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Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

economist.com

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Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#31

Post by toast0 »

rsync wrote: post #13
avn2109 wrote: post #6

>> "Maybe we simply come up with better ways to build and design cities..." Reading that, I can't help but think that the canonically best methods for how to "build and design cities" have been pretty well understood for decades [0], if not much longer [1]. We in America have just been doing it wrong on purpose for quite a while (perhaps in order to goose suburban construction and automobile sales?) So the problem is…

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.

Don't worry, the site has poor access by car as well as by transit! (It's not particularly close to 101; it's closish to 237, but 237 is terrible, etc)

Could be worse, the SJ Earthquake's stadium is adjacent to caltrain, but you have to take a crazy bus route to get there. You can see it, but you can't walk to it.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#32

Post by mc32 »

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 don't know why, but there are a great many SFers who like to think of themselves as progressives (in the modern liberal sense) and have this weird affectation where they like to let you know what nth generation SFer they are. Like it makes a difference or as if I cared.

What i can't parse is that these are the same people who say they are for more immigrant rights --whatever one thinks of immigrant rights, I can't square their desire to tell you how genuine a San Franciscan they are and the proof is in their being nth generation. So a 6th gen SFer has more status than a 5th gen SFer and so on.

SF is the only place I've seen where people feel compelled to tell you their gen as if it were status in and of itself somehow.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#33

Post by avn2109 »

ktothemc wrote: post #17
avn2109 wrote: post #6

>> "Maybe we simply come up with better ways to build and design cities..." Reading that, I can't help but think that the canonically best methods for how to "build and design cities" have been pretty well understood for decades [0], if not much longer [1]. We in America have just been doing it wrong on purpose for quite a while (perhaps in order to goose suburban construction and automobile sales?) So the problem is…

Much of SF's urban planning and restrictionist attitude toward change is Jane Jacobs' work taken to its illogical extreme. (That's the book you just cited in [0]). Jacobs led a reaction toward Modernist top-down planning practices and urban renewal, which eradicated vibrant and lively communities in places like her home neighborhood of West Village. She celebrated the chaos and the street ballet cultivated by a mix o…

I have always thought that the West Village is so gentrified today because it's essentially one-of-a-kind. I.e. Jane Jacobs' ideas were (almost) not implemented completely in any other neighborhood in America, so everyone in the country who wants to live like that is forced to compete on price for the half mile square around Christopher street or what have you. But I wouldn't say the vibrance and liveliness has been "eradicated;" it's still pretty peppy all day and most of the night.

And I'm not sure it's fair to characterize SF's current malaise as the endpoint of Jacobs' ideas. IIRC nowhere her oeuvre is there an opposition to new construction---in fact, just the opposite. For instance, near the bottom of page 216 of the 1961 edition [0], she is pretty unequivocal that she is in favor of new construction, just not all at one time and place.

[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=P_bPTgOoBYkC&lpg=PP1&dq=de...

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#34

Post by anewcolor »

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…

Money can't buy everything

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#36

Post by nullc »

caseyf7 wrote: post #24

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.

Presumably part of the reason for the ghost town effect wasn't just the demand shifted but because the landlords (or banks) wouldn't blink. There presumably always a price which would have mitigated the churn, but the market failed to find it fast enough to avoid the undershoot.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#37

Post by ido »

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…

But there are plenty of existing cheap (relative to SF) cities that have all that sans the tech jobs and somehow they didn't become the new SV.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#38

Post by jmckib »

andrewfong wrote: post #21
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 increas…

The point they make in the article is that the rich are going to move to SF anyway, but without available luxury housing they will have to buy up cheaper housing and have it remodeled. So you still get gentrification and network effects, but even higher prices for non-luxury housing than if you'd have just built more luxury housing in the first place.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#40

Post by jmckib »

This is one of the most interesting parts of the article to me, but it's not mentioned until the very end.

On the other hand, if San Francisco zoning mostly deflects away non-techies who add to San Francisco congestion without adding much to its tech-centre synergies, then San Francisco's regulations may be reinforcing its status as technological leader.

That leaves technology as the saving grace. Maybe we invent really good holodecks, which make it much less critical to actually be in San Francisco. Maybe we invent teleportation, laws of physics be damned. Maybe we simply come up with better ways to build and design cities, which minimise the real or perceived downsides to residents of new building.

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