You have it backwards — the push for density is bottom-up, coming from the people who want to live in SF. The top-down elements are the regulations imposed to keep the city from changing.
I think the more accurate representation is that it's coming from people who _want_ to live in SF but currently don't (due to lack of housing or unaffordable housing). Should I be allowed to push for policy changes in a city I am not a resident of?
A) Many of the people supporting this are current residents of SF
B) Yes you are allowed to push for policy changes in SF, even if you have been pushed out to other parts of California or the USA. Desegregation was pushed by "outsiders" but most of us today agree that was a good thing that moved society forward.
No, it is also coming from people inside San Francisco who are on the verge of being priced out and if they are ever forced to move will not be able to ever find a new place to live inside the city. San Francisco is not some homogenous unit with only one voice and one opinion.
Or put another way: the housing market is illiquid, neighborhoods are ossified with older buildings and the units in them turning to squalor and the rent is too damn high.
If the housing crisis was only localized to S.F. then state level action wouldn’t be needed. The fact that housing shortages are widespread in CA makes it a crisis that must be solved at the state level.
Personally as a long time resident of SF I fight for density now in the hope that these efforts bear fruit before my 5 year old and 2 year old grow up. I want an SF where they don’t have to be ML engineers to live in the same city as their parents when they grow up
> The fact that housing shortages are widespread in CA makes it a crisis that must be solved at the state level.
In practice you are probably right, but I'm still wondering if you are right in theory.
Let me explain: there's so much pent up demand in SF and SV that any individual location allowing more building won't make much of a dent in overall housing costs.
One can certainly see that as a problem. But it's also an enormous opportunity: real estate developers in that community can build and build and build without worrying about oversupply ever dropping prices.
A booming local construction industry would also create lots of blue collar jobs, even if it never makes a dent in housing prices. Or rather, exactly when it doesn't make a dent in prices: because then the booming local construction industry can just keep on booming forever.
Now my question is: why does it look like all cities in the area are colluding against this? What keeps even one city from breaking ranks and allowing massive amounts of construction?
Is it that they can't find ways to benefit from the extra commercial activity? (I heard that eg property taxes are capped? And they have no creative ideas for how to otherwise benefit?)
Is it that there are bay area wide mechanisms that keep communities from allowing more building?
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Btw, the whole discussion reminds me when back in the years of the Great Recession after the Global Financial crises inflation was--as hard as that is to believe today--stubbornly low, and people saw that as a problem, instead of an opportunity:
At a minimum you can have your central bank buy up the whole national debt with newly printed money, and if that still doesn't raise inflation, you can start buying up the rest of world dollar for dollar. (Eg index funds are happy to take your newly created money.)
At some point, either your country's central bank owns the world in return for some data base entries, or inflation will pick up. (If inflation picks up too much, you can always soak up some excess money by selling things off your balance sheet. Standard central bank operating procedure.)
Instead of seeing this opportunity, people mostly just.. gave up?
Btw, orthodox economists suggested more or less exactly what I laid out above to Japan during the 1990s Lost Decade, but this was not a popular policy recommendation during the 2010s.
>What keeps even one city from breaking ranks and allowing massive amounts of construction?
Some minor city allowing massive construction isn't magically going to make lots of high-paying jobs appear there. Over time, it might make the place an attractive destination for migration, but it's far from certain. Think about it this way: if Toledo, Ohio allowed massive housing construction, would lots of tech companies flock there and try to get tech employees to move there? Or Fargo, ND? I kinda doubt it.
Even within the Bay Area (which is composed of a bunch of municipalities like SF, Oakland, Cupertino, San Jose, etc.), one city allowing more construction might not help you much if your job is elsewhere, because it's too far to commute and the commuting infrastructure sucks.
> Some minor city allowing massive construction isn't magically going to make lots of high-paying jobs appear there.
Yes. The high paying white collar jobs are already there in the bay area.
(My earlier comment mentioned jobs mostly in the context of new blue collar jobs for people during the construction.)
> Think about it this way: if Toledo, Ohio allowed massive housing construction, would lots of tech companies flock there and try to get tech employees to move there? Or Fargo, ND? I kinda doubt it.
I agree, but I don't see how that's relevant for the bay area.
> Even within the Bay Area (which is composed of a bunch of municipalities like SF, Oakland, Cupertino, San Jose, etc.), one city allowing more construction might not help you much if your job is elsewhere, because it's too far to commute and the commuting infrastructure sucks.
I don't even live in the bay area, so it doesn't help me at all. At least not directly. But I also don't see how that question is relevant?
As long as it helps some people enough that they are willing to pay enough to keep local house prices high, my argument still stands.
And the opposite is also ok: if one city building would actually make houses more affordable in that area, then that just invalidates the whole premise of the grand-parent comment that individual cities can't make dent, and that intervention from higher levels of government (like the state) are necessary.
> Now my question is: why does it look like all cities in the area are colluding against this? What keeps even one city from breaking ranks and allowing massive amounts of building?
The problem is that until all unmet demand at the upper end of the market has been satisfied, builders won't start building at the more affordable ends of the market.
If one small city allows more construction, the overall impact on the market will be tiny, this is why the "urban villages" approach doesn't help bring down housing prices, throwing up a few dozen new apartment complexes doesn't help when thousands upon thousands of new complexes are needed.
