4 ms·

"If you need an example of how intense this is, over the summer, 71,421 people, or 8 percent of San Franciscans, decided that we should all vote on every single

by timr 12y ago

"If you need an example of how intense this is, over the summer, 71,421 people, or 8 percent of San Franciscans, decided that we should all vote on every single project over the existing height limits on the waterfront by passing a ballot initiative. It was funded primarily by a single wealthy couple that didn’t want to lose their views, and they put it through in one of the lowest turnout elections in city history." What she doesn't say, really matters: that initiative was primarily about stopping a massive government handout to the multimillionaire owners of a professional basketball team, which would essentially give away a choice bit of public property in order to build an arena in a part of town where no arena should exist. The ballot initiative was put in place to make it much more difficult for that land-grab to go through. This stuff isn't just about people being ridiculous NIMBYs. Honestly, I think it's more ridiculous to look at San Francisco and claim that the problem is that we aren't building enough, when you can walk up to just about any live/work space in SOMA (i.e. the new construction), and see that the tenant list is mostly startups. That's what happens when you let developers build whatever they want -- they build for the most lucrative allowed use of the land. And that usually isn't residential construction. Is there NIMBYism in the bay area? Absolutely. But the biggest problem, by far, is that there's a massive technology bubble inflating everything from real estate to salaries in a very tiny slice of livable property. The price increases are being driven by greed and speculation as much as any sort of sustainable demand.

