Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted here because you touch on an important truth: SF is a globally important city with a massive jobs base run by people who wish it wasn’t.

I was also just in San Francisco (also from Brooklyn!) and noticed this as well. Downtown SF has all the look and feel of a global city, think Manhattan or Tokyo. Once you get into the western half of the city it seems like a nice quaint European city half it's size. I definitely understand why rich land owners want to "preserve the character of the neighborhoods" but you can't have it both ways.

The most puzzling thing was that I did see a few new residential constructions going up and they were also of the 1-3 story variety.

> I definitely understand why rich land owners want to "preserve the character of the neighborhoods"

Yeah, see that's the part that confused the hell out of me actually. I actually don't know if I understand that.

I mean I'll freely admit it, some parts of SF are gorgeous and unique. Let's not bulldoze the painted ladies. In fact maybe let's save large sections of some lovely neighborhoods with Victorian houses and quaint hilly streets and so on. The parks and the coastline are a treasure.

But like the city is actually pretty big, and huge sections of it are just ugly. I went all the way through outer sunset on the way to the beach and it's just endless blocks of small unremarkable houses, all with garage doors as their primary streetside element. There's no reason to keep this stuff. Or even if you want to remember it fondly you could keep half of it and carve out a square mile or so of it and build apartment buildings and house like 200,000 more people.

I mean, I went to a meeting in SOMA and drove by a Best Buy, surrounded by a large suburban style parking lot. Like seriously WTF guys, you're keen on preserving the character a fucking big box store surrounded by surface parking? You could house tens of thousands of people on that same lot AND KEEP THE BEST BUY AND THE PARKING SPACES on the first two floors if you really felt like it.

The whole city just feels insane to me. Like you'll go by a dozen blocks of crappy postwar 3 story commercial buildings that have no aesthetic value to anyone. Street after street where the entire first floor of every building is garage doors.

I mean, guys, you don't have to DO anything to to fix a lot of the basic problem, just literally stop preventing people from building the housing that the market is desperately begging to be supplied.

It doesn't have to turn into Manhattan. Paris is one of the most dense cities in the world and it has charm for miles. Why is everyone hanging onto these lame low rise districts that have no obvious redeeming features? This is madness.

The reason those buildings are 1-3 stories is that most of the city has a zoning limit restricting building to ~4 stories at most.

Prop 13 also allows people to sit on their land because they can still afford the property tax for ridiculously expensive houses. If Prop 13 did not exist, NIMBYs would not have the resources to keep stalling development.

Many of them would be selling out and moving to less expensive areas had Prop 5 passed, but the Democrat machine opposed it.

Why fix a regressive tax with an even more regressive subsidy? Prop 13 has had such far reaching negative impacts.

I was just in SF too last week and I hear you, but I also feel for them. I would be pretty pissed off if someone built an apartment next to me. I like my views. I like my neighborhoods without apartments. This sort of thing is easier to solve earlier on, it's a bit late now. There's no free land. To build an apartment will entail buying up houses, knocking them down then building them next to houses which are already tightly packed and blocking views.

Frankly, what's playing out in SF reminds me of what's playing out in US. Who has the right to determine how things stay? Outsiders or those who currently live there? Outsiders will like a slice of the pie and will cry and moan loudly about how insane and unfair it is, but hey, if you have a home, why should you watch your home value drop because of new apartments? If you just bought a home for $1mil just to be comfortable with no speculation and hope that it will grow faster than inflation. An influx of housing dropping your house to $800k will wipe out 100% of your down payment.

As an outsider, I feel for SF. I don't really care if they build an apartment or not. If I want to move there, I'll pay the price. What I care about is that they clean up, too many homeless, crazy, folks doing drugs in the public streets, poop, and all sorts of craziness. Clean that up.

> To build an apartment will entail buying up houses, knocking them down then building them next to houses which are already tightly packed and blocking views.

Yup, you got it, that's how it works. This concept is called "a city".

Any rights San Francisco might have once had to get upset about that dynamic evaporated when they happily let companies house several million jobs in the area.

> if you have a home, why should you watch your home value drop because of new apartments? If you just bought a home for $1mil just to be comfortable with no speculation and hope that it will grow faster than inflation. An influx of housing dropping your house to $800k will wipe out 100% of your down payment.

I'm not buying this argument at all. The more dense a city gets the more valuable single family homes get.

Take a look and see how much a two story single family home goes for in the West Village or brownstone Brooklyn. The logic you're trying to advance is dubious.

CPLX, shout when you run for office back east. You've my vote.

I live in a Victorian in the Castro. There's a four (?) story housing project down the block. It's 100% fine. I understand not everyone feels that way, but we have a housing crisis, and housing people is more important than views.

Down the block. If it was built next to your Victorian would you feel the same? We don't have a housing crisis. There's tons of land and cheap home in the US. We have a capital problem, folks are going to SF because that's were the owners and controllers of capital are not because they can't find a house in other parts of the country

I wouldn't care if it was 100 feet closer.

I think it's going to be easier to build housing than to make network effects in industries not matter. You can just smear the companies across the country like they're butter.

Not gonna happen because people are happy with the status quo. There's the upper echelon of SF (those who earn $300k+) who can afford to live in luxury apartments, younger tech workers (~$200k) who don't mind paying for $4000 mission district 1 bedrooms, and the rest who are willing to commute from Antioch for their low-six figures. Oh, and scum liberal politicians protecting their own property values.

Brooklyn isn't really great about this either tbh. Sure, there is a downtown with high rises, but it gets 3 stories high pretty quickly.

NYC has plenty of problems, don't get me wrong, but I'd argue Brooklyn actually has a pretty straightforward model for this that would apply to San Francisco.

The general idea is figure out which areas have a core aesthetic that defines the area and is worth preserving, and landmark them. Then take the stuff that isn't in that category and basically let people go nuts with it and build high rise housing, and have some clear incentives for affordable housing that get it built into major projects.

Meanwhile make sure to take care of the parks and the waterfront, actually have real transit, and don't give a shit about humoring people who insist on driving.

Try it.

Most of that is due to history and not zoning limitations. Williamsburg, Bushwick, Greenpoint, and LIC in Queens have all sprouted up.