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Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

dougmccune.com

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Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#161

Post by omegaham »

tomschlick wrote: post #67
omegaham wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current system screws over newcomers in favor of longtime residents. Rent control and Prop 13 mean that if you've been living in SF for a couple of decades, you're paying bargain-basement prices for either rent or property tax. Asking people to vote against their interests doesn't work very well.

It also screws over people making less than 100k who can't afford a 4k/mo 1br apartment.

If they're newcomers, yes.

If they're long-time residents, they're paying $800 a month for that exact same $4k/mo apartment.

You're basically asking the long-time residents to vote for measures that will detract from the San Francisco-ness of SF and won't benefit them at all. This is why the NIMBY groups are so powerful.

The only way that you're going to beat them is by getting enough newcomers who can overpower said NIMBY folks in municipal elections. That's going to take a long time to happen.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#162

Post by chii »

resu_nimda wrote: post #144
pauloday wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that it's an "epidemic", but houses are certainly getting bigger in the US[1]. I can see why a block filled with yards/gardens and small buildings is preferable to a block filled with large buildings and not much else. This just seems like a newsletter for people who care about things like that enough to participate in their local government. I doubt I'd personally agree with many of their stances, but I…

This just seems like a newsletter for people who care about things like that enough to participate in their local government. For other cities/locales you may be right, but in SF, it just seems offensive. We all know what the consensus epidemic is in the Bay Area, and attempting to use that word to imply that these poor landowners are being encroached upon is something I find reprehensible. Their "epidemic" is a trif…

> while people are being pushed out of their homes and homeless fill the streets

i find it hard to believe that the homeless problem is due to the soaring house prices in SF.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#163

Post by mbesto »

dougmccune wrote: post #62
mbesto wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of artistic value is simply saying the art has value. Tell people you've had several offers for $100k and you can probably find someone offering $101k for it.

I've had several offers for $100,000. I'd certainly consider your offer if you can beat that. Paypal my email address :)

I like your attitude :)

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#164

Post by brc »

rhino369 wrote: post #72
honkhonkpants wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High rises are one thing but they are not the way to solve SF's housing shortage. One 5-story building on one corner of every block in the sunset would easily relieve the shortage. Geographically speaking most of SF already suffers from poor quality of life. Except for the northeast quadrant of the city, SF is dominated by flat, boring, ugly zones of car-centered banality. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7398485,-122…

But a couple 45 story buildings will mean you don't have to put up a 5 story building on every corner. Or do both and make it really affordable. You also have to consider that decreasing cost in SF will lead to increased demand.

I actually think it would be very hard to soak up demand at this point.

I think adding high rise is the right choice, as long as it is accompanied with increases in transport links. It's all very well to add in a couple of thousand people, but they all have to get in and out and buy groceries etc. you don't want each of those people owning a car and making the traffic worse.

I think there should be mor emphasis on making other parts of the Bay Area more like the things people want from the city / peninsular proper. Whether that is transport, cultural or liveability, it should all be possible.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#165

Post by brc »

WildUtah wrote: post #145
3s933x7dpsh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. If the problem is that absent foreign investors are buying up all the housing stock, maybe we should make a 100 story tower on some parking lot in SOMA and sell each floor as a $5M luxurious penthouse unit with the stipulation that the buyer must reside out of the country. Boom, we just took a bunch of those foreign investors out of the market without increasing traffic and decreased the annual US trade deficit b…

"with the stipulation that the buyer must reside out of the country." If we could prevent them from getting a visa to come at all, we could do the same thing and we wouldn't even have to build the building. Just allocate a few address numbers on ritzy street corners and sell the "buildings" to investors stashing Russian or Chinese black market cash.

You could actually do that. If you sold options in an approved development with a five years delay in start time, you'd probably get in plenty of cash and not actually have any new residents. You could get a healthy market going in just the right to own an apartment in the future.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#166

Post by brc »

robbyking wrote: post #127
notadoc wrote: post #26

Why is SF so opposed to building up? Build more high rises filled with apartments and condos, there are plenty of areas that could be rezoned to accommodate high rise living.

