1. Units in skyscrapers are fundamentally expensive, whereas small apartment buildings or townhomes or quadplexes can be relatively cheap per-unit.

2. Having moderately higher density has a lot of useful knock-on effects, like better walkability and transit support.

3. The objections are rooted in selfishness and classism/elitism. It's like someone objecting to a homeless shelter in their neighborhood because eww, homeless people. This common attitude doesn't mean we should never build homeless shelters.

China has been able to migrate hundreds of millions of its citizens from rural farms to urban skyscrapers, and it hasn't been fundamentally expensive. Obviously costs in the US are much higher, but that's the problem that should be attacked. Replacing single family homes with two story apartments doesn't deal with the problem long term, and invites political battles that may be unwinnable.

Um, isn't the average cost of a house in any major Chinese city MORE expensive than in the US?

A typical two bedroom in Shanghai is $870k [1]. Homes in Chongqing China are more expensive than in Columbus Ohio [2] -- yet wages are about 1/5th ($9k/yr in Chongqing vs $46k/yr in Columbus) [3]

[1] http://fortune.com/2017/07/18/china-beijing-property-housing...

[2] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/278350/average-annual-sa...

It absolutely deals with the problem long-term, because population isn't going to increase forever. We need more density in the US, but we don't need skyscrapers everywhere, that's ridiculous.

I don't think many middle income and lower folks are in skyscrapers. A lot of buildings in China cap out at six stories, which is cheaper (no elevators needed!)

Also, earthquake protection makes SF based buildings more expensive to build, especially as they grow tall.

This is absolutely true. I have spent about a year in China and when you are in those older neighborhoods it is mostly 4-5 story walk-ups. Some of these small units are worth more than a single family home is parts of the US especially if they are next to good schools.

China has a massive housing imbalance. The skyscrapers are being purchased as investments by the newly rich and are out of reach to low/middle income folks. Also, not all those skyscrapers are good quality. In our condo on the 37th floor, we had to have the bathroom flooring completely redone because there were leaks all over the place. This building was built like 5 year ago! In addition, when you walk around the construction sites of those new skyscraper projects, you see those countryside workers crowded into hastily constructed dorms, 4 or 5 people in one tiny room. You can see them sitting around eating their small portion of rice and veggies. It is definitely a sight that would make most “living wage” Americans cringe...

My wife grew up in China and she loathes skyscrapers. We bought a single family home here in the USA with a nice size backyard and she has the happiest wife in the world. She often goes in our backyard just to sit and watch the squirrels. She also has a piano which she can play any time of the day. In China, neighbors complain when start playing your piano in those crowded skyscrapers....

I have an unproven hypothesis that most people on the planet would love their own single family home like we have here in the US. They aren't living in those dense urban areas because it is hip and cool. They are living there because they have no choice.

They're going to have a lot of issues with that policy long term. The US started doing that in the 50s and 60s only to find it raised crime rates and decreased economic productivity (these became what we know now as "the projects"). Not until Jane Jacobs came along did we begin reversing that trend, and we are still dealing with poor urban planning in the form of suburbs and luxury apartments.

The US doesn't have 500 million out-of-work children of peasant farmers to resettle in cities in the next 2 generations.

My guess is that if we re-zoned the Bay Area and replaced 1/4 of the current single family homes with 3-to-6-story apartment buildings we could cover several decades of regional housing demand and push housing prices down by 50%.

6 storey apartment buildings are too tiny, they need to be 35+ floors tall

I live in a 7-story 28-unit Manhattan building. It sits on a plot roughly the size of my parents’ home in Cupertino, which houses 2 (6 around Thanksgiving). I don’t think the Bay Area has a 30x housing shortage.

You need to build with some reserve in mind

In my town people object to homeless shelters near residential areas and schools because of all the used needles that mysteriously show up around the existing shelter.

Cheap rent doesn't mix with skyscrapers; the article notes this. Per unit cost gets high when you build tall.

> Why not just build a massive cluster of skyscrapers and put all the people who want cheap rent there?

1: where? and 2: these homeowners will oppose it, because it still drives down the value of their investment because it drives down demand.

There is no way to drive down demand but keep prices high. That's not how economics works.

1. Pick a few contiguous blocks, it doesn't really matter where.

2. The logic being, if you have to screw people out of their equity (retirement) might as well make the smallest footprint.