techsupporter 12y ago
So why doesn't the initiative say that? Why run a vote on requiring votes on all waterfront development height changes?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
ktothemc 12y ago
Why blanket punish and make every single development on the waterfront more expensive because of a single Warriors arena project that was eventually moved to Mission Bay? All of these little costs, process hurdles add up and make housing more expensive. The broad point is that these citizen anti-growth initiatives, which might have a single poorly-designed and consulted project in mind, end up having very long-term and consequential impacts on housing prices across the board. This 2014 study examined 7,300 land parcels in the Bay Area and found that if you increase the number of independent reviews for a construction project by one standard deviation, average land prices increase by about eight percent. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/07/01/regulatory-constraints-on-supply-are-a-key-factor-in-san-franciscos-affordable-housing-crisis/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/07/01/regulatory-const... I agree and am concerned about how the point of the economic cycle we're in affects the profile, goals and objectives of people we attract to Silicon Valley. You tend to get more true believers at the low points in the cycle versus the gold-rush folk we're seeing now. What do you think is the best way of dealing with this? We can either build a lot more housing or drive away jobs and companies if we think they're too greed or speculation-driven.
- timr 12y ago
  "Why blanket punish and make every single development on the waterfront more expensive because of a single Warriors arena project that was eventually moved to Mission Bay?" It's a long and detailed backstory, but the executive summary is that you've got a group of lawmakers who were inclined to rubber-stamp the sweetheart deal, so you can't just write a law that allows them discretion on the outcome. The arena plan required a zoning variance that was being granted for this particular project, and so the initiative targeted the exception-granting process for zoning. It was as specific as possible to the arena project, while still being effective and legal. In any case, it's still possible to build housing on the waterfront -- it's just not possible to get zoning exceptions without public review. I think that's probably a good thing.
  - techsupporter 12y ago
    This isn't public review, it's a public vote. A vote is a vastly different barrier to entry than review. One of the biggest complaints I have about the west coast--and, yes, I'm a transplant so I bring my own ideas to the party--is this obsession that everything should be put to a vote. The initiative process is broken in this regard because it increases that expectation. Public officials, especially elected ones, are supposed to have discretion. That's why we elect them. If they screw up, we vote out the people responsible, not erect more set-in-amber barriers to doing things in the future.
    - timr 12y ago
      Yeah, well...you're sort of grinding your axe on the wrong stone, here. This law wasn't passed because people believe "everything should be put to a vote" -- it was passed because a lot of people were (IMO rightfully) pissed that their elected representatives were essentially giving away public land to the wealthy. It's a story as old as politicians. I wish there was another way to block that sort of thing that didn't require citizen initiative. But if it comes down to passing an initiative that requires populist approval to violate existing laws or shrugging and walking away because we can't vote the bastards out until after there's an arena on the waterfront...well, I'm glad we have initiatives for that. I don't generally like the outcome of direct democracy, but this is a case where the initiative process worked exactly the way it was supposed to.
desdiv 12y ago
>Honestly, I think it's more ridiculous to look at San Francisco and claim that the problem is that we aren't building enough, when you can walk up to just about any live/work space in SOMA, and see the tenant list is mostly startups. That's what happens when you let developers build whatever they want -- they build for the most lucrative allowed use of the land. And that usually isn't residential construction. So why aren't the developers building taller commercial buildings? Startups are lucrative, right? So why don't the developers just build twice as high and sell twice as much floorspace for twice the revenue? They're free to build whatever they want, right?
- ktothemc 12y ago
  Can't do that. Proposition M, passed in the mid-1980s, caps the amount of office space that can be built in a given time period. We're right up against the cap at the moment.
  - timr 12y ago
    Prop M doesn't impact the stuff I'm talking about, which is (nominally) residential construction being used exclusively for business use. The prevalence of this kind of "live/work" space in SOMA is an artifact of the "building up" that happened the last time there was a technology bubble. We can see how well that worked out: a lot of people were evicted from older construction, only to have it replaced with more expensive new construction that is mostly being used for business purposes, because no actual human beings can afford it.
    - spikels 12y ago
      You got your history wrong. Few if any people were evicted to build live/work units in SF. Live/work units were build exclusively in areas zoned industrial (i.e. old factories and warehouses) - not apartments[1]. In fact it is illegal NOT to run always be running a business in a live/work unit[2]. Most live/work building's rules will require that you maintain a business license. Although most live/works are used primarily if not exclusively for housing the city does not seem to care as long as they get their license fees. Did you just make up you "facts" to support you ideology? Give the reverse a try someday. ;) [1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-S-F-s-live-work-development-boom-began-3272818.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-S-F-s-live-work-de... [2] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Fees-considered-for-S-F-live-work-lofts-3199974.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Fees-considered-for-S-...
kansface 12y ago
> I think it's more ridiculous to look at San Francisco and claim that the problem is that we aren't building enough... I have no understanding of this (common) sentiment. We are adding jobs at 10x the rate we are building new housing. There are only two variables in the equation. You can not will the relationship between supply and demand out of existence. > That's what happens when you let developers build whatever they want No, this is exactly what happens when you don't let developers build to accommodate the market. According to the article, a 640 sq ft single unit costs 500K$ to build [1]. The worse case scenario is that after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, the project is delayed by any one of dozens of parties that can block development for years. In summary, of the 1/10th of the required housing we do build, it is quite literally __impossible__ for any of it to be affordable and turn a profit. Any laws that make building more onerous will only exacerbate the problem. 1. http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2014-02-11/real-costs-building-housing http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2014-02-11/real-cos...
- geebee 12y ago
  I've been interested in a possible analysis for a while (maybe I should finally dig in and do it myself). My hypothesis is that San Francisco isn't as nimby-istic as it appears, that this is an artifact of a political and geographical oddity. San Francisco is a 7x7 square mile city and county that is already reasonably dense (on average - parts are extremely dense, the only place outside NYC with 100k+/sq mi density, whereas other neighborhoods 4 miles away are leafy suburbs). It's also a peninsula, and much of the area to the south is designated open space. Here's the thing - I'd be interested in analyzing other metro regions where a long standing, dense urban core isn't its own city and county, and see what percentage of growth happens within it or outside it. In other words, let's look at sub-regions with existing stable population density of above (say, 20,000 inhabitants per square mile for the last 50+ years) and see how much construction has occurred within them. For instance, does Atlanta have a small, historic downtown with an existing housing base that has been relatively dense and stable for 50 years? Has the growth in Atlanta come from tearing down 80 year old buildings in neighborhoods with 20k/sq mile populations dating back a while, or has it been in the suburbs and exurbs that count as "Atlanta" but wouldn't count as "San Francisco"? I don't know the answer to this question, but I think it's an important one to answer before concluding that SF is uniquely "nimby-istic" toward housing in some cultural or political way. You can probably tell where I'm leaning with this, though - that the NIMBY attitude, to the extent that it exists, has more to do with low density areas like mountain view resisting new housing than high density areas like much of SF.
mahyarm 12y ago
Lets make a car analogy: If you restrict a Japanese car seller to only export 10k cars to the USA, that car seller will inevitably export 10k luxury cars. The reason why they do this is because the demand for luxury cars wont be exhausted by such small numbers. Once they can sell unrestricted, they will definitely go for the far more profitable median market cars, because they can sell far greater volume of them. If you want to prevent gentrification, you would allow massive density increases. The middle class out buy the rich in aggregate. This blog article gives a better overview of the concept: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/06/how-density-limits-bring-about.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/06/how-density-limits-br...
- timr 12y ago
  It's a bad analogy. The car manufacturer's costs go down with scale, making low-margin, high-volume production an achievable business model. Real estate development costs don't really have economies of scale -- it costs a lot more to build skyscrapers, both in terms of construction costs, and in terms of land (rezone a parcel to increase height limits, and the cost of the land goes up to match the new use). Said another way: unlike cars, the fixed costs of real estate dominate the cost of the final product at all scales of "production".
  - mahyarm 12y ago
    It's not about that, it's about manufacturers going for the low hanging fruit first if they are restricted to selling a small limited amount. These manufactures in my example have already gotten the economies of scale by developing for their local market, so on a marginal basis, it doesn't apply in this metaphor. On a cost basis, those unit construction costs are around $200k for a 3 bedroom 'family' condo vs. the $1 million that a condo would currently cost today in the SF bay area. Big difference and actually affordable for a $70k/yr annual income vs the $335k/yr income required for a $1million dollar condo.

