301–310 of 380 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, San Francisco is already ugly. It's not like you'd be razing historically important beaux arts buildings to build more.
In my experience, San Francisco is a beautiful city when viewed from a distance, but rather unfriendly and dirty up close.
The solution is terminally simple: _All_ new development must include 10% to 20% of units to low income people. Everywhere. SF. NYC. LA. etc. The end.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But the reason foreign money is pouring in to SF real estate rather than a zillion alternatives is that it's a good investment. And the reason for that is precisely the very restrictive policies designed to maximize real estate value. So if you legalize housing construction, the foreign money problem will disappear as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the reason foreign money is pouring in to SF real estate rather than a zillion alternatives is that it's a good investment. And the reason for that is precisely the very restrictive policies designed to maximize real estate value. So if you legalize housing construction, the foreign money problem will disappear as well.
For a few years, I've been challenging people when this discussion comes up to give examples of situations where increasing housing supply resulted in falling prices. As far as I can tell, without a fundamental demand drop, this rarely if ever happens. And you've hit on one of the reasons: the investors who want in want into a market where real estate commands the prices it does.
Philadelphia, additional housing, plus market crash. It doesn’t say that prices on existing housing went down, but the new “luxury” housing did not sell for close to the expected luxury prices.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10370964
http://grist.org/cities/urban-activists-set-out-to-sue-san-f...
Hi guys, it's me, Sonja Trauss, AMA.
One of your volunteers got me involved with the Balboa Reservoir CAC, so I’ve been going to those meetings, except when they reschedule it to Wednesday evening (I already have something scheduled for Wednesday evening, why do they keep rescheduling transportation to Wednesday evening, I wanted to hear the presentation), and I wonder, do you see benefit in having heavy BARF representation in so few meetings? A bunch s…
Yeah the Balboa CAC meetings are particularly frustrating. The answer is yes - there is benefit to SFBARF representation at the Res meetings. It's not obvious, but on the CAC there are pro building people, and having supportive people commenting helps them argue that housing at the reservoir is something people want. I know it helps because I got calls and emails asking me to encourage people to go when we hadn't been there for a while. If our presence didn't matter, no one would have complained when we weren't there. :D
However much you can go is good. When you're there introduce yourself to the CAC members, and chat them up. Definitely testify whenever you get a chance. Especially trade information with whichever CAC members seem the most pro-building and let them know they should get in touch with you for particularly important meetings or if they need a letter written.
For spring - vote for the pro-housing slate, that's easy at least www.sfyimby.org/slate/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a few years, I've been challenging people when this discussion comes up to give examples of situations where increasing housing supply resulted in falling prices. As far as I can tell, without a fundamental demand drop, this rarely if ever happens. And you've hit on one of the reasons: the investors who want in want into a market where real estate commands the prices it does.
Generally, people don't build housing supply with the intent of oversaturating the market and losing money!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the reason foreign money is pouring in to SF real estate rather than a zillion alternatives is that it's a good investment. And the reason for that is precisely the very restrictive policies designed to maximize real estate value. So if you legalize housing construction, the foreign money problem will disappear as well.
For a few years, I've been challenging people when this discussion comes up to give examples of situations where increasing housing supply resulted in falling prices. As far as I can tell, without a fundamental demand drop, this rarely if ever happens. And you've hit on one of the reasons: the investors who want in want into a market where real estate commands the prices it does.
When I moved to the Bay area from France, I was very surprised by the complete lack of organized government at the regional level. Decisions, planning an budgeting seem to happen either at the San Francisco level, or at the California level. That is a huge gap! The result is that nothing ever seems to get done at the scale of the bay, and SF is left to deal with a problem bigger than one city. The fact that SF seems…
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…
I agree with the overall direction of your sentiment, it is just that ample time in the trenches of doing business has disabused me of the effectiveness of capitalism to regulate markets the way we think it does. It regulates the markets all right; the amount of human ingenuity spent trying to game the system at others' expense either now or in the future never ceases to impress me.
What has happened in SF, NYC, London, is that the high cost of housing is caused by market inefficiencies as pointed out by a number of economists (eg, Edward Glaeser, Paul Krugman, Tim Harford) called “rent seeking” where politics is used to artificially limit supply (in this case through zoning restrictions) to create artificial scarcity. This is true of NYCs 13,000 limit on Taxi medallions which caused them to hav…
The high cost of housing is simply due to the transformation of land into a 'gold-like' asset. This was done by untaxing it and reducing interest rates to zero (propelling demand for more 'gold' like assets). It wasn't a market inefficiency that made land hard to create and intentionally drove up its value. It was neoliberals.
We never had a full land value tax in our country (or anywhere in the world, for that matter). What does this refer to, exactly?