[forthwall]

I really hope L Breed and her leadership approve more residential conversions of office spaces in downtown. A few developers are interested but there seems to be a holdup for whatever reason. SF has already had some successful conversions like 100 Van Ness.

While I don't think that is a surefire way of fixing dtsf but it is a start. The superdense neighborhood of chinatown and somewhat dense neighborhood of little italy are pretty lively still, probably because everyone lives above the commercial and retail spaces that exist there.

(There's not much commercial offices in those neighborhoods but there's a few, especially between california and bush)

[kqr2]

S.F. has nearly 16 million square feet of vacant office space. Why can't it become housing?

https://archive.ph/znGkU

[acchow]

16M square feet is last year’s estimate. Wonder what the figure is today

[littlexsparkee]

18.7 as of April https://socketsite.com/archives/2022/04/visualizing-all-the-...

[epistasis]

These numbers seem tiny. Even if it all converts into 1000 sq ft residential homes, 18,000 new homes will not be enough to solve the housing shortage.

Definitely would help a ton though, and I probably shouldn't be hopeful of a single solution here.

[sofixa]

1000 sq ft (92 sq m) is a quite decent family apartment. For young singles or couples without kids, half of that is pretty decent. 20-25-30k new homes is nothing to sniff at, even if it won't solve the full problem.

[acchow]

San Francisco has dropped back to 2013 population levels.

[alexpotato]

This is what happened in the NYC financial district post 9/11.

Companies didn't want to move back into some of the office buildings so they were converted into residential housing.

I remember dating someone who lived down there and looking up at the ceiling and mentioning "Why do you have such weird drop ceilings here?" This is where I found out her apartment used to be an office building.

[BurningFrog]

I think the supervisors decide that, not the mayor?

Probably because the supes are elected by neighborhood, they are very NIMBY.

[littlexsparkee]

2 reasons 100 Van Ness was easier: compact floor plate (ensures access to light) and didn't need a seismic retrofit as it was built in 1974. That's not the case for a lot of office buildings. Also mentioned: nearly all buildings are partially leased right now - it's impossible to do the work with anyone still in there.

Source: https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101889483/what-would-it-take-...

[mc32]

Why would people want to live in relative expensive housing if there are no jobs in the city for them?

Converted apartments are not going to be "affordable" (by say the likes of students, and people just out of college not in finance or tech.

Once the white collar workers leave, there is less demand for service workers to live there. Sure maybe some salaried workers like in emergency services and policing might choose to live there. If I were a service worker, living in SF proper would not be the thing I'm looking to do.

[eszaq]

With more housing, the relative expense decreases, and some people will move in just because they like the bustle of living in a city. Those are also the kind of people who will patronize local establishments.

Years ago, the center of the action in "Silicon Valley" was actually in the geographical valley, in the south bay. The south bay is way different from SF - safe and sterile. Some people would move up to SF and commute all the way down to the south bay just because they wanted to live somewhere interesting. Those sort of people also tended to be the sort to start startups, and the center of the action gradually moved to SF.

I think SF can try following the same path a second time, focus on catering to the gritty hipster demographic and hope something valuable grows out of it. Added housing to push rents lower seems like a good start.

[inamberclad]

I think it's more that the barriers to entry for tech businesses have plummeted. In the olden days (80's, 90's, etc), you didn't have the internet as your force multiplier.

[mc32]

I can see professionals making this calculus, but not the service sector workers proponents often want to see move into cities.

[epicureanideal]

> and the center of the action gradually moved to SF

Is this true? Are there some numbers available for comparison?

[jltsiren]

Housing remains expensive only if too many people want to live there. If the demand goes down, housing costs must eventually go down as well.

Once the balance between supply and demand is similar, urban living should be cheaper than suburban living, because urban areas need less infrastructure for each resident.

[elcritch]

Good points, though bad housing policies like SF’s can artificially decrease supply.

For expensive housing you need both demand and lack of ability to create new housing.

[inamberclad]

We could reduce the cost with increased supply. Conversions are cheaper than new buildings by a large margin. Plenty of people would appreciate living in a metropolitan area for its own sake.

[mc32]

People appreciate places they can live that affords them earning a living (work). Yes, you may get an influx of people wanting to live in a city, but it's not going to solve the issue for people who can't afford an apartment in the city.

If the work itself is leaving, why would they want to live in a city, just to live in a city? To what end? I guess retirees with deep pockets, ok?

[stale2002]

> you may get an influx of people wanting to live in a city

Ok, thats still a benefit. Allowing more people to live in the city is still a good thing.

> To what end?

To allow more people who want to live here, to do so.

[adam_arthur]

The housing won't be as expensive if there is mass office to residential conversion, and a large percentage of jobs go remote

[mc32]

I agree it will come down from $4000. But if I were a service worker, I'd balk at $2500 (let's say it even went as low as that) if I could get it cheaper elsewhere. Hayward, Oakland would be cheaper.

