Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart • Hacker News Board

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#101

Post by sneak » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:09 PM UTC

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…

SF is not in SV.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#102

Post by kurthr » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:12 PM UTC

aetherson wrote: post #86

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.

San Francisco is the second-densest large city in the United States (after NYC). It is denser than the Tokyo Metropolis (which, note, is not the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, which is less dense yet). (NYC density: 10,831 people/km^2. SF density: 7,152 people/km^2. Tokyo density: 6,200 people/km^2) Adding enough additional units to the city to make major changes to its affordability is not just a quick change to zoning la…

Population density in "Tokyo" is much higher than you describe at 15k/km2 on average with many wards of 300-500k persons that are OVER 20k/km2. The Tokyo Metropolis includes Yokohama which is 30km away (it's like including all of Marin/San Mateo/Oakland), while the Met Area you describe would be like the whole Bay Area down to San Jose and halfway to Sacramento. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo

Seoul, HK, Beijing are similar and I think India has much higher densities still. Population densities in many parts of the world are much higher than SF. I could take a picture out of my window right now of a block of ~200x30story apartment blocks right next to each other standing like soldiers. It's not rare.

Do I want that for SF? No, but the density isn't that extreme... unless you're talking about total $ borrowing power of the individuals involved.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#103

Post by stale2002 » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:12 PM UTC

aetherson wrote: post #86

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.

San Francisco is the second-densest large city in the United States (after NYC). It is denser than the Tokyo Metropolis (which, note, is not the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, which is less dense yet). (NYC density: 10,831 people/km^2. SF density: 7,152 people/km^2. Tokyo density: 6,200 people/km^2) Adding enough additional units to the city to make major changes to its affordability is not just a quick change to zoning la…

NYC density in FiDi is 27,812/km2 actually. There are TONS of places in SF that are much lower than this.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#104

Post by SilasX » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:14 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #100

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…

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…

Agreed. I hate how people keep casually mentioning that "oh, you could just build up n% of the low-rise areas", as if convincing all those neighborhoods to go along with it and replacing all those buildings were somehow easier -- politically or otherwise -- than 20 SoMa/FiDi high-rises.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#105

Post by honkhonkpants » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #99

honkhonkpants wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

If things are spread out and randomly distributed then you have a living economy reachable by foot. There will be a bakery, a barber, a library, and a cafe in your neighborhood. If you put all the houses in one place and all the bakeries in another, then you have to get in your car or on the bus to travel between them.

I always trot out Paris, but that's only because it's such a good example.

https://www.google.com/maps/search/bakery/@48.8858374,2.3347...

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#106

Post by uola » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

aetherson wrote: post #86

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.

San Francisco is the second-densest large city in the United States (after NYC). It is denser than the Tokyo Metropolis (which, note, is not the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, which is less dense yet). (NYC density: 10,831 people/km^2. SF density: 7,152 people/km^2. Tokyo density: 6,200 people/km^2) Adding enough additional units to the city to make major changes to its affordability is not just a quick change to zoning la…

Yes, there seem to be a common misconception that it's density as such that matters. Successful big cities are not based on density, but the fact that they go on and on (making some areas very dense indeed), while San Francisco quite quickly becomes suburbs. Everyone always comes dragig with examples of cities that developed over decades. A more apt, but still unlikely, comparison would be something like Vancouver. Personally I think that the ship sailed when the tech companies built campuses instead of towers.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#107

Post by baddox » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #59

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…

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?

I thought the key ingredient of astroturfing is the concealment of the source of the message. The idea is to make a centralized effort appear to not be centralized. I would say that providing templates to contact public officials would qualify as astroturfing. And yes, I would extend that attribution to many advocacy groups whose proposals I agree with.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#108

Post by baddox » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #104

stale2002 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agreed. I hate how people keep casually mentioning that "oh, you could just build up n% of the low-rise areas", as if convincing all those neighborhoods to go along with it and replacing all those buildings were somehow easier -- politically or otherwise -- than 20 SoMa/FiDi high-rises.

Ideally the political solution would be only a single step that allows property owners to build x-story buildings in certain zones. That shouldn't require the persuasion of every single neighborhood, because "neighborhood" shouldn't be a political unit with the ability to stop a property owner from building a structure that is permitted by the larger government's (i.e. the city's) zoning laws.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#109

Post by Mz » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

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 seriously doubt it is that simple. We have lows and policies at both the federal and state level that impact the price of housing. They have a different impact on both individuals and on housing in cities versus smaller towns or rural areas.

Trying to "correct" for what federal and state laws and policies do the housing situation in a specific location is quite burdensome. In order to fix some of what goes on in San Francisco, you would need to figure out the impact of those federal and state laws and policies and see if, realistically, anything can be done to counter them at the local level or if you would need to fight them at the state and/or federal level to have any hope of resolving the situation.

Just because the problem is obvious in San Francisco and significantly impacting the locals does not remotely mean it originates there and can be solved there.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#110

Post by uola » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 9:32 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #94

amyjess wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think the question is why San Francisco doesn't expand like, say, New York has? Where each new neighborhood becomes somewhat self sustaining. I seem like there would be a queue of people that wants to start a company in the cheaper part of town. I guess maybe SV is that cheaper part though.