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SF's Historic Preservation Rules Are in Limbo, All Part of CA's Push for Housing

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Re: SF's Historic Preservation Rules Are in Limbo, All Part of CA's Push for Housing

#31

Post by SllX »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #6
pieix wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This forced top down push for density You have it backwards — the push for density is bottom-up, coming from the people who want to live in SF. The top-down elements are the regulations imposed to keep the city from changing.

I think the more accurate representation is that it's coming from people who _want_ to live in SF but currently don't (due to lack of housing or unaffordable housing). Should I be allowed to push for policy changes in a city I am not a resident of?

No, it is also coming from people inside San Francisco who are on the verge of being priced out and if they are ever forced to move will not be able to ever find a new place to live inside the city. San Francisco is not some homogenous unit with only one voice and one opinion.

Or put another way: the housing market is illiquid, neighborhoods are ossified with older buildings and the units in them turning to squalor and the rent is too damn high.

Re: SF's Historic Preservation Rules Are in Limbo, All Part of CA's Push for Housing

#32

Post by com2kid »

eru wrote: post #30
Erem wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the housing crisis was only localized to S.F. then state level action wouldn’t be needed. The fact that housing shortages are widespread in CA makes it a crisis that must be solved at the state level. Personally as a long time resident of SF I fight for density now in the hope that these efforts bear fruit before my 5 year old and 2 year old grow up. I want an SF where they don’t have to be ML engineers to live in…

> The fact that housing shortages are widespread in CA makes it a crisis that must be solved at the state level. In practice you are probably right, but I'm still wondering if you are right in theory. Let me explain: there's so much pent up demand in SF and SV that any individual location allowing more building won't make much of a dent in overall housing costs. One can certainly see that as a problem. But it's also…

> Now my question is: why does it look like all cities in the area are colluding against this? What keeps even one city from breaking ranks and allowing massive amounts of building?

The problem is that until all unmet demand at the upper end of the market has been satisfied, builders won't start building at the more affordable ends of the market.

If one small city allows more construction, the overall impact on the market will be tiny, this is why the "urban villages" approach doesn't help bring down housing prices, throwing up a few dozen new apartment complexes doesn't help when thousands upon thousands of new complexes are needed.

Re: SF's Historic Preservation Rules Are in Limbo, All Part of CA's Push for Housing

#33

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #2

Sad. Communities should be allowed to preserve their character and charm and preserve quality of life for their existing residents. This forced top down push for density doesn’t make sense - there is a whole country of places to live in, and yet everyone feels entitled to crowd into expensive and desirable places at the price point that fits them. It’s basically taking away from the people that have put down roots fo…

> there is a whole country of places to live in

San Francisco has slightly more opportunity for me than the 2,000 persons village my family lives in. Not many tech companies there, though I must admit both are walkable!

Re: SF's Historic Preservation Rules Are in Limbo, All Part of CA's Push for Housing

#34

Post by Gibbon1 »

Erem wrote: post #12
elevatedastalt wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the more accurate representation is that it's coming from people who _want_ to live in SF but currently don't (due to lack of housing or unaffordable housing). Should I be allowed to push for policy changes in a city I am not a resident of?

If the housing crisis was only localized to S.F. then state level action wouldn’t be needed. The fact that housing shortages are widespread in CA makes it a crisis that must be solved at the state level. Personally as a long time resident of SF I fight for density now in the hope that these efforts bear fruit before my 5 year old and 2 year old grow up. I want an SF where they don’t have to be ML engineers to live in…

Housing shortages are widespread all over because the US is short 5 million units of housing.

My preferred solution is to weaponize HUD. Use it to offer low interest loans to developers. Build a couple hundred thousand per year of mixed use multi-family. Where it'll do some good and add to muni's tax base. Keep building until busted out landlords are jumping out windows.

