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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

#71

Post by dougmccune »

Camillo wrote: post #66
dougmccune wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can the answer be both? If you're trying to use it as a chart to figure out home prices it doesn't provide enough information and it's misleading when it comes to determining the numeric relationship between regions. But if you're using it to get a sense of the impossibility of moving from one of the lower-cost parts of the city to one of the more expensive areas of SF, I think this captures that emotional feeling. I…

What are you talking about? The Richmond is not adjacent to Twin Peaks or Noe Valley. It's not even close. There are several neighborhoods in between.

You're right, but I was talking about the steady increase in price as you move from the Inner Richmond southeast toward Noe Valley on the sculpture. That cuts through the Haight, Cole Valley, Castro, etc. In terms of how I binned the data by hexagons, that's a diagonal progression across 4 adjacent hexagons, moving from an average price of $766/sq ft on the eastern side of the Inner Richmond across all the way up to $1,050 in Noe Valley. In the photos of the sculpture it might be hard to identify how much that rising part of the sculpture is actually moving south, but it is (and can be seen a bit better if you play with the model yourself or watch the animated gif of it rotating).

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#72

Post by rhino369 »

honkhonkpants wrote: post #45
lr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people who do not own (i.e., renters) in SF also do not want high rises. They feel like SF would have a long way to go before all of the foreign money runs out and those apartments would become affordable to them. In short, they don't think more building will benefit them in terms of housing, but will instead be bad for them in terms of quality of life, e.g., more people and traffic, etc.

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…

But a couple 45 story buildings will mean you don't have to put up a 5 story building on every corner. Or do both and make it really affordable.

You also have to consider that decreasing cost in SF will lead to increased demand.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#73

Post by honkhonkpants »

rhino369 wrote: post #72
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…

But a couple 45 story buildings will mean you don't have to put up a 5 story building on every corner. Or do both and make it really affordable. You also have to consider that decreasing cost in SF will lead to increased demand.

A 45-story building is much more expensive than 9 5-story buildings and causes localized transportation problems. You really want your housing, jobs, education, retail, and leisure spread around such that people can conduct most or all of their daily affairs on foot.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#74

Post by rictic »

lr wrote: post #31
umeshunni wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

A lot of people who do not own (i.e., renters) in SF also do not want high rises. They feel like SF would have a long way to go before all of the foreign money runs out and those apartments would become affordable to them. In short, they don't think more building will benefit them in terms of housing, but will instead be bad for them in terms of quality of life, e.g., more people and traffic, etc.

How do you square the narrative "units in these high rises would be bought out by investors and so no one would get to rent them" with "these high rises would attract too many people and too much traffic to the neighborhood"

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#75

Post by [deleted] »

arcticbull wrote: post #22
dougmccune wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good point! Yeah, please be advised there's artistic license taken and the Z-axis scale is arbitrary (well, not arbitrary, it's linear but stretched and certainly doesn't start at 0). You're totally right that the difference between the lowest areas and the highest isn't really as exaggerated as it appears. The real delta between lowest and highest is about 2.7x. I'd argue though that a difference between ~$500/…

My interpretation of it was that a 2.7X delta in price between lowest and highest isn't correlated linearly with affordability. i.e. a house that's twice as expensive per square foot doesn't make it half as affordable. People who already have to leverage themselves extensively to mortgage a property will never afford a property twice as expensive per square foot so it's actually infinitely less affordable, if you see…

[deleted]

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#76

Post by resu_nimda »

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…

Quoting the linked notice:

It is bad enough that the recent monster home epidemic is consuming every inch of a lot up to its maximum permissible limit to build supersized single-family homes. This legislation, in effect, enables the trend for a monster-home-plus-in-law at the cost of further eroding our mid-block open space that is a community resource providing residents with light, air, privacy, visual relief, and a much-needed psychological comfort zone.

I've never actually seen words like these penned, in favor of NIMBYism. SF is experiencing a "monster home epidemic"??? This is legitimately disgusting.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#77

Post by dpark »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #60
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.

> From what I read here on HN, SF is pretty messed up.

You probably shouldn't base your impression of SF entirely on the negative articles you read on HN. SF has some serious issues, but it also has a lot going for it. Namely, the job opportunities if you're in tech are great. The weather is great. Lots of the area is beautiful. It's a liberal area (great if that fits your views), including being LGBT-friendly. It's got some great culture if you're in tech.

The biggest problem with SF seems to be housing affordability, and that's frankly not a huge problem for 6-figure earners (not the way it is for the real middle class), despite all the self-pity. 6-figure earners in the bay can afford housing, even if they can't afford what they want to own.

> So, if someone doesn't want to live somewhere messed up, don't go there to begin with.

This isn't helpful for the nearly million people who already live in SF or the millions who live in the surrounding areas.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#78

Post by oldmanjay »

dougmccune wrote: post #16
corysama wrote: post #14

Very beautiful, poetic, relevant to a lot of the audience of HN, and props for detailing the tech behind it. Meanwhile... the highest and lowest hex I can spot is 1265 / 457 = a ratio of 2.76 with both endpoints having relatively steep curves compared to the rest of the histogram. With the graph's Z0 set to 457 and Zscale set to an arbitrary ratio, the sculpture-graph conveys the impression that there is a discrepanc…

Very good point! Yeah, please be advised there's artistic license taken and the Z-axis scale is arbitrary (well, not arbitrary, it's linear but stretched and certainly doesn't start at 0). You're totally right that the difference between the lowest areas and the highest isn't really as exaggerated as it appears. The real delta between lowest and highest is about 2.7x. I'd argue though that a difference between ~$500/…

That's the sort of "artistic license" that leads the adherents to the politics of envy to make proclamations about how life is somehow less worth living when you know someone else has more than you. When charitable, people call it hyperbole. At its core, it is simple emotional manipulation. At least you were subtle about it!

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#79

Post by jdavis703 »

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…

I think the answer to this is the city should do all the land acquisition/architecture/engineering/environmental impact research/planning approval, and then offer that completed package for developers to bid on. This will make it much easier for developers to build projects as they'll not have to worry about paying these up-front costs only to have the city reject their proposals, while still allowing voters to ensure truly terrible projects aren't built. Surely there must be downsides to this approach, what are they?

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#80

Post by Apocryphon »

dougmccune wrote: post #54
unstatusthequo wrote: post #52

Maybe if he sells a lot of these he can afford a million dollar fixer upper or teardown.

I moved to Oakland

Let's hope that you won't have to build a second sculpture for there in the future, too. But Oakland seems to have more prudent housing measures in place.
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