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 for newcomers. Personally it feels unfair and unnecessary because the same people have other places in the country to choose from where they could live and work - they just don’t want to accept the trade offs and live within their means.
Cities are living, evolving, organisms that should function to serve the reason for their existence: the amazing efficiency of colocating so many people and resources. San Francisco is, by a large margin, the least dynamic city I have ever encountered in the US. For a place that prides itself on progressivism, it's mindblowing how obsessed they are with preserving things exactly the way they are.
If I didn't want to live around other people I would simply move out of America's second densest city and not live in one of its most economically productive megaregions.
I generally agree with your position when it comes to undeveloped places that people moved into specifically because they weren't hyperdense. But I don't think the same applies to cities-- you specifically chose to live in a very dense and congested place.
> Communities should be allowed to preserve their character and charm and preserve quality of life for their existing residents.
It really doesn't look good (especially in SF) when most of those long-term residents are white and the newcomers are more demographically diverse. Pretty much all of the defining traits of segregation
> It’s basically taking away from the people that have put down roots for newcomers.
The only thing you lose (materially speaking) are property values. What's the point of complaining to other people about your property values? Why should we care?
I know. It’s especially sad when these people are different than me, or have children that might clog up the school system. I especially resent people who have an expectation that they should be able to live within a couple hour commute of a decent paying job. Who do they think they are? My parents sacrificed a lot to help me with the down payment on my single family home just so I could live somewhere within nice views and architecture, and where I don’t have to worry about the wrong element in my neighborhood. Personally I feel it’s unfair and unnecessary that young people should be able to remain in the city where they grew up because they have other places in the country to choose from where they could live and work - they just don’t want to accept the tradeoffs that come with living in the middle of nowhere with few good job prospects.
> It’s basically taking away from the people that have put down roots for newcomers. Personally it feels unfair and unnecessary because the same people have other places in the country to choose from where they could live and work
If those existing residents don't like the changes, then they're free to follow your advice and live somewhere else.
Preserving the community and also preserving the low tax rate at which people who bought their houses ages ago pay. If the people who “put down roots” had to pay in property taxes what the newer arrivals have to pay, many of them would be priced out as well.
If the price of homes keep rising we'll all be enjoying a life of being homeless, squatting with two dozen others inside one of those historic buildings.
> Communities should be allowed to preserve their character and charm and preserve quality of life for their existing residents.
No they shouldn't. Private property is private property. Demonstrate a specific harm like pollution or you don't get to tell other people what to do with their real-estate.
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!
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.
There is also a whole country of places to live in for those who don’t want to embrace change when their neighborhoods feel a societal pressure to do so. They can live in whatever style of neighborhood they want to live in (or create) anywhere in the country. Change is a constant (whether it be good or bad; obviously subjective adjectives).
These folks who have uprooted themselves from their existing homes to make a better life have as much right to live wherever they want to (considering a country and or society with freedom of movement; e.g. USA) as those who currently occupy the space.
I’m not saying your position is incorrect. I’m saying your argument is flawed.
The argument is not so much flawed as it is morally reprehensible. The phrase ‘Maintaining the character of the neighborhood” is historically a racist dog whistle used by Whites wanting to keep out Blacks. For background of the historical intent of zoning practices, see “The Color of Law”:
You can also read more the 1920’s SCOTUS case ‘Euclid vs Ambler’ where the justices agreed that apartment dwellers were essentially a public nuisance and thus apartments could be regulated.
Nowadays it’s not so much skin color, but rather social class or the ‘wrong’ sort of minority that people want to keep out. Whatever the reason, the type of restrictive zoning the OP is advocating for has major repercussions for equality by restricting access to well paying jobs and other amenities like hospitals and schools.
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?
It may also be coming from people who do live in SF, and wish they could continue, but cannot afford to - because other people, who have more money, are outbidding them for the artificially limited supply of housing.
