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In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

nytimes.com

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Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#221

Post by bhickey »

skewart wrote: post #170
rconti wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well absolutely. And one commenter there (or here) mentioned the negative externalities of someone else's development driving down your property values or making your schools overcrowded or whatever. All of these things are deserving of sympathy and consideration, but.. well, currently they're getting too much of it.

Absolutely. > or making your schools overcrowded To which I say, build more schools! With more housing and people comes a bigger tax base and more money to fund infrastructure improvements. I don't know a single pro-construction person who doesn't also vigorously support improving urban infrastructure.

With Prop 13 in place, cities and towns can't adjust taxes to cover their budgets. It behooves a Bay Area municipality to seek out commercial investment and drive away residential.

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#222

Post by CamperBob2 »

ng12 wrote: post #216
CamperBob2 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two things that continually surprise me about life in the modern, Internet-enabled age... two things that I would never have dreamed would happen, if you'd asked the 1996 version of me what American life would be like in 2016. One is our increasing indulgence in irrationality, to the extent that we almost celebrate it. I would never have guessed that hard-right social conservatism would still be a dominant…

The problem with your analysis is that it undervalues the benefits of living and working in a major city, especially as a young person. I don't really want to remote -- I want to get out, interact with people, take a coffee break and people watch, grab drinks with coworkers. I want to meet people my age doing interesting things. I want to go out drinking/clubbing/whatever without worrying about driving home after. Ad…

And that's great, I wouldn't argue with any of the choices you've made for yourself. For you, the social benefits of urban life are apparently worth the costs, and that's fine. You and your friends probably aren't the ones who are doing most of the complaining.

But if it's that important to someone that they live in that particular city, to the exclusion of all other possibilities available on the planet, then they shouldn't complain when it turns out that real estate and transportation are limited resources that somebody has to pay for. It's the whining about the costs and downsides that bothers me the most about these articles.

People who act like they don't have a choice, when they do have a near-infinite variety of choices compared to most people on Earth, annoy me.

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#223

Post by gorkemyurt »

pj_mukh wrote: post #17
hodwik wrote: post #2

I say this as a conservative: Building limits are systemically classist and racist. They maintain a geographical segregation system. If you want to fix the country then remove all limits, let developers develop whatever and whereever they deem there is demand. Remove occupancy laws where they're not about safety. Remove property line setbacks. End parking requirements. End requirements about private kitchens and bath…

As a liberal, I agree. One problem, foreign money. It is mentioned in passing in the article but Vancouver (even with more sensible building laws) is still getting screwed because foreign money keeps pouring in.

No foreign money is good! They are not sending their kids to local schools, or driving down on 101 every day to cause traffic. They also pay way way more property tax compared to someone bought a house 20 years ago..

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#224

Post by freyr »

Houshalter wrote: post #211
freyr wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, you have established residents pushing back against expansion, construction, and denser housing -- perhaps to preserve what they value in their community, or perhaps out of personal interest and to drive up their property values. On the other, you have a massive influx of tech workers who have convinced themselves that they must live in this small, overpriced city for their basic livelihood, and that…

Man "entitlement" is such a weird word, and such a weird way to frame the issue. There are property owners who would like to build on their own property, not hurting anyone. And being told they're not allowed to because rich people like the aesthetic. There's poor people being priced out of their own city because of this. Who's entitled? And this is hardly the first time a US city has experienced growth.

Yes, it's somewhat a matter of perspective.

Although I'd point out that it's not just rich people who appreciate San Francisco's aesthetic.

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#225

Post by simoncion »

bhickey wrote: post #221
skewart wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. > or making your schools overcrowded To which I say, build more schools! With more housing and people comes a bigger tax base and more money to fund infrastructure improvements. I don't know a single pro-construction person who doesn't also vigorously support improving urban infrastructure.

With Prop 13 in place, cities and towns can't adjust taxes to cover their budgets. It behooves a Bay Area municipality to seek out commercial investment and drive away residential.

> It behooves a Bay Area municipality to seek out commercial investment and drive away residential.

AIUI, (and I might not understand correctly) that's not quite right.

If you make significant improvements [0] to a piece of land the value of just those improvements are assessed and added to the assessed value of that land. So -IIRC- if the owner of a two-story multi-family dwelling demolishes the building and builds a fifty-story building in its place, his assessed property value would be the same as it would if he had purchased that property with the new construction on it.

[0] Like -for instance- adding on a new room to a house.

