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The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

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Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#61

Post by dionidium »

golergka wrote: post #51
Fede_V wrote: post #31

Housing in SF is an incredibly powerful illustration of the danger of letting things get so bad that the usual remedies no longer apply. Basically: - Traditionally, the proper fix for a shortage of housing is to build more houses. Just lift the existing regulations, and let the free market do what it does best: take care of the demand at an efficient price. - However, after years and years of very slow building, the…

It sounds like you think that only the poor people problems with housing should be solved, and if someone is better off and can't find an apartment due to crazy demand, his problems don't concern you and solving his problems counts for nothing.

I'll just say that it doesn't sound like that to me at all

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#62

Post by BurningFrog »

Fede_V wrote: post #31

Housing in SF is an incredibly powerful illustration of the danger of letting things get so bad that the usual remedies no longer apply. Basically: - Traditionally, the proper fix for a shortage of housing is to build more houses. Just lift the existing regulations, and let the free market do what it does best: take care of the demand at an efficient price. - However, after years and years of very slow building, the…

...the houses would almost all be built for the very well off. The amount of houses you'd have to build before you started constructing truly affordable housing is immense.

This is a common mistake. In reality, all added supply brings down price levels across the board.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#63

Post by aetherson »

nkurz wrote: post #59
aetherson wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name some of these cases.

I think it's mostly a "thought exercise", but here's a treatment looking at the costs of commuting to SF from Las Vegas: http://mobile.businessinsider.com/its-cheaper-to-commute-fro...

As that article points out, you're looking at 2 hours of commuting each way with that.

I assure you, you can find a cheaper total cost of living + commuting within 2 hours of SF by car.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#64

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

zt wrote: post #58
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet there's nothing inherent with software development that makes SF and the Bay Area any different from lots of other cities, other than inertia. It's amazing that an industry that prides itself on being non traditional is so tied to a specific geographical location, as if there's some valuable mineral that can only be mined in SOMA and downtown Palo Alto.

There is nothing inherent about finance that makes New York and London any different than a lot of other cities, other than inertia. It could be otherwise than it is, that's sort of the truth of network effects, but it's difficult.

Favorably comparing Bay Area software to Wall Street is an odd thing to hear from you.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#65

Post by Pinatubo »

mdb333 wrote: post #28

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_%281... Good thoughts. You failed to mention Prop 13 which was put into place a long time ago and simply doesn't make sense anymore. It's at least part of the reason it is so affordable (in relative terms) for rich people to keep second homes here when they bought them years ago. We live in a building of 60 units where probably at least a third of those are abse…

> We live in a building of 60 units where probably at least a third of those are absentee owners. They're rich enough and the cost to maintain is so low that they don't even need or want to rent those units out.

Another possible cause is that being a landlord in San Francisco is incredibly difficult and time consuming. Last year friends of mine rented out their condo to someone that turned out to be a problem tenant. They had to hire a lawyer and pay the tenant off in order to get him to move. Rather than making money as landlords, they lost almost $50,000 on the deal.

The apartment now sits vacant, and they have no plans to rent it out again.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#66

Post by paulpauper »

We are on a self-imposed path leading to only one place: a city that is entirely rich and, more or less, entirely white.

I want to live in a beautiful, multiethnic, socioeconomically mixed community. A city where people of low, moderate, and high incomes live together, and people of different ethnicities interact.

I guess he's never heard of Chinatown. SF is one of the most most ethnically diverse cities in the country. http://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/california/artic...

Also 'white' does not imply 'rich', as there are many regions in America that are predominantly white and very poor, Appalachian region being one.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#67

Post by Agustus »

mdb333 wrote: post #28

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_%281... Good thoughts. You failed to mention Prop 13 which was put into place a long time ago and simply doesn't make sense anymore. It's at least part of the reason it is so affordable (in relative terms) for rich people to keep second homes here when they bought them years ago. We live in a building of 60 units where probably at least a third of those are abse…

In your example, the building you describe is a condominium? If so, then what does it matter what your tax bill is and if they are absentee owners; if the owner maintains the property, pays their bills and taxes, then you should be happy to have them.