A) Many of the people supporting this are current residents of SF
B) Yes you are allowed to push for policy changes in SF, even if you have been pushed out to other parts of California or the USA. Desegregation was pushed by "outsiders" but most of us today agree that was a good thing that moved society forward.
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 same city as their parents when they grow up
> 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 an enormous opportunity: real estate developers in that community can build and build and build without worrying about oversupply ever dropping prices.
A booming local construction industry would also create lots of blue collar jobs, even if it never makes a dent in housing prices. Or rather, exactly when it doesn't make a dent in prices: because then the booming local construction industry can just keep on booming forever.
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 construction?
Is it that they can't find ways to benefit from the extra commercial activity? (I heard that eg property taxes are capped? And they have no creative ideas for how to otherwise benefit?)
Is it that there are bay area wide mechanisms that keep communities from allowing more building?
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Btw, the whole discussion reminds me when back in the years of the Great Recession after the Global Financial crises inflation was--as hard as that is to believe today--stubbornly low, and people saw that as a problem, instead of an opportunity:
At a minimum you can have your central bank buy up the whole national debt with newly printed money, and if that still doesn't raise inflation, you can start buying up the rest of world dollar for dollar. (Eg index funds are happy to take your newly created money.)
At some point, either your country's central bank owns the world in return for some data base entries, or inflation will pick up. (If inflation picks up too much, you can always soak up some excess money by selling things off your balance sheet. Standard central bank operating procedure.)
Instead of seeing this opportunity, people mostly just.. gave up?
Btw, orthodox economists suggested more or less exactly what I laid out above to Japan during the 1990s Lost Decade, but this was not a popular policy recommendation during the 2010s.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
I think we are in agreement that if enough houses are built, price drops will follow.
One issue we encountered here in Seattle (or at least we believe we encountered!) is that people move, so when housing got too expensive in California, people moved from California to Seattle where housing was cheaper.
Now obviously if California reformed its housing policies, I think they could easily absorb pent up local demand along with some growth. However if a smaller locale like Seattle fixes its housing problems, I worry that Seattle couldn't absorb pent up demand for housing from California.
> Being able to add lots of supply to an over-priced market without that dropping prices, is every suppliers' dream.
Getting filthy rich is supplier's dream. Most builders (and arguably businesses) are short sighted, but if government policy makes them tons of $ they will still try to claim it was all part of their brilliant long term plan.
If every major west coast city replaced its stupid zoning laws with, say, Japan's zoning system (see https://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001050453.pdf), then prices would come crashing down and everyone would make crap-fuck-tons of money.
As a trivial example, on a 10k sqft lot right now in Seattle suburbs, builders are constructing single family homes and selling them for 2 million.
With not-idiotic zoning, that could be 6 flats selling at 600k each.
Never mind the rules that discourage constructing flats and instead push builders towards making 4 story townhomes.... (Perfect for able-bodied couples without kids who are under the age of 40! And no one else...)
> Now obviously if California reformed its housing policies, I think they could easily absorb pent up local demand along with some growth. However if a smaller locale like Seattle fixes its housing problems, I worry that Seattle couldn't absorb pent up demand for housing from California.
Are you saying that (A) Californian's won't come, and that's why Seattle won't absorb pent up demand from there?
Or are you saying that (B) Californians will enthusiastically come, thereby preventing any price drop?
Case (A) means Seattle can solve its own housing affordability problem by allowing more building. Case (B) means Seattle's real estate developers can have an endless boom.
> If every major west coast city replaced its stupid zoning laws with, say, Japan's zoning system (see https://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001050453.pdf), then prices would come crashing down and everyone would make crap-fuck-tons of money.
Yes. But my argument is that if just a single town adopted sensible measures, developers could make obscene amounts of money in that city. Especially if the rest of the area persists in their stupidity.
