[HN Gopher] 54% of San Francisco homes are in buildings that wou...
___________________________________________________________________
54% of San Francisco homes are in buildings that would be illegal
to build today
Author : undefined1
Score : 141 points
Date : 2021-04-01 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sfzoning.deapthoughts.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sfzoning.deapthoughts.com)
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| It's amazing how much we let city governments get away with
| zoning restrictions. Almost universally city governments will say
| they're "pro affordable housing", yet they will never budge an
| inch and give away some of their zoning power.
| meddlepal wrote:
| You're not letting city governments get away with anything, the
| voters, the ones that actually show up, support these measures.
| brudgers wrote:
| The market produces market rate housing. Developers prefer to
| develop higher priced housing because the effort to develop a
| housing project is mostly independent of the number of units
| and the market segment for which they are built...a few low
| cost units is about the same effort and risk as a lot of high
| priced units.
|
| Actually, it's probably harder to build low cost units because
| bankers prefer a higher upside and psychologically tend to
| identify more with wealth than poverty...I mean people usually
| don't go into banking to alleviate poverty, misery, and
| suffering...although I have known bankers and they were all
| pretty decent people. It's just that their day to day work was
| serving wealth.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Reminds me of something I read somewhere: the difference
| between condos and "luxury" condos is usually just the price.
| zozin wrote:
| Home owners and landlords have more sway than renters. Why
| would they vote for government officials that promise to
| destroy their asset values?
| abfan1127 wrote:
| I agree. I was surprised to hear that Houston doesn't have
| zoning in the traditional sense.
|
| https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-
| heard-h....
| Nelkins wrote:
| The number is 40% in Manhattan (buildings, not homes though).
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-...
| payne92 wrote:
| This is true in many, many places: as zoning, safety, access, and
| environmental rules evolve most older buildings become not
| buildable under current rules.
|
| Our national housing stock is FULL of places with narrow winding
| stairs, lead paint, full flow toilets and shower heads,
| untempered glass, single pane windows, uninsulated walls or
| ceilings, ungrounded outlets, undersized plumbing, sketchy
| chimneys, springy floors, etc.
|
| I'm surprised the number isn't closer to 80-90%, especially with
| the recent energy efficiency rules.
| jws wrote:
| _Our national housing stock is FULL of places with narrow
| winding stairs, lead paint, full flow toilets and shower heads,
| untempered glass, single pane windows, uninsulated walls or
| ceilings, ungrounded outlets, undersized plumbing, sketchy
| chimneys, springy floors, etc._
|
| My house from 1890 scored 10 for 10 on your list. I addressed
| about half of them over the decades, but the other half are
| just, "It's ok, we'd do it better if we did it over." The
| additions and any bits "touched" have to meet current code, but
| the old parts are allowed to be what they are.
|
| I don't feel it detracts from my living experience at all. (I
| did take care of the _" this can kill you"_ part of the list as
| well as most of the single pane windows and uninsulated areas.)
|
| A couple of the code mandated changes are definitely negatives,
| as are a couple of "slightly off" construction problems which
| required space wasting and slightly dangerous constructs in the
| house instead of just accepting that the wall at the bottom of
| the stairs is 2 inches closer than code allows.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| 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.
| shados wrote:
| 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.
| zzapplezz wrote:
| Straw man - generally the idea of YIMBYism is to be more
| inclusionary, so that 3+ stories is allowed not required.
|
| In contrast, SFH-only zoning is exclusionary.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| 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.
| Animats wrote:
| Why? After the current bubble collapses, this will no
| longer be a problem.
| sidlls wrote:
| 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.
|
| At best we might see a slight cooling in the rise in
| already absurd prices for property out here.
| forgotmysn wrote:
| thats what they said when the dotcoms busted in 02 though
| Analemma_ wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I guess the prices could collapse a fair bit and still be
| overpriced.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| That's because people conflate the price of land
| (appreciating) with the price of the house on top of it
| (depreciating) and the people living it in (mixed bag).
| baybal2 wrote:
| 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.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| 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.
| r00fus wrote:
| You do realize that the problem is NIMBYs all the way down
| tho, right?
|
| How do you think zoning laws came into place?
| tjalfi wrote:
| > I'm surprised the number isn't closer to 80-90%, especially
| with the recent energy efficiency rules.
