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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

#211

Post by zach »

eweise wrote: post #195
Renevith wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? I shed exactly zero tears for someone whose $250k property quadruples in value to $1m in five years. Sell the house and dance with joy at your (untaxed!) $750k capital…

Right just move your kids somewhere new and cheap like Fresno because there happened to be a housing bubble where you lived. Houses provide a stable environment for raising families. Why should you be forced out by taxes?

Don't worry, families have little opportunity to own a house anymore, much less suffer the tragedy of unrealized capital gains. The most accessible housing market for urban or suburban California families is renting from the Prop. 13 aristocracy.

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

#212

Post by visarga »

astrodust wrote: post #191
zt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm the author). You make excellent points, and I don't mean to minimize the regional issues. Sure, if I had a magic wand then I'd increase housing being built across the Bay Area. In fact, I'd like consolidate the jurisdictions in the Bay Area, but that's a whole other argument. I don't quite know how to play out the claim that demand is infinite. One, I don't believe that. And, two, it seems like an argument that…

Completely ignoring the transit issue is remarkable. New York City serves an example of a vibrant and expensive city, but one that has a multitude of options depending on how much you're prepared to commute. People truck in on a daily basis from New Jersey and Connecticut because there's highways and reliable (enough) rail options. BART, from all accounts, is a total disaster and is about to completely implode. The r…

If the Japanese could have high speed trains in 1964, why can't an area with such density have a stellar transport service in 2016? If you increase the speed by an X factor, you get an increase of surface by X^2, moving the problem away in a place where there is low density.

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

#213

Post by zach »

dv_dt wrote: post #150
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 my view, Prop 13 is a most problematic as applied to investment/commercial real estate, a lesser one applied to secondary residences - but really is a good thing for primary residences.

People are surprised that Prop. 13 applies to investment and commercial real estate. I was too until I discovered that Howard Jarvis and the backers of the proposition were all apartment owners. If it only applied to owner-occupied residences, it would never have been up for a (off-year election) vote.

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

#214

Post by chipsy »

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…

Hong Kong faced this conundrum in the mid-20th century: Lots of refugee immigration, plus a major fire, causing an urgent housing crisis at the bottom end of the market. The city built massive, tenement-style public housing blocks, and never stopped building. Almost half of the population of Hong Kong today lives in public housing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Hong_Kong

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

#215

Post by Decade »

Mz wrote: post #86
zt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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.

If you actually want to solve it, you need to think bigger than that. In fact, we need changes all the way up to the federal level. We need to overhaul the entire way that the US handles housing, across the board. In a nutshell, our current housing paradigm was born of the soldiers returning home from WW2. Thus, the entire infrastructure is geared towards supporting single family homes designed for the nuclear family…

It’s not a lifestyle thing. We need to separate our house from our net worth.

As long as house prices rise faster than inflation, then that’s nice for the people who manage to buy a house, but it’s common-sense unsustainable.

A soldier returning home from WW2 could buy his first house with a few years of savings. No mortgage necessary.

A few decades later, housing prices rising faster than inflation, and a Gen X yuppie needs a 30-year mortgage to afford a house. Not ideal, but still affordable.

A few more decades, and Millenials face a world where you need to be making bank to even think about paying for the mortgage. No wonder we are having kids later, etc., etc., etc.

I don’t know how net worth and housing will be decoupled, but it has to happen. When only the bank can afford your home, that’s an ingredient for social unrest. All I know is that it’s really going to suck for the people who’ve pumped so much money into their house, when it all comes down.

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

#216

Post by Decade »

chipsy wrote: post #214
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…

Hong Kong faced this conundrum in the mid-20th century: Lots of refugee immigration, plus a major fire, causing an urgent housing crisis at the bottom end of the market. The city built massive, tenement-style public housing blocks, and never stopped building. Almost half of the population of Hong Kong today lives in public housing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Hong_Kong

Wouldn’t work here. I’ve been to the housing meetings.

Basically, if San Francisco tried that, then the entire affordable housing budget would be taken up just buying enough land. As it is, the mayor’s office of housing and community development is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on maybe a few thousand units. Not very efficient, and not nearly enough to make a major impact on the housing crisis.

Streamline the process, and you get branded as a traitor to the people and undoubtedly a peon of the greedy and corrupt developers.

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

#217

Post by m0llusk »

rsmsky1 wrote: post #146

Is San Francisco really on a path to becoming almost entirely white? I thought a large portion of the Sunset and Richmond were Asian and it had a much larger Asian percentage than other cities?

San Francisco is around 40% Chinese. If you look at indicators like unemployment, single parent births, education level the Chinese population is as different from the Caucasian population as Caucasians are from Black Americans. Chinese make a very strong and strangely unrecognized contribution to San Francisco economically and socially.

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

#218

Post by [deleted] »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #47
refriedbeans3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, this could alleviate some of the issues you are seeing in SF, but in practice this is not something many tech companies founded here would do. Most new tech companies are being started by people already working in the industry, and the industry is located in Silicon Valley, with epicenter now being in SF. So it just doesn't make sense from a competitive perspective for most companies to move out of the Bay…

I've seen recent comments on HN that some people are considering it a sign of shrewdness and intelligence that some companies aren't locating themselves in SF.

[deleted]

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

#219

Post by Decade »

rkayg wrote: post #44

Great article. How can we turn your ideas into reality?

Start by voting. Read those tedious propositions and those small offices, and vote on every one of them. Supervisor Julie Christensen was pushed out by anti-housing Aaron Peskin with the approval of 12% of District 3’s residents. And don’t take the shortcut of just voting whichever way your Democrat or Republican voters guide tells you to vote.

Join, or at least follow, a political action group like SFBARF[0]. And when they mention some special committee, then don’t just go to a couple meetings and otherwise leave it alone. You’re supposed to be part of the community. Actually learn from and provide your own input to that community.

If you have some free time, then find what else the SF Planning Department has been doing[1], and attend their public hearings.

[0]http://www.sfbarf.org

[1]http://sf-planning.org

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

#220

Post by smrtinsert »

capkutay wrote: post #123
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…

If you care about SF housing, please just show up to Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors meetings. Talking about policy on hacker news is useless. Better yet, start or join a grassroots group of at least 10-15 people and thoughtfully present all your ideas without coming off as insensitive towards the homeless or low-income individuals. There's TONS of room for public input in SF, it's what makes our plannin…

It's not useless, its confirmation that those of us enjoying our easy lives in DC should stay here.
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