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Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

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Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#181

Post by avmich »

wolverine876 wrote: post #153
danjac wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe San Francisco is just not suitable any more? There's nothing magic about SF's geography that makes it a tech hub. It's not a mining town that needs to be next to coal or minerals, or a ski resort town that needs some mountains and snow. It's based on work that can literally be done anywhere. Hollywood, after all, was just a dusty desert town that became the hub of the movie business because it was easier to mov…

> There's nothing magic about SF's geography It includes two of the world's top ten universities, incredible natural beauty there and nearby, excellent weather (locals complain, as locals do, but it's wonderful), and all the resources and people are gathered there. It's hard to imagine the return on investment of moving.

I can think about Stanford as the first one... the other one is probably Berkeley. I'm quite surprised they both are in world's top ten universities - actually, skeptical about that. "Incredible natural beauty" is not only at least somewhat subjective, but definitely is not exclusive to SF. Weather is good, but even Honolulu and Miami would argue, not to mention quite a few other places, even if they are minority overall - so the weather is not that unique.

People - yes, currently the state of the people is well tuned in favor of SF (SFBA). But the question still remains.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#182

Post by pwinnski »

majormajor wrote: post #116
zozbot234 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they are. What do you think "anti-gentrification activism" boils down to, in practice? Build more and drive prices down? Of course not, the activists will conveniently tell you that this makes gentrification worse ! Which totally defies economic logic: there's only so much demand in the world for places like Manhattan!

> Which totally defies economic logic: there's only so much demand in the world for places like Manhattan! How much demand "in the world" to live in Manhattan do you think there is? The more the price drops, of course, the demand will go up. So how much "in the world" at both current prices and also if, say, prices went down by 5%? 10%? 50%? 75%? I think there's enough currently-unmet demand to keep the prices from f…

Who knows? Pretty easily 40 million like Tokyo has, and that would already be more than double the current population. Possibly much more.

There are a lot of people held back by nothing but cost, so dropping prices would increase demand. There are also people held back by other factors, but some of those would also likely be relieved by building more housing.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#183

Post by malandrew »

danjac wrote: post #80
dionidium wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the thing I always say about the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco is like, look, if you can't figure out how to gain from an influx of wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality, nerdy tech workers, then that's really on you. What a gift! Any city would be lucky to have that "problem." You have to actively work to make that a negative (by, say, refusing to a…

Maybe San Francisco is just not suitable any more? There's nothing magic about SF's geography that makes it a tech hub. It's not a mining town that needs to be next to coal or minerals, or a ski resort town that needs some mountains and snow. It's based on work that can literally be done anywhere. Hollywood, after all, was just a dusty desert town that became the hub of the movie business because it was easier to mov…

Hollywood also had more days of great weather than anywhere else and this was especially important for maintaining production schedules.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#184

Post by shoo »

johnpublic wrote: post #152

A friend of mine who recently moved to the US from the UK put it to me like this: "imagine one state says they will pay out benefits without a permanent address. Where do you think the homeless are going to move to?"

The "The Obvious Answer to Homelessness" by Jerusalem Demsas, published by The Atlantic (linked in another comment by thamer) argues that this hypothesis is falsified, and can cite research:

> Few Republican-dominated states have had to deal with severe homelessness crises, mainly because superstar cities are concentrated in Democratic states. Some blame profligate welfare programs for blue-city homelessness, claiming that people are moving from other states to take advantage of coastal largesse. But the available evidence points in the opposite direction—in 2022, just 4 percent of homeless people in San Francisco reported having become homeless outside of California. Gregg Colburn and Clayton Aldern found essentially no relationship between places with more generous welfare programs and rates of homelessness. And abundant other research indicates that social-welfare programs reduce homelessness.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#185

Post by lapama »

janalsncm wrote: post #180
jlmorton wrote: post #17

Imagine you're a municipality like San Francisco. You control all of the zoning regulations, and many of the permitting requirements. You have a AA+ credit rating, and even in today's higher rate environment, you can borrow billions of dollars at 6%. You already own oodles of land. You can build to whatever height you want within reason, because you control the zoning, and you even control many of the ordinances that…

I am one of those tech workers that moved to the Bay Area. The chance of me living here in 20 years is essentially zero. The governments here were granted a golden era of prosperity and have mostly squandered it. Trillions of dollars have been minted here, but you wouldn’t know it just by driving around. Public services are abysmal. Horrible public transportation. In another 20 years if the winds shift to some other…

[flagged]

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#187

Post by lapama »

jlmorton wrote: post #17

Imagine you're a municipality like San Francisco. You control all of the zoning regulations, and many of the permitting requirements. You have a AA+ credit rating, and even in today's higher rate environment, you can borrow billions of dollars at 6%. You already own oodles of land. You can build to whatever height you want within reason, because you control the zoning, and you even control many of the ordinances that…

[flagged]

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#188

Post by JumpCrisscross »

BigRedDog1669 wrote: post #179
t-writescode wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative question: * do San Francisco renters turn out to Town Hall meetings, local elections, pester their representatives and put in as much #not-bribery as landowners?

Town Hall type meetings only take curated questions normally and heavily gatekeep who is allowed to speak.

> Town Hall type meetings only take curated questions normally and heavily gatekeep who is allowed to speak

Then it’s not a town hall. Town hall means anyone can ask questions. You may need to line up. But that’s it.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#189

Post by [deleted] »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #142
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> government is run by and for the benefit of the established land owners Do San Francisco’s renters fail to turn out to vote? (Serious question.)

> Do San Francisco’s renters fail to turn out to vote? They aren't the best but when thy do vote they've somehow managed to link voting for housing to being a form a racist gentrification.

[deleted]

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#190

Post by Aunche »

fnimick wrote: post #67
dionidium wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the thing I always say about the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco is like, look, if you can't figure out how to gain from an influx of wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality, nerdy tech workers, then that's really on you. What a gift! Any city would be lucky to have that "problem." You have to actively work to make that a negative (by, say, refusing to a…

> the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco The people who are complaining about this are not the same people who are restricting housing access. A similar dynamic happens in Boston, where people are resentful of gentrifiers, and I can't blame them. They're not the ones voting to block housing, it's the already rich people in the area who do that.

> The people who are complaining about this are not the same people who are restricting housing access.

The majority of them think that YIMBY is useless or counterproductive because only luxury apartments are being built. There have even been protests against this [1]. The main problem is that most housing advocacy is focused on taxing tech workers and using that to subsidize rents, which of course does nothing for housing costs, but does help landlords.

[1] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/7/20759029/excelsior-protest-65...

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