|
| Sommerville, Ma is a city of 80,000; 22 buildings meet the
| zoning code[0].
|
| [0] https://cityobservatory.org/the-illegal-city-of-somerville/
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Same is true of used cars, aircraft, boats and any number of
| regulated products. Change any tiny reg and all the previous
| stock "could not be built today". It doesn't mean much.
| Buildings last decades, centuries, far longer than any zoning
| board decision.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Aircraft are a different case than the others above. Aircraft
| are built to a type certificate and once it's issued so long
| as that type certificate is not revoked, airplanes can (in
| fact, must) be built today in conformance with that type
| certificate. Modifications to that type certificate are
| permitted, but they do not require full conformance with
| current regulations.
|
| My 1997 airplane was built on a type certificate first issued
| in 1956 (under CAR-3 regulations) and amended to include my
| model in 1969. Many regulations changed between 1969 and
| 1997. Beechcraft could build one today under that type
| certificate, even though they couldn't get that exact type
| certificate newly issued today (CAR-3 has been replaced by
| Part 23 requirements).
| throwaway8581 wrote:
| One of the first things I do when moving into a new place is
| remove all the flow restrictors on the faucets and shower
| heads. And I replace at least some of the LED bulbs with
| beautiful, soft, full-spectrum incandescent bulbs. Two quick
| fixes to improve your quality of life.
| russellendicott wrote:
| _gasp_ /s
|
| I can totally understand the flow thing--less flow means
| longer, more annoying shower.
|
| I've found that the soft white LED bulbs are a tolerable
| replacement for full spectrum incandescent. I stick with LED
| because I'm lazy and I don't have to change them as
| frequently.
|
| However, when the LED bulbs DO go out they do the flickering
| thing which is maddening. I'd prefer incandescent's total
| failure to produce light over the flickering fail mode any
| day of the week.
| incadenza wrote:
| I remember when I lived there everyone was so against the
| "manhattanization" of the city, so it was a big uproar every time
| a new building went in. I never quite understood how to square
| that view with the desire to keep housing affordable
| joshuamorton wrote:
| You can do both. Manhattanization is perhaps bad, but low-mid
| rise, Brooklynization or Barcelonazation or even Missionization
| of more of the city would help vastly. The highest population
| density parts of SF are Mission and Haight and similar midrise
| mixed use areas, they're significantly denser (50-100% more)
| than Richmond and Sunset.
|
| Imagine fitting an extra 100K people without adding any
| buildings higher than 3 stories.
| ASM_god wrote:
| lots of hypocrisy when it comes to housing
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| It's simple, the people who are against "manhattanization" do
| NOT want to keep housing affordable.
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| Rent controls!
| umeshunni wrote:
| I hope you're being sarcastic.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I assume this is meant to be read in the same tone as "The
| Aristocrats!"
| ralusek wrote:
| That just turns the city into a firt-come-first-serve
| lottery, in addition to all sorts of perverse
| incentives/disincentives for landlords and tenants alike,
| rather than a place where the people who are most
| willing/able to pay to live there are the ones that do. Rent
| control is one of the worst solutions to any problem.
| majormajor wrote:
| > That just turns the city into a firt-come-first-serve
| lottery
|
| That's how property ownership works, after all. Extending
| the same benefits to renters has a lot of obvious appeal
| even if it does nothing to fix overall price increase
| trends.
| kar5pt wrote:
| Yeah, property _ownership_ not property renting. They
| work differently for a reason. When housing prices rise,
| owners are incentivized to sell. When rents rise on rent
| controlled buildings, renters are incentived to stay put,
| even if they don't need the space. This incentivizes
| building owners to not maintain the buildings since they
| know renters won't leave anyway.
|
| There's tons of ways to make housing affordable without
| resorting to policies that have been rejected almost
| unanimously by economists.
| ralusek wrote:
| No it's not. If I walk into SF with 2 million dollars,
| there are more than a few people who would give up their
| 1 million dollar house for that amount of money. My
| desire and means to live there would just have to exceed
| their own.
|
| If someone is in a rent-controlled situation, they were
| simply lucky to get there first, and there is no
| mechanism in place for anybody else to rotate into that
| position.
| SllX wrote:
| A collective delusion that we can have our cake and eat it too.
