We do possess the technology to build higher buildings, rather than simply create sprawl. Housing is expensive enough in SF that said technology could be profitably employed.

This is especially important to consider in much of silicon valley, which has very few high buildings and not much density.

Adding more housing is probably not going to drastically drop prices, but it'll certainly help contain price increases.

As for higher buildings: I'm not going to argue that we shouldn't raise building heights in SF. I'm just saying that developers aren't going to voluntarily make any of those tall buildings cheaper than market rate. They also won't build more space than they know they can make a comfortable profit on, at current prices.

Again, name a city in the US where construction has lowered real estate prices. Developers don't have any natural incentive to do that.

Unless they're colluding, they'll keep building if it's profitable to do so. And there's a lot of margin for that in SF, especially if they get rid of some of the big obstacles.

There are various articles about 'filtering' and how it's not happening in cities like SF. Here's one - there are probably better ones:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/02/19/what-liber...

I know SV is a separate entity (entities, actually), but it's obviously very closely related.

People in the US are going to have to figure out density sooner or later. This stuff has knock-on effects all up and down the west coast. Lots of people move here to Bend to escape the bay area, and are driving up local prices...

if it's profitable over the long term.

Keep in mind that builders have to allocate ever-increasing percentages of units to "below-market housing".

Then, with the current bubble bursts, they're stuck with the below-market renters but will be scrambling to fill the rest of the units.

> "Filtering is the idea that, as new market-rate housing is built, higher-income people move into it, leaving behind older housing stock for lower-income people."

It does, there was an article here a few weeks ago where they had studied gentrification in SF and found that the areas that allowed more new (luxury) apartment construction had less reduction in poor people living in the area compared to the ones that didn't.

I watched Seattle build like crazy in the late 90s. It seems like every month a huge skyrise apartment building came online in Belltown. Many thousands of units were added every year. It coincided with a continuing influx of people so I don't think it lowered the absolute price of real estate, but the laws of supply and demand are pretty inviolable. Seattle is pretty affordable by present SF standards, and with much of the same cultural appeal.

(I live in SF but used to spend lots of time in Seattle)

I'll give you that Seattle is more affordable than San Francisco...but it's also at least twice the land area of SF, with fewer people and geographic constraints. And the weather is...an acquired taste.

2. Hong Kong, one of the densest cities in the world, is built on land much steeper than SF.

None of these places is really keeping up with demand. SF is simply the worst of the worst from that point of view.

I agree completely about the weather. I grew up in western Oregon and I don't know how it's possible to sustain human life further north without an IV of antidepressants!

No, housing prices do not necessarily immediately sink. Developers will only build when they believe they can turn a profit. But you can overbuild during boom times and allow housing prices to correct when demand diminishes.

Obviously, with perfect foresight, few intelligent developers would choose to begin a construction project just before a major economic retraction. But if your suggestion is that we should build now, then wait for economic armageddon to really adjust prices downward, then I guess I can't argue.

http://cityobservatory.org/what-filtering-can-and-cant-do/

If you ask me, the best we can do now is improve regional transit to make SF look more like Manhattan, and fight to hold on to whatever low-income property remains on the SF peninsula in the meantime.

I'm making a more nuanced point: indiscriminate high-end construction doesn't help, and that's what you get in SF without the kind of planning that people in this debate like to call "NIMBYism".

I'd personally love it if someone were to build 1000 units of affordable housing. The thing is, nobody is gonna do that unless they're forced to do it -- in this town, it takes years of fighting to get a fraction of that number built (for example: NEMA phase II had 52 'affordable' units built, out of a total of 489. Those other 437 units have some of the highest rents in San Francisco.)

http://sfist.com/2013/11/18/middle_class_screwed_in_current_...

I'm comfortable with the idea that the market will figure out the right amount of housing, and the right price for housing. I'm not saying that there should be no zoning laws, but within whatever zoning laws you have, why not allow it to be a free market? The forces of supply and demand do a good job shaping what supply is provided. Zoning itself may be a big part of the problem as well:

"The artificial upward pressure that zoning places on house prices—primarily by functioning as a supply constraint—also may undermine the market forces that would otherwise determine how much housing to build, where to build, and what type to build, leading to a mismatch between the types of housing that households want, what they can afford, and what is available to buy or rent" ( Jason Furman, Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers)

Perhaps we'd all be better off leaving much more of land use to the market as well.

That's the point, to increase the supply.