So multiple cities finding sanity at the same time might be required to do anything about broader housing affordability in the Bay Area, but for a construction bonanza with insane profits it's actually better for the city that breaks ranks not to have competition from other cities finding sanity.
So my question is: why does no single city seem to break ranks?
> So my question is: why does no single city seem to break ranks?
Because city councils don't follow the laws of economics, at all!
City council members only side benefit from economic growth. Heck during the early 2000s housing boom, Seattle City Council members got negative press for "being too friendly to building developers".
As an example of this inanity, cities should be eager to have well funded efficient permitting departments, after all the faster buildings get built, the faster property taxes go up! But no, permitting departments are famously slow and awful to deal with. Simple tasks can take months, and a large complex can take years to get approved.
Every city should increase permitting costs for large projects until the building department is a profit center, and then put into place aggressive service level guarantees on response times to requests.
But that isn't what happens, my 100% ignorant guess would be entrenched power structures in permitting departments, but I honestly have no idea why.
That's the kind of explanation I am looking for, but I'm not sure this specific one is sufficient, yet: what you describe is probably accurate for most cities, but only one city would have to break ranks.
A very large % of voters object to dense housing. I see a lot of "too many people keep moving here, we need to stop building more houses!" comments on neighborhood forums.
That is likely the other factor.
An election cycle or two ago, a candidate in Seattle who was proposing density increases lost big time. Since then, proposals have been... less than earthshattering.
IMHO a citizens referendum is needed to really change things, but it'd need one hell of an ad campaign behind it.
People in nice neighborhoods like their neighborhoods, and they tend to have enough $ to back those feelings up when it comes to political donations. Asking them to take a gamble on completely changing the area they live at, and hoping it becomes better, is a hard sell.
It's a shame that a developer can't just outright pay a city somehow to legalise building. There's an obvious huge surplus to be made. Perhaps distribute the proceeds amongst all the voters in the city or so.
Wouldn't matter, money is not the deciding factor.
Builders already pay the city money to build, then property taxes go up and the city makes more money, and when the finished house is sold the city makes money from the sale.
The problem is the city council doesn't care. If they make the city a boat load of money but then lose the next election, their political career is over. Voted out of office for pissing everyone off is not something politicians are too keen on having happen to themselves.
>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.
> 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.
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.
Former San Francisco resident here. I pushed for building reform while I lived there. Will continue to vote for building reform there now, even though we got pushed out (kids....) by high prices, because we yearn to move back. I don't think there's any incongruity in my consistent position on this issue.
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.
> Should I be allowed to push for policy changes in a city I am not a resident of?
Yes. Because this country has the first amendment. It is a matter of law that you can and may (within the law).
If you (and I am not saying you do) not agree with people being able to push for such changes (via speech as it is defined and interpreted by our court via the first amendment), then please state your reasons for disagreeing rather than posing a loaded question.
Yeah but I feel like you have to admit there is a tragedy of the commons here -- there will always be more people who want to live somewhere than can realistically have a high-quality of life there....
Part of the reason San Francisco is so desirable is because it's iconic, it would be a great irony to make room for more people by removing what makes it special.
It always felt to me like if we want more San Francisco then we should build more beautiful cities, there's a lot of amazing coast in California.
What's really so iconic about it that would make it "not San Francisco" if it were removed? The Golden Gate Bridge, perhaps? Sure. Coit Tower? Maybe, but... eh? Transamerica Pyramid? Cool, but I wouldn't care much if it was gone. Palace of Fine Arts? Sure, I'd be really sad to see that go, but it's not "San Francisco".
I've lived in SF for 14 years and I don't think "because it's iconic" is in my top 10 reasons for liking it here.
Also consider that cities always change. SF in 1924 looked a lot different. It was desirable then. It changed. It's desirable now. It'll change again, and still be desirable.
I'm a homeowner here, and would absolutely love it if many many more people had the opportunity to own homes in SF, without mortgaging their entire life.