by timr 12y ago

techsupporter 12y ago

So why doesn't the initiative say that? Why run a vote on requiring votes on all waterfront development height changes?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

ktothemc 12y ago

Why blanket punish and make every single development on the waterfront more expensive because of a single Warriors arena project that was eventually moved to Mission Bay? All of these little costs, process hurdles add up and make housing more expensive. The broad point is that these citizen anti-growth initiatives, which might have a single poorly-designed and consulted project in mind, end up having very long-term and consequential impacts on housing prices across the board. This 2014 study examined 7,300 land parcels in the Bay Area and found that if you increase the number of independent reviews for a construction project by one standard deviation, average land prices increase by about eight percent. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/07/01/regulatory-constraints-on-supply-are-a-key-factor-in-san-franciscos-affordable-housing-crisis/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/07/01/regulatory-const... I agree and am concerned about how the point of the economic cycle we're in affects the profile, goals and objectives of people we attract to Silicon Valley. You tend to get more true believers at the low points in the cycle versus the gold-rush folk we're seeing now. What do you think is the best way of dealing with this? We can either build a lot more housing or drive away jobs and companies if we think they're too greed or speculation-driven.

timr 12y ago
"Why blanket punish and make every single development on the waterfront more expensive because of a single Warriors arena project that was eventually moved to Mission Bay?" It's a long and detailed backstory, but the executive summary is that you've got a group of lawmakers who were inclined to rubber-stamp the sweetheart deal, so you can't just write a law that allows them discretion on the outcome. The arena plan required a zoning variance that was being granted for this particular project, and so the initiative targeted the exception-granting process for zoning. It was as specific as possible to the arena project, while still being effective and legal. In any case, it's still possible to build housing on the waterfront -- it's just not possible to get zoning exceptions without public review. I think that's probably a good thing.
- techsupporter 12y ago
  This isn't public review, it's a public vote. A vote is a vastly different barrier to entry than review. One of the biggest complaints I have about the west coast--and, yes, I'm a transplant so I bring my own ideas to the party--is this obsession that everything should be put to a vote. The initiative process is broken in this regard because it increases that expectation. Public officials, especially elected ones, are supposed to have discretion. That's why we elect them. If they screw up, we vote out the people responsible, not erect more set-in-amber barriers to doing things in the future.
  - timr 12y ago
    Yeah, well...you're sort of grinding your axe on the wrong stone, here. This law wasn't passed because people believe "everything should be put to a vote" -- it was passed because a lot of people were (IMO rightfully) pissed that their elected representatives were essentially giving away public land to the wealthy. It's a story as old as politicians. I wish there was another way to block that sort of thing that didn't require citizen initiative. But if it comes down to passing an initiative that requires populist approval to violate existing laws or shrugging and walking away because we can't vote the bastards out until after there's an arena on the waterfront...well, I'm glad we have initiatives for that. I don't generally like the outcome of direct democracy, but this is a case where the initiative process worked exactly the way it was supposed to.

desdiv 12y ago

>Honestly, I think it's more ridiculous to look at San Francisco and claim that the problem is that we aren't building enough, when you can walk up to just about any live/work space in SOMA, and see the tenant list is mostly startups. That's what happens when you let developers build whatever they want -- they build for the most lucrative allowed use of the land. And that usually isn't residential construction. So why aren't the developers building taller commercial buildings? Startups are lucrative, right? So why don't the developers just build twice as high and sell twice as much floorspace for twice the revenue? They're free to build whatever they want, right?