|
| In my early 20s I enjoyed challenging my friends on what they
| would do to make the city more affordable. Got a lot of
| proposals that essentially boiled down to "control who can live
| here, kick out everyone that doesn't fit and cap the city's
| population". Don't ask me how, I never got a straight answer
| whenever I pointed out the problems. People can express what
| they want, they can't usually tell you how they would obtain
| it.
| lightgreen wrote:
| > I never got a straight answer whenever I pointed out the
| problems
|
| What are the problems?
| closeparen wrote:
| The main problem with "control who can live here" is that
| you would generally like children born in the place to be
| on the shortlist, but this would be unconstitutional under
| the Equal Protection Clause. Cities and states can't
| privilege natives over migrants.
|
| Rent control and the heritability of Prop 13 are the best
| California can do to prioritize incumbents. They do work
| somewhat, but the next generation of natives is still as
| screwed as prospective migrants re: forming their own
| households in the place, at least while their parents are
| still alive.
| [deleted]
| nitrogen wrote:
| _Cities and states can 't privilege natives over
| migrants._
|
| This is causing huge problems in Utah right now. Great if
| you have a house (or condo/etc) you don't want, bad if
| you have a house you like because you might get taxed out
| of it, terrible if you want a house. Every house and
| condo has dozens of unconditional cash offers on day one.
| lightgreen wrote:
| > this would be unconstitutional under the Equal
| Protection Clause
|
| There's a lot of places where very few people can afford
| to live. Like Manhattan for example.
|
| > Cities and states can't privilege natives over
| migrants.
|
| If native own property they can continue living there as
| long as they wish.
| [deleted]
| closeparen wrote:
| San Francisco would like housing to remain scarce _but be
| allocated to its favorite people_ , who are quite
| distinct from those with the highest ability to pay. This
| part is best achieved by an immigration policy. But
| that's not allowed, so they're stuck with imperfect
| substitutes. We can protect our favorite people from
| displacement, but it's harder to make homes that change
| hands flow to them vs. tech workers.
| kar5pt wrote:
| How are you going to keep people out of the city without
| raising prices? Also how is that fair to people who didn't
| have the privilege of being born in a nice city?
| SllX wrote:
| What's the problem with:
|
| 1. Picking who is worthy of living in San Francisco as
| determined by the City and County of San Francisco
|
| 2. Removing current residents that don't fit the criteria
|
| And 3. Controlling who may then migrate in?
|
| You tell me, Ford. You tell me. I have faith that you can
| do it. I'll give you exactly one hint: San Francisco is not
| a country.
| lightgreen wrote:
| > 1. Picking who is worthy of living in San Francisco as
| determined by the City and County of San Francisco
|
| No it is decided by the free market.
|
| > 2. Removing current residents that don't fit the
| criteria
|
| Only those who rent. People who own property can continue
| to live there as long as they wish.
| olliej wrote:
| Who gets to decide who is kicked out? at some point there
| will be a bunch of people born in the city who want to buy
| a house but can't but of the cap. You have to consider (and
| policies like this don't) what happens _even if_ no one
| moves into the city. In that scenario the population will
| still rise, until it hits the cap, at which point people
| have to leave.
|
| At that point where do they go? Presumably other cities
| will be allowed such caps so they can't move to those
| either.
|
| Then there are historical population control tools like
| redlining, and racist applications of eminent domain used
| to remove "undesirable" (a euphemism for black)
| neighborhoods.
|
| By placing a cap on population you ensure that the victims
| of that discrimination never have the opportunity to return
| to the places they used to live - and as an added bonus you
| get to claim that your policy isn't racist because it has
| no stated racial bias.
|
| Say your rental lease is up, and the only place you can
| find to rent is Colma. Now you've left SF are you ever
| allowed to return. What if someone else moved into SF while
| you were away thus taking your position under the cap?
| Honestly if anything this possibly right here could easily
| cause rental and housing prices to go up even more.
|
| Then there's SF's claim to be an open and welcoming
| multicultural city - you can't claim that well disallowing
| new residents, and so new cultures, from entering.
|
| The only real way to reduce hoisin cost is to build more
| housing. Where and what type you build are the only actual
| questions that you need to answer.
| lightgreen wrote:
| > racist applications of eminent domain used to remove
| "undesirable" (a euphemism for black) neighborhoods
|
| I'm sure white trash neighbourhoods were not welcome
| there as well.
