> because the two lane roads can't be expanded fast enough

You can't build your way out of congestion.

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/10/18/dealing-with-c...

The structure of cities in the US needs to change some so that you can be close to more things: food, cafes, bars, barber/hairdresser... all that kind of stuff that's common on a regular basis. That way you don't have to clog up the roads for even the most minor of needs.

Agreed. At the same time, companies should invest more in distributed work places. Most of the congestion in the Bay Area and surrounding areas, extending through the Tri-Valley and into the Central Valley, is caused by commuter traffic.

Of course, the main reason house prices are so high in this area in the first place is because the tech industry is so heavily reliant on geographically centralized offices in the same area. Fix that and there's no reason for prices to keep shooting up in the first place.

It's true that dealing with a ton of new residents requires a lot of infrastructural work on the part of local governments. I don't think anyone denies that. The issue is that it's not a choice between getting a lot of new residents or not getting a lot of new residents.

Empirically, tons of people are moving to the Bay Area every year, whether local governments like it or not, whether they make provision for that or not. It's happening, and there's no legal way to stop it.

Resisting new development doesn't stop people from moving here, nor does it remove the need to build out new infrastructure. It simply makes property values become that much higher, because there's a fixed supply and a growing demand.

This is, I think the main factor in why NIMBYs resist development: their own property is worth much more every year. Building new residences would only slow the rate of appreciation of their property.

> Resisting new development doesn't stop people from moving here, nor does it remove the need to build out new infrastructure.

Sure it does. People aren't living in tents (generally speaking). Population can't grow unless the housing supply does.

There might still be a growing demand for Bay Area housing, but without supply growth, the effect of that demand is to push prices up until current residents are forced to leave. NIMBY housing policy has a lot of shitty side effects, but it does succeed at the basic goal of maintaining low population density.

San Francisco itself is a counterpoint. It's still the densest area of the US outside of Manhattan, despite decades of anti-development NIMBY housing policy. Both the population and the average rent are rising every year.

The old Victorians you see on postcards were built as single-family houses. Most of them are now subdivided into multiple apartments. Many houses in the city have illegally built inlaw apartments in the basement. People live with multiple roommates into their 40s and 50s.

It is true that eventually housing prices become so high they outstrip the ability of the local economy to provide salaries. In the meantime, it massively increases the costs of doing business, the capital requirements necessary to operate any business in the city. So far, venture capitalists have been willing to provide that capital, but that can't last forever. Last time (1999), it ended in a big economic crash.

Further complicating the analysis is rent control: most existing residents aren't forced to leave, because they are legally shielded from rising property values and rents. They are given the reverse, an incentive to stay in place no matter what, because they enjoy an artificially low rent that they cannot possibly replicate in any comparable dwelling. This causes market rents to skyrocket as maintenance costs and profit are shifted by landlords to the few open units they have, subsidizing the long term residents. It's a wealth transfer from "people who have moved recently" to "people who have not moved recently."

Finally, there are tons of people living in tents in San Francisco, which has become a major political issue lately. This is arguably partly due to homeless people from outside the city moving in to take advantage of its extremely generous social welfare programs for the homeless, but it is at least in part due to high housing costs.

> It's still the densest area of the US outside of Manhattan Do you have a source for that? Wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities...) seems to suggest the incorporated city is the second densest major city after New York, but not that San Francisco is the most sense place in the us after Manhattan. It's often cited that Brooklyn is twice as dense as SF for instance. Cambridge Massachusetts is more dense than San Francisco.

This. My apartment in the south bay is a perfect microcosm of this phenomenon: it is obviously a former single-family home, which has been subdivided and built upon, so that it now houses about 4 two-bedroom apartments. Although I live alone, I had to compete for it with two couples, who wanted to share it. So, you could have what was once a one-family home easily housing eight families.

> Sure it does. People aren't living in tents (generally speaking). Population can't grow unless the housing supply does.

Population can grow even if the housing supply does not, if the existing population becomes concentrated into fewer dwellings.

Bay Area residents who used to have their own apartments or houses are now renting rooms and sharing apartments or houses with others.

