Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California

Re:Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California by refurb on Thursday July 25, 2019 @06:16PM (#20530346)

Your comment about SF being young is really true. Take a look at a 1950's picture of the east side of Twin Peaks and you'll see huge tracks of open land. This is ~2 miles from downtown. A lot of SF was built in the last 60-70 years.

And also the trend of people wanting to live in SF is a pretty recent phenomenon. The population of SF in 2000 was the same as it was in the 1950's. People were leaving SF in droves 40 years ago.

Cities can't just turn on a dime.

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Re:Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California by laurencerowe on Thursday July 25, 2019 @09:59PM (#20531717)

While this is true of SF itself the Bay Area as whole has been growing at a steady million per decade (one and a bit San Franciscos) for the past 70 years.

Other urban areas undergoing growth seem to have done much better by allowing more density. Unfortunately the California tax system incentivizes municipalities to build office space over housing. With the Bay Area's patchwork local organization and no metropolitan level layer of governance local municipalities instead play beggar-thy-neighbour as they promote only development that expands their tax base while the burdens of providing schools etc. falls to the municipality next door.

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