[pmiller2]

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.

[r00fus]

You do realize that the problem is NIMBYs all the way down tho, right?

How do you think zoning laws came into place?

[wahern]

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.

[pmiller2]

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 It's inflexible and out of date zoning that's the problem.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.

[whimsicalism]

But it becomes a problem if it's entirely up to local voters. Let the state have a say in the zoning process.

[xiphias2]

Why would the current house owners do that? The renters suffer, who don't have voting rights, so I don't see why this would change in the future.

[ahepp]

What do you mean "renters don't have voting rights"?

[dragonwriter]

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.

Those people have no voting rights in the City.

[ahepp]

I can't tell if you're serious or not...

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?

[dragonwriter]

> 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.

[jonny_eh]

How can the thousands of future renters of a new high rise vote before it's been built? The few current home owners have all the power.

[Animats]

Why? After the current bubble collapses, this will no longer be a problem.

[sidlls]

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.

[Analemma_]

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.

[trimbo]

People have been complaining about SF real estate prices since at least 1846. [1]

[1] - https://books.google.com/books?id=GiAa8pLrSTIC&lpg=PA45&lr&p...

[HPsquared]

I guess the prices could collapse a fair bit and still be overpriced.

[pmiller2]

Yeah, especially when you consider that prices just 30 minutes away from SF in any direction are anywhere from 20-60% lower than in SF.

[refurb]

Where? 30 mins is still in Napa to the North, Oakland to the East and San Mateo to the South.

20%? Maybe in a few pockets. 60%? Never seen it. Even the crummy parts of Daly City the homes are $1M now.

[baybal2]

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.

[pmiller2]

Imagine there being 59 empty homes for each homeless person in the country. That's the US, not China, BTW: https://www.self.inc/info/empty-homes/

[hedora]

I wonder what percentage of the vacant California homes are held up waiting for permitting. It’s definitely non-zero.

(Similarly, I wonder how many are off market because it’s so difficult to evict problem tenants.)

[BobbyJo]

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.

[baybal2]

Very much true, and this is what I wanted to show — what is a case of a real speculative runaway.

Still, the fact stands as mindboggling as it is — China has few Californias of empty housing, and a ridiculous housing price runaway at the same time.

[ladberg]

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.

[pmiller2]

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.

[ladberg]

Yes it's legal but the people I've talked to don't do it. There's a stigma of renting over buying so the rent/home value ratio is way off compared to the US. Renting out the homes wouldn't really net much profit overall and they don't want to deal with being a landlord anyway, so they let the apartments sit empty.

[ricardobayes]

It is impossible to get married in China if the bride doesn't own property. The family won't allow it.

[refurb]

SF homes dropped 30% in 2008.

Edit: Actually 44% to be precise.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRSA

[imtringued]

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...

[bananabreakfast]

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.

[refurb]

Never leave? SF lost 20%+ of its population in the 50-70’s.

[forgotmysn]

thats what they said when the dotcoms busted in 02 though