The people moving here are generally wealthier or higher paid than the existing residents, and will not be deterred from moving here until the number of high-paying job openings decreases.

Regarding living in tents, there has been a noticeable increase in the homeless population in recent years. It's not clear if they were displaced from housing or came here from somewhere else, but there is no denying the increase.

71% of the homeless population in SF (who are now living in tent cities) used to live in a home in SF: http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/What-San-Francisc...

Please bear in mind that the wording on the question means that someone in a homeless shelter or city-funded SRO for a month "used to live in a home in SF". Which is to say that the number is meaningful, but needs to be taken with a substantial grain of salt.

@pjlegato I think it's a fair point, but as a local resident I don't see the "attack on our property values" argument come up much with blocking new development. Again, it's something only a very small minority are concerned about because it's not an immediate problem that everyone feels right away compared to all the others.

I agree that most people don't conceptualize it in quite those terms, but the choice really is:

* Allow new higher density development, accept that your neighborhood will be under construction for years and then will look vastly different forever; and besides that, the city has to divert budget from other things to pay for building expanded infrastructure now (because California property taxes are mostly fixed by Prop 13);

* Fight development, the city spends that money on your pet project instead, the neighborhood looks the same as it always has, and then there's the bonus that your house will be worth a whole lot more in 5 or 10 years.

This is why you have unremarkable 1950s-era 3 bedroom ranch houses that would go for 75k in most US suburbs selling for $2m in Silicon Valley. It's why you can pay $5000 a month for an apartment in San Francisco that would be $700 a month in most US cities.

I'm pretty surprised anyone thinks Dublin, California is "highly dense". It has half the population density of Oakland, and only double the overall population density of Alameda County, which is huge and empty. The only even remotely dense housing I can think of in Dublin are the apartments near the BART station, but even those are utterly car-dependent because there's nothing to which to walk. I challenge you to name even a single commercial establishment that fronts a walkable street instead of being totally surrounded by parking lots.

I don't think it's that Dublin is highly dense, it's that the new housing developments are (in comparison to the more spacious, less-planned communities). One of my good friends grew up there, and they lived in a regular neighborhood with normal sized houses and big yards.

The new developments have units stacked high and smashed together. It may not be absolutely dense, but it is certainly more dense than necessary or desired by residents.

Population density isn't a great measure here either, because Dublin has a ton of open/protected/unbuildable space, and even the planned communities have a certain target ratio of public/garden/playground use space.

I think it's more a case of it's the 'burbs, and they'd like it to stay that way.

https://www.bing.com/mapspreview?&ty=30&q=dublin%2c%20ca&sat...

> The new developments have units stacked high and smashed together. It may not be absolutely dense, but it is certainly more dense than necessary or desired by residents.

Not desired by the people living there? Or not desired by other people in Dublin? These are two very different things.

> even the planned communities have a certain target ratio of public/garden/playground use space.

Maintaining a certain amount of public space in the form of parks/playgrounds/plazas makes sense, but that shouldn't translate into shooting down high-density housing developments.

> I think it's more a case of it's the 'burbs, and they'd like it to stay that way.

This kind of attitude -- the "let's keep it this way, forever" attitude -- is exactly why the bay area is now largely unaffordable. Sure, we'd all love it if we could maintain a certain neighborhood style AND have affordable housing. But we can't.

So, it comes down to what you value more: a style of neighborhood with more space between residents, or people being able to afford their rent without hour+ long commutes.

> desired

That's something to be careful with too. I certainly desire a couple of acres of rolling woodland in Palo Alto, but... yeah, that's probably not in the cards. Some people may not desire dense housing, but given the alternatives like moving back to Cyanide Springs, Oklahoma, they might find it's still ok.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference

The OP never claimed that Dublin is highly dense but that it's one of the few places in the Bay Area building "highly dense" projects, which makes sense given the situation they describe of a local population complaining about increasing density.

> Recent attempts to get the developers to shoulder more of this cost is often the next fight these communities face.