|
| Anyway, I'm not ready to continue conversation where
| everything is considered racist, sorry.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Not the OP, but the ones that come immediately to mind is
| that a) capping the population will reduce the market and
| therefore increase prices and b) if you start limiting the
| people, the ones remaining will most likely be the rich [0]
| one way or another, making the market even more
| competitive.
|
| [0] Unless the place is not actually worth striving to live
| in, but in that case you probably don't have a rent price
| problem.
| lightgreen wrote:
| > reduce the market and therefore increase prices
|
| Why is that a problem?
|
| > if you start limiting the people, the ones remaining
| will most likely be the rich
|
| Why is that a problem?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Why is that a problem?
|
| This is like asking why high prices for food or health
| care are problems.
|
| It's a necessity of life, man. Do we really need to
| explain why basic necessities being very expensive is
| bad?
| milkytron wrote:
| > to make the city more affordable
|
| It doesn't achieve the goal, in fact further distances
| it.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| > Why is that a problem?
|
| Shelter is one of the few goods which a society
| necessarily needs. The alternatives (being homeless) are
| unacceptable. People give up food, electricity and
| healthcare before they give up shelter.
|
| It's fine at a micro scale (oceanfront is expensive, but
| a few blocks away is affordable), but causes incredible
| problems at a macro scale as the bay area demonstrates
| (people not able to live within 50+ miles of their
| support networks). It is VERY hard to uproot an entire
| life and move to an area where cost of living is lower,
| especially when you are poor. People in poverty form
| informal local support networks (neighbors watching kids,
| friends that can loan you $5 to top up your phone),
| making it that much harder to move to a lower cost area.
| nunez wrote:
| i.e. basically an affluent suburb
| bob33212 wrote:
| Complainer: 'Homelessness is a mental health problem, they
| shouldn't be arrested for sleeping and shitting on the
| sidewalk.'
|
| Me: 'Please go ahead and convince that homeless person to go
| to a Doctor's office, after you set up the appointment, and
| then follow up to make sure they take their medicine every
| day.'
|
| Complainer: 'Well, that is the job of a social worker, not
| me'
|
| Me: 'Are you going to go hire the social worker and let them
| know that they need to do this?'
|
| Complainer: 'That is the government's job, not mine'
|
| Answer: 'So you are going to vote for someone who says they
| will fix this, and that is about all you are going to do?'
|
| Complainer: 'I'm very busy'
| devenblake wrote:
| > Homelessness is a mental health problem, they shouldn't
| be arrested for sleeping and shitting on the sidewalk.
|
| Yes.
|
| > Well, that is the job of a social worker, not me
|
| Yes.
|
| > That is the government's job, not mine
|
| Yes.
|
| >> So you are going to vote for someone who says they will
| fix this, and that is about all you are going to do?
|
| Yes I will. I pay my taxes, it's not my fault the
| government wastes my money on the military and law
| enforcement. When there are candidates that pledge to fix
| this I donate to them and vote for them.
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > I never quite understood how to square that view with the
| desire to keep housing affordable
|
| It's more of a desire to "keep housing affordable [for me
| without decreasing quality of life by attracting more people]".
| olliej wrote:
| I'd argue it's more "keep housing affordable without reducing
| the value of my home".
|
| I recall seeing some article in which people were arguing
| that a council relaxing zoning laws to make more/cheaper
| housing possible was a "government taking" as it would reduce
| the value of their homes. Unfortunately I don't recall
| where/when so I can't guarantee it's not my mind merging
| unrelated stories.
|
| Or (because it's insane) the onion :D
| closeparen wrote:
| This is "de-manhattanization" - as buildings reach end of life
| they will have to be replaced by more suburban forms, in 100
| years San Francisco will have turned into Palo Alto.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I'll give you a direct answer that no one wants to say, but
| disclosure, I no longer live in SF due to work. I also don't
| own land or have a financial incentive to have high prices.
|
| TLDR: I would rather have SF as it is now (because i like it
| now and dislike change) than an affordable SF.
| "Manhattanization" is worse than the attempt of keeping it
| affordable.
|
| I would rather (to a limit) have an expensive SF than an SF
| that has more people in it. The manhattanization is not likely
| to drive down prices significantly. I read a article (cant find
| source) that said there would need to be ~4x the number of
| rental units in the city before prices fell meaningfully due to
| supply/demand. Even if the actual number isn't true, demand is
| so high that i don't believe any _achievable_ increase in
| housing would help at any meaningful way.