Hell, I wouldn't mind my home value dropping all that much, either. Sure, I'd lose money when I eventually want to sell, but at least my property taxes would go down. (But honestly, I don't think my home value would drop all that much, if at all. Demand so far outstrips supply here that we'd probably have to double or triple the housing stock before home prices would drop all that much.)
As a side point, if SF was upzoned to allow, say, six-plexes where possible, one could probably sell ones property to a developer for more than it is worth now as a single family home. At the same time, the per unit cost of the six-plex would be less than your current home price. Everybody in the transactions wins: you, the builder, and the five new families. The environment wins too, as five families can live closer to where they work instead of driving, and the new home are more energy efficient.
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 dubious value.
One way I look at it: in the longest of long terms, every single building will have had something significant enough about it to earn it a "historic" designation, and then you can't change anything, ever.
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 feels a decrease in land value tax revenue. But that kind of alignment is a good idea for all kinds of policies.)
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).
> 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.
Sounds interesting, but I wonder how you would get at those values?
Also, you would probably also want to extend what you say to include both locally enforced restrictions but also locally provided amenities.
But how do you decide who gets to benefit from eg having the Google campus next door? Or having a famous artist live in your community?
> 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.
That seems much more convoluted and prone to abuses than just letting Aspen collect its land value tax and keeping the whole thing, but also having that level of government pay for most things by itself.
Have a look at Switzerland: their system minimises vertical transfers, ie every level of government mostly only spends what it earns (in taxes).
(They do have some horizontal transfers between richer and poorer regions of the country, or richer and poorer people. But not much between eg Cantons and the federal level.)
>we should try to preserve truly outstanding examples of history,
OTH the examples of history already most likely to be preserved are they outstanding ones. This creates an expectation that historical examples of building are better than the present.
Perhaps we should try out preserving the median average building, not the worst or best. That might solve the issue of rose coloured geriatric glasses.
Or if you are intent on keeping a record of the built environment, we could mandate saving every building, but just encourage adaptive reuse and revision. There is more value in reworking than deleting. And more community buy in. I mean, who wants to do a clean rewrite every 20 years..
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.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadI generally agree with your position when it comes to undeveloped places that people moved into specifically because they weren't hyperdense. But I don't think the same applies to cities-- you specifically chose to live in a very dense and congested place.
Better to densify places that are already dense.
It really doesn't look good (especially in SF) when most of those long-term residents are white and the newcomers are more demographically diverse. Pretty much all of the defining traits of segregation
> It’s basically taking away from the people that have put down roots for newcomers.
The only thing you lose (materially speaking) are property values. What's the point of complaining to other people about your property values? Why should we care?
The folks complaining the most from what I remember were the Latinos?
If those existing residents don't like the changes, then they're free to follow your advice and live somewhere else.
No they shouldn't. Private property is private property. Demonstrate a specific harm like pollution or you don't get to tell other people what to do with their real-estate.
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!
These folks who have uprooted themselves from their existing homes to make a better life have as much right to live wherever they want to (considering a country and or society with freedom of movement; e.g. USA) as those who currently occupy the space.
I’m not saying your position is incorrect. I’m saying your argument is flawed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Color_of_Law
You can also read more the 1920’s SCOTUS case ‘Euclid vs Ambler’ where the justices agreed that apartment dwellers were essentially a public nuisance and thus apartments could be regulated.
Nowadays it’s not so much skin color, but rather social class or the ‘wrong’ sort of minority that people want to keep out. Whatever the reason, the type of restrictive zoning the OP is advocating for has major repercussions for equality by restricting access to well paying jobs and other amenities like hospitals and schools.
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 same city as their parents when they grow up
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 an enormous opportunity: real estate developers in that community can build and build and build without worrying about oversupply ever dropping prices.
A booming local construction industry would also create lots of blue collar jobs, even if it never makes a dent in housing prices. Or rather, exactly when it doesn't make a dent in prices: because then the booming local construction industry can just keep on booming forever.
