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Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

dougmccune.com

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Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#51

Post by dougmccune »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #46
iaw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doug, set up a shop with your designs for sale.

And if you don't want to (because you'd rather be making art than websites, say), then ask. There are a metric truckload of people here who could do one for you...

Thanks for the suggestion. It's not the website aspect of selling stuff that's the blocker. It's more the figuring out how to do pricing, shipping, networking in the art world, etc. And I'm still working up the self confidence to be able to call myself an artist with a straight face and say it confidently enough to ask for money and get someone to write a check.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#53

Post by yonran »

notadoc wrote: post #26

Why is SF so opposed to building up? Build more high rises filled with apartments and condos, there are plenty of areas that could be rezoned to accommodate high rise living.

The book Left Coast City (https://www.amazon.com/Left-Coast-City-Progressive-Francisco...) describes the characters of the anti-highrise “growth wars” of the 1980s. In short, San Francisco’s 1980s-era progressives believe that the private market is greedy and irrational (since big business redeveloped slums in the 1950s and overbuilt vacant downtown offices in the 1980s) and can’t be trusted to build what people need, and therefore we need community veto power and strong eviction protection. These activists also grew up back when the media taught that urban life was un-environmental (see the chapter on ditching the Lorax in Triumph of the City https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healt...), so they support height limits too. The same anti-development activists of the 1980s (e.g. Tim Redmond, Calvin Welch, Sue Hestor) are still active today to oppose all big development including housing.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#55

Post by unstatusthequo »

notadoc wrote: post #26

Why is SF so opposed to building up? Build more high rises filled with apartments and condos, there are plenty of areas that could be rezoned to accommodate high rise living.

Ground moves sometimes and the fancy commercial ones (like.nee Salesgorce obelisk) bring higher price per sqft than residential.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#57

Post by lr »

lr wrote: post #50
honkhonkpants wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High rises are one thing but they are not the way to solve SF's housing shortage. One 5-story building on one corner of every block in the sunset would easily relieve the shortage. Geographically speaking most of SF already suffers from poor quality of life. Except for the northeast quadrant of the city, SF is dominated by flat, boring, ugly zones of car-centered banality. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7398485,-122…

Yes, it is a suburb inside of a city. And the inhabitants of that area of The City like it that way. The people who live in the Sunset and Richmond form very powerful political blocks, and you're going to have to do a lot to unseat their representatives on the Board of Supervisors.

Maybe start-ups can convince their employees to move to the Sunset with the singular goal of voting in a pro-growth person to the Board of Supervisors. You can do this one district at a time.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#58

Post by wpietri »

tomschlick wrote: post #4

As an outsider, the solution to the SF housing issues seem pretty simple... Vote out the NIMBY politicians and replace them with people who will change zoning laws to allow for more building. I'd assume almost no one likes the current situation unless they are a landlord.

Your theory here is that there is a one-way relationship between supply and demand, but that's not the case. Increasing supply pushed down on prices, but that can increase demand, sustaining high prices.

That's especially important during a boom (or bubble, depending on your view). With the rise in prices, many companies are finally looking at putting offices elsewhere, or allowing more remote work. Building more housing would have only dropped prices if the pace of building outstripped the tech sector's ability to create jobs, which is prodigious. At a recent SF CTO conference, a number of speakers talked up non-SF options, something I wasn't hearing 5-10 years ago.

As to who likes the status quo, you ignore that "more building" here mostly means "tear down existing buildings and build bigger ones". That is a gain for the people moving in to the eventual new units. But it's a clear loss for the people forced to move, and a disruption of existing communities.

I have yet to meet a SF "build more" advocate so committed that they tore down their own home and replaced it more units.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#59

Post by SilasX »

umeshunni wrote: post #12
tomschlick wrote: post #4

As an outsider, the solution to the SF housing issues seem pretty simple... Vote out the NIMBY politicians and replace them with people who will change zoning laws to allow for more building. I'd assume almost no one likes the current situation unless they are a landlord.

>> almost no one likes the current situation unless they are a landlord. Anyone who owns property in the city, whether they are a homeowner or a landlord, likes the current situation. For non-landlord homeowners, the current situation keeps their property values and home equity high and it ensures that the neighborhood and quality of life they bought into stays permanently stuck in time. My local Nimby group, for e.g…

Astroturfing is when they send out of a bunch of professional advocacy designed to look "grassroots" in the sense of "just ordinary people who care about the issue".

I don't see how "a legit neighborhood group asking residents to contact their officials" fits that model; why do you say it's astroturfing?

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#60

Post by JustSomeNobody »

tomschlick wrote: post #4

As an outsider, the solution to the SF housing issues seem pretty simple... Vote out the NIMBY politicians and replace them with people who will change zoning laws to allow for more building. I'd assume almost no one likes the current situation unless they are a landlord.

The real solution is don't live in SF.

Seriously. From what I read here on HN, SF is pretty messed up. So, if someone doesn't want to live somewhere messed up, don't go there to begin with. One can't move near an airport and complain about the noise.

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