Do you live in San Francisco? For the past 5 years there have been housing projects _everywhere_ across the city. Last year there were 62,000 units in the pipeline (anywhere from approved to under construction). (http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2016/02/a-record-62000-un...) I can't find a link, but I think the goal several years ago was to have built 30,000 units between 2015 and 2020, and progress has been okay.

In 2016 San Francisco built twice as much housing per capita (EDIT: per new resident) as the state average. (https://sf.curbed.com/2017/5/4/15543668/san-francisco-new-ho...)

The city could do much, much better. The issue here isn't approvals, per se; it's the high cost of construction, and a big part of that is the concessions that the city (and NIMBYs) squeeze out of developers. But in any event at least the city is _approving_ projects. Compared to every other city in the Bay Area San Francisco is leading. Unfortunately that says more about the Bay Area than it does SF, but in any event SF isn't being hypocritical when it criticizes Brisbane, Palo Alto, etc.

I do live here, but I've also lived in the far east. There is no comparison. We see cranes in a few places, mainly SoMa, that is not sufficient. We should see building along geary, van ness, sunset Blvd, third, Octavia, California, etc.,etc.

I absolutely agree! Except for the part where SF is being myopic by criticizing Brisbane.

Imagine Tokyo was located near SF. Would you criticize Tokyo for complaining about the pace of development in SF, simply because Tokyo could be doing a better job?

By defending Brisbane, you defend every other city in the Bay Area that has been dragging its feet, especially those on the peninsula. Don't forget that both Santa Clara County and San Mateo County have substantially greater median incomes than SF, yet most of the cities in those counties--especially the richest ones--have literally flat-out opposed growth in residential units.

Compared to San Mateo (city), Palo Alto, Brisbane is a speck of land. South City, Daly City have lots of underused land. I would be in favor of having all of them increase housing, as they have land and transit infra.

I call out SF for its/our blatant hypocrisy. It's a bona fide city but they/we act as if we're still in the late 1800s Victorian times. Oh, historic, oh, views, oh, character, oh residential displacement. Always some provincial excuse.

Agreed, the Sunset and Richmond is too low density if SF really wants to address its housing shortage.

Give homeowners/developers incentives to turn low density blocks into mid to high density housing. And build Geary Street light rail (and put most of it underground so it doesn't take as long as the N-Judah does to get downtown)

SF definitely needs more underground transit. I recently found out that it takes on average 5 minutes less to take a bus from the inner sunset to forest hill to catch a K/L/M inbound than taking the N-Judah.

Grow The Richmond (https://growtherichmond.com/) will have a table set up tomorrow at Balbooa Fright Fest. Come say hi!

There is a growing group of people on the west side of the city who do want density.

There has been many apartment buildings built around Van ness (south and/or east of Whole Foods on California)... it's not just SoMa but you are right it's not enough.

The Brisbane baylands area is a full square mile, which is contiguous with parts of San Francisco and is separated by a 5-lane highway from the current residential part of Brisbane.

I live in a mixed SFH/midrise apartment neighborhood in Oakland, and our population density is 24,000 per square mile.

So putting 24k people in that part of Brisbane wouldn't even look particularly built up.

The Nob Hill, Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill areas (beautiful, treasured, highly desired places) in San Francisco all vary from 30k to 60k per square mile.

Putting 45k people on Brisbane baylands would be awesome.

What's really happening is that Brisbane loves the sweet tax revenues from all the businesses they host, but don't want the (expensive) responsibility to house all those people that work in town.

>but don't want the (expensive) responsibility to house all those people that work in town.

That's a common, often unstated problem, in many places. A new family often doesn't pay enough in taxes to cover the services they need, schools in particular. Which puts pressure on everyone's tax burden.

I live in a rural/exurban town in New England and the tax issue definitely comes up in any discussion of approving any sizable development. (The town tends to be against development in general for traffic etc. reasons but taxes are part of it.)

And it's even harder in California where so much of the property tax roll is frozen at tiny values from the past.

Prop 13 can take almost exclusive blame for cities in California giving preference to jobs and retail over housing. It's like a direct incentive if they want to keep their budgets balanced.

