To solve affordability crisis, Bay Area housing stock must grow 50% in 20 years

Post by davidw » Wed, May 02, 2018, 4:06 AM UTC

asimpletune wrote: post #281

kelnos wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? All "rights" are manufactured by humans. We would like to say that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are "natural rights", but they're not: a bunch of people just agree that they should be, so they are. (And imperfectly, at that! We wouldn't have capital punishment or prisons if we actually believed in these rights.) And if we recognized "physically being present before others" as a natural right,…

Sorry, I didn't mean to say "right" as in the kind manufactured by humans. I just meant that two people can not be in the same place at once. It's a right in a very literal sense, I.e. it's "right".

Post by rspeer » Wed, May 02, 2018, 4:08 AM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #280

kelnos wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the parent was referring to: homelessness on the rise, lower-income residents being forced out, the need for many service workers to transport themselves to the city because they can't afford to live here anymore, housing speculation and foreign investment leaving units empty and driving up prices, etc. All of that "changes the character of the city", IMO for the worse. One reason (of many) for these changes…

Homelessness is rising here because SF is open to homelessness therefore it attracts it from the rest of the country. Increasing housing supply by 50% will increase homelessness because you have 50% more people willing to financially support it.

Post by rspeer » Wed, May 02, 2018, 4:17 AM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #164

ajross wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but potentially not enough. The fraction of the population that is renting now is still (by definition in the case of a hot market!) much smaller than the fraction of the demographic that wants to move to the area and needs to be served by a just housing policy.

The renters - if they would vote (they typically don't) however have it in there interest to have more development: more places to rent places downward pressure on rent prices and thus limits their costs. Unlike homeowners (who benefit form prop 13), a renter faces the potential of their costs increasing yearly. If the large group that wants to move in can find a a place without having to displace someone else that l…

Post by redthrowaway » Wed, May 02, 2018, 4:39 AM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #195

redthrowaway wrote: post #65

What is far more likely is that people will simply leave the Bay Area, and demand will fall. It's far easier to create tech clusters in other cities than it is to convince a bunch of NIMBY boomers that other people need places to live, too.

"It's far easier to create tech clusters in other cities" Wouldn't it have been done by now if that were the case? Yet SF is still the Mecca for the tech and startup scenes.

Post by taysic » Wed, May 02, 2018, 5:02 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #289

taysic wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how I heard it. Turns out Berkeley got rent control in 1972 while Prop 13 was passed in 1978. But generally you're right. It's still my understanding that landlords of multiple units who have tenants in rent control would have a massive problem with the repeal of Prop 13. It's one of the things that go hand in hand with rent control and keep costs low. They would have a strong argument for being unable to main…

> It's one of the things that go hand in hand with rent control and keep costs low. Prop 13 doesn't keep total costs low for landlords, it just shifts costs from property taxes to other things.