|
| If you accept the premise that prices won't go down (this is an
| assumption of course), you need to consider if more people
| would be better. Of course more people can enjoy it, and that
| is good, but here is why i think it will make the city a worse
| city:
|
| SF is great in many ways. There are so many parks, all so close
| together so its very fun and walkable. So many restaurants and
| shops all so close. Walking SF is a joy compared to many
| cities, where most of SF is great for walking while some cities
| only have a few neighborhoods that are great for walking. This
| is my opinion on SF, not all agree.
|
| The "manhattanization" of SF would destroy some of that by
| changing the "street view" details of the city. Sure, its just
| more people and likely no fewer "things", but bigger facades
| that change less "per foot" are more boring - bigger buildings
| tend to have fewer doors and things per foot of sidewalk
| frontage. Not universally true, but often true. Also, SF has
| some great historic architecture, and that would get lost as
| new building destroy the existing "feel" of a neighborhood.
| Some neighborhoods this would be good, but some are great how
| they are, and new buildings should improve not deteriorate the
| beauty of the city.
| incadenza wrote:
| I hear you. I get where people are coming from in a general
| sense. On the other hand, it strikes me as a kind of
| provincialism. I feel like the same argument could have been
| made in 1930s San Francisco: "ok everybody, time to hit the
| pause button, I like it here now!" But on the other hand
| people should have a say in what their cities are like and
| how they develop.
| webdood90 wrote:
| There is not a better example of a NIMBY than this
| ruined wrote:
| housing isn't affordable in manhattan either so
| jedberg wrote:
| Because building up isn't actually any cheaper. As the
| building gets taller, the construction costs go up per sq
| foot, not down, and so does ongoing maintenance.
| majormajor wrote:
| Manhattan is hardly affordable. Development alone is hardly an
| answer for affordability. Most development projects in the US
| are designed to increase _growth_ and _demand_ , not to
| decrease price. Increased growth and demand actively work
| against affordability, so if your development is contributing
| to increased demand as much as it is to supply, it's not
| helping.
|
| It's like how building wider freeways doesn't solve traffic.
| Demand is not independent of what has been built.
| wisty wrote:
| You're talking about "induced demand". Induced demand is not
| so high for housing. I might decide to drive 15 minutes to
| get a hotdog from Costco is the traffic isn't too awful. I
| probably won't buy an extra house just because it looks like
| a better deal than before. It does exist to some extent, but
| it's nowhere near as big a deal as for roads (at least in the
| short-medium term), at least I think that's the currently
| thinking on it - https://appam.confex.com/appam/2018/webprogr
| am/Paper25811.ht...
| majormajor wrote:
| It's not induced demand through increased housing stock,
| it's city development that becomes a cycle of
| residential/commercial/business development (or all-in-one
| mixed development), all of which have feedback loops into
| each other.
|
| Simply going for growth-at-all-costs gets you a more
| crowded _but still expensive_ city. That may be better for
| the people running the cities and their budgets, but it 's
| not clear to me it's better for anyone else than having
| things spread out to more places across the state or
| country.
| kelp wrote:
| Sprawl is probably worse for the environment overall.
| More driving, more land taken over. More density also
| reduces that.
| moultano wrote:
| NYC has one of the lowest rates of housing starts per capita
| in the US.
| majormajor wrote:
| So density alone is not the answer, only _ever-increasing
| density_ would be?
|
| That seems an insanely dystopian outcome.
| akvadrako wrote:
| I think it's been tried and what you get is Tokyo. I
| wouldn't say dystopian but it's also one of the most
| expensive cities in the world. Apparently the average
| apartment is about $2000/month.
| wahern wrote:
| Induced demand is predicated on the consumer not having to
| internalize the costs, which is the case for the poster child
| of induced demand--non-toll, public freeways.
|
| The problem in the Bay Area isn't induced demand, almost by
| definition. Rather, the demand _already_ exists, and that 's
| precisely why costs keep skyrocketing despite very low supply
| growth. The only way out of the situation other than by
| increasing supply is to cut demand to live there by, e.g.,
| bombing tech headquarters and unleashing roving bands of
| human culling robots so that people would have less
| motivation to move here.
