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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

#41

Post by klipt »

ido wrote: post #37
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.

For example, Philadelphia is pretty cheap compared to the Bay Area, and already has an Ivy League university!

Pittsburgh is even cheaper and has Carnegie Mellon - not part of the Ivy League, but better than most Ivy League universities for Computer Science.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#42

Post by BurningFrog »

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…

> you could even argue that [...] building more luxury housing in SF would actually increase rents locally

You can argue a lot of things.

But the relationship between supply, demand and prices is very thoroughly studied. Facts are known!

I have never heard of such an effect happening in the real world, but then again I'm no expert. If anyone can provide a reference to an example, I am willing to be enlightened.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#43

Post by switch007 »

ianbicking wrote: post #10
wozniacki wrote: post #8

The top-voted comment for the same piece in the Economist explores the rent-seeking behavior of SF landlords, the origins and the conditions that gave rise to Prop 13 in the first place and proposes a set of (albeit, I admit, a bit far-fetched) solutions: I am one of these SF oligarchs, and I benefit from high rents of both types. Nevertheless, I have long called for an end to the rent-seeking. To me, the problem sta…

Something I'm coming to learn: for any bureaucratic system, those who are most capable of taking advantage of the system are the privileged. Every time we try to arrange a benefit for the poor, infirmed, disadvantaged, disabled, we create a tool for the more privileged to advance themselves. The poor hit a rough spot and they can't hold onto their homes – only the well off can hold their property for decades. Even re…

It's as if somehow the privileged elite are actually in control!

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#44

Post by nitrogen »

mblakele wrote: post #12
wozniacki wrote: post #8

The top-voted comment for the same piece in the Economist explores the rent-seeking behavior of SF landlords, the origins and the conditions that gave rise to Prop 13 in the first place and proposes a set of (albeit, I admit, a bit far-fetched) solutions: I am one of these SF oligarchs, and I benefit from high rents of both types. Nevertheless, I have long called for an end to the rent-seeking. To me, the problem sta…

I wonder how that cap-and-trade system would be gamed by different interests? The city would have to zone for the growth, or trade for credits. But zoning isn't the same as construction. It's hard to imagine an alternative without putting the city in the construction business, but it opens up loopholes. The existing system of "housing elements" http://www.hcd.ca.gov/hpd/hrc/plan/he/ seems broadly similar, and leads t…

Expanded goo.gl short link from parent comment (short links are unnecessary on HN as it will elide URLs past a certain length, plus people like to know what they're clicking on): http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/lnews/2015-02-05/fost...

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#45

Post by bronson »

epicureanideal wrote: post #29
bronson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's still there, and it still has the features you claim you're looking for. You don't sound very eager to check it out though...?

As for your edit: "the US government essentially provided this sort of start to Silicon Valley"

No. Re-read your first paragraph. The US government provided none of that. Watch Steve Blank again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#46

Post by andrewfong »

BurningFrog wrote: post #42
andrewfong wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> you could even argue that [...] building more luxury housing in SF would actually increase rents locally You can argue a lot of things. But the relationship between supply, demand and prices is very thoroughly studied. Facts are known! I have never heard of such an effect happening in the real world, but then again I'm no expert. If anyone can provide a reference to an example, I am willing to be enlightened.

Increasing supply lowers the mean price for the market as a whole. The laws of supply and demand do not rule out local changes that run contrary to the overall market depending on the nature of the new supply.

To pick one particular example, Facebook's construction of 394 apartments next to its campus is actually driving up home prices in that part of Menlo Park because the apartments are nowhere near sufficient to meet the demands of Facebook employees but are accompanied by new commercial developments that make the surrounding property more attractive to other Facebook employees.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#47

Post by gdix »

switch007 wrote: post #43
ianbicking wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I'm coming to learn: for any bureaucratic system, those who are most capable of taking advantage of the system are the privileged. Every time we try to arrange a benefit for the poor, infirmed, disadvantaged, disabled, we create a tool for the more privileged to advance themselves. The poor hit a rough spot and they can't hold onto their homes – only the well off can hold their property for decades. Even re…

It's as if somehow the privileged elite are actually in control!

Maybe the privileged elite got that way because they are capable and can work the system.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#48

Post by davidw »

mc32 wrote: post #32
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 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…

I spent a year there during the dot com boom, and was frankly pretty happy to move to Italy.

I'm somewhat liberal politically, but San Fran always felt like a different kind of 'progressive' than back home in relatively egalitarian, fairly moderate and generally well-run Oregon.

When I got to Padova, it felt like coming back to the real world. I'd go downtown and see young and old, wealthy and the not-so-well off. These days, thanks to immigration, it's also acquired some ethnic diversity: my daughter goes to a public school with children whose parents are quite varied.

The economy isn't great here though, and it really makes you wonder... Most of the planet would absolutely love to have the bay area's problems, as you can see by how many places try and ape it with their Silicon Alley, Prairie, Forest, Meadows, Fjord, Barren Wasteland, Cwm, Bog and so on.

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#49

Post by anigbrowl »

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.

Er, what? San Francisco didn't put a penny in the 49ers stadium. It's in Santa Clara because they were the ones willing to pay for it. Completely different entity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi%27s_Stadium#Financing_and_...

Re: Housing markets: The spectre haunting San Francisco

#50

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

How to do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM
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