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#226

Post by gorkemyurt »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #201
skewart wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the comment section on that article is pretty sad. The number of people whose argument against building more housing is a fear that it will make the city "ugly" is astounding. It's mind-numbingly selfish and greedy to think that a family should barely be able to make ends meet, and children should spend less time with their long-commuting parents, just so that SF can meet your personal aesthetic sensibilities.…

There are two things that continually surprise me about life in the modern, Internet-enabled age... two things that I would never have dreamed would happen, if you'd asked the 1996 version of me what American life would be like in 2016. One is our increasing indulgence in irrationality, to the extent that we almost celebrate it. I would never have guessed that hard-right social conservatism would still be a dominant…

"techies/hippies/yuppies/homeless people/Republicans"?

Let me guess you write poems for a living?

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#227

Post by technofiend »

skewart wrote: post #150
rconti wrote: post #140

The Times selected as an "NYTimes Pick" a comment from someone in Berlin who absolutely makes my blood boil. (S)he starts off by stating privilege as a 5th-generation San Franciscan (obviously, the kind who DESERVE to live in the city), and who fled in the tech boom of the 90s. The usual rant about whitewashing and yuppies and artists being pushed out ensues. Of course they don't want more housing built, because then…

Yeah, the comment section on that article is pretty sad. The number of people whose argument against building more housing is a fear that it will make the city "ugly" is astounding. It's mind-numbingly selfish and greedy to think that a family should barely be able to make ends meet, and children should spend less time with their long-commuting parents, just so that SF can meet your personal aesthetic sensibilities.…

I'm not defending her view but in my limited experience (Houston) developers build for profitablility and not aesthetics, and actively fight any laws designed to constrain their aesthetic choices again due to profitablility.

So I think it's perfectly fine to build a Paris-like building if you must build something. It'll just never happen without legal action.

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#228

Post by everyone »

Why is the bay area important? In the software industry, in theory, where you are should be irrelevant as long as you have decent internet. Why not just choose a city that has the requirements your business needs and set up there. One example I can think of is Id deciding to set up Austin.

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#229

Post by dredmorbius »

narrator wrote: post #123

Serious question: why does everyone have to live in San Francisco? There are lots and lots of cheaper places to live and work, but it seems there is something that only San Francisco can do that everywhere else can't. Why aren't city planners working on creating that special "whateveritis" in their city as fast as possible? I don't want any pat answers like "the people are there" or "the jobs are there" because that'…

Cities are, much as CPUs or memory, networking systems. With provision of resources and removal of waste, as well as selection of components (here largely self-selection of residents), you end up with a nexus of high productivity.

For all its faults (and the SF-OAK-SJ Bay Area has many), the place is incredibly vibrant, has a density of venture support unlike any elsewhere (even NYC plays second-fiddle), and, assuming you can afford the housing costs and survive the commutes, has an immensely appealing physical environment. There are other places which offer some of that, but none quite matches on all.

And Poisson / Power distributions give a very rapidly falling marginal benefit to being located elsewhere. After SF, NYC, Seattle, Washington D.C. / NoVA, and then more or less heaped: London, Tel Aviv, Austin, RTP, Los Angeles, Melbourne, and any number of third-tier silicon-wannabees. The fact that LA and Chicago, vastly larger urban areas than SF, can't show a candle to it, is sobering.

And I'm not saying you have to be in SF, or that what SF VC are doing makes sense (IMO SF's overrated and VC are to a large extent rent-seeking irrelevantists). But for what it does, it does it better than any other spot on the planet, and has for decades, burying numerous other pretenders.

Eventually the living costs, congetstion, possibly physical limits (lack of fresh water, rising seas), or other factors may end its reign. But it's not happened yet.

Re: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

#230

Post by simoncion »

Houshalter wrote: post #218
ktRolster wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to fix the country then remove all limits, let developers develop whatever and whereever they deem there is demand. That's a bad idea, too. For example, in Fremont right now, there's a development that was built without being placed in a school district. So the students who will live there have no real school. Also, there are serious environmental impacts that need to be considered every time you build a…

The lack of school district is the most hilarious objection. If you live in a rural area, then the government is required to send a bus miles out of it's way to get your kids to school. Yet people living in one of the most populated cities in the US apparently live too far away from schools and shouldn't be allowed to build.

> If you live in a rural area, then the government is required to send a bus miles out of it's way to get your kids to school.

As one of those kids who got up at 04:00 to catch the 04:30 bus that arrived at school at ~07:45, (and repeated the trip -but in reverse- starting at ~15:00) I can confirm the truth of this statement. [0]

[0] I was literally the first child on and last child off of that particular bus. :/

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