Re: SF's Historic Preservation Rules Are in Limbo, All Part of CA's Push for Housing

#35

Post by mcmcmc »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #2

Sad. Communities should be allowed to preserve their character and charm and preserve quality of life for their existing residents. This forced top down push for density doesn’t make sense - there is a whole country of places to live in, and yet everyone feels entitled to crowd into expensive and desirable places at the price point that fits them. It’s basically taking away from the people that have put down roots fo…

Yeah how dare people want to live in the place they were born and raised, or near where they work. This kind of boomer mindset is gross and weird. Nobody is taking anything from you, if you want to preserve a historic site buy it and maintain it yourself. Don’t expect handouts to help you indulge your nostalgia.

Re: SF's Historic Preservation Rules Are in Limbo, All Part of CA's Push for Housing

#36

Post by shiroiushi »

eru wrote: post #30
Erem wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the housing crisis was only localized to S.F. then state level action wouldn’t be needed. The fact that housing shortages are widespread in CA makes it a crisis that must be solved at the state level. Personally as a long time resident of SF I fight for density now in the hope that these efforts bear fruit before my 5 year old and 2 year old grow up. I want an SF where they don’t have to be ML engineers to live in…

> The fact that housing shortages are widespread in CA makes it a crisis that must be solved at the state level. In practice you are probably right, but I'm still wondering if you are right in theory. Let me explain: there's so much pent up demand in SF and SV that any individual location allowing more building won't make much of a dent in overall housing costs. One can certainly see that as a problem. But it's also…

>What keeps even one city from breaking ranks and allowing massive amounts of construction?

Some minor city allowing massive construction isn't magically going to make lots of high-paying jobs appear there. Over time, it might make the place an attractive destination for migration, but it's far from certain. Think about it this way: if Toledo, Ohio allowed massive housing construction, would lots of tech companies flock there and try to get tech employees to move there? Or Fargo, ND? I kinda doubt it.

Even within the Bay Area (which is composed of a bunch of municipalities like SF, Oakland, Cupertino, San Jose, etc.), one city allowing more construction might not help you much if your job is elsewhere, because it's too far to commute and the commuting infrastructure sucks.

Re: SF's Historic Preservation Rules Are in Limbo, All Part of CA's Push for Housing

#37

Post by janalsncm »

If you do not zone for housing you are zoning for homelessness. SF needs to figure out the future they want to have: a vibrant community where people from all walks of life can thrive, or blocks of homeless people living outside of the “historic” funeral parlor and the “historic” laundromat.

My opinion, the whole city burned down once, and it kept on going. It will be ok to lose a couple “historic” buildings.

Re: SF's Historic Preservation Rules Are in Limbo, All Part of CA's Push for Housing

#38

Post by KingMachiavelli »

eru wrote: post #29
kelnos wrote: post #16

I am generally highly skeptical of "historic" designations on buildings or other public features. Ultimately they're just used to ossify things and act as an excuse to refuse change. History is certainly valuable, and I do think we should try to preserve truly outstanding examples of history, but this sort of determination too subjective, and often the balance swings too far into a realm of preserving things of dubio…

That's another reason why land value taxation is a good idea: a regulation like designating a building as historic, will immediately lower the tax take in line with the severity of restrictions it imposes. Thus there's a nice and direct feedback loop. (Now, you just need to arrange things so that the level of government that gets to decide which building to mark as 'historic' is also the level of government that feel…

The ideal solution for this is the LVT is split between each level of government and it's parent. Each level receives tax revenue based on the market value after it's own zoning and all other restrictions apply. But each level must pay it's parent government based on the land value without any of local zoning or restrictions imposed.

For example, Aspen Colorado can certainly just ban all new construction outright and collect taxes accordingly. But it would owe the state Colorado tax revenue based on the theoretical land value of Aspen's total land.

This preserves local control as much as possible but forces communities to fairly compensate the rest of the country should they choose to purposely under utilize their land. E.g if SF doesn't build more housing then Austin now has to build more, etc.