Why would the people building the housing be responsible for these costs? If new people are moving to a community and consuming services, can't they pay for those services through taxes like everyone else?

The cost to deploy most services does not increase linearly with the tax base. Usually it's capital expenditure.

Maybe (but not necessarily!) the number of police can grow linearly with the growth in taxable property. But police cars and police stations must be acquired from scratch. Same with sanitation workers vs an expanded water treatment plant, bus drivers and buses.

Some of those costs can maybe be amortized via debt issue (bonds), but the cost of servicing those would still be borne by the community overall and not necessarily the newcomers' taxes alone.

When a new development is proposed, it's the developer who's there in the moment, hoping to make business and a profit. The prospective-and-still-hypothetical newcomers are not yet there to make a case that housing be built for them. So it's not insane that the developer be put in a position to minimize negative effects of new building.

This isn't a perfect system, and it's certainly one that can be abused by nimbys as everyone now knows. In particular things get unintuitive for (usually older) folks who are house-rich but cash-poor ... accommodations might leave them with a house worth more, even as a fixed income prevents them from absorbing, say, increased taxes. But, since Proposition 13 passed in 1978, California has been pretty clearly biased towards disproportionately helping out those sorts of people though. Can't say we weren't warned.

> Some of those costs can maybe be amortized via debt issue (bonds), but the cost of servicing those would still be borne by the community overall and not necessarily the newcomers' taxes alone.

This seems like another way of saying money is fungible. Suppose there is School A used by current residents and School B we propose to build for new residents. The annualized cost (labor+amortized capital) of a School is $X/year, which registers as a tax burden on current residents. Building School B doubles the total tax burden, but in response to a doubling in population, so per-person taxes are unchanged. (assuming that new residents pay taxes at or above the average rate, which is certainly true in the Bay Area).

It's meaningless in this case to distinguish who is paying for which schools - you could say "newcomers are paying the entire cost for School B" since the marginal revenue increase equals the marginal cost, or you could say that the costs of servicing both schools are "borne by the community overall". But in the latter case, in order to claim that current residents are contributing to new infrastructure, you have to acknowledge the reciprocal contribution of new residents to existing infrastructure: increased tax revenue helps to pay off the bonds that built the current schools, and that will eventually be sold to renovate and rebuild them. Either way it balances out.

The annualized cost of a school isn't fixed though. Firstly, the capital cost of the older schools may well have been paid off. Secondly, the cost of building one is going to be pushed up by the fact they're competing with expensive premium housing for land, builders, etc. Thirdly, they're also going to be competing with existing schools for teachers and it's not like teachers from outside the area are going to be able to afford to move there unless they're paid an awful lot.

> Firstly, the capital cost of the older schools may well have been paid off.

In the long term nothing is "paid off"; you have to keep up a regular schedule of renovations and renewal projects, or things fall apart. Which is what's currently happening to a bunch of US infrastructure. :-(

As for cost differences, property tax revenue scales with rising land values, so land costs should be a wash (ignoring prop 13 insanity, which from other replies seems like it might be the real issue here). And expensive housing / high cost of living for new teachers is caused by high demand for housing without a corresponding increase in supply. So existing schools would already face that problem, but increasing supply by developing new housing should help to mitigate it.

> The cost to deploy most services does not increase linearly with the tax base.

In the long run, infrastructure for dense housing developments is cheaper per resident than infrastructure for sprawly housing developments.

An apartment complex of 100 units requires far fewer miles of road, water pipes, electrical wiring, sewer pipes, etc. per $ of local tax revenue generated than a development composed of 100 detached SFHs.

But, you're right about the immediate impact vs tax revenue that comes in slowly.

> Why would the people building the housing be responsible for these costs? If new people are moving to a community and consuming city services, can't they pay for those services through taxes like everyone else?

Prop 13's property tax rate limitations made developer fees more important as a source of revenue to support city services (raising up-front property prices.)

