 70 people died, $20B in damage) vs Hanshin earthquake (6.8 magnitude, 6400+ died, $100 billion in damage). Are the fears irrational? Each culture has a different approach. I agree with other comments though - fear of earthquakes is a minor footnote in the grand scheme of property development in California.
discardorama 12y ago
> Only 376k housing units? WTF! In a city with a population of 840K, is that so bad? That works out to roughly 2.23 people per unit. In NYC, in 2011, there were 3.35M housing units, and population of NYC was 8.273M. That works out to 2.47 people per unit. So why is NYC's situation not a clusterfuck, but SF's is?
- icambron 12y ago
  First, NYC is also kind of a clusterfuck; rents there are terrible. But while NYC needs to continue building more, it at least has the excuse that it's built up a lot already, and its mayor is actively encouraging more development. People don't cram into arbitrarily small spaces, so one thing to remember is the cause and effect: way more than 840K people want to live in SF proper, but there's no room. So 376K housing units effectively sets the population cap. But because a larger pool of people want to live there, the prices all go up. Rent control fixes that for incumbent residents but worsens the problem for everyone else. The only way to alleviate that is to create more houses so that a larger percentage of the people who want to live there actually can.
- jakevoytko 12y ago
  The subways in New York help the common case - minimizing how much is needed to spend on housing, while being well-connected to Manhattan. This is how people can live in a relatively cheap borough like Queens, and still have 15-35 minute commute to their job. There's also a massive amount of rental apartment stock at any time. This means that you have the liquidity to make any tradeoffs necessary, by balancing your budget, commute distance, number of roommates, and the amount of space you need. New York is also connected to several public transit systems (NJTransit, Metro North, PATH), so you can often go way cheaper, by leaving the city bounds itself. It's not all sunshine and roses, though. Rent is going up in a lot of the previously-cheap neighborhoods in Brooklyn. This hasn't really affected me, but my sister has been priced out of multiple apartments in the 5 years she has lived in the city.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

God reading about the San Fran housing market just makes me angry. Only 376k housing units? WTF! And 172k of them are rent controlled? WTF! What a clusterfuck.

pyrophane 12y ago

And then there are places like Mountain View and Cupertino that were happy to have companies headquarter there but then refused to allow new housing to be built for the workers, putting even more pressure on SF to pick up the slack. I was not aware the numbers were that bleak. Is that total housing units or just rental units?

jackowayed 12y ago
Looks like total units: http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.htm http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.... Though I was actually surprised it was so high. That's units, not bedrooms, and it's only a city of ~800k people. I guess there's a lot of 1-person households to bring down the average despite all the families and twenty-somethings in 2-4 bedroom units with at least as many inhabitants as bedrooms.
ulfw 12y ago
Well, no one forced said companies to set ground there. Especially when a ton of their employees don't even want to live near Mountain View, Cupertino or Menlo Park and thus have to be bused for an hour+ from SF. Jus' saying ;)
- raverbashing 12y ago
  This The US is vast, but of course, let's cram all the technology workers in a tight corner of a bay and densify that to the max. Grow Out. Of course, SF is a "city", not the kind of city that's part of an urban sprawl like the others. Maybe that's what other cities should start doing. That and quality public transport (not only Google Bus)
  - chillingeffect 12y ago
    I dream of building a city in an otherwise-empty part of the U.S., one built around electric bike paths (and hell Segways lol), with bicycle and pedestrian paths and lightweight rail moving around the heavy stuff. Cars and trucks and trains can be on the perimeter and in several large arteries.

tn13 12y ago

As a new immigrant to US and Bay Area I am totally amused to see that there is so much vacant land everywhere and yet so little housing. Dont see why cupertino, MV, Sunnyvale cant have 10 floored housing complexes.

djloche 12y ago
There is a fear of earthquakes destroying property and lives in California.
- patio11 12y ago
  Please point Californians who think this at a photo of Tokyo.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    Fears are often not rational, and such fears do play a minor role in feelings against certain structures in California. Talk to some people for a while and it comes up. Having said that, it's not the main driver preventing development in the Bay Area. Citizens with money, influence, and established interests want lower-density development, and so that's what exists.
  - davidw 12y ago
    Or photos of the very much intact skyscrapers in downtown San Francisco after the 1989 earthquake.
  - djloche 12y ago
    For whatever the reasons - the Japanese government decided that opportunities of building taller buildings outweighs the risks involved. Both California and Japan have a long history of earthquakes and know the danger involved. When you look at the numbers, more people have died due to earthquakes in Japan than in California. Prime example: CA 1994 Northridge earthquake (6.7 magnitude, 70 people died, $20B in damage) vs Hanshin earthquake (6.8 magnitude, 6400+ died, $100 billion in damage). Are the fears irrational? Each culture has a different approach. I agree with other comments though - fear of earthquakes is a minor footnote in the grand scheme of property development in California.

discardorama 12y ago

> Only 376k housing units? WTF! In a city with a population of 840K, is that so bad? That works out to roughly 2.23 people per unit. In NYC, in 2011, there were 3.35M housing units, and population of NYC was 8.273M. That works out to 2.47 people per unit. So why is NYC's situation not a clusterfuck, but SF's is?

icambron 12y ago
First, NYC is also kind of a clusterfuck; rents there are terrible. But while NYC needs to continue building more, it at least has the excuse that it's built up a lot already, and its mayor is actively encouraging more development. People don't cram into arbitrarily small spaces, so one thing to remember is the cause and effect: way more than 840K people want to live in SF proper, but there's no room. So 376K housing units effectively sets the population cap. But because a larger pool of people want to live there, the prices all go up. Rent control fixes that for incumbent residents but worsens the problem for everyone else. The only way to alleviate that is to create more houses so that a larger percentage of the people who want to live there actually can.
jakevoytko 12y ago
The subways in New York help the common case - minimizing how much is needed to spend on housing, while being well-connected to Manhattan. This is how people can live in a relatively cheap borough like Queens, and still have 15-35 minute commute to their job. There's also a massive amount of rental apartment stock at any time. This means that you have the liquidity to make any tradeoffs necessary, by balancing your budget, commute distance, number of roommates, and the amount of space you need. New York is also connected to several public transit systems (NJTransit, Metro North, PATH), so you can often go way cheaper, by leaving the city bounds itself. It's not all sunshine and roses, though. Rent is going up in a lot of the previously-cheap neighborhoods in Brooklyn. This hasn't really affected me, but my sister has been priced out of multiple apartments in the 5 years she has lived in the city.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]