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 construction?
Is it that they can't find ways to benefit from the extra commercial activity? (I heard that eg property taxes are capped? And they have no creative ideas for how to otherwise benefit?)
Is it that there are bay area wide mechanisms that keep communities from allowing more building?
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Btw, the whole discussion reminds me when back in the years of the Great Recession after the Global Financial crises inflation was--as hard as that is to believe today--stubbornly low, and people saw that as a problem, instead of an opportunity:
At a minimum you can have your central bank buy up the whole national debt with newly printed money, and if that still doesn't raise inflation, you can start buying up the rest of world dollar for dollar. (Eg index funds are happy to take your newly created money.)
At some point, either your country's central bank owns the world in return for some data base entries, or inflation will pick up. (If inflation picks up too much, you can always soak up some excess money by selling things off your balance sheet. Standard central bank operating procedure.)
Instead of seeing this opportunity, people mostly just.. gave up?
Btw, orthodox economists suggested more or less exactly what I laid out above to Japan during the 1990s Lost Decade, but this was not a popular policy recommendation during the 2010s.
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.
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.
I think we are in agreement that if enough houses are built, price drops will follow.
One issue we encountered here in Seattle (or at least we believe we encountered!) is that people move, so when housing got too expensive in California, people moved from California to Seattle where housing was cheaper.
Now obviously if California reformed its housing policies, I think they could easily absorb pent up local demand along with some growth. However if a smaller locale like Seattle fixes its housing problems, I worry that Seattle couldn't absorb pent up demand for housing from California.
> Being able to add lots of supply to an over-priced market without that dropping prices, is every suppliers' dream.
Getting filthy rich is supplier's dream. Most builders (and arguably businesses) are short sighted, but if government policy makes them tons of $ they will still try to claim it was all part of their brilliant long term plan.
If every major west coast city replaced its stupid zoning laws with, say, Japan's zoning system (see https://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001050453.pdf), then prices would come crashing down and everyone would make crap-fuck-tons of money.
As a trivial example, on a 10k sqft lot right now in Seattle suburbs, builders are constructing single family homes and selling them for 2 million.
With not-idiotic zoning, that could be 6 flats selling at 600k each.
Never mind the rules that discourage constructing flats and instead push builders towards making 4 story townhomes.... (Perfect for able-bodied couples without kids who are under the age of 40! And no one else...)
Are you saying that (A) Californian's won't come, and that's why Seattle won't absorb pent up demand from there?
Or are you saying that (B) Californians will enthusiastically come, thereby preventing any price drop?
Case (A) means Seattle can solve its own housing affordability problem by allowing more building. Case (B) means Seattle's real estate developers can have an endless boom.
> If every major west coast city replaced its stupid zoning laws with, say, Japan's zoning system (see https://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001050453.pdf), then prices would come crashing down and everyone would make crap-fuck-tons of money.
Yes. But my argument is that if just a single town adopted sensible measures, developers could make obscene amounts of money in that city. Especially if the rest of the area persists in their stupidity.
So multiple cities finding sanity at the same time might be required to do anything about broader housing affordability in the Bay Area, but for a construction bonanza with insane profits it's actually better for the city that breaks ranks not to have competition from other cities finding sanity.
So my question is: why does no single city seem to break ranks?
Because city councils don't follow the laws of economics, at all!
City council members only side benefit from economic growth. Heck during the early 2000s housing boom, Seattle City Council members got negative press for "being too friendly to building developers".
As an example of this inanity, cities should be eager to have well funded efficient permitting departments, after all the faster buildings get built, the faster property taxes go up! But no, permitting departments are famously slow and awful to deal with. Simple tasks can take months, and a large complex can take years to get approved.
Every city should increase permitting costs for large projects until the building department is a profit center, and then put into place aggressive service level guarantees on response times to requests.