OTOH, real estate prices are extremely inflated. The immediate effect of new housing would be a deluge of property tax revenue. I would guess that it'd take at least 10-20 years for the net negative effects of Prop 13 to take hold, perhaps longer. But because of increased density (lower infrastructure cost per unit), they'd probably still be ahead of where they are now.

I think it's fair to say that the real calculus in Brisbane is simply opportunity cost: they get a better ROI with commercial than residential. And this calculus simply makes it easier to defend anti-development sentiment, which is really what it all comes down to.

Have you ever been to Brisbane? Most people move there for the small-town feel; I personally tried, but got out-cashed by a Chinese investor. You're not going to convince them to become San Francisco's housing overflow.

Geographic mobility really is a huge hurdle. A lot of business is becoming centralized around major long-distance transportation hubs, San Francisco being chief among them. Live in Concord, but want to work in Los Gatos? Good luck getting there by train. I lived in the Mission and to get to China Basin was a bus to a train to a bus. I opted for the ten minute drive instead of forty-five minutes of transferring. It's embarrassing how much better we could do so much better moving people around. Right now I opt to drive the 101 south instead of taking Caltrain, even though my employer covers the cost, because it would cost me an additional $10 a day to take other trains/buses to get to the Milbrae transfer, and by the time I've driven myself either to 4th/King or San Bruno I could have already been half way to work just driving the whole way. We need to do better.

I lived in Brisbane for a year. It was beautiful and calm and peaceful and pastoral. I had 3 apple trees, a peach tree and a pear tree. It's totally unsustainable for cities like Brisbane to have such a huge jobs/housing imbalance.

Not to mention, no one is asking to knock down the beautiful hillside neighborhoods - they want to build housing in the flat baylands across the 5-lane highway Bayshore Blvd. The SF Muni T-line basically already services this proposed baylands neighborhood.

As for the mobility issue - I agree 100% that transportation is a crucial part of this whole equation. I also understand that you can't build effective transportation if you keep surrendering to people who want car-oriented sprawling development patterns, including prioritizing cars even in our dense neighborhoods.

Brisbane does not attract 45k workers to their business parks. Nowhere near that.

I didn't say that. 45k is just the midpoint in density between Nob Hill and Telegraph Hill. Seems like a good target for the baylands neighborhood.

Brisbane's city report from 2013 states there were ~6,500 jobs in the city. Add in children, unemployed, retired, etc... and that accounts for many times more residents than can actually live in Brisbane. Which means Brisbane is contributing heavily to the housing problem in the Bay Area.

We can fault Brisbane just as we can fault every municipality in the Bay Area. That's not short sighted, it's necessary.

They are not a "city" and they are not attracting talent and or companies' which create the demand. San Francisco is but, while they advertise themselves as a city, promote growth, grant tax breaks for cachet employers, etc., they do very little, in terms of creating and building housing for those workers. They demand others do what they themselves are unwilling to do.

Now, imagine the opposite, Brisbane demanding San Francisco become more suburban because San Francisco is to city-like for their liking.

They are in fact planning to do just that - put more office space in that zone, which will create demand for housing in SF (the nearest major residential area) rather than adding housing. And in the past, they've blocked a proposal that would have added 70K residential units.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-small-city-control...

The attitude is essentially, "I've got mine, let's pull the ladder up after me and deny anyone else affordable housing."

To be fair, unlike the Baylands proposal, there were very valid environmental reasons to block that 70k units of housing on San Bruno Mountain.

It also has ensured that residents of San Francisco have very easy access to wilderness - I'm certainly better off being able to go hiking with just a 15 minute drive.

That's fair. But it's also worth recognizing those 70K units may mean that some middle-income SF resident had to move to Pleasanton or something instead due to affordability, so our nice hiking proximity is their 90-minute commute.

You emphasize the 70K, but the Brisbane Baylands proposal in your link is for 4,400 units.

Sorry. The link was to support the first sentence (and my main point) which is to refute the parent post's statement that "they are not attracting talent and or companies' which create the demand". Brisbane is planning to do exactly that in this case.