Tax reassessments during the boom of 2001 to 2007 were on track to price a lot of people out of their houses based on their current economic status. Proposition 13 and other bills passed across the country allowed individuals to avoid being "taxed out" of their house.

If you have a job that pays $100,000 and the taxes on your $250,000 house is $7,500 (3% property tax) and the tax quadruples to $30,000 in five years; why would you want the market fluctuations to be able to force an individual to leave their house?

The main item with this problem, as is with all affordability issues is that supply is not meeting demand. Look in Detroit and Flint where there is not enough demand and the supply is worth next to nothing.

Author's points of increased units would lead to a drop in prices until it becomes affordable to all. San Francisco will never allow it because the people who live there want to keep it San Francisco and NIMBY rules.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#68

Post by xenadu02 »

zt wrote: post #15
paulsutter wrote: post #3

One issue he doesn't mention is traffic congestion. A potential remedy could be a significant tax on parking. Perhaps very significant. Parking is ugly and a blight on the city, as well as a tremendous waste of space that could be more effectively used for housing.

(I'm the author). Traffic is a big problem -- as is parking. Public transit investments do have to correspond with building housing, but too often the lack of one is used as an excuse not to expand the other. We have to start somewhere. As I said in the post, public transit deserves it own analysis -- I was already in the thousands of words just on housing! -- maybe that will be next.

Indeed. In the current Prop-13, anti-tax environment you simply cannot propose building infrastructure to support future needs. The need must already exist and be bad enough to get people to vote for taxes to pay for improvements.

Muni will not be extending T to Fisherman's Wharf, nor BART building a 2nd trans-bay tube and line through the Richmond/19th Ave unless the bay area can manage this housing problem and bring in more residents to pay for it.

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#69

Post by muzz »

zt wrote: post #40
mdb333 wrote: post #28

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_%281... Good thoughts. You failed to mention Prop 13 which was put into place a long time ago and simply doesn't make sense anymore. It's at least part of the reason it is so affordable (in relative terms) for rich people to keep second homes here when they bought them years ago. We live in a building of 60 units where probably at least a third of those are abse…

(I'm the author) Prop 13 is a problem, no doubt. It would deserve a very long essay -- some of them exist as sub-essays within Kim-Mai Cutler's writings. I tried to focus on policy ideas that, more-or-less, San Francisco could implement themselves.

The magnitude of Prop 13's distortions contribute much more to the problem than policies that a city could implement itself.

Housing is often viewed as a San Francisco problem, but really it's an area-wide problem acutely and a state-wide problem more broadly. I.e., areas outside the policy of San Francisco, such as peninsula, south bay, etc, are not significantly cheaper. And entire other metros, like Los Angeles and San Diego, have had similar percentage cost increases (and those metros are actually more "unaffordable" since incomes are lower there).

Re: The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It

#70

Post by wernercd »

BurningFrog wrote: post #62
Fede_V wrote: post #31

Housing in SF is an incredibly powerful illustration of the danger of letting things get so bad that the usual remedies no longer apply. Basically: - Traditionally, the proper fix for a shortage of housing is to build more houses. Just lift the existing regulations, and let the free market do what it does best: take care of the demand at an efficient price. - However, after years and years of very slow building, the…

...the houses would almost all be built for the very well off. The amount of houses you'd have to build before you started constructing truly affordable housing is immense. This is a common mistake. In reality, all added supply brings down price levels across the board.

But you completely ignore the "time and amount of houses it would take" aspect.

If you can only build 10 houses, and make 10% commission... are you going to build a shack? or are you going to build mansion?

The houses that get built, if the gates were to open wide, would all start off on the high end... while that would start a downward pressure, it would still be a very long time before those who can afford $200k for a house see anything in their range built.

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