Screwing people out of retirement? When you buy a house there is no contract with the city to keep the city from expending and improving. Such an agreement would be against capitalism. And... What about the teachers, janitors, and other necessary individuals that make a community work? Most of them have to drive hours just to get to work in the Bay Area since all the housing is going to engineers making at least 100k a year.

For a single earner making at least $100k a year, I'm looking at moving away from the Bay Area for any notion of not blowing $50k on rent every year.

I can't even touch the housing market in an area inconvenient to my work without literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in liquidity. That is cash that I simply do not have, nor do I have wealthy relatives that can front me the money. Please don't assume that just because an engineer has, what looks like a high income on paper, that they can even afford houses that cost millions of dollars in a high cost of living region as the Bay Area.

My coworkers that have set down roots here have to drive hours, and they're also making "at least 100k a year". What about the engineers that need jobs and homes, and the people that move just for their job? City's full, go away.

> I can't even touch the housing market in an area inconvenient to my work without literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in liquidity.

You and the parent agree. guywaffle's comment talks about people who make much less than you and are in the exact same situation. Absolutely true that a high income doesn't make spending 50% of it on housing any better. And someone who makes a smaller amount doesn't even have that option. You're both screwed, just in different degrees.

How large of a place are you looking for? $4,000 rents a three bedroom in much of the bay area.

There was no assumption. You just completely missed my point.

You are looking to moving out of the Bay Area for cheaper rent. There are people who make a lot less than you who can’t afford to live here. They drive from Tracy and Stockton to get paid a fraction of what you get. Stop crying.

I'm moving for more than cheaper rent, but thanks for playing. There are people that make six figure salaries that can barely afford to make ends meet due to the cost of living, and that is a fact. Try swallowing $4000 a month in rent for the suburbs, after CA taxes, before utilities/food/gas/car upkeep. Even people with six figure salaries are having to face a reality that they are being pushed out in favor of people with even more money. If I want to buy a house, guess what? I'm commuting from Manteca or farther. Affording Tracy would be a luxury. It's a numbers game and more people than you're willing to admit are hurting.

You can get a nice two bedroom 20 minutes from downtown Austin for ~$600k. You can get in on the ground floor and be part of the NIMBY block in 15 years when nobody can afford to live here anymore! :)

Loved Austin when I lived there. I went back earlier this year and it just wasn't the same. The hypergrowth over the past few years has turned moderately annoying traffic into a driving nightmare, which compounds everything because Texas is very car-centric.

Btw you realize this all started because you didn’t understand my comment and decide to be a troll about it.

Ad hominem is the best way to get the point across. Don't ever change, sir/madam.

Umm hypocrite?

Of course there's no contract like that. What there is instead is a democratic process for the residents of the city to guide and shape how their city evolves and improves.

You're watching it play out, but some seem to not like that the residents of the city have a greater say than the "not residents" of the city. I find that perfectly natural, normal, and desirable.

No, what you’re seeing is a bunch of greed. Residents in cities like Berkeley and Palo Alto love the economic boom the tech companies are causing, but they aren’t willing to shoulder the responsibility that the boom brings. So they are screwing over their neighboring cities forcing the burden on them.

Or the greed of people who want the big salaries of SV but don't want to pay the big rents that go along with it. See, that word is loaded and works both ways.

“Screwing people out of their equity” is not nearly what is happening here.

To sell the 3 units in the new lot, they will have to be relatively high end and there will probably be no clear net plus/minus in property values attributable to them. Instead of fighting the change tooth and claw, the neighborhood should be ensuring that the development as-built is high quality. For one, the lot setbacks look like to be as much as 20 feet, which is quite good.

Or you could just find a cheaper place to live.

Or if an area is zoned for this type of construction, which it is, then maybe the neighbors should stop whining and those homes should be built.

Where? How about Antioch or Richmond ?

That's what they said about the Mission several years ago.

We already tried housing projects, it didn't turn out well.

Uh, earthquakes?

Uh, Tokyo?

Yes? http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15024911 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/1155413... And more close to the point, here's an example of the kind of work that goes into building really tall buildings in California, which makes them expensive to live in and not at all likely to become cheap housing: http://www.cnn.com/style/article/quakeproof-skyscraper-new-w...

Vast majority of Tokyo is small buildings. Skyscrapers are fucking expensive and exist in posh districts only.