Random place in SF: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7718267,-122.4388549,3a,75y,...
Near where I lived in Padova, which is way smaller than SF, and way, way less well off:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.3850829,11.8706466,3a,75y,18...
They look fairly similar, despite a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house in that area of the suburbs in Padova going for under 200K euro.
Here's what Milan looks like, which does have a decent economy, for Italy: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4582853,9.2105922,3a,90y,219...
None of this 2/3 story crap, even if it's fairly far out from the city center. They've built up.
When you have sudden surges in demand you can't just pin it on supply. You have to think about macroeconomic objectives for the city (i.e. preserving low and mid income housing) as well as how to plan for the long term, like when the boom turns to bust and lots of those new residents leave.
> Neither of the cities you mention have experienced
> the sudden, massive surge in demand that SF has
> in recent memory.
SF had 350k people in 1900, and 800k in 2010[1], a growth of ~2.3x. Milan had 550k people in 1900 and 1.3 million in 2010[2], a growth of ~2.35x.
I don't understand how you think SF is the exception in this example. Both of these cities have had similar population growth, Milan slightly more actually. It seems the difference is that Milan decided to build up.
What davidw was observing was that there's plenty of cities that do better at satisfying the demand for housing than San Francisco does.
You can have a growing population in the same area while demand goes down, if you're building enough new housing to offset the demand. The examples davidw and I have been citing here show cities that have faced similar population growth that have built up rather than succumbing to SF's housing problems.
I think your claim that it's apples to oranges is invalid. Yes SF has been a boomtown, but plenty of cities all over the world have been boomtowns without the same issues.
The issue is that SF has been a boomtown AND hasn't gotten its act together when it comes to building up density. That's what makes it a special case, and that's why both the demand for housing housing prices are ridiculous there.
You've simply ignored my point about the rate of growth in demand. That introduces a new factor, which is the need to control displacement of lower-income people and maintain healthy economic diversity.
Also, the issue here is not that SF is opposed to density. SF has many high-density neighborhoods and virtually all new construction is higher density. The issue is how hard the city should negotiate with developers to set aside price-controlled units to maintain economic diversity.
Sure it is. Otherwise, given the prices you could get for building higher buildings, someone would have done it. It'd be like printing money.
I don't think that's something that needs to be planned for. Even in a worst case scenario there will be plenty of demand to fill up any the new housing that's coming up in SF.
What is that really narrow, darkly painted building? Is that a house? Whatever it is, it sure looks peculiar (but I like it!)
EDIT: I actually just noticed the street view image cuts off part of the house, making it seem tinier than it actually is. Originally, I thought it was a "micro-house" or something.
While I'm generally in favor of development I think that this simplistic approach of just going around local planning departments is just going to lead to more problems. I think it would be better to cut state and local funding of counties if they don't match growth targets that region commits to. This way we incentivize communities to embrace growth while letting the residents still have a strong say in how and where their community grows. Letting developers call the pace hasn't made for good urban planning in other parts of the country and there is no reason to expect it to do a lot better here. Let's incentivize these parties to work together rather than giving one all the power to drive the process.
[1] http://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/trafficindex/list [2] http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/BART-gets-candid-... [3] http://www.caltrain.com/Page3882.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Transbay_Termina...
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Transit-plan-to-r...
at rush hour, at many stations, there isn't only no space on the trains, there's nowhere to fucking stand and wait for them.
Well duh, ostensibly high-paying jobs are good, remember? Like, the tech sector is one of the few remaining industries with lots of jobs that pay well, and now we gotta demonize them too? Would it be preferable for everyone to be equally poor?
And it obviously is a supply problem. The California Legislative Analyst Office was pretty clear on that:
> While many factors have a role in driving California's high housing costs, the most important is the significant shortage of housing in the state's highly coveted coastal communities. We advise the Legislature to address this housing shortfall by changing policies to facilitate significantly more private home and apartment building in California's coastal urban communities.
To whom, exactly? If those jobs are going to people who are moving here from somewhere else, then who benefits? There was a thriving city here long before tech startups came along.
The cruel irony of this kind of job growth is that it doesn't benefit the people who are being displaced. I personally think we need a more balanced approach: we need to build more housing, but we also need to start implementing some disincentives for companies to locate offices in San Francisco. It makes no sense, for example, that we're giving tech companies tax breaks to move their employees here.
That's because they're being displaced. Because there is not enough housing.
There are a lot of benefits to being in a wealthy area even for those who are not the ones with the highest paying jobs, as Enrico Moretti explains in "The New Geography of Jobs".
And if you want to see what an actual bad economy does for people.... check out Greece, or even Italy (which isn't nearly as bad off). It's not pretty.
