[quanticle]

Everything in this article comes back to housing. That's not the tech. industry's fault. The tech. industry would love to have more housing in San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area. Housing prices have increased so quickly, and are currently at such a high level that even highly paid tech. workers are thinking twice about moving to SF. We see it often enough in the comment threads right here.

The problem is that the existing residents of San Francisco would like to preserve their relatively low density city, and simultaneously cram several million more people into it. In every other growing city, swathes of older, low-density housing are torn down and replaced with higher density apartment and condominium blocks. These high-density urban high-rises relieve the pressure on the remaining, cheaper, low density residential properties, while simultaneously adding additional economic growth and neighborhood vitality. It just seems that the residents of San Francisco have made a collective choice that they'd rather have the "charm" of their "historic" (like you can call anything less than 200 years old historic) city, rather having a city that people can move into and live in on less than programmer wages.

[api]

I turned down a really great salary offer in the Bay Area recently because it was not that great given the housing prices. Basically you'd have to offer me over $175k to even consider coming there... and even then I'd be concerned about continued real estate inflation pricing me out of any chance of getting desirable housing and paying it off in a decent amount of time.

The other thing is that in Silicon Valley you're paying for RE like it's New York but you don't live in New York. You live in a boring and IMHO rather ugly suburb. I was shocked at how bad it was... I was driving around and thinking "I cannot think of anywhere else in the USA where so much gets you so little."

[SheepSlapper]

I found that out the hard way. Six months ago I got a job in SF that paid me 50% more, and moved to the East Bay where I pay almost 3x the rent (for the same square footage, in a much crappier neighborhood). I could buy a nice house where I'm from (WA) for what I'm paying in rent now, and that stings a bit.

It's definitely been a fun experience (there're TONS of cool things to do here), but had I known 6 months ago what I know now... I'm not sure that I would have made the transition.

[rayiner]

Some of the DC suburbs are getting close in terms of how expensive it is to live in desolate suburbia.

[varelse]

For many years, I've wanted to move from the South Bay to SF.

Not anymore.

It's too damned crowded now. So I predict it will just get more crowded and there will be no changes to the zoning to improve mass transit and housing to embrace and handle that crowding. Even a small change like repealing rent control would work wonders for new residents by increasing housing supply and reducing opening rents at the expense of existing residents having to come to grips with market rates. Not gonna happen: the inmates are solidly in charge of this asylum.

So instead the overflow will continue early adopting Oakland and eventually gentrify the place. Not my cup of tea at this point in my life, but I'm happy to jump off the appropriate BART stops and enjoy their restaurants and coffee shops on the weekends as they appear.

That said, attacking the tech shuttles makes as much sense to me as shooting up an unemployment office when one loses one's job. All you're doing is venting your anger on people slightly less unlucky than you are. The people they truly hate are safely ensconced in Pacific Heights, Tiburon, Palo Alto, and Atherton with excellent security.

For the record, here's a description of what an Ellis eviction entails:

http://www.andysirkin.com/HTMLArticle.cfm?Article=3

[gum_ina_package]

Spot on. Not trying to be cliche, but big government is what's causing these problems. If they would allow high rises to be built, we wouldn't be seeing these issues.

[drhayes9]

I don't see the big government argument here. If the residents of San Francisco are voting to keep the city a certain way, how does that align with traditional "big government" narratives of over-regulation, bloated spending, etc?

You could say the residents of SF are using city regulations a certain way, but that doesn't imply big government to me.

[LanceH]

Government dictating what may and may not be done with private property. Not in the spending sense as it is normally used, but definitely in the invasive sense.

[drhayes9]

I think it's awfully reductionist to blame the "government" and stop there. It simplifies a lot of what is really going on and threatens to become a thought-terminating cliche; "Well, that's big government for you."

This is the democratic reaction of a lot of city residents (many of whom are blue collar) to the new economic realities within their hometown. That leads to many more paths of resolution than just saying "big government".

In other words, government isn't the problem here. The SF housing crisis, the coming class war, the inequities of late-era capitalism -- these are the real problems.

[kllrnohj]

Big government has nothing to do with this. The protesters themselves are the problem. Not because of their current protests, but because of their previous protests against more housing.

The government has tried, many times, to zone and build more dense housing which would have prevented this problem. The people of SF have been organizing and protesting every step of the way against that for the last 15 years.

Hell, even today they are protesting the increase in housing costs while simultaneously protesting against increased housing.

[schiffern]

>In every other growing city, swathes of older, low-density housing are torn down and replaced with higher density apartment and condominium blocks.

…which generally means going from bad design to worse when it comes to human health. Mental illness, social isolation, physical inactivity, and poor performance in school are all correlated with living in high-rise buildings (even after accounting for socioeconomic factors).[1]

This isn't to say that healthy high-density living can't be done, just that it generally isn't what's done. Singapore is a good counter-example.[2]

[1] http://web.uvic.ca/psyc/gifford/pdf/ASR%20High%20Rises%20pro...

[2] http://www.livablecities.org/articles/high-density-livabilit...

[Futurebot]

This is exactly it. I've posted about ideas for fixing this a few times in the past:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6549063

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6944259

The unfortunate thing right now is that these ideas have no real traction outside of econoblogs, the most popular being Matt Yglesias' MoneyBox. City Halls, historic preservation committees, online comment sections, community boards, and others have endless rants about their grievances, or piles of suggestions that don't touch the problem at all.

In the case of this article, it's mentioned in passing, but dismissed as the equivalent of "it'll be too little, too late." If a place is as important as it seems (like New York has been for a very long time in a number of industries), these problems aren't going anywhere - regardless of bubble pops - and should be dealt with right away. Are there any serious commentators or analysts that believe that the SFBA will disappear if "social" vanishes? I think that's incredibly short-sighted.

Short version: there are solutions, but those who matter aren't really listening.