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Housing in the Bay Area

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Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#71

Post by weisser »

phamilton wrote: post #58
weisser wrote: post #10

Cannot believe I'm posting here but relevant: I have a room in my house in the Sunset opening next month. $900. It's month-to-month rent. Looking to house a founder/hacker/designer/etc currently struggling with SF rent (or someone who wants to move to SF but didn't think they could afford to live in SF) My email is in my bio.

That's cool and all, but sort of counter to the point being made. Subsidizing housing for those already on top doesn't really help with wealth inequality.

Couldn't be further from my intent. I'm not looking to give housing to people who are "already on top" - those people would not want to live in an old house in the Sunset ;)

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#72

Post by HillaryBriss »

carapace wrote: post #65

I'm in favor of how "building in the Bay Area is approved by discretion", I call it having some power over what gets built. "Democracy" y'know? I'm from SF. I grew up here. I'm also a computer nerd. To me, the tech "industry" has been ruining the city I love since the Dot-Com boom. To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. The saddest part is, this city kin…

I hear what you're saying, but, maybe a "brick wall" of resistance is not the only possibility.

I'd like to suggest an alternative: a companion bill that requires local and regional governments to provide adequate service and infrastructure expansion once the inevitable building surge happens.

Access to government services and infrastructure really ought to be maintained at current levels for everyone.

And if that can't be guaranteed, then cramming more people into a given city or area should be recognized for what it is: a transfer of wealth. And _of course_ there will be resistance to government mandated transfers of wealth. We should expect such resistance as a fair and rational response to these kinds of laws.

The real question becomes: how do we make this as fair as possible for both the newcomers and the existing residents?

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#73

Post by zanny »

carapace wrote: post #65

I'm in favor of how "building in the Bay Area is approved by discretion", I call it having some power over what gets built. "Democracy" y'know? I'm from SF. I grew up here. I'm also a computer nerd. To me, the tech "industry" has been ruining the city I love since the Dot-Com boom. To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. The saddest part is, this city kin…

Except at the end of the day it does not really matter. "I was here first" has usually been a strong economic force, but has never been overriding or absolute. SF has spent decades doing its damned hardest to resist growth and development, and has failed to stop it so far, and it has only caused pain for everyone involved by gentrifying unevenly and having its present housing crisis.

In the same line of thinking about democracy - the entire established population of SF might not want to attract the tech industry, but the tech industry - many times more people, in effect, than SF - chose SF. The greatest flaw in democracy is being out of the majority opinion, and if "build up SF" were not so it would not even be on the radar as a question.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#74

Post by shalmanese »

pedalpete wrote: post #41
Tiktaalik wrote: post #25

Even if this bill passes and substantially more multi-family housing starts getting built, do not be surprised if house prices remain extremely high. Vancouver doesn't have the same anti-development issues that SF has, and has been building multi-unit condos and apartments all over the region for decades. Multi-unit housing starts are about at its highest level ever. The average price of a detached house however is C…

Vancouver is a bit of an anomaly, and much of the housing pricing there is being driven by foreign investment rather than occupation rates. I moved out of the sea-to-sky about 6 years ago (I'm from Whistler) but I seem to recall huge amounts of apartment vacancy in Yaletown and even Coal Harbour areas. From what I've been reading in Canadian news, it seems that many of these properties remain empty and are not in the…

The official vacancy rate is low but the unofficial vacancy rate is much higher. Many empty units are kept off the rental market due to how tilted the rights are in favor of tenants. 39 percent of the landlords surveyed in 2003 said they kept vacant apartments off the market because of regulations. [1]

http://missionlocal.org/2015/06/a-closer-look-at-airbnbs-inn...

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#75

Post by honkhonkpants »

bduerst wrote: post #50
honkhonkpants wrote: post #40

When I look at this bill I have to wonder if it will really help. Outside of the city of San Francisco itself, almost nothing is being built, because the construction costs are too high. Not the permitting and planning costs, but the actual guys-with-hammers-and-saws costs. For example in Oakland there are number of properties that are fully entitled to build and have been sitting that way for years. So how does Brow…

Have you really been looking outside of SF? Redwood city, about 30-40 min south of SF, has been booming with building growth. Developers are building, but can't get approvals with local governments fast enough.