It's not; there are literally tens of thousands of new units currently under construction[1] in the City. The issue people have is most proposals for new construction in San Francisco consist almost exclusively of luxury housing. There's no shortage of housing in San Francisco, only a shortage of affordable housing. [1] http://paragon-re.com/San_Francisco_Housing_Development_Repo...

Generally construction of luxury-only housing indicates high regulatory barriers. Because it is hard to make a building, then demand is high, and the costs of meeting the regulations is also high. The rational response to that is to make he unit-cost high.

If you placed sever restrictions on car production you'd find the surviving brands would be the luxury brands.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#167

Post by xapata »

stouset wrote: post #160
ramses0 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly, you'd want to pin rent as 25% of income and then have the height be related to where you would need to be on the U.S. income scale as a percentile to be able to afford it. ie: You've got a $899,000 home sale, that's supposedly a ~$4000/mo rent, which leads towards a "25% rule" of $16,000/mo income => $192,000/yr => which is supposedly 93.9%-ile. Going from $4000/mo => $5000/mo, it seems like it takes you to 96…

The absolute difference in dollars scales ridiculously high though once you start getting above 90%ile though. Going by percentile practically makes it a logarithmic scale.

> Going by percentile practically makes it a logarithmic scale

In theory as well. Small changes of the log of a variable are approximately equivalent to small percent-changes.

Edit: Though percentile is a little different than percent-change.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#168

Post by santaclaus »

andrewbinstock wrote: post #88
cloudjacker wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, SF is merely masquerading as a world class city, by the people that live in the area. It has no grip on its elementary problems that actual world class cities have developed solutions for. But you can have a good time there. Nobody will actually know if you live in an apartment and have startups give you free food everyday, or if you live in a tent under the highway. Now if you are trying to earn enough to make…

What makes a world-class city? I'd say great architecture, great culture, high-quality museums, good schools, great universities, excellent hospitals. And people who care about each other. San Francisco has all of those.

Reliable public transit and bars open until 4am would be rad to have!

> great universities

SFSU?

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#169

Post by laurencerowe »

nerfhammer wrote: post #81
honkhonkpants wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 45-story building is much more expensive than 9 5-story buildings and causes localized transportation problems. You really want your housing, jobs, education, retail, and leisure spread around such that people can conduct most or all of their daily affairs on foot.

If you want people to be able conduct all of your daily affairs on foot 45 story buildings are the way to go.

High-rise buildings really aren't necessary for a walkable lifestyle. 5-6 stories (Berlin style) and everything you need is within a couple of blocks. Even with UK style terraced streets usually mean you have shops/cafes/pubs within easy walking distance.

Re: Sculpture of Housing Prices Ripping San Francisco Apart

#170

Post by ghaff »

School-Cotton wrote: post #130
aetherson wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in fact the financial district is not all of NYC. And there are plenty of places in SF that have higher than its overall average of 7,100/km^2. The point is, the meme in HN is that San Francisco is some weird spread out suburb like, I don't know, Houston (1,414 people/km^2). It's not. It's already quite dense. Could it be denser? Obviously yes. Could it QUICKLY become SO MUCH denser that it radically changes the…

Regardless of what the density numbers show (which I suspect depends much more on what we choose to define as "the city" than on any reality), anecdotally it's impossible to get around comfortably in SF without a car. Being able to live without a car is the defining characteristic of a real city as opposed to a sprawled-out suburb, in my mind.

I do know people who live in SF without owning a car but they use a lot of Uber/Zipcar/other rentals/car sharing etc. (as well as cycling and using delivery services). Personally, in their position, I'd probably own a car.

That said, there are very few US cities where you could live without a car without it being a hassle, especially if you want to leave your core urban area on a regular basis.

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