(I'm the author).

You make excellent points, and I don't mean to minimize the regional issues.

Sure, if I had a magic wand then I'd increase housing being built across the Bay Area. In fact, I'd like consolidate the jurisdictions in the Bay Area, but that's a whole other argument.

I don't quite know how to play out the claim that demand is infinite. One, I don't believe that. And, two, it seems like an argument that has us throw up our hands and do nothing. It's large problem that needs a large solution -- I've heard estimates in the 100-200 thousand unit range -- but I'd rather shoot for that goal than do nothing at all.

Kinda off topic in context of this thread, but if you’re organizing panel discussions about this, you should try to get someone from http://www.spur.org in your panel. See http://www.spur.org/policy-area/housing and http://www.spur.org/policy-area/regional-planning

Thanks! I know SPUR well, I'm actually on their housing policy board.

I'm not saying this is your motivation, but when it's a proposal to the housing problem is framed as "Let's Fix San Francisco" it feels like the proposer believes they must live in San Francisco, especially when the proposer isn't a native San Franciscan. It feels tribal, and this issue is extremely tribal, and anyone who appears to belong to a specific tribe chimes in with a "We need to fix San Francisco" undoubtedly people from other tribes chime in and complain about how that tribe is the problem and the conversation usually devolves into name calling at some point.

When the proposal is a bit broader, i.e. "Let's fix the Bay Area", then, at the very least, it doesn't feel like a claim is being made on San Francisco by a specific tribe.

More than anything, it's the tribal nature of this issue that really sucks and it really stalls the things for everyone.

Completely ignoring the transit issue is remarkable. New York City serves an example of a vibrant and expensive city, but one that has a multitude of options depending on how much you're prepared to commute.

People truck in on a daily basis from New Jersey and Connecticut because there's highways and reliable (enough) rail options.

BART, from all accounts, is a total disaster and is about to completely implode. The rail project through the valley is anemic, completely inadequate for any serious commuter use.

If you can provide more options, stronger links with better commute times, you can live in places farther away without as huge a penalty on your time. It should be practical to live in Oakland and work in San Francisco, the two are so damned close, but it's a nightmare in practice.

Fix that and you're half way to solving this problem.

If the Japanese could have high speed trains in 1964, why can't an area with such density have a stellar transport service in 2016? If you increase the speed by an X factor, you get an increase of surface by X^2, moving the problem away in a place where there is low density.

Yeah. In Palo Alto my crappy 1 bedroom apartment that I was living in 3 years ago was in the middle of suburban jungle (no restaurants or shops for a few miles in any direction) and was $1650. I looked last week and it was $2500. That was a crappy place.

If you want to live by downtown PA (university Ave) its right around $2800-3000 for a 1 bedroom, for places with 20 year old appliances and no upgrades.

The peninsula is just as bad because of school preferences, etc.

New engineers getting hired in MV and PA literally can't afford to live by themselves in a 1 bedroom. That is fucked.

Can you clarify where in PA you were that had no restaurants or shops for a few miles in any direction? PA is relatively small, and there aren't any apartments further west in the really nice parts. Further east there are still stores and shops and such (albeit not as nice as near downtown).

Past past California ave about 2 miles near el camino. It was a little over 2 miles to California Ave and maybe 2 miles to the san Antonio shopping center. They weren't pleasant walks the most direct way (along el camnino) and even longer if you decided to take the scenic route and everything is spread out.

Not an impossible feat to bike, but the energy is low and there are much better ways to spend rent money.

Like down El Camino towards California Avenue and beyond, I'd think.

Well what they really do is live further out, displacing poorer people. Places like Sunnyvale and Santa Clara are more doable.

> I expect what would really happen if SF just went all in building new housing, is that prices would drop in the city slightly, allowing people to move back into the city, thus increasing demand and increasing prices back to where they were.

That seems unlikely to me, based on intuition and my admittedly elementary understanding of economics. It seems very unlikely that a significant increase in the quantity of housing units would cause no change in the price of housing units.

It would indeed cause the pricing to drop, but just temporarily until all the new housing stock was filled.