There are currently 18 residential projects in Redwood City, 7 of which are already entitled but not under construction, 1 which withdrew the application after being entitled, and three in planning, leaving 7 under construction. Given that half of the entitled projects are not proceeding, I don't see the evidence that the government is the one holding things back.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#76

Post by realkitkat »

rconti wrote: post #33
sytelus wrote: post #13

I highly doubt this bill would pass without severe modifications. The problem is that we have two groups in population: One who own houses and other who don't. First group don't want new houses and dilute value of their property. Politicans very well knows that making this group unhappy will end their careers. The second group is often in minority outside large cities. This is why its very hard to pass laws that woul…

I'm a lowly wage slave homeowner, but I support this.

Ditto. If only we could next rationalize and overhaul our property tax system / prop-13[1] of 1978. Then we might have a fighting chance of [ more ] affordable housing.

Maybe instead of paying linear tax based on purchase price, we could implement a reverse logarithmic scale for property tax % based on state / national / something average sales prices / sqft that would be re-assessed yearly. And then either apply that to all new home purchases, and when enacted, allow existing home owners to opt-in ( recent buyers ), or opt-out.

[1] http://www.californiataxdata.com/pdf/Prop13.pdf

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#77

Post by studentrob »

apsec112 wrote: post #69
carapace wrote: post #65

I'm in favor of how "building in the Bay Area is approved by discretion", I call it having some power over what gets built. "Democracy" y'know? I'm from SF. I grew up here. I'm also a computer nerd. To me, the tech "industry" has been ruining the city I love since the Dot-Com boom. To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. The saddest part is, this city kin…

This is absolutely democracy. It's just democracy on the state level, rather than the local level. In this case, the state level is appropriate, because San Francisco's policies have an effect on all the surrounding cities, and all the other Americans who might want to live in SF. Would it be "undemocratic" to say that San Francisco can't unilaterally vote to stop paying federal income taxes? In any case, cities will…

> San Francisco's policies have an effect on all the surrounding cities, and all the other Americans who might want to live in SF.

You could make that case for all regions of the world. Nobody is completely isolated. We breath the same air and everyone deals with the effects of pollution.

It's not a reason to prevent changing existing law.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#78

Post by superuser2 »

carapace wrote: post #65

I'm in favor of how "building in the Bay Area is approved by discretion", I call it having some power over what gets built. "Democracy" y'know? I'm from SF. I grew up here. I'm also a computer nerd. To me, the tech "industry" has been ruining the city I love since the Dot-Com boom. To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. The saddest part is, this city kin…

>Y'all "young gods" will just have to figure out some other place to hatch the singularity. Move away.

Tech employees are hated everywhere. Portland, Seattle, etc. want us gone just as much as everyone else. Why is your hatred special?

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#79

Post by honkhonkpants »

arebop wrote: post #49
honkhonkpants wrote: post #40

When I look at this bill I have to wonder if it will really help. Outside of the city of San Francisco itself, almost nothing is being built, because the construction costs are too high. Not the permitting and planning costs, but the actual guys-with-hammers-and-saws costs. For example in Oakland there are number of properties that are fully entitled to build and have been sitting that way for years. So how does Brow…

If construction costs explain the high price of bay area housing, how is it possible that houses in the midwest are produced at less than 1/5 the price? Are the Kansas guys with hammers really making 1/5 the wages of the California hammer swingers?

Construction costs do not explain housing prices, but construction costs do explain which developments are undertaken and which are not. Consider that construction costs are basically the same in Oakland and San Francisco, but prices are higher in San Francisco, it makes little sense to develop in Oakland. The profits are simply not there.

Re: Housing in the Bay Area

#80

Post by apsec112 »

carapace wrote: post #65

I'm in favor of how "building in the Bay Area is approved by discretion", I call it having some power over what gets built. "Democracy" y'know? I'm from SF. I grew up here. I'm also a computer nerd. To me, the tech "industry" has been ruining the city I love since the Dot-Com boom. To me, they are an invading army culturally speaking. In a very real sense my home is being destroyed. The saddest part is, this city kin…

"San Francisco is the largist metropolitan area with the most wilderness/open space around it in the world."

This bill specifically applies to development in urban areas only. More development in areas that are already urban will reduce pressure for cities to expand outward, into pristine wilderness. That's why environmentalist organizations like the Sierra Club support infill development: it's a low-water-use, low-greenhouse-gas alternative to suburban sprawl.

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