San Francisco's Fog Over Growth • Hacker News Board

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#71

Post by danans » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 9:57 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #57

rsync wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... which is sort of an interesting criticism, until you consider that you get a chance to "luck out" every 6-8 years or so when the real estate market crashes. There have been at least 3 such occasions since the Netscape IPO, and another on it's way. Hope you saved some money.

While there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the growth/zoning/etc. debate, I suspect that in the January 2016 economic climate in the Bay area, no reasonably imagined housing expansion would make more than the smallest dent in housing prices. Look at Manhattan. Yes, you can't build willy-nilly whatever you want but there's certainly plenty of high-rise residential construction and housing prices are still p…

> ...and housing prices are still pretty high in desirable areas.

Isn't that kind of tautological? Prices are always relatively high in desirable areas, and the high relative prices are actually a contributing factor to their desirability. What's more eye-opening is that prices in desirable areas are so high relative to above-average incomes for the area.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#72

Post by JauntTrooper » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 10:22 PM UTC

gmarx wrote: post #10

"would lift U.S. gross domestic product by 9.5 percent"? Really? Over what period of time? If it's one year it's unbelievable. If it's over 50 years, who cares?

Most recent US GDP: $17.914 trillion.

9.5% of that would yield an additional $1.7 trillion of net goods and services produced by our economy.

For comparison, we spend ~$0.85 trillion on Social Security and ~$0.6 trillion on defense a year.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#73

Post by AlexWest » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

People who want to move here (for opportunities or work) by definition do not have an established life here, are not part of our community, do not have family and friends they have known for years based here, and have not worked to contribute to making San Francisco what it is. I am not overly concerned about how hard it may be for them to arrive.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#74

Post by wmil » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

It's interesting that SF can be so pro-immigration on the national level, but so anti-immigration on the municipal level.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#75

Post by tsunamifury » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 10:30 PM UTC

api wrote: post #70

narrator wrote: post #66

Being a Bay Area native, my opinion is that the push back to increased growth is due to the horrible traffic situation. More people means traffic gets worse, muni gets more crowded, commutes get longer. The only people who want growth are real estate developers and recent transplants who are fine with not trying to actually go anywhere besides home and work. There's a point where the congestion starts to lower qualit…

Too bad transportation infrastructure is completely verboten in America. New York has it grandfathered in (was built before the car era) and New York does not have this problem. The simple reality is that cars don't scale beyond a certain density because, well, cars can't pass through other cars. Cars work fine for light to medium density but beyond that you must either build trains or stop growing. (Or waste billion…

My favorite part is that SF has gotten it in its head that being car-unfriendly (planned closing of Market St) is a great idea, while not improving public transit at all.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#76

Post by vhold » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 10:41 PM UTC

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #2

It's a shame that when people focus on the bay area's ludicrous housing costs, they tend to speak exclusively of San Francisco and ignore the opportunity to develop Oakland, which has a lot of flat land that is easier to build tall buildings on top of, instead of trying to densify San Francisco's endless peaks and twists. The author said a potential future for San Francisco is as a "gated community for the rich." Tha…

Imagine how different San Francisco would be if plans like this had moved forward: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_Mountain#Westbay_Con...

Not only did they want to fill the bay in with the mountain, they wanted to build another Bay Bridge there.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#77

Post by dublinben » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 10:43 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #68

pfooti wrote: post #58

Legit thought experiment and not a troll, because I'm curious about thinking through this. What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents people from owning property that's not their primary residence? Like: if you don't live in it more than 190 days a year, you pay a really high property tax on it. I've always thought a big part of the landlord - tenant issues around rent control, fair market housi…

If you do that, you'll get more single-owner homes, and less rental units, but you'll kill the ability to have apartment buildings (or, at most, one per owner). More single dwellings and less apartment buildings doesn't sound like the path to "more affordable housing".

You can own an apartment. It's called a condo.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#78

Post by cgy1 » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 10:45 PM UTC

wmil wrote: post #74

It's interesting that SF can be so pro-immigration on the national level, but so anti-immigration on the municipal level.

Because it's somehow become socially acceptable to hate on whites and Asians.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#79

Post by mahyarm » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 10:52 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #55

mahyarm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand the entire BART tube fear. You can get from fidi to downtown oakland in 12 minutes on a consistent schedule. I think it's more the bridge with it's horrible 1 hour traffic and how most of the bay area is a very car dependent place.

"You can get from fidi to downtown oakland in 12 minutes on a consistent schedule." Yes, but that's all you can do. If you're in pac heights or the presidio or ... anywhere west ... you're going nowhere.

That is a failure of SF transit. It takes 30m to get from the west to the east side of SF already. 20m to get to the mission from pac heights with an uber, 45m with muni! For east side SF friends in the mission, oakland is closer than ocean beach.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#80

Post by mahyarm » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 10:54 PM UTC

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #40

mahyarm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand the entire BART tube fear. You can get from fidi to downtown oakland in 12 minutes on a consistent schedule. I think it's more the bridge with it's horrible 1 hour traffic and how most of the bay area is a very car dependent place.

BART can be standing room only quite often during commutes, but if you're going from Market Street to an Oakland station, its really not that big of a deal.

NYC is standing room only during most commutes too. I'd rather stand for 15 minutes than be stuck in traffic for 45 minutes any time.