Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

Yes, SF's process is incredibly broken. It's not just that they are too expensive and time consuming (which they are!), it's also that the rules are arbitrary, and there are multiple departments, which often have the exact opposite requirements.

Additionally, any approval can be appealed by neighbors for any reason, at very little cost, but then the person applying for the permit will then have to spend thousands more, and potentially years more, to fight the appeal.

The uncertainty and lack of clear rules is actually worse than the cost (which is ridiculous).

I find it hard to imagine a more dysfunctional planning process.

Supply and demand.

Demand is higher than supply.

Everyone in SF knows that and actually seems to not want to increase the supply.

Strike that, they want the property tax revenue but only from huge, high-brow luxury apartment build-outs. The City has no problem letting the supply at the high end of the market increase.

By stopping any growth in the supply of nominally affordable rentals, the City leadership is pushing people of limited means outside of the city.

Let's see then if the City's limitations to increasing Supply makes sense:

1) low-income people -- like it or not, the vast majority of crime is committed by this group -- are pushed out of the city. That reduces crime. Check, makes sense from the City leadership perspective.

2) Rent control fools the city's renters into voting for more of the same. Landlords cannot profit; take affordable units off the market. Again, the low income types are pushed out of the city. Check. (see #1)

3) Also, by putting these mom-and-pop landlords out of business, rent control eliminates a COMPETITOR for the Luxury Apartment developers -- if there are no low-cost apartments to rent, people have no choice but to pay up or get out. Rent control also pushes up rents at the low end as those units go offline/out of business/converted to condos/etc., leaving fewer units available for low income folks.

The City is acting in its own best interest to:

- limit supply growth of apartments - put mom and pop landlords with affordable units offline - thus eliminating affordable units and the low socio-economic status people who create most of the crime problems from the city

And all that pushes up rents to benefit high-property-tax-paying Luxury apartment developers.

The City needs as much property tax revenue as they can get.

"How do we attract luxury apartment developers to boost the City's property tax haul?

- eliminate the low-priced competitors -- and even get the voters to approve it -- by imposing rent control

- reduce crime so Luxury apartment developers will feel they can attract high-dollar customers

- reduce/eliminate the creation of new affordable housing

SF wants property tax revenue. If you understand the above, you know everything.

It's not like the City leaders are going to announce their strategy to voters. Too many low-income/moderate-income renters here in SF.

But you can see the effects: - high rents due to the gradual elimination of mom-and-pop low rent units (they go out of business or convert to condos) - no more low-end Supply allowed to be created - rent control is here to stay (at least until all the low-priced apartments are gone)

Old, large trees are not easily replaced. A 100 year tree is not the same as 3 or 4 trees that were just planted.

Hong Kong is 75% rural montane forests. The city density is closer to 80000/mi^2.

An unsurprising choice, since for a century residents were surrounded by a much poorer, much more dangerous country, and the ocean, in all directions. The only place you can go in Hong Kong to escape are its parks.

Inflation is exponential. It removes all the contrast in the the historical data, and trends are more difficult to spot if a linear scale is used on exponential data.