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Shaken by the latest digital gold rush, San Francisco struggles for its soul.

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Re: Shaken by the latest digital gold rush, San Francisco struggles for its soul.

#11

Post by prostoalex »

citricsquid wrote: post #5
surrealize wrote: post #2

Grrrr. Existing SF residents are facing an influx of newcomers, who are pushing out (pricing out) some existing residents. And somehow, it never occurs to them to just make room for more people, so that existing residents don't get pushed out. SF has plenty of opportunities to build upward , but as long as SF insists on being anti-development and anti-height, the housing supply problem is going to continue.

Why is SF (I assume you mean local government?) anti-height? Are there downsides to building upwards (environmental? taxation?) or is it just a refusal to allow the landscape to change?

http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/01/san-francisco-can-become-a-...

"f you look at San Francisco’s zoning map, you’ll see height and density restrictions everywhere. There are also citywide building caps — restrictions on the number of new buildings that can be started every year. And finally there are labyrinthine regulatory procedures. Here, for your amusement, is a flowchart put together by the San Francisco Planning Department that outlines the steps a developer needs to go through to obtain a building permit. Despite the department’s use of Comic Sans, this is not meant to be a joke."

Re: Shaken by the latest digital gold rush, San Francisco struggles for its soul.

#12

Post by greggman »

gnosis wrote: post #9
surrealize wrote: post #2

Grrrr. Existing SF residents are facing an influx of newcomers, who are pushing out (pricing out) some existing residents. And somehow, it never occurs to them to just make room for more people, so that existing residents don't get pushed out. SF has plenty of opportunities to build upward , but as long as SF insists on being anti-development and anti-height, the housing supply problem is going to continue.

From what I understand, efforts in other cities to build upwards to house poor people have been a failure. That strategy results in large populations where poverty is highly concentrated. This leads to those areas becoming breeding grounds for crime and hopelessness. Over and over again in the US, large scale projects have exhibited this pattern of failure. That's not to say that building affordable housing shouldn't…

The op said nothing of poor people.

There are plenty of cities in the world that have built up without becoming ghettos. Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York to name a few. High rise housing != ghetto

Re: Shaken by the latest digital gold rush, San Francisco struggles for its soul.

#13

Post by charonn0 »

citricsquid wrote: post #5
surrealize wrote: post #2

Grrrr. Existing SF residents are facing an influx of newcomers, who are pushing out (pricing out) some existing residents. And somehow, it never occurs to them to just make room for more people, so that existing residents don't get pushed out. SF has plenty of opportunities to build upward , but as long as SF insists on being anti-development and anti-height, the housing supply problem is going to continue.

Why is SF (I assume you mean local government?) anti-height? Are there downsides to building upwards (environmental? taxation?) or is it just a refusal to allow the landscape to change?

After a building boom in the 70s-80s the city passed anti-Manhattanization laws.[1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanization

Re: Shaken by the latest digital gold rush, San Francisco struggles for its soul.

#14

Post by viscanti »

citricsquid wrote: post #5
surrealize wrote: post #2

Grrrr. Existing SF residents are facing an influx of newcomers, who are pushing out (pricing out) some existing residents. And somehow, it never occurs to them to just make room for more people, so that existing residents don't get pushed out. SF has plenty of opportunities to build upward , but as long as SF insists on being anti-development and anti-height, the housing supply problem is going to continue.

Why is SF (I assume you mean local government?) anti-height? Are there downsides to building upwards (environmental? taxation?) or is it just a refusal to allow the landscape to change?

SoMa is the only neighborhood with any 20+ story residential buildings going up. It's hard to say why so many of the other neighborhoods are against building up. The geography of SF lends to some beautiful views from atop the hills. Residents living on those hills are unlikely to welcome tall buildings to crop up and block their view.

SoMa probably ends up being the big-city, tall building part of SF in the future. It would take a big mind-set change for many other neighborhoods to build up anytime soon.

Re: Shaken by the latest digital gold rush, San Francisco struggles for its soul.

#15

Post by benkay »

sakopov wrote: post #4

I was recently contemplating moving to the bay area from Midwest. Then a few months ago i shared a hostel room in Edinburgh with a guy from Portland. When we got to talking he told me that he is originally from San Francisco but decided to ran away to Portland to escape nearly insane cost of living. I don't know how much of this is true but he was telling me that some dingy studio apartments have 10-15 people in line…

My "family" of roommates pays $1625 for a 1,408 ft2 3-br (from the 1880s) in Goose Hollow, one of the residential neighborhoods in downtown Portland. Gas can runs as high as ~150/mo in the winter, but that's not a bad deal for being able to:

- chain bikes to the front porch without fear of theft (indefinitely).

- leave our back door unlocked every day, and the front door most as well.

- walk to some of the best coffee shops in the best coffee town in America (Public Domain, for instance).

- walk to Powell's.

- walk to network with ANY tech company in the downtown area.

- eat amazing food for at most (95th percentile) 20 bucks/entree.