Basically, the author is suggesting that (within practical bounds) the demand for housing inside SF is unlimited.

I think it's a fair assessment.

I really don't think so. If demand is effectively unlimited, then I highly doubt it is only unlimited at exactly the current housing prices. Some significant portion of the housing is not under rent control (most people I know don't live in rent controlled units) and some portion of the supposedly effectively unlimited demanders should be willing to pay more than the current prices.

Maybe they switch to alternatives (larger, further away) at around this price level. Other commentators have noted that you don't pay much less further away, just get much more house than you need. An increase in supply and subsequent drop in prices would be absorbed immediately given the other conditions (appears to be the claim).

Is it, really? The entire current population of the Bay Area is tiny (7 million people across 101 cities, less than a million in S.F. proper). Compare:

Tokyo metro area: 37.8 Million

Mexico City metro area: 21.2 Million

NYC metro area: 20 Million

If demand where truly unlimited, then building up S.F. to Tokyo standards or above over the next few decades should be practical, since that level of demand would provide the funds for the growth. Of course, what is really going to happen is that demand will likely stabilize around or below the 15 million threshold for the entire Bay Area.

You're right that the same arguments apply throughout the Bay Area. That fact that SF needs to build more and denser housing doesn't excuse Palo Alto, Mountain View, Berkeley, Oakland, etc. from doing the same.

But even the housing policy you describe, in which SF acts unilaterally, would still be a great good. Tens of thousands of people previously priced out of SF would now be able to live in the city. And those who still couldn't afford the city would find it much easier to live within a reasonable commute.

70 story high rise in Atherton and Belmont! That will be the day :-)

I quite liked the Peninsula. SF wasn't really my cup of tea. God forbid people like me that lived on the Cliffs of Despair (Pacifica) and were relatively happy.

They finally demolished the cliff buildings a couple of weeks ago!

Yeah, I saw that on the NYTimes. Glad they did it before it fell into the ocean :-)

Yep, the East Bay is quickly losing its status as the cheap overflow for San Francisco. A lot of the Peninsula and Santa Clara County is bad too.

BART now designates high-cost areas. You can see it in the tri-valley, the new Whole Foods in Dublin is a good indicator. Now they want to build an IKEA next to it.

Poorer, non-tech people are getting pushed out to Tracy and made-from-scratch exurbs like Mountain House.

SF is just the center, Oakland/Berkley is getting hit hard now. The Uber acquisition of that large office complex in Oak has set off a bonanza. The hipster brigade is already popping up in weird places in Oakland. Really not sure where all the poor people will go.

There is one, weird, and very not pc observation though: old home owners get pushed out, but in the East Bay you see a lot of Indian newcomers moving in - and not highly paid executives, but Indian fresh out of rural areas in India, men in sandals (no socks, ever) and women in full garb. Where is that money coming from?

How exactly do home owners get pushed out? Who is making them sell their properties against their will?

>> A way to look at it would be that SF's sphere of rent influence would end up shrinking, but the magnitude of the epicenter remains unaffected.

This is roughly the conjecture of Marchetti's constant :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti%27s_constant

See also induced demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

In some cases it's cheaper to live in another city and fly to/from SF every single day than to live in SF.

Name some of these cases.

I think it's mostly a "thought exercise", but here's a treatment looking at the costs of commuting to SF from Las Vegas: http://mobile.businessinsider.com/its-cheaper-to-commute-fro...

As that article points out, you're looking at 2 hours of commuting each way with that.

I assure you, you can find a cheaper total cost of living + commuting within 2 hours of SF by car.

My point was simply how absurd this is, not that it's a practical alternative.

Some employees at UCSF do this -- They can get on a 7-on/7-off schedule, fly in from somewhere more reasonable (often Denver or somewhere in the Midwest), stay on a couch for a week, earn a SF salary then fly back to a $1,500/month mortgage somewhere else.

'Stay on a couch for a week' - pretty large pre-requisite here..

I don't disagree, but they often have coworkers who work opposite shifts (7am - 7pm vs. 7pm - 7am) so they can share an apartment space without running into each other too much.

It doesn't matter how much housing you build. The landlords will still charge as much as the market can bear.