What's the Matter with San Francisco?

It seems to me one of the biggest problems is rampant NIMBYism.

I just had a discussion about this with a coworker.

I very strongly agree with this article. Diversity does not survive in expensive areas and I strongly believe that is worth preserving in San Francisco. I understand the problems rent-control causes, but if it were removed and all residential areas jump up to market price then diversity would be completely destroyed. That might not mean anything to a lot of people who work in tech(the feeling I get when I talk about it with coworkers), but I think it means a lot.

This was voted down and is something of an inflammatory comment but there's truth to it. You see it throughout the Valley and the entire Bay Area. It's why there is little density in the Valley in my opinion, why the public transit isn't very good among other things.

I'm afraid it's hard to change. People who paid so much for their Valley homes certainly do not like the idea of the supply dramatically increasing and their pleasant, small communities becoming drastically urbanized. And I understand that.

But the progressive nature of this area has always seemed face value to me as an outsider who travels to this region often. It's incredibly nice here but I believe it is time to begin building lots of high rises (scaled for quakes) in some city near SF and urbanizing areas while creating mix zoned housing and commercial similar to what you'd see in NYC. It's time for an experiment like that in the Valley somewhere.

You're comparing two different solutions, removing rent control & allowing new housing to be built. For the sake of the argument, let's keep the rent-control, but let's let developers build new buildings! If they build on a property with rent-controlled units, they have to replace those rent-controlled units in the new building and provide housing for the tenants somewhere else while the building is being built.

It's just a supply/demand problem. We should to increase the amount of housing available in SF to lower prices so we can bring in the new generation of creatives, freaks and outcasts. We've got a big hill to climb, and there would be a lot of apartment towers going up, but SF could do it.

As far as rent-control goes, there's a moral argument to be made. What makes the person who's already living in SF more deserving of a place to live than the person who wants to move to SF? Rent-control is fundamentally anti-immigrant.

I agree. They didn't intend this to happen, but they hold blame for being ignorant.