Nor will there be at any point in the near future, no matter how much housing gets built. But that's a red herring. If the question is "should we favor policies that encourage the tech industry, or discourage it?", you have to do better than arguing that the tech industry is a net good in some ideal world that doesn't currently exist.
SF had a pretty strong economy before tech came along. Saying "tech...or the Greek economy" is clearly absurd.
I think there could certainly be enough housing to help a bunch of people at the margins, especially if density were allowed in a lot of the greater bay area.
"The problem is that the building and real-estate industries have a huge lock on California politics."
San Francisco is the #1 most development-hostile major city in the world. According to World Bank data, even in places like Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, it's still much easier to get planning permits than it is in SF. Blaming the power of the real estate industry for San Francisco's rents is like blaming the Chinese famines on capitalist saboteurs.
What's at stake here is how much affordable housing the city for negotiate for with developers. Critics argue this state bill undercuts the city's negotiating position.
Basically this state bill is a developer move to undercut SF's negotiating position, as they have more political influence at the state level.
[1] http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/201...
This may well be possible to argue, but you're going to need a source for a claim that goes against the basic concept of supply-and-demand.
The limited supply is not their fault. The refusal to bid in the market would be a meaningless self-sacrifice. The lack of healthy leverage and organization by workers in other industries have nothing to do with tech workers, who, again, are a minority power in politics.
If you're saying that a few tech elites are players in politics, fine, but that has nothing to do with the rest of the world who aren't elites. It's almost not worth mentioning that elites everywhere are players in politics. The rest of the tech world are not creating organized vehicles to channel money or votes (unlike teachers or firemen, who do organize). They're just people participating in the housing market. And whatever tech elites are doing, they don't look like they're winning the battle to up supply on housing so they can import more employees.
What's the reason that money from employees of one industry are displacing workers from another industry? Because workers in that other industry lack the leverage to demand more wages that keep up with other industries, because housing supply is limited, and because population is growing.
That may be true, but a city needs more than just tech workers to function. The goal is balanced growth.
> Restrictions on housing supply hurts everyone who isn't a landowner.
Objectively false. Affordable housing requirements help lower income people.
> whatever tech elites are doing, they don't look like they're winning the battle to up supply on housing
You mean up the supply of market-rate housing. Most critics are not anti-growth, they just want more affordable housing.
And as for displacing workers from other industries who can't afford market rate, it's not us vs. them. The "industries" you're talking about are intertwined: tech, restaurants, cafes, schools, police, nursing, art, and so on. If a city doesn't grow in a balanced way and pushes all those other people out it could make it an undesirable place to live. Already we are seeing big increases in restaurant prices due to cost of living.
Then they should support as-of-right construction. Mandating affordable housing doesn't actually increase its availability if a developer's plans to build affordable housing keep getting shot down.
This is such a confusing issue, everyone seems to be making sense.
Bottom line, this bill is massively supported by developers, so take that as a gauge of how much power it gives municipalities.
[1] http://48hills.org/2016/05/22/a-terrible-housing-bill-looms-...
But speaking of the affordable housing bonus, Tim Redmond’s specific concerns seem to be that height limits, setbacks, and backyard requirements may be waived, not that there would be any reduction in affordable housing. But I agree that the affordable housing bonus law is somewhat open-ended so who knows what concession a developer might request.
[1]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
[2]: http://web1a.esd.dof.ca.gov/Documents/bcp/1617/FY1617_ORG224...
By the way, the Legislative Analyst’s Office has released an endorsement[1] of the bill which provides background, justification, and proposed improvements.
In fact, when you look around, you see similar trends nationwide. A lot of this is just the predictable consequence of our near-zero interest rate policy since 2009.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/medi...
https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-washington-rent-t...
The plain truth is that the housing crisis is a combination of too much sudden demand fueled by the tech boom and too little supply. The tech community likes to deflect criticism of their sudden influx of relatively high-income workers and say "don't blame us, it's a supply problem."
This bill focuses mainly on juicing supply by removing restrictions on builders. But part of that is weakening the affordable housing restrictions on them.[1] The problem with that is, increasing market-rate housing alone may not make an appreciable difference in prices where it matters most from a macroeconomic perspective: for low-to-mid income residents.
Cities need teachers, service industry workers, artists, etc. Already the restaurant industry is facing a major worker shortage.[2] Let's not even get into the cultural effects of long-term residents getting displaced en masse. So if market-rate supply alone can't solve this, then you need affordable housing regulations to set aside spots.
Sam has offered a rather simplistic statement on the law of supply and demand on this. But that masks the real question: whether weakening affordable housing demands as this bill does is a smart move. Will juicing mostly market-rate housing be enough?
[1] http://48hills.org/2016/05/22/a-terrible-housing-bill-looms-...
[2] http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/print-edition/2016/0...