building more luxury condos means that the rich foreign investors who are looking for speculative investments can stay out of mid-market housing meant for mid-income homeowners, and mid-income homeowners can stay out of low-income housing meant for low-income homeowners.
A concept that really is lost on a lot of people. It doesnt make any economic sense to build and sell something of low value when you could do it at higher value. In a place like SF that is being squeezed
by an influx of high income earners, new luxury housing just makes the old luxury housing less luxurious in comparison. If the market is screaming "we will pay absurd high prices for nice space!" Then by all means, meet that demand and everyone wins. Don't waste precious time energy and land building deliberately crappy subsidized apartments. That's lost profit for the builders, architects, and potential tax revenue too.
I'm not arguing for libertarian planning-- Let's leverage these high prices to build some amazing neighborhoods that can be enjoyed for generations: walkable, mixed-use, sustainable, transit oriented.
I usually use the trusty car comparison here. There's no point in starting a factory that builds 20-year old shitty Saturns. It's more reasonable to build great cars, and trust that the second-hand markets provide the necessary supply of extremely cheap beaters.
In the not-too-distant past, condos used to deprecate. Now their value goes up with each additional year of wear and tear!
>Then by all means, meet that demand and everyone wins. That's lost profit for the builders, architects, and potential tax revenue too.
Yeah, "lost profit", the cardinal evil. Sure, everybody wins, except the poor devils that make less than 100k and can't afford housing anymore. But who cares about them? Profit profit profit!
The truth is public policies should seek to maximise social gain. It's not their fucking job to enter into considerations about some people's profits.
PS: it doesn't make economic sense to waste money doing proper waste management when you can just dump your poison in the river, nevertheless we legislate that businesses must do the former.