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!