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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

#141

Post by joelwilliamson »

robbyking wrote: post #127
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...

According to your link, there are about 10,000 new units under construction. That's about 10-20 buildings worth. Not exactly a huge boom.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#142

Post by honkhonkpants »

hkmurakami wrote: post #139
honkhonkpants wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we can't do that right? Not to well-off, straight, white people! https://hoodwork-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/story/i... http://www.janetdelaney.com/south-of-market/ http://oaklandplanninghistory.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/1/1/181...

Richmond always feels distinctly Asian to me. "In the Richmond District neighborhood in San Francisco, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Asian (50.0%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (10.9%), and residents who report Irish roots (6.9%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (4.5%), along with some Russian ancestry residents (4.1%), among others.…

You're right about that. In light of history I was using "white" to mean "not black". Over the decade we haven't seen any problem in displacing black people by the thousands to build even things that weren't worth having, like the Cypress freeway and the Western Addition.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#143

Post by WildUtah »

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…

I can see the problems in that picture.

+street five times too wide

+snout houses with huge garages and driveways but few yards and porches

+low rise housing with one floor devoted to parking in a high demand area

+not nearly enough trees

+no street corner retail

But if you think that's bad, you should see 98% of the United States where it's much worse than the worst of San Francisco.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#144

Post by resu_nimda »

pauloday wrote: post #135
resu_nimda wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know that it's an "epidemic", but houses are certainly getting bigger in the US[1]. I can see why a block filled with yards/gardens and small buildings is preferable to a block filled with large buildings and not much else. This just seems like a newsletter for people who care about things like that enough to participate in their local government. I doubt I'd personally agree with many of their stances, but I…

This just seems like a newsletter for people who care about things like that enough to participate in their local government.

For other cities/locales you may be right, but in SF, it just seems offensive. We all know what the consensus epidemic is in the Bay Area, and attempting to use that word to imply that these poor landowners are being encroached upon is something I find reprehensible. Their "epidemic" is a trifling concern compared to what some are going through.

I can see why a block filled with yards/gardens and small buildings is preferable to a block filled with large buildings and not much else.

There are plenty of places in the country where you can find that. When very wealthy people stubbornly want to hold onto that in the middle of one of the most dense metro areas in the country, while people are being pushed out of their homes and homeless fill the streets, yeah I find it disgusting for them to talk about preserving their "much-needed psychological comfort zone." They can move out to the country if they really want all that stuff, they can afford it, not everyone can.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#145

Post by WildUtah »

3s933x7dpsh wrote: post #121
rictic wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

"with the stipulation that the buyer must reside out of the country."

If we could prevent them from getting a visa to come at all, we could do the same thing and we wouldn't even have to build the building. Just allocate a few address numbers on ritzy street corners and sell the "buildings" to investors stashing Russian or Chinese black market cash.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#146

Post by int_19h »

pauloday wrote: post #135
resu_nimda wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know that it's an "epidemic", but houses are certainly getting bigger in the US[1]. I can see why a block filled with yards/gardens and small buildings is preferable to a block filled with large buildings and not much else. This just seems like a newsletter for people who care about things like that enough to participate in their local government. I doubt I'd personally agree with many of their stances, but I…

>> I can see why a block filled with yards/gardens and small buildings is preferable to a block filled with large buildings and not much else.

Preferable to whom, though? Look at it from the perspective of one of those people who are renting in SF, and can barely afford that rent given your paycheck (or cannot afford it, actually, if you had to pay market value). I bet they would prefer a residence they can afford to the one they cannot.

So long as freedom of movement and freedom to buy and sell property are in place, it's either-or - either a given block will be affordable, or it will have yards/gardens and small buildings. The latter carries an implied statement that people below a certain income level simply shouldn't be there. I think it's clear why some would find it "legitimately disgusting".

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#148

Post by msie »

resu_nimda wrote: post #76
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…

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…

Are you saying the fear-mongering is legitimately disgusting? Or the idea of a "monster home epidemic"?

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#149

Post by WildUtah »

kurthr wrote: post #102
aetherson wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Se…

Tokyo's built-up area has population density near 150 (in persons/hectare, the SI unit of population density). It's nearly the same in the central wards and in the outer suburbs. Tokyo achieves that density with almost no one living in buildings over five stories high and the vast majority in free-standing single family homes under four stories.

San Francisco County, not including any suburbs, averages around 90, excluding big open spaces like the Presidio. The Bay Area is closer to 30, just in built-up areas, not including parks and open space.

Manhattan is about 500 and Paris 300.

Gp, of course, has fallen into the trap of including open space in his calculations. Most metro statistical aggregates include a lot of surrounding farmland, ocean, and parks and don't reflect density experienced by residents or development intensity on available land.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#150

Post by sliverstorm »

whordeley wrote: post #147

WOW, this is utterly profound! Like that time someone put an empty McDonalds cup on the floor of a fine art museum and everyone stood around proclaiming its genius.

Or, somewhat the reverse:

http://qz.com/535482/italian-museum-cleaners-mistook-a-conte...

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