[wpietri]

Have you tried asking people living in those homes about your "easy" plan? The one that would involve them living somewhere else for a couple of years during construction and then moving back to a smaller, less appealing place? As I said, San Francisco residents mostly seem pretty happy where they are.

[bzbarsky]

No one would be forcing them to move.

Now some might _choose_ to move because they could sell their single-family home for a much higher price to someone who would then build a multifamily building on the lot. But that's obviously their business.

But to the main point of your argument, about happiness: it's a general truism that people in low-density-zoned areas are happy there and oppose any sort of upzoning anywhere nearby. Upzoning nearby but not on their actual lot is particularly bad, because it would reduce the value of their real estate; people fight _that_ tooth and nail.

The result is that everyone who is already there is fine; it's people who are trying to enter the market, either via moving to the area or by growing up and trying to move out of their parents' house, who get screwed. But since by and large those people don't vote (the young for demographic reasons; the not-yet-residents because they're not yet residents), it's the incument residents who get to control the zoning rules to their exclusive (perceived, at least) benefit.

Which is all fine, but then prices get out of hand and people panic and start introducing things like rent control and whatnot, which makes prices get even more out of hand anytime someone actually moves. And then we see the current San Francisco real estate market.

[teacup50]

People don't fight upzoning because it reduces the value of their real estate; in fact, it almost always does the opposite.

People fight upzoning because they like where they live, and upzoning would destroy what they like about it.

As for "people trying to enter the market", upzoning makes it that much harder; condos are generally a worse investment, so most high-density developments are rentals. If you think housing prices are high, try the cost of a buying a rental building.

Lastly, the "incumbent residents" bit is hilarious. I believe that's called "a citizen", or "a community member" -- as in, the people who are paying the taxes and electing representative leadership to serve in the interests of their established community.

[bzbarsky]

> People don't fight upzoning because it reduces the value of their real estate

You didn't read what I said carefully enough. People fight _nearby_ upzoning because it reduces the value of their real estate. Upzoning of their actual land increases its value, of course.

Agreed on people fighting upzoning of their own land because it would change the surroundings in a way they find undesirable.

By "people trying to enter the market", I mean the housing market, not the real estate purchase market. That is, people trying to find a place to live. It's quite rare for people first moving out of their parents' house to do so by buying a house themselves; they typically rent. The result is that there are tons of places in the US (including San Francisco) where people have to move far away from their relatives when they move out on their own because there is nowhere nearby that is a viable place to live.

As for that last.... that's true if you exclude the interests of the children of the community (which are nearly always excluded; once the kids finish college they're on their own and typically shut out of the community). It's also true if you ignore the fact that some of these communities (and the Bay Area is particularly bad about it) try to create lots of employment opportunities but without the corresponding housing. This leads to hellish commutes for everyone, including the members of the community in question, lots of complaining, and poorer quality of life than you would have otherwise.

There are some unpleasant tradeoffs here, for sure. The problem is that some people refuse to acknowledge that the tradeoffs even exist and to discuss what the right tradeoff is. They insist that nothing must ever change, period, and it never occurs to them that this means that their commute will suck more and more and their kids will not be able to live near them.

Note that I say this as someone who lives in a suburb. I like it here. I would not be terribly happy with upzoning myself. And yet I'm watching a lot of the resulting problems play out (including people who grew up in the town being completely priced out of it). It's not pretty, and upzoning sure would help some of those problems.

[jacobolus]

Several of the people I know living in the western half of the city are living with 3–4 roommates in one single-family house, because they can’t afford separate apartments. Because they have rent control, they can continue to afford to stay in places where rents have doubled in the last few years, but they can’t afford to move to a new place, and might have to leave the city entirely to e.g. get married and start a family. Some of them don’t drive, so the excessive parking requirements are useless, but are constantly and bitterly complaining about how slow and unreliable the Muni buses are (the ones who drive complain about traffic congestion instead).

Many such people would be pretty happy to have an independent one bedroom apartment in a 5 story building in the same neighborhood at a similar price, assuming some improved transit.

[wpietri]

I agree they would be pretty happy to have apartments. But even they wouldn't be happy to be kicked out of their current place now so that in two years some entirely different people could have 1-bedroom apartments on the land where they once lived. And that's not even considering the current owners or all the neighbors. Your friends are likely to be new arrivals, and so have little connection to the people around them. But for many people living out there, those are their childhood homes, and their neighbors are important parts of their lives.

Personally, I also think a lot of land west of Twin Peaks is underutilized. But I think it's important for people not to be glib about the fact that a lot of the people living there think it's just fine, and that even for those who want something different we're talking about incredibly disruptive and expensive change.

[abritinthebay]

Congratulations! You're the exact cause of the problem SF has had for nearly 30 years now!