Under Prop 13 -- both the rate limitations and the assessment increase limitations -- "everybody else" isn't paying for the (full, prorated costs of) services through taxes, new homeowners are paying full-freight from full-value assessment and direct taxes, and by paying (or, for new purchasers of existing houses, in effect reimbursing the prior owner) for the development fees. Homeowners that have held their property longer still paid (or reimbursed) the development fees when they bought the house, but pay reduced share through direct property taxes.

You don't even need to bring Prop 13 into the discussion. Depending upon both existing demographics of a town and the expected demographics of a new project, the development can lead to tax increases. Because, in many cases (especially outside of cities) most property taxes go to the schools, a development catering to young families is going to put a lot of pressure on an existing tax base in a community tending toward singles and couples with their kids off to college and beyond.

Community could always implement Mello-Roos tax which can be used to fund new infrastructure. Its how a lot of new communities pay for their schools and roads.

This is a great point that a lot of people miss. Yes, Prop 13 limits the increase in property taxes, but there are other ways to raise taxes collected on homeowners.

When I was looking to buy a house in SF, I dug up a lot of the tax information and the Mello-Roos tax seemed pretty common.

It's the timelines. Let's take an example:

A new 100 unit building opens in April of year 1. 25 new students move in. This means overall the school district now needs one extra classroom. Usually the schools are at capacity already, so they need to roll in a portable and hire a teacher.

The problem lies in the fact that these kids are going to be in school in September of Year 1. Assuming it took a year to build the building, that means the district had to start spending money for the construction in year 0, and the teacher in year 1.

But the building won't get their first post-construction tax payment until Year 2. And that won't hit the school budget until Year 3.

So for 3 to 4 years, the school has had to front the costs of supporting those new students. By year 4 they'll have the revenue to support those new students, but they had to eat those first few years. And they won't hit efficiency until a few years down the line still.

If the developer has to make a direct payment to the school, it helps the absorb that cost.

As it turns out, in Cupertino at least, the developer has to pay $100 per new unit when they open the building, which at least helps offset the costs, but the school still comes out behind.

It turns out that there's a long-established financial mechanism for paying upfront for something when you'll get the income to pay for it later--bonds. Major capital projects (such as building new schools) are usually financed via bonds, so timelines aren't that much of an issue.

Except practicality gets in the way. "Dear voters, please approve a bond that will increase your taxes to help pay for all the new people who are moving in, who will increase your traffic and suck away resources from your children."

Those don't usually go very well.

Why would you need to raise taxes to pay off bonds? Why isn't the increased revenue from the new residents' taxes sufficient?

If your population doubles, sure you need to sell enough bonds to double your infrastructure, so the annualized cost (labor + amortized capital) of providing Government Services will double. But your tax base also doubles, so as long as the new residents pay at least the average tax rate (and wealthy gentrifiers usually pay higher rates), you'll collect double the revenue and everything balances out.

> Why would you need to raise taxes to pay off bonds?

To make the interest payments? A bond is a loan and it has to be paid off. The taxes from the future residents will only cover the current costs, not the interest.

Again that's a wash, though, as long as interest rates on new bonds are not significantly higher than those the city is already paying on its existing infrastructure bonds (or on future bonds that will be sold when necessary to repair/replace the current infrastructure as it falls apart). Sure, high interest rates would provide an incentive against new infrastructure investments, but rates over the past few years have been historically low.

(Also, the effect of interest rates is at most a small single digit percentage, so even if it's not exactly a wash, those costs could be cancelled out by other effects, e.g., the returns to scale on denser infrastructure - you can generally serve 2x the population at less than 2x the cost, but you still get to collect 2x taxes).

Interestingly enough, in terms of taxes, dense does better:

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/5/13/101-productive-...

>but these services are often not financed by the housing development authorities

Train companies in Japan build train stations, but also malls, supermarkets, and real estate.

I think it would be interesting to see more development that relies on this mixed-zone development. Sure, more people means more traffic, but being closer to things like shops could also reduce traffic. Perhaps no-parking stores to force people to walk, things like that.

I lived in San Jose back when poor people could afford to live as far north as Redwood City. My elementary school (Stonegate) had portables back then.

These are all very well known implications of growth. You don't even have to cite them.