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

101–110 of 155 posts

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

#101

Post by elliotec »

refurb wrote: post #46
Gibbon1 wrote: post #3

Answering a question, why the decline in rents 1950-1960? Far as I know during WWII the population of the city swelled due to war time industry. After the war people moved to newly created suburbs in Santa Clara and the Peninsula. I'm unsure but I think my grandparents moved to SF during the 1939-1940 WWII preseason. And by the late forties had moved away.

People were leaving! In 1950 the population of SF peaked (at the time) at 775,000, by 1960 it was down to 740,000, then by 1980 down to 678,000 (13% drop over 30 years!). Hard to believe it living in SF today.

It's not hard to believe at all. White flight to suburbs after the war is a pretty well known phenomenon that happened in every major city in the US.

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

#102

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Retric wrote: post #99
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco's wooden victorian are very beautiful, it also has a lot of "western American port city" architecture in tact, as you say. Many of us find that beautiful compared to old European cities that have their own very different histories. "The most beautiful city in the world" is most definitely an exaggeration, but it definitely has its own charm.

IMO, San Francisco is an ugly city. It's got that smattering of high rises in a mostly low rise city that just screams slums in most of the world. I mean there is a reason most photos are of a bridge not the buildings. I accept everyone has different aesthetics. But, the city just screams fake to me without any of the organic charm an old city or the brutal asthetic of say NY. PS: I guess you can call it unique...

Not just bridges, I mean, SF has stuff like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_ladies#/media/File:Pai...

Linking into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_ladies:

> "Painted ladies" is a term in American architecture used for Victorian and Edwardian houses and buildings painted in three or more colors that embellish or enhance their architectural details. The term was first used for San Francisco Victorian houses by writers Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larsen in their 1978 book Painted Ladies - San Francisco's Resplendent Victorians.[1]

Such housing is virtually everywhere in SF if you bother walking out of the urban core. I used to lose myself for hours just wandering around SF neighborhoods.

I really wonder if you really know what slums really are. I live in Beijing, a high rise city by any definition, which has slums galore (though not the ones found in India). Even the tall buildings are dingy, lack character. I also lived in Lausanne for a couple of years...supposedly a nice city, but it definitely had its share of grit and urban fake-ness. Especially high rise social housing (say in Renens), which, while not bad, definitely had a feeling of sluminess to them.

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

#103

Post by gdudeman »

snewk wrote: post #20
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.

i acknowledge that city ordinances can be a huge headache, but consider that trees serve more than just aesthetic purpose. They provide shade, filter particulate matter, and increase air quality for a much larger area than just 'your own property'. This is especially important in the urban core of cities where greenery can be scarce, and mature trees even more so.

This is a perfect example of a positive externality.

We tend to try to make the producers of negative externalities pay for the problems they create for the rest of us, but we rarely pay the producers of positive externalities for the benefits we all get from them.

It's interesting that cities never put their money where their mouths are. If we really valued trees, we, the non-tree owners, would pay people based on the size and benefits of their trees.

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

#104

Post by gdudeman »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #60
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.

It is worth mentioning that building into the sky is expensive. Easy sure. But expensive. Each floor is more expensive than the one below it. I'm not sure what the premium is though. Anyone know? What's the added cost for an apartment building as you go up? Seattle has a lot of 2+4 construction. Where it's 2 floor concrete and 4 floors wood. I believe the limit used to be 2+2 but they raised it. Cheaper construction…

Interesting corollary: the upper floors sell for far more than lower floors. My understanding is that often upper floor tenants will subsidize the lower floor tenants - the lower floors exist in order for the upper floors to be high.

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

#105

Post by x0x0 »

x0x0 wrote: post #55
timr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this exactly. If you can get 70% efficiency in a skyscraper you're doing phenomenally well. Also, the cost of land isn't included in the $300/sq.ft. number (though that becomes a proportionately smaller concern for taller buildings, for obvious reasons), nor the costs of financing, insurance, maintenance, etc. But more to the point, these numbers set only the lower bound on what a unit will sell for. These numbe…

Hmm, [1] suggests 25% overhead for 30-40 stories. Maintenance is largely irrelevant to the sales price, assuming the HOA/condo association fees aren't wildly out of line with others. Also, these should scale linearly or sub-linearly I'd think. I still don't see an answer to why $300/ft2 (or hell, $500/ft2) construction costs are a problem when condos sell for $1k +- 50 ft2 in the north east chunk of sf. Even $500/0.7…

Replying to self: denominator on land costs should have factor .7 not (1/.7) so $210. Embarrassed.

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

#106

Post by rtpg »

DrScump wrote: post #69
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.

For the last part, having mixed-zone development is essential.

Put housing above supermarkets! Offices inside apartment complexes! Make it easy for people to walk around.

I think that people don't need convincing not to use their cars... it's more that the space needs to be built in a way to where cars are not necessary.

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

#107

Post by unethical_ban »

Balgair wrote: post #61
kafkaesq wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Embarcadero, the Ferry Building, Sunset, SOMA and the hipster spots, Haight-Ashbury with the old Victorian houses, with the Redwoods nearby... SF is a great place, at least to visit, and while it has what you describe, it is not what you describe.

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

#108

Post by bane »

lyqwyd wrote: post #30
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking the same thing. Is it physical limitations of building (such as earthquake proofing) that makes it difficult? Or is it the suffocating amount of bureaucratic red tape imposed by short-sighted interest groups?

Definitely red tape. I'm doing an expansion on my house in SF. 1 year in already, and at least another year to go before we get permits, if we even wind up getting them. It will probably cost over $10,000 just in planning review / permitting costs when it's all done. That does not include the added time architectural costs of changing the plans as demanded by the various planning departments.

By way of comparison, out here on the East Coast, I went by my county office on a Friday, talked over what I wanted to do with the clerk, sketched out a basic plan on a blank sheet of paper, paid $75 in fees, taped the permit to my front window and started work on an expansion the next day.

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

#109

Post by bane »

snewk wrote: post #20
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.

i acknowledge that city ordinances can be a huge headache, but consider that trees serve more than just aesthetic purpose. They provide shade, filter particulate matter, and increase air quality for a much larger area than just 'your own property'. This is especially important in the urban core of cities where greenery can be scarce, and mature trees even more so.

The right way to do it is not by restricting cutting down trees, but by encouraging planting more. I bet a $100/year property tax deduction per tree would have the city absolutely packed full of every kind of tree you can imagine.

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

#110

Post by bbcbasic »

Balgair wrote: post #61
kafkaesq wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like my kind of town
Post reply on HN