ktothemc 12y ago
Can't do that. Proposition M, passed in the mid-1980s, caps the amount of office space that can be built in a given time period. We're right up against the cap at the moment.
- timr 12y ago
  Prop M doesn't impact the stuff I'm talking about, which is (nominally) residential construction being used exclusively for business use. The prevalence of this kind of "live/work" space in SOMA is an artifact of the "building up" that happened the last time there was a technology bubble. We can see how well that worked out: a lot of people were evicted from older construction, only to have it replaced with more expensive new construction that is mostly being used for business purposes, because no actual human beings can afford it.
  - spikels 12y ago
    You got your history wrong. Few if any people were evicted to build live/work units in SF. Live/work units were build exclusively in areas zoned industrial (i.e. old factories and warehouses) - not apartments[1]. In fact it is illegal NOT to run always be running a business in a live/work unit[2]. Most live/work building's rules will require that you maintain a business license. Although most live/works are used primarily if not exclusively for housing the city does not seem to care as long as they get their license fees. Did you just make up you "facts" to support you ideology? Give the reverse a try someday. ;) [1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-S-F-s-live-work-development-boom-began-3272818.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-S-F-s-live-work-de... [2] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Fees-considered-for-S-F-live-work-lofts-3199974.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Fees-considered-for-S-...

kansface 12y ago

> I think it's more ridiculous to look at San Francisco and claim that the problem is that we aren't building enough... I have no understanding of this (common) sentiment. We are adding jobs at 10x the rate we are building new housing. There are only two variables in the equation. You can not will the relationship between supply and demand out of existence. > That's what happens when you let developers build whatever they want No, this is exactly what happens when you don't let developers build to accommodate the market. According to the article, a 640 sq ft single unit costs 500K$ to build [1]. The worse case scenario is that after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, the project is delayed by any one of dozens of parties that can block development for years. In summary, of the 1/10th of the required housing we do build, it is quite literally __impossible__ for any of it to be affordable and turn a profit. Any laws that make building more onerous will only exacerbate the problem. 1. http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2014-02-11/real-costs-building-housing http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2014-02-11/real-cos...

geebee 12y ago
I've been interested in a possible analysis for a while (maybe I should finally dig in and do it myself). My hypothesis is that San Francisco isn't as nimby-istic as it appears, that this is an artifact of a political and geographical oddity. San Francisco is a 7x7 square mile city and county that is already reasonably dense (on average - parts are extremely dense, the only place outside NYC with 100k+/sq mi density, whereas other neighborhoods 4 miles away are leafy suburbs). It's also a peninsula, and much of the area to the south is designated open space. Here's the thing - I'd be interested in analyzing other metro regions where a long standing, dense urban core isn't its own city and county, and see what percentage of growth happens within it or outside it. In other words, let's look at sub-regions with existing stable population density of above (say, 20,000 inhabitants per square mile for the last 50+ years) and see how much construction has occurred within them. For instance, does Atlanta have a small, historic downtown with an existing housing base that has been relatively dense and stable for 50 years? Has the growth in Atlanta come from tearing down 80 year old buildings in neighborhoods with 20k/sq mile populations dating back a while, or has it been in the suburbs and exurbs that count as "Atlanta" but wouldn't count as "San Francisco"? I don't know the answer to this question, but I think it's an important one to answer before concluding that SF is uniquely "nimby-istic" toward housing in some cultural or political way. You can probably tell where I'm leaning with this, though - that the NIMBY attitude, to the extent that it exists, has more to do with low density areas like mountain view resisting new housing than high density areas like much of SF.

mahyarm 12y ago

Lets make a car analogy: If you restrict a Japanese car seller to only export 10k cars to the USA, that car seller will inevitably export 10k luxury cars. The reason why they do this is because the demand for luxury cars wont be exhausted by such small numbers. Once they can sell unrestricted, they will definitely go for the far more profitable median market cars, because they can sell far greater volume of them. If you want to prevent gentrification, you would allow massive density increases. The middle class out buy the rich in aggregate. This blog article gives a better overview of the concept: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/06/how-density-limits-bring-about.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.ca/2014/06/how-density-limits-br...

timr 12y ago
It's a bad analogy. The car manufacturer's costs go down with scale, making low-margin, high-volume production an achievable business model. Real estate development costs don't really have economies of scale -- it costs a lot more to build skyscrapers, both in terms of construction costs, and in terms of land (rezone a parcel to increase height limits, and the cost of the land goes up to match the new use). Said another way: unlike cars, the fixed costs of real estate dominate the cost of the final product at all scales of "production".
- mahyarm 12y ago
  It's not about that, it's about manufacturers going for the low hanging fruit first if they are restricted to selling a small limited amount. These manufactures in my example have already gotten the economies of scale by developing for their local market, so on a marginal basis, it doesn't apply in this metaphor. On a cost basis, those unit construction costs are around $200k for a 3 bedroom 'family' condo vs. the $1 million that a condo would currently cost today in the SF bay area. Big difference and actually affordable for a $70k/yr annual income vs the $335k/yr income required for a $1million dollar condo.