- order fancy cocktails for ~9/ea.

- order amazing beers for 4.50/pt. (max).

- meet brilliant people (MBar's a good place to start).

- breathe clean air.

- not have to live in samey-samey suburban hell.

- surround yourself with nature, wander through the nation's largest in-city park and visit natural wonders like the Columbia Gorge and Mt. Hood.

The benefits are not completely enumerable online. Build your dream life here!

Re: Shaken by the latest digital gold rush, San Francisco struggles for its soul.

#16

Post by surrealize »

gnosis wrote: post #9
surrealize wrote: post #2

Grrrr. Existing SF residents are facing an influx of newcomers, who are pushing out (pricing out) some existing residents. And somehow, it never occurs to them to just make room for more people, so that existing residents don't get pushed out. SF has plenty of opportunities to build upward , but as long as SF insists on being anti-development and anti-height, the housing supply problem is going to continue.

From what I understand, efforts in other cities to build upwards to house poor people have been a failure. That strategy results in large populations where poverty is highly concentrated. This leads to those areas becoming breeding grounds for crime and hopelessness. Over and over again in the US, large scale projects have exhibited this pattern of failure. That's not to say that building affordable housing shouldn't…

> From what I understand, efforts in other cities to build upwards to house poor people have been a failure.

You could always build upward to house the rich people instead. I'm sure a lot of the incoming startup-types are young and would be happy to live in a high-rise (The correlation between youth and high-rise-living coming, in my experience, from the fact that people with kids often want more space. But that's not a hard-and-fast rule, obviously.).

> But it might make more sense to build lots of small scale housing, with a focus on building viable community spaces rather large scale ghettoes.

I'm not sure if SF has the land space to build lots of small-scale housing. I totally agree about building nice community spaces, though, and I think high-rise building is compatible with that (e.g., Manhattan's pocket parks).

Re: Shaken by the latest digital gold rush, San Francisco struggles for its soul.

#17

Post by gnosis »

greggman wrote: post #12
gnosis wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, efforts in other cities to build upwards to house poor people have been a failure. That strategy results in large populations where poverty is highly concentrated. This leads to those areas becoming breeding grounds for crime and hopelessness. Over and over again in the US, large scale projects have exhibited this pattern of failure. That's not to say that building affordable housing shouldn't…

The op said nothing of poor people. There are plenty of cities in the world that have built up without becoming ghettos. Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York to name a few. High rise housing != ghetto

The gentrification that's happening in SF and that's described in the original article is happening because the rich are pushing out the original residents -- who were indeed poor.

From the article:

  Again and again, you hear of teachers, nurses, firefighters, police
  officers, artists, hotel and restaurant workers, and others with no
  stake in the new digital gold rush being squeezed out of the city.

  ...

  Bernal Heights in those years was a glorious urban mix of deeply
  rooted blue-collar families, underground artists, radical activists,
  and lesbian settlers
In general, the people described above would be considered poor.

As for high rise apartments not necessarily being ghettoes. That's obviously true. High priced apartment complexes and skyscrapers housing businesses are what constitute much of the "building up" in the cities you mention. It's only when building up is combined with low-cost housing that problems begin. But building up isn't the problem per se, but rather it's the high concentration of poverty that such projects encourage.

Re: Shaken by the latest digital gold rush, San Francisco struggles for its soul.

#19

Post by gwern »

charonn0 wrote: post #6
surrealize wrote: post #2

Grrrr. Existing SF residents are facing an influx of newcomers, who are pushing out (pricing out) some existing residents. And somehow, it never occurs to them to just make room for more people, so that existing residents don't get pushed out. SF has plenty of opportunities to build upward , but as long as SF insists on being anti-development and anti-height, the housing supply problem is going to continue.

How are current residents being priced out? If they rent, then rent increases are limited by law and no-fault evictions are nearly impossible to get honestly. If they own, the no one can force them to move short of the city invoking eminent domain.

Property taxes being set on increasing market values of properties?

Re: Shaken by the latest digital gold rush, San Francisco struggles for its soul.

#20

Post by ryguytilidie »

charonn0 wrote: post #6
surrealize wrote: post #2

Grrrr. Existing SF residents are facing an influx of newcomers, who are pushing out (pricing out) some existing residents. And somehow, it never occurs to them to just make room for more people, so that existing residents don't get pushed out. SF has plenty of opportunities to build upward , but as long as SF insists on being anti-development and anti-height, the housing supply problem is going to continue.

How are current residents being priced out? If they rent, then rent increases are limited by law and no-fault evictions are nearly impossible to get honestly. If they own, the no one can force them to move short of the city invoking eminent domain.

"then rent increases are limited by law"

In certain cases, yes, but personally I lived in SOMA in an apartment for 2 years and my rent was going to go from 2k to 3k because Google had asked the building if they could rent some of the units. So I mean, maybe it was illegal and I don't know about it, but I can certainly say I don't live in San Francisco anymore because I was priced out by new incoming tech employees.

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