This article specifically addresses buildings that are only illegal because of zoning. They aren’t including buildings that are unsafe due to building regulations like firecodes, ADA, etc.
Yeah, but let's be clear though: the problem is bad zoning, not zoning itself. The fact that SF prohibits apartments in 76% of the city, according to the article (which, I'm assuming, excludes places like Golden Gate Park) is an abomination in itself. Literally just allow more apartment buildings, let buildings get built higher, and make a couple other tweaks for higher density housing, and zoning becomes a non-problem.
After that, all you have to deal with are the NIMBYs. Le sigh.
Zoning originally was driven by legitimate fears of tuberculosis and other diseases, and it emerged as an extension of building and safety codes which had developed in response to innumerable deadly tragedies.
Though, some of the more famous court cases that later secured broad zoning powers evinced mixed motivations clearly implicating class tensions.
I once took a Land Use seminar in law school. My professor, as well as numerous authors on the subject, always seemed incredulous and even cynical about professed concerns w/ tuberculosis and similar health concerns. But over the years since I've lost count the number of times I've come across non-legal historical writing directly or indirectly reflecting fears about tuberculosis, the prevalence of miasma theory, etc, so I no longer second guess the earnestness of those early regulations and court cases.
The powerful will always coopt laws and institutions to their advantage. That's almost the definition of power--the capability to do that. It's unavoidable. That dynamic doesn't by itself negate, post hoc, the original legitimacy of those laws and institutions. Of course, earnestness alone doesn't justify them at inception, either.
I'm literally saying it doesn't matter how they came into place. Zoning per se is irrelevant. It's inflexible and out of date zoning that's the problem. You don't have to go full on Houston and eliminate all zoning to solve this particular aspect of the problem.
The renters suffering aren’t actual current renters so much as the would-be renters who can’t actually become renters in the City because there are no units available for them to rent.
> How can someone say with a straight face that it's unjust people who don't live in a jurisdiction have no say in how it's run?
AFAICT, no one said it was unjust that nonresidents don’t vote in city elections. It was raised as a reason the policy was unlikely to be changed at the city level, because the people adversely effected aren’t voters in the city.
What collapse? In all but the most deplorable areas houses will have multiple offers within days of listing, starting even before any marketing effort. In many cases we're talking cash over the asking price. This isn't coming mainly/only from the tech sector. The number of people with FAANG salaries simply isn't sufficient to support the large number of multi-million dollar homes here. A lot of it is absentee (foreign) investors (for example, just under 20% of purchases in San Mateo as recently as 2019).
At best we might see a slight cooling in the rise in already absurd prices for property out here.
I've been reading about the "imminent" collapse of the SF housing bubble for essentially my entire adult life. Even the actual housing bubble implosion in '07 barely put a dent in it.
A more extreme example: 1/5 of all housing stock in China are vacant concrete boxes, and people are still complaining about apartment prices reaching to the sky.
Imagine cities both 20 times the size of SF, and being one fifth vacant.
To be fair, housing in China is used as a savings vehicle. They have few, if any, social safety nets available to them, and don't trust the stock market.
Housing in the US doesn't have nearly the same speculative force behind it.
Vacant != on the market. I know a few people living in china, all of whom own more apartments than they can use (in the same neighborhoods no less, so it's not even vacation homes).
They do it because it's the best way to invest their savings, so new apartments are usually spoken for before they're even built and often unoccupied until they're sold again.
Is it legal for private citizens to rent out vacant housing units in China? If so, that doesn't surprise me very much. Every landlord has more housing units than they can use.
It won't collapse (over the long term [0]) because the underlying reason is a savings glut. There are dozens of factors that contribute to the savings glut and I don't see any signs of them going away for the next 15 years. Of those dozen factors at least one third would have to go away all at once for there to be a sustained housing crash.
[0] The 2008 recovery happened within 3 quarters...
What bubble? People will never leave San Francisco en masse. The "exodus" during the pandemic will be the greatest outflow of people from the city for the next decade.
San Francisco can build more housing to accommodate a higher population or let its poorest citizens get priced out. Either way people will not stop coming.
You zone for what you want to build, not what is there already. The later wouldn't make any sense.
The arguments generally given are to show that we're preventing building for density, pointing out NIMBYism, etc, but even if we were doing the polar opposite, the same would be true:
If you have a town that's all single family, and zoning rules pass that any and all buildings MUST be 3+ stories, then all the existing houses wouldn't be allowed under current zoning laws. The fact that they're not allowed under current zoning rules is irrelevant. The question is only if the new zoning rules are good for what you want to see or not.
Even if you allowed skyscrapers, most existing houses and buildings would be illegal because of code. The map on this particular page mentions it only looks at zoning, so it's still very valid.
But my point is saying "X amount of homes would be illegal to build" is completely pointless and just meant to rile people up. OF COURSE most buildings are illegal to build today. We don't build like we use to for a variety of reasons. Even if you forget about building code, there's also rules around minimum amount of affordable units that older buildings didn't need to follow. Zoning is a specific one and yes, it's often problematic and regressive. Let's focus on that.
The building code and fire code thing is not true. Building codes are actually very flexible. There are plenty of ways to build a building to look exactly like almost any old building and fully comply with all codes.
Look like old buildings? Sure. But actually be the same? No. Hell, the building I live in is less than 12 years old and the electric panel is no longer to code, the HVAC condensate line is no longer to code, the damn stairs are no longer to code, the freagin dryer vent is no longer to code. They were all to code when they were built.
After that, all you have to deal with are the NIMBYs. Le sigh.