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Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

forbes.com

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Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#71

Post by hollerith »

briandon wrote: post #66
gobbluth wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with you and MJN. The US is in desperate need of investment in public transportation. Europeans have absolutely mastered the art of urban design and public transportation, and I wish we'd learn from their example. But try telling 99% of the US that 1) their shitty sprawled real estate is effectively worthless, 2) their obese asses will have to give up their cars, and 3) we've spent 70 years of infrastructure i…

I don't disagree with you per se, but I have spent nearly a decade living in a city which has amazingly great public transport, very dense living arrangements (30-story highrises are the norm), and people walk constantly. Are you ready to go grocery shopping pretty much every single day or every other day? Or can you manage to be at home during a 6-hour window for the grocery delivery if you want to shop once a week…

Please tell us which city you just described.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#72

Post by briandon »

hollerith wrote: post #71
briandon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you per se, but I have spent nearly a decade living in a city which has amazingly great public transport, very dense living arrangements (30-story highrises are the norm), and people walk constantly. Are you ready to go grocery shopping pretty much every single day or every other day? Or can you manage to be at home during a 6-hour window for the grocery delivery if you want to shop once a week…

Please tell us which city you just described.

I live in Hong Kong.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#73

Post by mturmon »

Apocryphon wrote: post #43
Androsynth wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been south of Palo Alto? There is not much of a difference between San Jose and LA (I have lived in both). Besides, LA is not ugly because of the population density, but because of the endless sprawl.

How do the two cities resemble each other? SJ seems sleepy and is basically a giant suburb.

Parts of the western San Fernando valley, which lies within LA proper, are not that dissimilar from SJ.

And, when people say "LA", they really mean the LA area, which contains not only the city itself, but outlying/surrounded cities like Pasadena, Santa Monica, Compton, Long Beach, etc.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#74

Post by DanBlake »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #45
DanBlake wrote: post #27

As a new landlord in San Francisco, I can tell you that the biggest issue forcing this is rent control. The way rent control works is certainly designed to help those in need but instead it creates a artificial demand for affordable housing. Without rent control, the market is free to compete and suddenly open up a ton of bottled up apartments. The issue is, a family on welfare with a income of 40k a year should not…

What's your thought on Prop 13? It's hard to imagine why owners should be insulated from tax increases while tenants should not be insulated from rent increases.

The 1% is tied to the market value of the home, at the time of taxation. Its saying, they will never tax you more than 1% of the market value of your home.

Rent control is tied to the time of original purchase. If you want to say that your rent can never be more than 1% of market rent, sure- sounds good.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#76

Post by nickpinkston »

luser001 wrote: post #65
mjn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that building regulations are precisely what is causing the the area to following an LA-style trajectory. San Francisco is one thing, and reasonably dense. But the huge sprawl of Palo Alto, Mountain View, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Gatos, etc., is caused by all these communities wanting to be LA-style suburbs with no dense housing, and enacting laws accordingly.

Hmm, there's a HUGE difference between LA-style suburbs and the Bay Area. In LA-style suburbs, you have drive about 10 miles to a shopping mall, i.e., residental areas have no businesses apart from the occassional gas station. That's because these areas were unpopulated desert or something which got converted into housing. By contrast, each of the towns in the Bay Area was a standalone town of its own with its own do…

I have to say - whenever I drive the 101 - I'm reminded of LA. It's actually less dense than most of LA. I live in the Richmond which is probably about twice as dense housing wise as most of LA's working class neighborhoods.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#77

Post by nickpinkston »

gobbluth wrote: post #38
DanI-S wrote: post #13

The Bay Area is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and if they turn it into another Los Angeles I will cry. This country is phenomenally huge and there is no reason whatsoever to live clustered together in vile, concrete scabs. Compact cities are more efficient, but congested urban sprawl is most definitely not. Strict building regulations are part of what make this place productive and desirable in the f…

I also love San Francisco, but you have the wrong target in mind. Urban density is GOOD. What sucks is a car-centric culture that forces sprawl. You want a NYC or European-style transportation system, where it's completely unnecessary to own dangerous, unreliable, expensive automobiles. Cities designed around walking -- like the good parts of San Francisco -- are WAY more human-friendly and memorable. I guarantee tha…

Agree completely!

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#78

Post by bitops »

mahyarm wrote: post #69
rayval wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with rent control. San Francisco is just one part of the Bay Area, and the Bay Area is just one part of California. The entire state has high real estate prices, despite pockets of low-priced housing (Stockton, for example). Law of supply and demand: a lot of people don't want to live in freezing Minneapolis or bleak Detroit. Or Mumbai or Monterrey, for that matter. Rich or poor, they would rat…

If it's really weather, why are almost all of the east coast sun states significantly cheaper? And two of them don't have a state income tax! (Florida and Texas). New York also has fairly shitty weather comparatively and it's even more expensive. It's more complicated than that. Prop 13, cities forcing a lack of density and other polices and forces I don't know about push California to it's sky high rates.

> If it's really weather, why are almost all of the east coast sun states significantly cheaper?

Simple - people don't want to live in those states as much as California. For example, we have palm trees in California. They have them in Florida too - it's not the same!

Similarly, Texas also has nice weather but it's way more variable than California which has a fairly temperate climate. In TX crazy temperature swings are the norm. Also, I've known a number of Texans throughout my time in the Bay Area, pretty much all of them from Austin. The culture of Austin is the most like California and San Francisco - artsy, liberal, etc. Places like Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio are decidedly not like San Francisco.

To your point about Prop 13, I agree that it's an issue, and it's definitely a major part of why we keep having this budget crisis over and over and over again, every friggin' year. Sadly, I don't think Prop 13 will be abolished or really revised until the state is completely broke - much worse than it is now. But eventually it will change.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#79

Post by Androsynth »

Apocryphon wrote: post #43
Androsynth wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been south of Palo Alto? There is not much of a difference between San Jose and LA (I have lived in both). Besides, LA is not ugly because of the population density, but because of the endless sprawl.

How do the two cities resemble each other? SJ seems sleepy and is basically a giant suburb.

Parts of it are sleepy, parts of it arent. But really its just endless tract housing and strip malls.

(also similar: minimal amount of nature within the city itself; lots of concrete but not in an elegant urban way; not much in the way of historical sections)

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#80

Post by hristov »

DanBlake wrote: post #27

As a new landlord in San Francisco, I can tell you that the biggest issue forcing this is rent control. The way rent control works is certainly designed to help those in need but instead it creates a artificial demand for affordable housing. Without rent control, the market is free to compete and suddenly open up a ton of bottled up apartments. The issue is, a family on welfare with a income of 40k a year should not…

As a new landlord in San Francisco, you want to get rent control abolished so that you make lots of money. But of course when you bought your property you knew it was rent controlled and what the rent control price was, so if you do own rent controlled buildings you should have known what you were getting into.

Rent control does not really affect growth of housing, because new housing is almost never rent controlled. Furthermore, abolishment of rent control would also create a lot of inflation in a city because a city cannot function on engineers only. And once low income people get forced out of town they will want more money commute to the city.

So it is not such a black and white issue.

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