Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

dougmccune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 212 posts

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#121

Post by 3s933x7dpsh »

rictic wrote: post #74
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.

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"

+1. If the problem is that absent foreign investors are buying up all the housing stock, maybe we should make a 100 story tower on some parking lot in SOMA and sell each floor as a $5M luxurious penthouse unit with the stipulation that the buyer must reside out of the country. Boom, we just took a bunch of those foreign investors out of the market without increasing traffic and decreased the annual US trade deficit by 1% to boot.

Fundamentally, if people outside the country want to buy our housing, we should be happy about that, and create jobs by building housing to meet the demand. Imagine if our reaction to Chinese demand for Buicks was to limit car manufacturing and complain that foreign investors are making Buicks unaffordable.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#123

Post by honkhonkpants »

3s933x7dpsh wrote: post #120
honkhonkpants wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are examples of that working and there are examples of shorter heights working equally well. I enjoy them both (Manhattan and Paris as examples of the two types) but what SF is doing doesn't really work for me. All the high rise residences are being built in a small area south of Market, but in the same neighborhoods there's nothing to do, nothing to eat, no public spaces. It's not very livable.

I can't agree, there are lots of restaurants in SOMA as well as the city's best nightlife IMO.

Nightlife I'll grant you. But I bet if you moved into the new apartments on Beale and Folsom you'd take an Uber everywhere, because there's nowhere to eat lunch on a Saturday within half a mile, and the nightlife is 1.5+ miles away.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#124

Post by dcosson »

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.

> 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

The frustrating thing about this NIMBY argument, is that it's usually presented as the progressive option, it's standing up for the people. But in reality it's often selfish - homeowners/landlords who have a lot to gain are gaining support for their cause, by getting the disenfranchised to basically decide "If I'm going to be priced out of the city anyway, I'm gonna take as many other people as I can out with me". When in reality, many of them would have a shot at not getting priced out at all with better policy (or at least a shot at making "getting priced out" not so bad, e.g. more housing supply in the city & in neighboring towns -> prices drop a little in the city -> prices drop a lot outside of the city within easy commuting distance).

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#125

Post by azernik »

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 think he's trying to say it's not astroturfing - ie that is too large-scale for that. Thereby preempting dismissal of this anecdotal evidence.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#126

Post by 3s933x7dpsh »

honkhonkpants wrote: post #123
3s933x7dpsh wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree, there are lots of restaurants in SOMA as well as the city's best nightlife IMO.

Nightlife I'll grant you. But I bet if you moved into the new apartments on Beale and Folsom you'd take an Uber everywhere, because there's nowhere to eat lunch on a Saturday within half a mile, and the nightlife is 1.5+ miles away.

That part in the middle of South Beach is a weird little restaurant desert. However if you are willing to make the 10 minute walk I'd recommend the Delancey Street Restaurant for a nice place for brunch with a good social mission. I had many a mimosa there when living in the corporate housing across the street.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#127

Post by robbyking »

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.

It's not; there are literally tens of thousands of new units currently under construction[1] in the City. The issue people have is most proposals for new construction in San Francisco consist almost exclusively of luxury housing.

There's no shortage of housing in San Francisco, only a shortage of affordable housing.

[1] http://paragon-re.com/San_Francisco_Housing_Development_Repo...

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#128

Post by cloudjacker »

andrewbinstock wrote: post #88
cloudjacker wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, SF is merely masquerading as a world class city, by the people that live in the area. It has no grip on its elementary problems that actual world class cities have developed solutions for. But you can have a good time there. Nobody will actually know if you live in an apartment and have startups give you free food everyday, or if you live in a tent under the highway. Now if you are trying to earn enough to make…

What makes a world-class city? I'd say great architecture, great culture, high-quality museums, good schools, great universities, excellent hospitals. And people who care about each other. San Francisco has all of those.

Visit another self-proclaimed world class city and see what functions better

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#130

Post by School-Cotton »

aetherson wrote: post #112
stale2002 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But in fact the financial district is not all of NYC. And there are plenty of places in SF that have higher than its overall average of 7,100/km^2. The point is, the meme in HN is that San Francisco is some weird spread out suburb like, I don't know, Houston (1,414 people/km^2). It's not. It's already quite dense. Could it be denser? Obviously yes. Could it QUICKLY become SO MUCH denser that it radically changes the…

Regardless of what the density numbers show (which I suspect depends much more on what we choose to define as "the city" than on any reality), anecdotally it's impossible to get around comfortably in SF without a car.

Being able to live without a car is the defining characteristic of a real city as opposed to a sprawled-out suburb, in my mind.

Post reply on HN