How are you finding that has worked out for SF overall?

[wpietri]

One, I don't think asking for some modest thought and compassion in the face of glib, facile plans is the exact problem SF has. But thanks for sharing your feelings so dramatically; I hope it was cathartic for you.

And two, I think things are working out reasonably well for SF. The US has a history of absolutely terrible attempts at grand redevelopment. Read up on our "urban renewal" waves, for example. San Francisco has mostly avoided or repaired that sort of urban planning idiocy, and I think it would be monumentally dumb to let another bubble lead to big "solutions" to problems that are transitory.

If you and others would like to indulge that third-world dictator tendency to dramatic urban planning, might I suggest finding someplace else in the Bay Area? San Francisco is less than 1% of the land; there's no particular reason to do it here. Or, better, show us how it's done in, say, Texas, which has plenty of space to develop that nobody is currently occupying.

[abritinthebay]

> San Francisco has mostly avoided or repaired that sort of urban planning idiocy

If you think that then I have a bridge to sell you. A nice International Orange one.

SF is a hive of planning idiocy, from dumb height laws, to 1:1 parking requirements, to terrible permit application processes. It's practically a model for planning idiocy at this point.

[wpietri]

You do realize that "that sort" restricts the meaning of "urban planning idiocy" to the kind I mentioned in the previous sentence, right?

Assuming you do, then I guess this is just more spleen venting. Anonymous spleen venting of course; I imagine you wouldn't act this way in person: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

[teacup50]

Were you even in SF 15 years ago, when the .com bubble popped and housing prices returned to a degree of sanity?

If you want to see the cause for "the problem SF has had for nearly 30 years now", look in the mirror.

[wpietri]

I agree, and the maddening thing for me is that my fellow people in the tech industry so rarely say, "Why yes, we are the problem. What can we do about it?"

I wrote this more than a year ago: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-some-San-Francisco-residents-a...

As far as I can tell, the willful obliviousness is just as bad as then, and maybe worse.

[abritinthebay]

Thinking the tech industry is the problem is pretty much like saying you get a cold because you go out in cold weather.

It's not true, but it sounds right if you don't look too close.

The tech industry isn't the cause of anything but growth. Growth isn't bad. Growth is totally manageable. It's not like these issues magically showed up in the tech boom of the 90s - it just made them worse.

However what DID cause this: bad urban planning, lack of ability to change, being systemically unable to fix the housing issues over the last 40 years.

Plenty of places cope with growth periods better than SF, but SF doesn't want to cope with them: it wants to have it's cake and eat it too. It can't, but it's been trying for a long time and failing horribly.

This is not a new development. It's not a new problem. The solutions have been the same for a long time but no-one wants to change to fix them.

[wpietri]

Growth isn't necessarily bad, but neither is it necessarily good. Some growth is manageable; some isn't.

It appears we both agree that rapid growth is a proximate cause of the problem, and the tech industry is the main cause of that rapid growth. Where we differ is that you think a bunch of other people should immediately change to accommodate you, while you simultaneously refuse to acknowledge their perspective, which is that their previous system was working well enough for them until tech people came along in overwhelming numbers. And that maybe they were perfectly happy with how things are, and feel no particular need to change to suit you.

The rest looks like dickish handwaving to me. If you'd like to just keep yelling at people, stop bugging me. If you'd like to have an actual discussion, then start behaving respectfully.

[dragonwriter]

> Were you even in SF 15 years ago, when the .com bubble popped and housing prices returned to a degree of sanity?

IIRC, one of the notable things about SF in the .com burst was that housing prices did not drop significantly (as they did in outlying areas of the Bay Area), the rate of increase just dropped, as the people who still had good-baying SF jobs moved in from the peripheries and replaced the people who could no longer afford SF because they fell off the gravy train.

[wpietri]

The purchase prices for homes weren't much changed by the dot-com bust. The prices for commercial rents definitely were:

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-franciscos-fluctu...

My recollection is that housing rental was in between.

It's worth noting that the dot-com bust hit tech hard, but didn't do anything to housing nationally. So it's hard to separate the effect of the dot-com bust with the housing bubble that was starting to inflate at the time. And thinking about who I know who bought property right after the bust, it was people who made money in the previous bubble, which would also have a masking effect.

[abritinthebay]

Just like every NIMBY. People like you have complained about this in the same way in SF since the 1900s. They've never been right.

Just conservative and regressive selfish fools with no ability to look at the bigger picture to help their fellow man (and themselves)

[wpietri]

You are certainly demonstrating your desire to help your fellow man by anonymously being a dick to actual fellow men. Bravo, sir, bravo.

[abritinthebay]

Well the important thing is that you've found a way to feel superior. Bravo sir, bravo.