> The problem is that until all unmet demand at the upper end of the market has been satisfied, builders won't start building at the more affordable ends of the market.
As outlined in my original comment, I don't see how that is a problem?
The whole point is that you can either you can let your real estate developers run wild and make lots of profit (and thus pay lots of taxes) building houses upon houses upon houses without any price drops from over-supply.
Or you'll eventually see price drops, and thus more affordability.
Btw, back in the old days the complaint was that greedy developers would build sub-par units to make money off poor people. Nowadays the complaint is that greedy developers will only sell nice units to the rich. How times have changed.
Any new supply is good. If you don't supply excellent units at the top, you just have rich people outbid the middle class for slightly worse (but still nice) units. And the middle class gets pushed down to outbid the lower class for even worse units.
The other way round, adding units at the top allows everyone on the ladder to move up one rung. All the way to the bottom.
Developers should just concentrate on whatever's most profitable.
> If one small city allows more construction, the overall impact on the market will be tiny, [...]
That's the first of the two cases I outlined above. I would also classify that as a (local) success of allowing more housing.
Being able to add lots of supply to an over-priced market without that dropping prices, is every suppliers' dream.
> The whole point is that you can either you can let your real estate developers run wild and make lots of profit (and thus pay lots of taxes) building houses upon houses upon houses without any price drops from over-supply.
I think we are in agreement that if enough houses are built, price drops will follow.
One issue we encountered here in Seattle (or at least we believe we encountered!) is that people move, so when housing got too expensive in California, people moved from California to Seattle where housing was cheaper.
Now obviously if California reformed its housing policies, I think they could easily absorb pent up local demand along with some growth. However if a smaller locale like Seattle fixes its housing problems, I worry that Seattle couldn't absorb pent up demand for housing from California.
> Being able to add lots of supply to an over-priced market without that dropping prices, is every suppliers' dream.
Getting filthy rich is supplier's dream. Most builders (and arguably businesses) are short sighted, but if government policy makes them tons of $ they will still try to claim it was all part of their brilliant long term plan.
If every major west coast city replaced its stupid zoning laws with, say, Japan's zoning system (see https://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001050453.pdf), then prices would come crashing down and everyone would make crap-fuck-tons of money.
As a trivial example, on a 10k sqft lot right now in Seattle suburbs, builders are constructing single family homes and selling them for 2 million.
With not-idiotic zoning, that could be 6 flats selling at 600k each.
Never mind the rules that discourage constructing flats and instead push builders towards making 4 story townhomes.... (Perfect for able-bodied couples without kids who are under the age of 40! And no one else...)
Housing shortages are widespread all over because the US is short 5 million units of housing.
My preferred solution is to weaponize HUD. Use it to offer low interest loans to developers. Build a couple hundred thousand per year of mixed use multi-family. Where it'll do some good and add to muni's tax base. Keep building until busted out landlords are jumping out windows.
It may also be coming from people who do live in SF, and wish they could continue, but cannot afford to - because other people, who have more money, are outbidding them for the artificially limited supply of housing.
Former San Francisco resident here. I pushed for building reform while I lived there. Will continue to vote for building reform there now, even though we got pushed out (kids....) by high prices, because we yearn to move back. I don't think there's any incongruity in my consistent position on this issue.
> Should I be allowed to push for policy changes in a city I am not a resident of?
Yes. Because this country has the first amendment. It is a matter of law that you can and may (within the law).
If you (and I am not saying you do) not agree with people being able to push for such changes (via speech as it is defined and interpreted by our court via the first amendment), then please state your reasons for disagreeing rather than posing a loaded question.
Yeah but I feel like you have to admit there is a tragedy of the commons here -- there will always be more people who want to live somewhere than can realistically have a high-quality of life there....
Part of the reason San Francisco is so desirable is because it's iconic, it would be a great irony to make room for more people by removing what makes it special.
It always felt to me like if we want more San Francisco then we should build more beautiful cities, there's a lot of amazing coast in California.
What's really so iconic about it that would make it "not San Francisco" if it were removed? The Golden Gate Bridge, perhaps? Sure. Coit Tower? Maybe, but... eh? Transamerica Pyramid? Cool, but I wouldn't care much if it was gone. Palace of Fine Arts? Sure, I'd be really sad to see that go, but it's not "San Francisco".
I've lived in SF for 14 years and I don't think "because it's iconic" is in my top 10 reasons for liking it here.
Also consider that cities always change. SF in 1924 looked a lot different. It was desirable then. It changed. It's desirable now. It'll change again, and still be desirable.
I'm a homeowner here, and would absolutely love it if many many more people had the opportunity to own homes in SF, without mortgaging their entire life.
Hell, I wouldn't mind my home value dropping all that much, either. Sure, I'd lose money when I eventually want to sell, but at least my property taxes would go down. (But honestly, I don't think my home value would drop all that much, if at all. Demand so far outstrips supply here that we'd probably have to double or triple the housing stock before home prices would drop all that much.)
As a side point, if SF was upzoned to allow, say, six-plexes where possible, one could probably sell ones property to a developer for more than it is worth now as a single family home. At the same time, the per unit cost of the six-plex would be less than your current home price. Everybody in the transactions wins: you, the builder, and the five new families. The environment wins too, as five families can live closer to where they work instead of driving, and the new home are more energy efficient.