In SF, the majority of voters are already renters. Something like %70. But the people who live there are oddly irrational and think building will somehow raise the rent because it would be all 'luxury' apartments, and thus 'raise' the price. And these are the "perma renters" who have been forced out or closed to forced out due to their lower incomes.

The renter political majority are the people who got laws such as rent control in. And the other very landlord unfriendly laws that make ~ %30 of residential rental stock unoccupied in SF due to fears of bad renters costing far more than their income. Also their are other laws that let petty NIMBYs prevent neighbors building stuff in their empty lots, so they can extract concessions out of them, or just avoid the personal inconvenience of construction during working hours. A good chunk of people in SF are unemployed / not in the labor force. Something around %30. 'Tech workers' are a very small minority of the population, but are the new immigrants aggravating the supply problems.

Then you have old money in SF organizing political groups to block building on the water front so their waterfront condo views will not be block and so on.

The multiple competing interests in SF lead to the general regulatory failure there of not building nearly enough. SF has always been a city with it's head far up it's ass, it was very bad in other ways in the 70s too, with similar 'renter friendly' laws causing more problems than solutions.

You're right, the existing hegemony in SF is an unholy alliance between anti-immigrant liberals and rent-seeking landlords.

I should have been more specific about wanting newer "tech renters" (ie. not crazy liberals who think building housing somehow drives up rents).

Apparently this has already happened in Mountain View and I do think eventually SF will have to come around. Probably through an alliance of either developers and new renters (curtailing most regulation) or new renters and silly rent-controllers (streamlining regulation but requiring the addition of rent control on x% of all new units).

(On a separate note, the hypocrisy of SF liberals is ridiculous. They're all for allowing immigration nationally, but violently attack people who dare to move into their city.)

Most political groups commit the modern sin of hypocrisy. Old 'conservative' people decrying taxes and welfare yet exploiting it as much as possible for themselves, and organizing in force whenever it is threatened.

> But the people who live there are oddly irrational and think building will somehow raise the rent because it would be all 'luxury' apartments, and thus 'raise' the price.

Is this for real? So clearly false. (Increasing supply will somehow increase demand by even more?) I have to assume these ideas have been spread by the vested interests that you've noted.

Just read the news anytime a new "luxury" apartment is built. Lots of anger and protests, despite the fact that addition of luxury stock should in fact decrease prices on other units.

The bald-faced entitlement that has spouted from the mouths of non-techy friends and acquaintances has embarrassed me. I try to hold on to the assumption that they are outliers :(

I'm no expert, but isn't that what typically happens with gentrification? Make the neighborhood more desirable by whatever means, more middle/upper-class people want to live there, local landlords raise the rent on existing units despite no actual change in their quality?

I've read about folks who worked for years to clean up their low-end neighborhoods, organize a neighborhood watch, drive out the dealers, etc, and as things improve the landlord jacks the rent up until they have to move to a slum area again. That's not about "luxury apartments" specifically, just about how manifestly screwed you are if you're not at least middle-class.

Gentrification often comes down to increasing demand without increasing supply. If supply weren't artificially restricted, it would be profitable to expand the housing stock instead of completely displacing existing residents.

This has already happened in Mountain View. Last election the "renting" demographic managed to overthrow the entire city council, who previously had been controlled by the typical "raise home prices by blocking construction" homeowner interest group.

The result has been the beginning of many new large multi-unit housing developments. Dense multistory condos and rowhouses near downtown are happening. Google's plan for office space was even rejected because it didn't have enough new housing units!

I read Google's plan was rejected because Mountain View didn't want more Google employees living in the city -- they wanted a more employer-diverse resident+business base.