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San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

sfstandard.com

341–350 of 622 posts

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally a lot of friends in SF don’t bother reporting crimes because they know the police won’t do anything and it’ll be just a waste of their time reporting it.

Or if you call the police, they just never show up, or when they do, tell you not even bother filing a report. Citizen: Someone stole my backpack and laptop out of my car! Police: And?

If you want to make an insurance claim don't insurance companies require a police report? I would assume this is the case regardless where you live.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What crimes will drug users commit if drugs are legally available like alcohol?

Evidence from Portland, which decriminalized all drugs via Measure 101, the answer is, "Whatever crimes are necessary to enable people to afford their drug of choice." Not all drugs are equal. You can't drink your way into effectively schizophrenia, but you can get there in no time with the currently available super-potent variety of meth. Some drugs completely wreck your ability to live in a way compatible with hold…

I think the problem is decriminalization is just one half of the solution. It doesn't make the supply of drugs more available, it just removes a penalty for the people who are caught with possession.

What's worked very well in other nations is to literally supply people with as many drugs as they'd like.

The government handles the manufacture and distribution. All of it for free. In return:

1. The government knows who and how many drug users there are

2. Rehabilitation services can be provided. They may even be a requirement for someone to obtain the drugs.

3. Addicts can begin to lead a much more stable life due to a consistent supply. This has positive impacts on the society for many obvious reasons (e.g. little incentive for crime)

4. It is much easier for someone to ween off a drug if quality/supply is consistent.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#343
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe SF should relax the legal requirements of residential space, then? If they choose not to build sufficient housing... they can at least choose to use what they have. A windowless room with a community bathroom doesn't sound appealing, but at a certain price point it's better than nothing.

> Maybe X should relax the legal requirements of Y That's a slippery slope. Lots of legal requirements exist to protect someone. Legal requirements for windows are pretty reasonable to ensure people have at least some bare minimum of access to natural light in their home, rather than just living in a box.

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#344

The city officials are asleep at the wheel. Blame it on remote work and pandemic as much as you want, but the reality is that the city was in decline even before that. It is too expensive to live in the city. It is too expensive to commute to the city. It is too expensive to feed yourself in the city. Crime is rampant. Drug use and filth is everywhere. Most importantly city has been hostile to tech and business owner…

We can fix it, but only if we get organized. Sachin Agarwal (co-founder of Posterous) and I founded GrowSF to fix the city. We're less than two years in and already the #2 most influential voter guide in the city.

We must elect pro-growth and pro-tech people who can bring competence to government. There's no other way out of this mess.

We'd love your support! https://growsf.org/donate

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially methamphetamine. Why especially Meth and not Heroin or other opioids?

Meth gives people lots of energy and prolonged use causes psychosis. Heroin makes people feel content and sleepy.

> Heroin makes people feel content and sleepy

Only until they come down and go into withdrawal later and need to pay for a fix.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Housing can be affordable while going up in nominal terms. Housing cannot be affordable if it goes up in real terms though. In an ideal world house prices would increase 1:1 with wage growth from an affordable baseline. There are 2 ways to fix it: either crash the market or introduce policies which will cause either stagnation or below inflation growth in housing prices for at least 20 or 30 years.

> In an ideal world house prices would increase 1:1 with wage growth from an affordable baseline. There's only one way to do that - a command economy, with all housing owned and doled out by the government. That just doesn't work, anywhere, ever. You have to work very hard to ignore the fact that some places are more desirable than others to live in, and sometimes those desirable places change. Also, different people…

>That just doesn't work, anywhere, ever.

Except for Vienna.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#347

I do ask myself how long the WFH trend is going to last. My hypothesis is that at some point in the next 5 years we're going to starting seeing articles on HN promoting the productivity and well-being benefits of in-person interaction with your co-workers. From where I'm standing, productivity doesn't look so great. It's an open secret in my remote-heavy, North American west-coast social circle that everyone knocks o…

>From where I'm standing, productivity doesn't look so great. It's an open secret in my remote-heavy, North American west-coast social circle that everyone knocks off at 1-2pm when the east coast people are definitely logged off. Probably the east coast people are doing the same thing, but in the morning. Lots of happily phoning it in. That hasn't been my experience at all. I work for a multinational company with tea…

Can confirm like 80% of my Google friends are 3 hour/day types. But then again, it was only 5-6 hours/day before COVID anyway.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#348

Trivia note: there are certain words that only appear in headlines. Like "brace" to mean "prepare." (Although I think that one might occasionally show up in normal text.) What else? "eye" as a verb. ("Supervisors eye relaxing building codes")

https://xkcd.com/2584/

a few delightful examples.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Housing is an investment that should only go up in price" will eventually kill any market It doesn't have to. Housing can be affordable while going up in nominal terms. Neither do I think most San Francisco homeowners think about housing supply strategically. They're pissed off about a specific view being blocked. Or construction noise. Or their area's average rent going up. (?!?) Alternatively, they're comfortabl…

> Housing can be affordable while going up in nominal terms. Housing cannot be affordable if it goes up in real terms though. In an ideal world house prices would increase 1:1 with wage growth from an affordable baseline. There are 2 ways to fix it: either crash the market or introduce policies which will cause either stagnation or below inflation growth in housing prices for at least 20 or 30 years.

Why can’t new housing reflect the actual cost of materials and labor, with a marginal land value, and existing housing generally increase in land value because it is more desirable? That’s the way it used to work, and many people gained appreciation in their houses simply because of growth.

The real underlying problem is a lack of new housing stock, at least partly due to the decade long neglect in the construction trade following the housing bubble collapse.

Re: San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash

#350

Part of this is tying property taxes to real property values (yes I know SF's hands are bound by CA law and prop 13 in particular). These days I live in NZ here rates (the local name for our property tax equivalent) are determined by relative property values. Effectively the City decides it needs to raise $N this year - your property tax will be the fraction of this determined by the value of your land divided by the…

My understanding is that that is the rule in most states. Is where I live. I don't know about CA.

States and counties are starting to move away from this.

Michigan essentially has a prop 13 that limits property tax increases to below what the average inflation rate is (far below average home price appreciation).

Counties like Allegheny in Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh) simply just haven't reassessed properties since 2012 - which is actually even more regressive than Prop 13 in CA and the equivalent in Michigan.

I imagine in the near future Prop 13 equivalents will become more common, not less.

Voters vote for what's good for them, not what's fair.

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