Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco • Hacker News Board

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#21

Post by andrewfong » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 5:47 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #14

By San Francisco, I suspect they mean the San Francisco Bay area. While building in SF proper would decrease rents there, we can't have everyone who wants to move to the Bay Area live in San Francisco proper. Keeping this in mind, SF proper has a natural and inherent economic rent. So there is only so much pressure more building could relieve in SF proper. That said, I don't think many people would have much issue wi…

> While building in SF proper would decrease rents there

I'm not sure that's a given. Building lots of luxury housing in SF might actually decrease rent in Oakland and other parts of the Bay Area but not have an appreciable effect on rent in SF proper, at least in the short term. In fact, you could even argue that because of network effects and gentrification, building more luxury housing in SF would actually increase rents locally, even as it decreased rents regionally.

And that actually could explain why it's rational for some low-income residents of SF to oppose (or impose conditions on) new construction in SF itself. Increasing the geographic segregation between rich and poor can impact tax revenue, crime, education, transit, and regional politics in ways that particularly hurt the poor.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#22

Post by mblakele » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 5:49 AM UTC

wozniacki wrote: post #20

mc32 wrote: post #14

By San Francisco, I suspect they mean the San Francisco Bay area. While building in SF proper would decrease rents there, we can't have everyone who wants to move to the Bay Area live in San Francisco proper. Keeping this in mind, SF proper has a natural and inherent economic rent. So there is only so much pressure more building could relieve in SF proper. That said, I don't think many people would have much issue wi…

The problem is the whole bay area is averse to build up. Mostly true. However, that somewhat diminishes the degree by which SF especially is averse to construction, and more worryingly is averse to outsiders of all kinds - not just culturally misplaced Midwestern-ers - which is quite telling. Its a special brand of NIMBYism not found elsewhere. The following comment is also from the Economist piece and sheds light on…

I think of it as parochialism, but there may be a better word.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#23

Post by avn2109 » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 5:50 AM UTC

sparkman55 wrote: post #15

rsync wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about a city that just built a brand new, terabuck priced stadium (which will be around for 20-30 years) 43 miles out of the city in a car-centric suburb.

I couldn't believe that the new 49ers stadium (in Santa Clara) cost a trillion dollars, so I looked it up. It cost $1.2 billion [1] - a "gigabuck" rather than a "terabuck." To put that in perspective, a single office building in nearby Palo Alto just sold for $300 million. [2] Judging from the people driving up and down 101 with flags flying, the people wearing 49ers jerseys year-round in San Jose, the big BBQs hangi…

In other news, applying SI prefixes to atypical units is really fun. It reminds me of how civil engineers use kilo-pounds aka "kips."

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#24

Post by caseyf7 » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 5:51 AM UTC

SF has felt unbearably constrained before. Then 2001 happened and there were tumbleweeds on 101. The people that were left had dozens of friends that left. Tech is fundamentally stronger this time around, but not by that much. Everyone is talking about the supply and demand of housing, but we also need to consider the supply and demand of six figure jobs.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#25

Post by bronson » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 5:55 AM UTC

epicureanideal wrote: post #18

Why doesn't someone raise a VC fund to build another Silicon Valley somewhere else? I personally don't think it involves that much magic. Just build a brand new giant university in a relatively cheap place where you've bought up a ridiculous amount of land. Hire a bunch of Ivy League professors to teach there and establish departments. Market heavily. Around the university, build tons of housing for students. Further…

You can live there right now.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hsieh%20vegas&sort=byDate&pref...

There's no university but the Downtown Project has everything else you want.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#26

Post by grundprinzip » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 5:55 AM UTC

Something that is (typically) left out in these articles about how expensive rent in SF is, is that even for tech folks with rather high income the city becomes too expensive as soon as you have family. It might be ok to pay 2.5k per bedroom when you're single, but when you pay an additional 1.5k per child in daycare perspective changes.

In my opinion, if the trans-bay (e.g. Oakland to San Mateo) and around-the-bay (Berkeley - SJ) public transport would be reasonable in terms of time, things could normalize easier. It could take some pressure of the rent market as more opportunities could be found in other places.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#27

Post by epicureanideal » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 5:57 AM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #19

epicureanideal wrote: post #18

Why doesn't someone raise a VC fund to build another Silicon Valley somewhere else? I personally don't think it involves that much magic. Just build a brand new giant university in a relatively cheap place where you've bought up a ridiculous amount of land. Hire a bunch of Ivy League professors to teach there and establish departments. Market heavily. Around the university, build tons of housing for students. Further…

If by "expensive" you mean "billions"... with profitability not nearly so assured. You cannot simply build some of those things. Culture and good schools take decades to build.

Many people would probably agree with you but my personal unsubstantiated opinion is that both can be bought. Want good schools? Hire good teachers (and bring in a class of workers who care about their kids' educations and help their children succeed). Want culture? Hire musicians, artists, etc. Other natural culture will come by building the right kind of environment (see The Timeless Way of Building) and bringing in a bunch of talented people with cash to spend to generate the kind of environment they want by paying for bands to play, artists to make art, baristas, bartenders, etc.

Re: Olin College, I don't often hear it as often as Stanford probably because of the relative size of the marketing budget, but the software engineers who come out of Olin College are probably not paid so significantly less that a 30-40% reduction in rent wouldn't compensate.

Re: $Billions... Or a couple thousand software engineers organized to invest together.

Re: "You simply cannot build some of those things." Challenge accepted! Er, well, but I'm short about a billion dollars in order to attempt it. Know anybody who can help with that?

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#28

Post by Kalium » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 5:58 AM UTC

mblakele wrote: post #22

wozniacki wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the whole bay area is averse to build up. Mostly true. However, that somewhat diminishes the degree by which SF especially is averse to construction, and more worryingly is averse to outsiders of all kinds - not just culturally misplaced Midwestern-ers - which is quite telling. Its a special brand of NIMBYism not found elsewhere. The following comment is also from the Economist piece and sheds light on…

I think of it as parochialism, but there may be a better word.

I've started using the word privilege to describe it to San Franciscans. The reactions this gets are interesting.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#29

Post by epicureanideal » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 5:59 AM UTC

bronson wrote: post #25

epicureanideal wrote: post #18

Why doesn't someone raise a VC fund to build another Silicon Valley somewhere else? I personally don't think it involves that much magic. Just build a brand new giant university in a relatively cheap place where you've bought up a ridiculous amount of land. Hire a bunch of Ivy League professors to teach there and establish departments. Market heavily. Around the university, build tons of housing for students. Further…

You can live there right now. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hsieh%20vegas&sort=byDate&pref... There's no university but the Downtown Project has everything else you want.

I heard about this before, but I am not familiar with exactly what went wrong. I'd imagine a bunch of things could be learned from this so it wouldn't happen again.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#30

Post by Kalium » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 6:01 AM UTC

epicureanideal wrote: post #27

Kalium wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "expensive" you mean "billions"... with profitability not nearly so assured. You cannot simply build some of those things. Culture and good schools take decades to build.

Many people would probably agree with you but my personal unsubstantiated opinion is that both can be bought. Want good schools? Hire good teachers (and bring in a class of workers who care about their kids' educations and help their children succeed). Want culture? Hire musicians, artists, etc. Other natural culture will come by building the right kind of environment (see The Timeless Way of Building) and bringing i…

People can and do try to build good schools with cold hard cash. However... when was the last time you heard Olin College mentioned in the same breath as Stanford?

It's much, much easier said than done. It's still the work of decades and absurd amounts of money. Every freaking city of notable size in America has tried to dump money into getting their own local startup ecosystem going, and most of them have gone a lot of nowhere.