I know this will never happen, and I'm sure is not a popular opinion, but San Francisco needs a Bloomberg/Giuliani (pre-nutcase) style Republican to come in and clean house. Sometimes that is needed, and sometimes the opposite is needed; otherwise you get run away situations like deep red and deep blue areas that progress backwards.

Hope springs eternal but we’d have to change the city charter so we’d have city-wide elections.

It doesn’t matter what stripe, but yeah we need someone with determination to come in and clean house like after the Koch era.

People are so fed up neighbors in the west part of the city are wondering out loud if it’s possible to secede from the city while remaining in the county cuz they just want a government which takes care of the hoi polloi. The police don’t even want to bother with robberies unless it involved a weapon because the DA won’t take the cases and the perps are instead given citations...

You are asking a cartel to vote to increase supply and decrease prices. That's not what cartels do.

The term "cartel" is interesting here, if the power structure is indeed the voting population of San Francisco being predominantly homeowners, then as those homeowners are the suppliers of the housing market, it is a cartel in form.

San Francisco has its own unique issues but local government in pretty much any upscale suburb in America is effectively a homeowner cartel.

It's interesting to have all these startups improving efficiency and all, but then have a government doing exact opposite.

No love for Nimbyish supervisors but "startups improving efficiency" isn't a counterweight nor a good example to contrast with.

Actually it is. I've always felt that many 19th century local governments in the US were run like start-ups with a grand vision of creating a better society for their citizens. If you look at the efforts to build transportation, support business, promote local education, and the like it's hard not to see the parallels.

Edited: clarification

because the supervisors are just acting in the short term best interest of property owners. limit supply and prices will go up. they're all on the take.

This is such a sophomoric take on a complicated issue.

Speaking as a long-time renter who is now a property owner, I almost never think about things in terms of “limiting supply”, and as far as I can tell, my neighbors don’t either. They do care a lot about things that you’d expect a non-cartoon-villian to care about: neighborhood quality, schools, access to daylight, preservation of views, congestion, etc.

While I’m sure there are idiots out there who think like economist robots, generally, characterizing the other side of a debate as one-dimensional doesn’t do anyone any good.

You are right. I own a property, and I wouldn't probably like crowding in my neighborhood. But despite the fact that I don't like it, I would vote in favor of denser zoning.

I keep coming back to parts of San Francisco are already over 60,000 people per square mile. People talk about more housing and talk zero about infrastructure. Want to pack more people in? Where the fuck are the subways?

People do not talk about zoning without infrastructure. it is implied.

Not my experience. The people that blame the city for enforcing existing zoning are the same that would get the vapors if you suggested the city raise taxes to run more buses and build subways.

Exactly. I’ve been saying for years that the key to greater density in SF is transit. Trying to force developers to build high density housing is pushing on a string; make the place desirable for commuters, and density will follow the demand.

HN’s average level of discourse on housing policy tends not to be particularly intelligent. Mostly folks who read the first chapter of their econ 101 textbook, then got bored.

Aren’t those the people that make up their communities?

The money going into SF is big enough these days(just look at the city budget, it's a multiple of similarly large cities elsewhere in the US) that the government has fallen into a default of over-regulating everything and then carving out shortcuts and excemptions, and this isn't a new trend, even - SF has always been expensive but the pay-to-play system really started picking up steam with Willie Brown's mayorship back in the 90's, amid the original dot-com boom.

When a city is "hot" and the working population is very transient, which is the case with SF's new tech workforce, nobody is really being a watchdog. The existing property owners will drift along, yelling about anything that might concievably affect their property values, and they get thrown bones to stay complacent since they're the most consistent voters. But they don't pay rent, and the majority of the workers still expect to be here as a career stepping stone and then move on to somewhere that doesn't suck, and so they put up with the rent and don't put down roots. People staying long-term under rent control hang onto their position for as long as they can. There's a lot of kicking cans down roads going on, hence the system trundles on.

What percentage of single family homes in SF are owned by single families, and what percentage of single families own a single home?

Because if the answer isn’t 100% to both those questions, then “property owners” are not strictly the community’s constituents.

true, but in cities, as opposed to burbs. most residents/voters are renters not lessors/owners.

Allow denser zoning, then land value increases much more!

,,Just let them build.''

Would you also advise a company to destroy its profit center?

Thing is they’re like that guy or gal who is waiting for the “perfect one”. That one is never gonna come. It’s been like this decades. Get something!

In the Bay Area city I live in, there was an empty building on "main street" which remained that way for about 13 years.

Every few years a potential new business would file for permission. Nope, no, "not a good fit", "too many of your idea already here", and more endless excuses kept the building empty.

Finally, about 1.5 years ago, a business was finally granted permission to move in. About 6 months later, a second business [a refugee from San Jose] moved in upstairs.

Both businesses resemble other businesses already on "main street".

I'd like to know more about the previous 13 years of "we don't want your tax money, we'd rather a big gaping hole and an empty building but thanks".

Lvl Up and AFK aren’t all that similar to businesses already in Campbell though.

The empty bank building was a real eyesore though, especially with its prominence on that end of Campbell Ave. And now that it’s filled, a couple more of the empty storefronts near it look like they won’t be for long either.