Millennium Tower is tilting, sinking • Hacker News Board

Re: Millennium Tower is tilting, sinking

#181

Post by fennecfoxen » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 5:42 PM UTC

irq11 wrote: post #163

fennecfoxen wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they're not able to pass 100% of the cost of whatever capital improvements they feel like on to their renters is part of a massive wealth transfer from landlords to long-established tenants. In other circumstances I'd accuse that of deterring investment and being a contributor to the terrible housing situation in the Bay Area in general, but honestly, the zoning / planning-permit situation is the first…

Instead of "massive wealth transfer", I think you meant to write "slight dent in disgustingly fat profit margins", because - just based on aggregate metrics - most landlords are making a stone-cold killing in this market. Indeed, let's all shed a tear for the SF landlord. I don't know how those poor folks can stay in business when property taxes are capped and median rent rises at ten times the rate of inflation!

Individual landlords don't see (real) rent increases for apartments are all subject to rent control. They only get an incremental adjustment for inflation. If a landlord owns an apartment but it is occupied by a tenant under rent control, it doesn't matter if the property is "worth" 10x as much. His rent collected hasn't gone up, and he can't sell it for 10x as much because that tenant has very strong legal protections around his use of the property at its price. In that case, 90% of the property's annual returns is being enjoyed by the tenant for as long as he stays there. (He may be able to realize a gain after the tenant moves away or dies, but he's still lost out on the decades of rent which he would have been able to get at market rates.)

Considering that any landlord buying a property will certainly be on the hook for the downside in a property if the housing market crashed, and you'll see that this isn't the greatest. (BUT THE HOUSING MARKET ONLY GOES UP AND WILL NEVER CRASH hahahahahaha yeah right).

Anyway. In general one needn't shed a tear for landlords and capitalists of their ilk for failure to make a profit: the money is its own reward. But we do need to respect the money (because that is the reward), the precise behaviors we are incentivizing, and the impact of political risk which we are inflict upon the people we might want to spend money investing in the region. For instance: making things like this risky means that risk-tolerant entities are likely to be involved (which means the rich guys, speculators and businesses that San Francisco loves, not individual homeowners). And the price of the landlord assuming any political risk will find itself baked into the price of any new rental property.

But as I was saying: it's kinda moot from a median-apartment-price perspective if nothing new gets built anyway for other reasons.

Re: Millennium Tower is tilting, sinking

#182

Post by r_smart » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

Gracana wrote: post #170

jonathankoren wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or some investor did.

Investors will always want things cheaper, and they don't understand engineering. The responsibility of ensuring that the design is safe falls on the engineer who stamped the drawing. Situations like this are covered in engineering ethics classes, which most civil engineers in the US would have taken.

Plus, depending on the state, a Professional Engineer (a certification earned) has to sign off on this stuff and is liable in the event of something catastrophic happening, like the building falling over.

Re: Millennium Tower is tilting, sinking

#183

Post by wahern » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:13 PM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #108

wahern wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the Outer Richmond district of San Francisco, which was built on sand dunes. Most houses in my neighborhood were built in the 1920s and 1930s, +/- a decade. I was told by a contractor that it's extremely common for houses to have shifted considerably, sometimes by several feet. Mine certainly has, though not nearly that bad. Most of the houses are built on concrete foundation walls that go about 3 feet into…

How do you plan plumbing and electricity for houses moving several feet?

For plumbing, I don't know. That's a good question I should ask a contractor the next time it comes up. But given how old these houses are perhaps the problems are sporadic. A broken pipe here or there gets fixed and people move on. And some kinds of movement might not matter, like if the back of the houses shifts down the front end might not move nearly as much.

Also, AFAICT the plumbing comes up under the foundation walls, not through. Concrete slabs on the first floor aren't original (and you can still find the occasional house with a dirt floor at the first level), so maybe there are some degrees of freedom of movement that mitigate problems.

For electricity the Richmond and Sunset districts and I believe the vast majority of the city uses overheard wires. So there's plenty of slack.

Re: Millennium Tower is tilting, sinking

#184

Post by pix64 » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:48 PM UTC

djcapelis wrote: post #123

rtpg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope the SF rules for building giant buildings are similar to recent Japan ones. What I've heard is that after the Kobe earthquake, Japanese earthquake rules have been made so good that anything built after '95 has never fallen over, even in 2011-sized earthquakes (at least until the tsunami came).

California seismic building codes are pretty solid. The state does its own earthquake research and has definitely lead the US in terms of building codes. In the US, CA's seismic exam for structural engineers is considered the most rigorous in the country. Generally, the seismic codes are roughly at Japanese levels. However, CA's buildings are mostly older.

But this was built in 2008

Re: Millennium Tower is tilting, sinking

#185

Post by nucleardog » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #144

jondiggsit wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, would rather be building on sand rather than clay. Clay is an absolutely terrible substrate for construction. Not to mention it does not drain. Hills don't become saturated with water... the water tends to flow to ze bottom of ze hill, where it will saturate things. I'd be curious to know what exactly you are draining into... drywells and clay are not friends. - High-end residential builder here

Clay can be a total pain in the ass to work with, it's more stubborn than concrete to remove, but you'd be hard pressed to find a material more solid to build on than rock. What's your beef with clay? The kind of glacial packed clay mentioned in this article is the sort of stuff even a power shovel has trouble with. It looks like light coloured slate, dry, brittle, and dense. I'm not sure what your preference for san…

> Sure, it's easy to remove, but it's so variable I have no idea how you'd get anything to stay level on top of it.

Living somewhere built on what is apparently some of the most variable types of clay and that experiences temperature swings of ~150F throughout the year: we don't.

Any basement more than 30 years old is cracked and heaved. Houses require constant adjustment of the teleposts to avoid large cracks forming in the house built on top of the foundation.

Re: Millennium Tower is tilting, sinking

#186

Post by _Codemonkeyism » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 4:12 AM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #179

webXL wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget to throw in some insurance , aka moral hazard.

Insurance ought to just price people out of areas that are too risky. Why doesn't it?

Here, people build houses - according to media - and afterwards complain that they can't get insurance.

Re: Millennium Tower is tilting, sinking

#187

Post by burfog » Fri, Aug 05, 2016, 9:17 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #18

WalterBright wrote: post #7

My house is on a steep hill, and Seattle has a reputation for hills sliding away under heavy rain. Before building it, I hired 3 separate geologists to evaluate the site. After digging holes, they said the site was sitting on "glacial till", which is clay that was compacted by about a mile of ice, and said there was nothing to worry about. Paying them was worth it for the peace of mind. (Turns out the till was so har…

One of the geologists told me a simple way to judge the slide risk. Look at the tree trunks. If tree trunks are leaning, or are curved, that indicates the ground under them is shifting.

no, light will do that -- trees grow toward light