But that isn't what happens, my 100% ignorant guess would be entrenched power structures in permitting departments, but I honestly have no idea why.
A very large % of voters object to dense housing. I see a lot of "too many people keep moving here, we need to stop building more houses!" comments on neighborhood forums.
That is likely the other factor.
An election cycle or two ago, a candidate in Seattle who was proposing density increases lost big time. Since then, proposals have been... less than earthshattering.
IMHO a citizens referendum is needed to really change things, but it'd need one hell of an ad campaign behind it.
People in nice neighborhoods like their neighborhoods, and they tend to have enough $ to back those feelings up when it comes to political donations. Asking them to take a gamble on completely changing the area they live at, and hoping it becomes better, is a hard sell.
Builders already pay the city money to build, then property taxes go up and the city makes more money, and when the finished house is sold the city makes money from the sale.
The problem is the city council doesn't care. If they make the city a boat load of money but then lose the next election, their political career is over. Voted out of office for pissing everyone off is not something politicians are too keen on having happen to themselves.
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.
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.
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.
(Full disclosure: I'm a homeowner in SF, and want us to build build build build.)
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.
Yes. Because this country has the first amendment. It is a matter of law that you can and may (within the law).
If you (and I am not saying you do) not agree with people being able to push for such changes (via speech as it is defined and interpreted by our court via the first amendment), then please state your reasons for disagreeing rather than posing a loaded question.
Part of the reason San Francisco is so desirable is because it's iconic, it would be a great irony to make room for more people by removing what makes it special.
It always felt to me like if we want more San Francisco then we should build more beautiful cities, there's a lot of amazing coast in California.
I've lived in SF for 14 years and I don't think "because it's iconic" is in my top 10 reasons for liking it here.
Also consider that cities always change. SF in 1924 looked a lot different. It was desirable then. It changed. It's desirable now. It'll change again, and still be desirable.
I'm a homeowner here, and would absolutely love it if many many more people had the opportunity to own homes in SF, without mortgaging their entire life.
Hell, I wouldn't mind my home value dropping all that much, either. Sure, I'd lose money when I eventually want to sell, but at least my property taxes would go down. (But honestly, I don't think my home value would drop all that much, if at all. Demand so far outstrips supply here that we'd probably have to double or triple the housing stock before home prices would drop all that much.)
https://www.apartments.com/303-e-43rd-st-kansas-city-mo/q2fj...
The city needs to stop living in the past
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 dubious value.
One way I look at it: in the longest of long terms, every single building will have had something significant enough about it to earn it a "historic" designation, and then you can't change anything, ever.
(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 feels a decrease in land value tax revenue. But that kind of alignment is a good idea for all kinds of policies.)
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).
Sounds interesting, but I wonder how you would get at those values?
Also, you would probably also want to extend what you say to include both locally enforced restrictions but also locally provided amenities.
But how do you decide who gets to benefit from eg having the Google campus next door? Or having a famous artist live in your community?
> 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.
That seems much more convoluted and prone to abuses than just letting Aspen collect its land value tax and keeping the whole thing, but also having that level of government pay for most things by itself.
Have a look at Switzerland: their system minimises vertical transfers, ie every level of government mostly only spends what it earns (in taxes).
(They do have some horizontal transfers between richer and poorer regions of the country, or richer and poorer people. But not much between eg Cantons and the federal level.)
OTH the examples of history already most likely to be preserved are they outstanding ones. This creates an expectation that historical examples of building are better than the present.
Perhaps we should try out preserving the median average building, not the worst or best. That might solve the issue of rose coloured geriatric glasses.
Or if you are intent on keeping a record of the built environment, we could mandate saving every building, but just encourage adaptive reuse and revision. There is more value in reworking than deleting. And more community buy in. I mean, who wants to do a clean rewrite every 20 years..
My opinion, the whole city burned down once, and it kept on going. It will be ok to lose a couple “historic” buildings.