Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

experimental-geography.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 155 posts

Re: Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

#61

Post by Balgair »

kafkaesq wrote: post #51
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #9

Building straight into the sky is easy. You'd be amazed at how earthquake-proof skyscrapers are with modern technology. You want a challenge? Build in a city where you're required to post notice any time you cut down a tree on your own property.

Build in a city where you're required to post notice any time you cut down a tree on your own property. That's because you're talking about one of the most beautiful cities in the world (despite the attempts of some people to decry otherwise) and, as expressed through the will of its electorate, intends to stay that way. It's also a city that's keenly aware of ecosystem dynamics and environmental issues generally, an…

HA! San Fransisco is a dirty, 2 fisted drinking town, full-stop. It is not 'one of the most beautiful cities in the world'. Try Hamburg or Vienna. It is a port of call for those looking to escape polite society, be they gays, Chicanos, drunk miners, Russian trappers, whores, Burners, or whatever else isn't talked about on 5th Ave. Do not delude yourself into thinking San Fransisco's people care about anything but the prices of their vices. That is what makes SF great, it just wants to get sloppy drunk. Do whatever else you want.

Re: Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

#62

Post by fsaneq2 »

capkutay wrote: post #16

Obligatory reminder: If you care about housing in the Bay Area, register to vote now. Scott Wiener is a housing and transportation advocate running for State Senate in this election. http://registertovote.ca.gov/ Show up to Planning Commission and Board of Supervisor meetings. Participate in public comment. We all talk about how NIMBYs rule SF, it's because they show up in full force at these gatherings.

Out of curiosity, is there a way for a non-citizen to vote?

I see the logic of requiring you to be a citizen, but it does nevertheless feel a little unfair -- I live here too, and I pay my taxes like everyone else.

Re: Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

#63

Post by krschultz »

twic wrote: post #25
aidenn0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you happen to know how many units the largest residential building in NYC has? It would be interesting to know the minimum number of buildings needed to cover the 200k unit deficit. [edit] Thanks for all the replies! So it looks like we are talking about a minimum of hundreds of buildings to be torn-down and rebuilt taller. That seems unlikely to happen in SF proper.

423 Park Avenue is the tallest [1]. 412 637 square feet, containing 104 apartments. I have no idea what fraction of the floor area is apartments, but if it was all of it, they would average 3968 square feet, which seems huge. If everyone got the same modest but comfortable 820 square feet i have, there could be 503 apartments. At that rate, you'd need about 400 towers to make 200 000 apartments. [1] https://en.wikipe…

A pretty high fraction of each floor is apartments, the problem is that the apartments are huge. I'm pretty sure the penthouses actually span two floors. The lower floors probably have 2 or 3 units per floor.

More moderate apartment buildings would have had several units per floor, but that building was built to be the most prestigious in the city.

Re: Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

#64

Post by markcerqueira »

kafkaesq wrote: post #51
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #9

Building straight into the sky is easy. You'd be amazed at how earthquake-proof skyscrapers are with modern technology. You want a challenge? Build in a city where you're required to post notice any time you cut down a tree on your own property.

Build in a city where you're required to post notice any time you cut down a tree on your own property. That's because you're talking about one of the most beautiful cities in the world (despite the attempts of some people to decry otherwise) and, as expressed through the will of its electorate, intends to stay that way. It's also a city that's keenly aware of ecosystem dynamics and environmental issues generally, an…

Couldn't really take you seriously after you called San Francisco "one of the most beautiful cities in the world." Yeah - it's a hip and cool city, but I don't know... Maybe get out of the Bay Area some more and see the rest of the world?

Re: Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

#65

Post by moultano »

harryh wrote: post #43
timr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the long run, that isn't true. A skyscraper has a useful life well in excess of 50 years. If you look at places like Chicago, you'll see that luxury high-rises get renovated 20-30 years in to become mid-range places." It really depends. They just gutted 101 Van Ness (a pre-existing 1960s-era skyscraper) and turned it into housing. It's all luxury -- the cheapest units are upwards of $3000 a month for a tiny studi…

> That's fine, but it doesn't change the fact that new construction doesn't help anyone but wealthy people in SF, today. If you build more luxury housing it lowers the price of luxury housing so that a marginally less rich person can move to that tier. That marginal move reduces the demand on the next lower tier of housing which should reduce the price at that level. And so on, and so on...

Just like hermit crabs when a slightly bigger shell is available. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1dnocPQXDQ#t=1m33s

Re: Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

#66

Post by vonmoltke »

dragonwriter wrote: post #40
rayiner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, they build class I-III in the Mission and SOMA. These buildings will always be "luxury" units, because at $300+/sq.ft. construction costs the economics don't pencil out otherwise. In the long run, that isn't true. A skyscraper has a useful life well in excess of 50 years. If you look at places like Chicago, you'll see that luxury high-rises get renovated 20-30 years in to become mid-range places. Of course…

> In the long run, that isn't true. A skyscraper has a useful life well in excess of 50 years. If you look at places like Chicago ...they aren't like San Francisco. In addition to construction costs, I wonder what the effect of periodic major earthquakes is on maintenance costs of large buildings. And, particularly, the relative costs of larger vs. smaller buildings.

Doesn't seem to be dissuading high-rise construction much in LA.

Re: Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

#67

Post by vonmoltke »

davidw wrote: post #53
nerfhammer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New York City is vast. Brooklyn alone is 40% larger than San Francisco.

If you're talking about outlying areas, the rest of the bay area is amazingly not dense given how expensive housing is.

You can't really compare a single municipality to several that collectively equal it's size. The latter case has a whole lot of more localized and conflicting political interests that serve to hold back the area as a whole.

Re: Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

#68

Post by irq11 »

harryh wrote: post #52
timr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was addressed by the source article. It happens a bit, but it isn't magic : one of the author's models found that for every 1% increase in housing, rents dropped by 1.7%. Lowering rents enough to make SF affordable for poor people requires construction on a scale that isn't just impractical -- it's economically impossible. No developer would choose to build into such a market with fixed construction costs at hun…

Indeed construction costs are far too high! Significant zoning changes are needed to make SF more affordable for large swaths of the economic spectrum. And even then, unfortunately, it will take time. Buildings don't go up overnight. The problems that SF is experiencing today are due to decades of mistakes.

The costs he is citing are fixed. They don't have anything to do with zoning or past decisions by San Francisco.

Re: Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

#69

Post by DrScump »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #9

Building straight into the sky is easy. You'd be amazed at how earthquake-proof skyscrapers are with modern technology. You want a challenge? Build in a city where you're required to post notice any time you cut down a tree on your own property.

Boosting housing by building vertically is virtually unlimited.

The trickier part is supplying the added people with water, electricity, gas, food, and other supplies without augmenting infrastructure (which is failing left and right as it is) and convincing them to never travel out of or into the city using its already-at-capacity freeways and rail.

Re: Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

#70

Post by davidw »

vonmoltke wrote: post #67
davidw wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about outlying areas, the rest of the bay area is amazingly not dense given how expensive housing is.

You can't really compare a single municipality to several that collectively equal it's size. The latter case has a whole lot of more localized and conflicting political interests that serve to hold back the area as a whole.

I know they're different politically - I'm comparing the results, which are terrible.
Post reply on HN