Downtown SF and SJC were quite ugly during downturns before tech came to the rescue. Market street until recently was still suffering from blight brought on 40 years ago.

[epistasis]

I don't understand what your contention is here, but my best understanding is that you think that there's nobody who could afford these apartments with jobs in SF, and that they would sit empty. Is that correct?

If I got that correct, then I would first say that there are massive numbers of people who want to live in SF who have been kept out by the $4000 prices, and lowering it to $3500 or $3000 would bring in far more people.

Further, thinking only in terms of service workers and tech workers misses a lot of what goes on in the city, there's a ton of people in between.

But even if I'm wrong, then having a huge number of vacant apartments is really good news for all renters in the city. It puts pressure on all other landlords to power prices. It changes the market segmentation, and drives improvements in prices or apartment quality for all market segments adjacent to whatever price the conversions initially target. There is no downside to a bunch of vacant office space converting to vacant apartments.

One problem with mass conversions, and in general the way that SF has done planning—zero change allowed for decades then dumping a bunch of new stuff in a small area—is that it takes a long time for the new neighborhood to gain all the character of a neighborhood, for example the little shops, the community groups, etc.

[ajmurmann]

It's absolutely insane that the government has any say in what a building gets used for. I can see some arguments why the government has a say in constructing a building in the first place, but controlling what it's used for is just planned economy, communist hubris!

[alexpotato]

You should talk to people in Houston.

It effectively has no zoning which means you get oil processing plants built next door to elementary schools.

The Austrian Economists will jump in here and say that's why certain private property developments buy the equivalent of "sky rights" (or "land rights" I guess) with adjoining properties to effectively create their own zoning.

[burlesona]

This is an incorrect urban myth. Oil plants don’t just get built wherever, and there are a lot of common sense provisions in Houston like limits on what can be built close to schools, even though the city doesn’t have zoning.

It’s flat and ugly there, but surprisingly socially vibrant, open, and interesting in large part because barriers to entry are so low and life is so affordable.

[inamberclad]

Seconded. I've been here for two years and I'm moving out because it's hot, humid, ugly, and car culture is brutal. However, it's a place where it's easy to get your feet under you and live a good life with interesting things. However, I can't recommend the suburbs - especially Clear Lake. They're the worst, most inescapably bland places I've ever seen.

[epistasis]

LA has zoning yet still places health destroying oil wells right next to housing and schools and retail.

Houston may not have zoning but it has plenty of code that mandate car dependency and huge amounts of driving and therefore suburban blandness.

Regulation versus deregulation is a barren framing, the real problem is absolutely terrible urban planning rules in the US that have created our bad situations. As a field, it would probably be better if it never existed.

[_-david-_]

>you get oil processing plants built next door to elementary schools

Do you have any examples? This doesn't seem likely to me.

[barbacoa]

Being down the street from oil refinery is a small price to pay for a $300k median priced housing.

[nathanaldensr]

Zoning, in general, is a compromise to a set of mutually-exclusive philosophies: individualism (e.g., private property ownership) and collectivism. Society can't function with only one or the other; there needs to be some mediation. Local governments are theoretically responsible to represent the wills of their voters, so this is probably the best way to do that. We can always argue, however, about where specifically particular zoning rules fall on that spectrum.

[viraptor]

That's an extreme view. Of course you want some zoning restrictions. Unless you're saying you're ok with (whatever loudest industry with lots of lorry traffic you can think of) being created nextdoors to you. Full anarchy is bad, super restrictive planning is bad too.

[rcpt]

Here in Long Beach we have honest to God oil derricks right in the middle of neighborhoods yet our zoning when it comes to new housing is as strict as it gets.

[nkrisc]

Ok I’m starting a pig farm next door to you.

[ajmurmann]

Won't happen, since the area is too desirable and building a high of farm there isn't economically viable unless you are just gonna do it make your point which would be an extremely rare event we shouldn't optimize for.

[nkrisc]

Ah, so it's only a problem that should affect poor people who live in undesirable areas.

[at_a_remove]

Let's have some fun with this. So maybe I am near a hospital, or an elementary school, whatever. I have a nice plot of land. You think people will be okay with me storing nuclear waste for a fee on that land?

Maybe I am next to your house. I want to have a hog farm or a 24/7 very loud factory.

[ajmurmann]

We have environmental protection laws and safety regulations that will prevent you from supporting nuclear waste without massive precautions. Now, I'll concede that there is value in separating polluting industries from business and residential areas. In general, I think a system like Japan has that's much coarser and centrally administered to prevent kicking away the latter by wealthy home owners would be friendly desirable. The US zoning system is so fundamentally broken and full of overreach that no zoning would be a massive improvement.

[jen20]

Ironically the most conservative areas are the ones who fall the hardest for the communist hubris, which is why you can’t get a beer without driving in so much of the USA.

[hindsightbias]

They think govt is bad, wait til they paint their house blue in their gated HOA communitiy.