[weberc2]

Genuine (outsider) question: how is housing not a uniquely-SF problem? The rest of the country and even other parts of California seem to have affordable housing, at least relatively speaking.

EDIT: RE downvotes, shame on me for not being familiar with SF politics, I guess. It is, after all, the center of the universe. (◔_◔)

[ng12]

It's not at all a SF problem, it's a metropolitan city problem. NYC, Boston, Denver, Austin, Boise, both Portlands, etc all have the same housing crisis.

The truth is well-paying (i.e. middle class) jobs are coalescing in a small number of cities which have failed to adapt to the growth. As a software engineer this means I can either make great money in one of the aforementioned cities or a fraction of it in an "off-brand" city. Lucky for me I can afford to pay out the nose for my apartment but this causes incredible pressure on the housing supply, especially for those less well-off.

[jupp0r]

There are some cities that seem to have better salary/cost of living ratios. I'm thinking of places like Boulder, CO or Provo, UT.

[dllthomas]

Even assuming your spending exactly tracts cost of living, ratio is only what's relevant if you're going to keep that same cost of living indefinitely. Often what matters more is the net.

[ethanbond]

One might ask why increasing productivity in a region leads to higher cost of living (rent).

Well, that one is pretty obvious. Landlords will charge the highest prices they can get away with.

The more interesting question is why landlords are supposedly entitled to all of the new wealth. After all they had no role in creating any of it.

[lotsofpulp]

Unless we remove the concept of land ownership, there aren’t many viable alternatives that don’t also have unwanted consequences.

At the root of the problem in your question is how does society determine who has a right to live where. Obviously, given the opportunity, most of the world would want to live with on the California coast or similar places.

Obviously, the most basic answer to the question I posed above is “might makes right”. But we have moved past a situation where fight someone to take their land, and instead have to buy it.

Yes, the current system is unfair for most people. Most people will never get a chance to live where they want, and most people are born without the chance in the first place. So why should society let those born to wealthy moms get the spoils?

There isn’t a good answer, other than a better alternative hasn’t been invented yet. But at least in the current scenario, a small percentage of people can move into the places they want, giving enough hope that people aren’t resorting to war. Or they are unable to.

[zozbot234]

> Unless we remove the concept of land ownership, there aren’t many viable alternatives that don’t also have unwanted consequences.

You can assess land rent (there are methods to do this that are quite reliable) and tax away, say, 80% of it, thus leaving in place enough of a market in land that its ordinary function in facilitating exchanges is not impaired. It's quite easy in fact, the main problem is really getting there from here.

[ng12]

Well, this is what free market capitalism is for. If it weren't for the loads of regulation whole neighborhoods in SF would have been replaced with high-density housing a decade ago.

However, California has decided that "housing as investment" supersedes all else. It's not that there's no viable alternatives: this is by design.

[hippich]

Because of risk. For each landlord "entitled to all of the new wealth" in a few successful cities, there are bunch of these less lucky.

[ng12]

https://news.kgnu.org/2018/08/the-affordable-housing-crisis-...

I believe that certain cities have better ratios but I'm also inclined to think those places are just slightly earlier in the cycle.

[blackguardx]

Denver is generally cheaper than Boulder.

[paggle]

Those are rapidly getting discovered and neutralized.

[weberc2]

> It's not at all a SF problem, it's a metropolitan city problem. NYC, Boston, Denver, Austin, Boise, both Portlands, etc all have the same housing crisis.

I was responding to the claim that it's a state- or national-level problem. Perhaps you would argue that this meets some criteria for being a 'national-level' problem, but it's not obvious to me.

[ng12]

Oh -- do you mean to ask how state/national politics play into San Francisco's housing crisis?

California state law is a big part of the problem: it gives individual cities way too much power to decide what gets built and what doesn't, severely restricting supply. For example, neighborhood associations can filibuster new development into nothingness, even for contradictory reasons like not having enough parking but also not being public-transport friendly enough. Additionally, California has wildly skewed tax law that disincentivizes people from moving or downsizing (look up Prop 13). Add in a lack of public transportation, zoning restrictions, and massive corporate subsidies and you've got a housing crisis brewing.

[btilly]

More than that, Prop 13 incentivizes cities to have commercial real estate instead of residential. Thereby forcing housing to be ever farther from workplaces.

[mikevp]

But before Prop 13, people on fixed incomes were getting taxed out of their paid-off homes they'd lived in for decades.

[redis_mlc]

Downsizing as you get older is a normal thing in the other 49 states.

Also, Prop 13 inexplicably applies to commercial real estate, and inherited property.

[ng12]

Which is in itself a symptom of the housing crisis. Instead of fixing the root problem they accelerated it.

[chipotle_coyote]

It isn't necessarily obvious, but in some ways that's because the San Francisco Bay area is such an outlier that it's easy to miss how fast housing costs in metro areas around the country have been rising relative to salaries. The median home value in Sacramento, for instance, is $330K, compared to San Francisco's staggering $1.3M -- but the home price in San Francisco in November 2011 was $633K, whereas in Sacramento it was $183K. (This is according to Zillow, and I picked those points because they're about the lowest points in the last eight years, just before the CA housing market had started to recover.) Housing prices in Sacramento have been going up slightly faster than they have in San Francisco -- and they're not flooded with techies making $200K+ annual salaries. (Granted, there are some techies from here who are probably willing to commute from there at this point.)

And this isn't just a California thing.

"Home prices are rising at twice the wage of growth." https://www.curbed.com/2019/5/15/18617763/affordable-housing...

"Low-cost housing is disappearing from the market." https://www.huffpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-inequality-har...

You can find a lot of these articles around without much effort.

[unethical_ban]

They're pointing out that in their opinion, the premise you're questioning is invalid, and if you wish to find the answer, look to a new premise.

[MisterOctober]

What's the other Portland, is it Portland, Maine? Sincere question

[ng12]

Yes, it's not as bad as OR but it's on it's way up -- especially for a small city in an underpopulated state.

[kec]

The parts of California which don’t have a housing problem are, broadly speaking, the parts of California which aren’t attractive to a ton of people as places to live.

The root cause is prop 13 disincentivizes moving around keeping the supply illiquid, and encourages ninbyism preventing new construction, as you’re basically locked in whenever you currently live.

[jackfoxy]

Not just prop 13, but the capital gains part of the tax code.

Used to be you could sell your house for more than you paid and have 2 years to roll it into buying a new house for the same or more money. Now the difference is taxable capital gains regardless of what your new living situation becomes.

IIRC this changed about 20 years ago.

[riversflow]

Wouldn’t people be even more NIMBY if they thought it was going increase their tax rate?