At the same time, since the Federal gov owns 90% of Nevada, Nevada as a state wouldn't be forced to make up the tax revenue for that land since all of its rules and restrictions come from a parent government (Federal/BLM rules).

Re: SF's Historic Preservation Rules Are in Limbo, All Part of CA's Push for Housing

#39

Post by eru »

shiroiushi wrote: post #36
eru wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that housing shortages are widespread in CA makes it a crisis that must be solved at the state level. In practice you are probably right, but I'm still wondering if you are right in theory. Let me explain: there's so much pent up demand in SF and SV that any individual location allowing more building won't make much of a dent in overall housing costs. One can certainly see that as a problem. But it's also…

>What keeps even one city from breaking ranks and allowing massive amounts of construction? Some minor city allowing massive construction isn't magically going to make lots of high-paying jobs appear there. Over time, it might make the place an attractive destination for migration, but it's far from certain. Think about it this way: if Toledo, Ohio allowed massive housing construction, would lots of tech companies fl…

> Some minor city allowing massive construction isn't magically going to make lots of high-paying jobs appear there.

Yes. The high paying white collar jobs are already there in the bay area.

(My earlier comment mentioned jobs mostly in the context of new blue collar jobs for people during the construction.)

> Think about it this way: if Toledo, Ohio allowed massive housing construction, would lots of tech companies flock there and try to get tech employees to move there? Or Fargo, ND? I kinda doubt it.

I agree, but I don't see how that's relevant for the bay area.

> Even within the Bay Area (which is composed of a bunch of municipalities like SF, Oakland, Cupertino, San Jose, etc.), one city allowing more construction might not help you much if your job is elsewhere, because it's too far to commute and the commuting infrastructure sucks.

I don't even live in the bay area, so it doesn't help me at all. At least not directly. But I also don't see how that question is relevant?

As long as it helps some people enough that they are willing to pay enough to keep local house prices high, my argument still stands.

And the opposite is also ok: if one city building would actually make houses more affordable in that area, then that just invalidates the whole premise of the grand-parent comment that individual cities can't make dent, and that intervention from higher levels of government (like the state) are necessary.

Re: SF's Historic Preservation Rules Are in Limbo, All Part of CA's Push for Housing

#40

Post by eru »

com2kid wrote: post #32
eru wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that housing shortages are widespread in CA makes it a crisis that must be solved at the state level. In practice you are probably right, but I'm still wondering if you are right in theory. Let me explain: there's so much pent up demand in SF and SV that any individual location allowing more building won't make much of a dent in overall housing costs. One can certainly see that as a problem. But it's also…

> Now my question is: why does it look like all cities in the area are colluding against this? What keeps even one city from breaking ranks and allowing massive amounts of building? The problem is that until all unmet demand at the upper end of the market has been satisfied, builders won't start building at the more affordable ends of the market. If one small city allows more construction, the overall impact on the m…

> The problem is that until all unmet demand at the upper end of the market has been satisfied, builders won't start building at the more affordable ends of the market.

As outlined in my original comment, I don't see how that is a problem?

The whole point is that you can either you can let your real estate developers run wild and make lots of profit (and thus pay lots of taxes) building houses upon houses upon houses without any price drops from over-supply.

Or you'll eventually see price drops, and thus more affordability.

Btw, back in the old days the complaint was that greedy developers would build sub-par units to make money off poor people. Nowadays the complaint is that greedy developers will only sell nice units to the rich. How times have changed.

Any new supply is good. If you don't supply excellent units at the top, you just have rich people outbid the middle class for slightly worse (but still nice) units. And the middle class gets pushed down to outbid the lower class for even worse units.

The other way round, adding units at the top allows everyone on the ladder to move up one rung. All the way to the bottom.

Developers should just concentrate on whatever's most profitable.

> If one small city allows more construction, the overall impact on the market will be tiny, [...]

That's the first of the two cases I outlined above. I would also classify that as a (local) success of allowing more housing.

Being able to add lots of supply to an over-priced market without that dropping prices, is every suppliers' dream.

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