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San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

sfstandard.com

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Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#111

Post by Spivak »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #20
guywithahat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underlying issue is government preventing development of both houses and office space. If you were to build more housing in any capacity that would risk lowering housing values and people (including politicians) would lose tens or even hundreds of millions in assets. This would be incredibly unpopular and won't happen anytime soon

> The underlying issue is government preventing development of both houses and office space. We live in a democracy. The underlying problem of government is voters. Most home owners ( especially in The Bay) refuse to allow anyone to build anything because they see that as a threat to their home value.

Unless your plan is to undermine democracy I don't see how you can really fix this. With some exception, the people who decide the rules for what is and isn't allowed to be built in an area are the people who live there. I can be mad all I want that a city/township doesn't want to provide me the kind of housing I want but it would be wrong to force them.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#112

Post by stavros »

lghh wrote: post #92
silicon2401 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe X should relax the legal requirements of Y That's a slippery slope. Lots of legal requirements exist to protect someone. Legal requirements for windows are pretty reasonable to ensure people have at least some bare minimum of access to natural light in their home, rather than just living in a box.

Seems to me like lots of people in SF would rather live in an indoor box than an outdoor box. Why not let those without homes choose if they are willing to take the risks associated with ignoring those rules over l king on the streets?

Presumably an office space would still cost more than a homeless person could afford, so it's not economical to convert an office to ultra-cheap housing.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#113

Post by whartung »

silicon2401 wrote: post #80
ethbr0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe SF should relax the legal requirements of residential space, then? If they choose not to build sufficient housing... they can at least choose to use what they have. A windowless room with a community bathroom doesn't sound appealing, but at a certain price point it's better than nothing.

> Maybe X should relax the legal requirements of Y That's a slippery slope. Lots of legal requirements exist to protect someone. Legal requirements for windows are pretty reasonable to ensure people have at least some bare minimum of access to natural light in their home, rather than just living in a box.

I can't say for certain, but I think most regulations about windows are about having an escape in case of disaster.

Specifically, there was house we were looking at, and one of the previous owners covered up the back porch.

However, one of the bedrooms used to overlook that back porch, and had a window on that wall.

They were not allowed to remove that window because "bedrooms have windows", even though the window was an interior window.

Similarly, we considered replacing our bedroom window with a bay window, but the code would not allow it because the windows were too small to allow egress.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#114

Post by woah »

tcmart14 wrote: post #37
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The underlying issue is government preventing development of both houses and office space. We live in a democracy. The underlying problem of government is voters. Most home owners ( especially in The Bay) refuse to allow anyone to build anything because they see that as a threat to their home value.

This guy gets it. It is NIMBYism at work. Whether it is keeping those ugly affordable apartments out of my neighborhood or wanting the housing supply restricted so I can keep my home value at peak value.

Building with no affordable units in it? Beyond the pale, the evil developers hate poor people and the units will all be bought be foreign billionaires who won't live there.

Building with x% percentage affordable units in it? Not enough affordable units and the units are not affordable enough. This will not offset the gentrification caused by the market rate units.

Building with high percentage of deeply affordable units in it? You can't just solve societal problems by throwing housing at it. The residents who will live in these deeply affordable units need social services to get their lives back on track.

Building with 100% deeply affordable units with on site social services? You can't put a homeless shelter in our neighborhood! The honest working class residents of this neighborhood have suffered enough from gentrification without having the homeless problem dumped on them too!

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#115

Post by seanmcdirmid »

silicon2401 wrote: post #80
ethbr0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe SF should relax the legal requirements of residential space, then? If they choose not to build sufficient housing... they can at least choose to use what they have. A windowless room with a community bathroom doesn't sound appealing, but at a certain price point it's better than nothing.

> Maybe X should relax the legal requirements of Y That's a slippery slope. Lots of legal requirements exist to protect someone. Legal requirements for windows are pretty reasonable to ensure people have at least some bare minimum of access to natural light in their home, rather than just living in a box.

> Legal requirements for windows

These are mostly for fire safety, not quality of life. Turns out not having a window during a fire has killed lots of people.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#116

Post by google234123 »

silicon2401 wrote: post #80
ethbr0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe SF should relax the legal requirements of residential space, then? If they choose not to build sufficient housing... they can at least choose to use what they have. A windowless room with a community bathroom doesn't sound appealing, but at a certain price point it's better than nothing.

> Maybe X should relax the legal requirements of Y That's a slippery slope. Lots of legal requirements exist to protect someone. Legal requirements for windows are pretty reasonable to ensure people have at least some bare minimum of access to natural light in their home, rather than just living in a box.

California has taken housing requirements to an extreme: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-broughel-hamilto...

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#117

Post by entropicdrifter »

lghh wrote: post #92
silicon2401 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe X should relax the legal requirements of Y That's a slippery slope. Lots of legal requirements exist to protect someone. Legal requirements for windows are pretty reasonable to ensure people have at least some bare minimum of access to natural light in their home, rather than just living in a box.

Seems to me like lots of people in SF would rather live in an indoor box than an outdoor box. Why not let those without homes choose if they are willing to take the risks associated with ignoring those rules over l king on the streets?

Because that's how you get the haves taking even greater advantage of the have-nots, to the point of injury, illness, and death in the name of slightly greater profits.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#119

Post by dopeboy »

x0x0 wrote: post #66
CTmystery wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the government ... is absolutely malevolent towards businesses. How so?

It kind of depends. Opening a restaurant is an absolutely hostile experience -- there are numerous articles discussing people's experiences. Opening a tech company in SF is very smooth sailing in the small (interaction with the government, registering, paying taxes, etc). Source: did it. Where SF fucks tech companies extraordinarily hard is housing costs (insane), commute times / options (even more insane, shockingly…

Given this experience, would you start a company in SF again? If not, where?

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#120

Post by samsolomon »

brandur wrote: post #63
sidvit wrote: post #34

How's this compare in other cities? Just annecdotally speaking, I feel like I know a lot more people who used to live and work in San Francisco who don't anymore post pandemic, as opposed to friends of mine who left and came back to Austin/New York/Seattle

Linked from the article, the Urban Displacement Project's recovery ranking dashboards [1] place San Francisco dead last amongst 60 major North American cities. [1] https://www.downtownrecovery.com/dashboards/recovery_ranking...

Whoa, not only last, but last by a long shot. Most of the cities toward the bottom in that list are in the lower 50s and upper 40s. Then you have the bottom 3—Portland at 41%, Cleveland at 36% and San Francisco at 31%.

That's quite a drop off.

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