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Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

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Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#91

Post by roflchoppa »

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.

You should see what the people are doing over at Laguna Seca, you bought your house next to a race track and you're complaining about the sound? Completely baffling.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#92

Post by alexandercrohde »

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.

As an insider (resident), that's the "solution" if you only look at 1 variable in this huge equation.

I think we should ask why people still want to live here when it costs so much. Yes jobs are part of it. But the other fact is that 30 story apartment complexes have negative externalities. Unique, historical victorians are part of what makes this city special (and parks), and if we let them be replaced with apartment complexes it'd destroy a piece of this city's appeal.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#93

Post by Kalium »

amyjess wrote: post #84
dpark wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> It's got some great culture if you're in tech. Honestly, I find the culture of Silicon Valley's tech industry to be utterly degenerate. Even if the area was affordable, I wouldn't live or work there in large part because SV puts me off. I work in tech, I'm LGBT myself (multiple letters of LGBT at that), and the Dallas area is pretty much everything I want in a city. I honestly don't get why the Bay Area doesn't jus…

The Bay Area already has sprawled north, south, and east. I have coworkers who commute from all those directions. It's hit the limit of the current transit infrastructure, and adding more is cost and time prohibitive.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#94

Post by dpark »

amyjess wrote: post #84
dpark wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> It's got some great culture if you're in tech. Honestly, I find the culture of Silicon Valley's tech industry to be utterly degenerate. Even if the area was affordable, I wouldn't live or work there in large part because SV puts me off. I work in tech, I'm LGBT myself (multiple letters of LGBT at that), and the Dallas area is pretty much everything I want in a city. I honestly don't get why the Bay Area doesn't jus…

> Honestly, I find the culture of Silicon Valley's tech industry to be utterly degenerate.

I'm not sure what that means. I was mostly referring to the fact that there are a ton of techies there. If you want to strike up a conversation about microservices with a stranger on the street, SF is probably the easiest place to do so.

> I honestly don't get why the Bay Area doesn't just expand outward.

Traffic, probably. It takes about 30 minutes to commute from Oakland to SF, and those two are pretty close geographically. Your commute could be far longer depending on where you live and work in the existing Bay Area. I doubt most people want to commute an hour from San Ramon to SF.

Plus there are mountains not far east of the Bay. I'm not sure how much of that land is easily developed.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#95

Post by cag_ii »

meddlepal wrote: post #65
lr wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or startups could just go to cheaper COL cities.

It's strange how far out of the way people will go to avoid the obvious.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#96

Post by brixon »

lordnacho wrote: post #89
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was there a couple of times last year. Mostly seemed like any other large city, except it's too low-rise to make sense. Actually not a pretty place, a lot of boring buildings. (Landmarks are different.) The thing that really stood out to me, however, was that there seems to be a lack of psychiatric care. Almost every day I was there I would run into some guy who was having an argument with an imaginary person. Ofte…

The US does not handle it's population of people with mental illness very well. A large percentage of the US homeless population have mental illness and cities with good weather have a much higher number of homeless people.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#97

Post by xanadohnt »

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.

I just moved myself, wife, and toddler out of Cole Valley to Seattle. We had to leave because - you guessed it - cost of living. My position is head of engineering for a small SaaS company. I make a _very_ healthy living by any standard yet couldn't afford to stay in SF with a family. It's bitter sweet; the bay area is absolutely amazing. But Seattle is a very close second and we're happy we can afford a comfortable life here.

Now my point - We became members of the the Cole Valley neighborhood association and the only involvement my wife and I had was reading the monthly newsletter. The newsletter's tone and NIMBYism was astounding! Laughably-so that it was a constant source of jokes and conversation. My wife and me kept returning to how, for she and I, that perspective was shortsighted; we believe that attitude actively works against protecting the very thing that makes the city great - diversity in arts, culture, and food & beverage. If NIMBYism truly prevailed this would all go away to a homogenous super-elite. ... but maybe that's the goal. :(

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#98

Post by cag_ii »

Camillo wrote: post #69
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…

Right, the notion that there is no room in SF is a complete lie. The Sunset and the Richmond could be completely razed to the ground and rebuilt at mid-rise density.

Wow, do you read what your writing? Razing a neighborhood like some sort of conquering force?!

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#99

Post by rhino369 »

honkhonkpants wrote: post #73
rhino369 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>A 45-story building is much more expensive than 9 5-story buildings

Including land costs, is that really true? I sort of doubt it, since those sorts of high rises are built in cities where land prices aren't that high.

> 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.

Don't you want the opposite of that? If it is spread, you spend more time traveling. Public transit that is spread out is very hard to accomplish. Cities with that stuff all spread out are car cities.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#100

Post by stale2002 »

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…

The problem with building mid sized apartments everywhere, is that now you have to be involved in political fights everywhere.

With high rise buildings, all you need to do is convince ONE place to build a bunch of them. Perhaps in a place such as south SOMA, which is packed with industrial warehouses that could be replaced with apartment sky scrapers.

Nobody is going to be gentrified when the old dirty warehouses in south SOMA get replaced.

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