81–90 of 100 posts
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And when a price is artificially lowered below its market rate, there will be a shortage. In this case, rent control. The combination of those two factors is what makes the housing situation so terrible.
And building skyscrapers on a 2d surface doesn't scale ... so the only other option doesn't work either.
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So I'm not the only one who thought that was an odd line?
The neighborhoods in SF are very distinct. The Marina and the Mission are very different from each other. This makes the city as a whole diverse. Bikes of San Francisco: https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4084/5112789301_da50dca4bd_b.j...
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 w…
How does anyone expect to have affordable housing with a growing population if, effectively, only 16% of the entire housing stock is allowed to be allocated to new arrivals at market rates? It would be another thing if some form of subsidized-rate housing was also offered for newcomers to SF, but instead what we get is a tiered system in which existing residents are set against newcomers, with landowners being the only ones to really benefit.
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Shame that this has been upvoted, because it's not really true. The Gini coefficient of CA and TX are extremely similar [1]- CA is ranked #44 in the US, and TX is ranked #43. However, social mobility of the poorest percentiles is significantly higher in Californian cities [2]. In fact, of the major US metropolises, the top four best cities for social mobility of children in the bottom quintile are: San Jose, San Fran…
It's about quality of life, not relative income. I used these two states as examples because I've spent a lot of time and have a lot of friends in both. In Texas, a middle class income sets you up with a decent house, in a decent hood, with a decent school district, and a fairly low stress life. You mix with others from random walks of life. In California, it feels like you spend every dollar just to survive, and you…
Of course, the hard part is obtaining a middle-class income in Texas.
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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…
But a big piece of it is sf getting fucked by the nimbyism elsewhere. viz Mountain View: they just authorized something like 3.4 million ft2 of office space between LinkedIn, Google, etc while supposedly they're giong to add 1.5k to 5k housing units. In the future. Where are the other, say, 15 to 20 thousand people going to live? Mountain View doesn't give a shit, but a bunch of them are going to have to life in sf,…
I jest... partially. Atherton is horrible for the whole area.
It's very difficult to build a city to serve two populations, one rich and one poor (or at least average). I would love to work in SF but have zero desire to live there because it's too expensive for everyone but the IPO crowd.
There is another way to look at this. The city serves two populations: people who currently live in a city, and people who would like to immigrate to the city. As a resident of a growing city, I find it somewhat puzzling and inconvenient that it's taken as an article of faith that large city growth is a good thing. Growth is good, but it's also bad: it brings congestion, filth, and higher housing prices. Even with th…
Because you don't want to be Detroit.
> It invented new models of delivering affordable housing and health care. It invested deeply in public space, from parks to bike lanes. It adopted a transit-first policy Is that really true? San Francisco, as much as I love it, never struck me as a particularly forward-thinking place when it comes to public transportation, bike-friendliness, healthcare, or housing policies. Compare it to any European city (e.g. bike…
It seems to me one of the biggest problems is rampant NIMBYism.
The problem is the legal situation where a lot of people and organizations that stand to gain from stopping development can veto it.
In other words: We don't need better people, we need better laws.
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 w…
Nit pick: If all these units came out on the open market, it would mean a substantial lowering of the market price.
It would also mean that a lot more people could live in SF, both because more people would share existing apartments, and because many of the apartments now empty would be rented out.
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The neighborhoods in SF are very distinct. The Marina and the Mission are very different from each other. This makes the city as a whole diverse. Bikes of San Francisco: https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4084/5112789301_da50dca4bd_b.j...
I could never figure out why fixies were so popular with the SF hipsters in a city with such steep hills. Or how fixies make hipsters so hip, for that matter. In Amsterdam, where it's flat enough that one-speed bikes are practical, fixies are called "Oma Fiets" for "Granny Bikes". http://www.workcycles.com/home-products/handmade-city-bicycl...
As hipness goes, a big theme of hipsters is to work really hard at looking like you aren't trying and don't care. Throw on some second-hand-store clothes to ride up the hill on a crappy, completely inappropriate bike to a very expensive dive bar to overpay for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and a dirty well whisky because that's how much you don't care.