|
| An example of actual induced demand in the Bay Area _might_
| be homeless housing in San Francisco. Since circa 2005 SF has
| built enough units of homeless housing to house every
| homeless person enumerated in the circa 2005 homeless census.
| But the number of homeless on the street has stayed the same
| --which is to say, the total number of homeless has
| approximately doubled since that time, w / half now living in
| city-built housing. _Arguably_ this suggests that there may
| be something like a set carrying capacity of unsheltered
| homeless in the city, and no matter how many units of housing
| you provide, you 'll always have that number of homeless on
| the streets.[1] Though, this is obviously just a conjecture.
| People argue vociferously about the origins and motivations
| of the homeless in SF. I certainly won't claim to have any
| concrete answers. But at least such a conjectured phenomenon
| would be consonant w/ the theory of induced demand.
|
| [1] To be clear, the induced demand in this scenario is
| demand for the free housing units, not spots on the sidewalk.
| majormajor wrote:
| > Rather, the demand already exists, and that's precisely
| why costs keep skyrocketing despite very low supply growth.
|
| If the costs are skyrocketing doesn't that mean demand has
| been going up, not that it already existed at these levels?
|
| How many more tech offices are in SF now than fifteen years
| ago? Has the city's commercial growth policies been
| considering in sync with their residential growth policies?
| Or have they let the one fan the flames of the other? They
| should've _preemptively_ bombed the tech headquarters, to
| tweak your suggestion. ;)
|
| But my money says that even if they had unleashed a bunch
| more residential construction fifteen years ago, it
| would've only been accompanied by _even more_ business and
| commercial growth. Coastal hub cities have a fundamental
| demand aspect with how cheap cross-country (or even global)
| travel is these days - there is a lot of built-in appeal
| that 's going to attract people there, even if only for
| second homes or investment housing, etc, and keep a lot of
| pressure on the price floor.
| wahern wrote:
| I'm sure demand has also been going up, though I don't
| know how to disentangle that from inflationary effects--
| same number of people wanting to live here, but w/ access
| to more wealth. In any event, it only drives home the
| point that the relationship between demand, supply, and
| price isn't something you can just will away, like an
| alternate universe Jane Jacobs applying Marxist
| economics.
|
| AFAIU, San Francisco has built more market and non-market
| housing than any other city in the Bay Area, despite
| being geographically quite small. Unfortunately, that's a
| relatively low bar in the context of the Bay Area
| considering so many cities just refuse to up-zone
| anything, or approve projects in up-zoned areas.
| olliej wrote:
| I disagree here as I've seen numerous examples of
| autonomous robots blocking sidewalks and crossings such
| that people with disabilities are unable to pass. Also who
| gets to win the contract? Are they using locally made small
| batch robots? If not, why not?
|
| Have we consider the use of organic cullers instead?
| meddlepal wrote:
| > I never quite understood how to square that view with the
| desire to keep housing affordable.
|
| It is easy, there is no absolutely no desire to keep housing
| "affordable" by anyone that owns property in SF.
|
| This is a problem through the US. Property owners vote and do
| things that are in their favor while renters and people that
| are trying to enter the market scream it is too expensive.
| vmception wrote:
| I listened to everything that people told me they miss about
| San Francisco
|
| and they are absolutely correct that this gentrifying
| transplant (aka anybody that signs a new lease, shrug) would
| find San Francisco unappealing
|
| I mean I find it unappealing now too, but would have found it
| more so unappealing
|
| Every single currently desirable neighborhood was an
| undesirable neighborhood within the last 30 years. "But the
| culture and the artists are gone" yeah, so is a gigantic
| abandoned highway through Hayes Valley replaced by ice cream
| shops _eeeeeverywhere_. There isn 't a coherent consensus, just
| angst.
| asveikau wrote:
| > Every single currently desirable neighborhood was an
| undesirable neighborhood within the last 30 years.
|
| This kind of thing is true of many (most?) cities in the US.
|
| (Well, I don't know about _every_ desirable neighborhood.
| Pacific Heights is going to be nice on either side of 30
| years.)
| antattack wrote:
| Moving to 1200sqft minimum lot size seems reasonable but 500sqft
| lot is tight, with little if any outdoor space. Plus 500sqft
| would not be friendly to older people or people with bad knees
| because of stairs.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Other people want to live in affordable housing in proximity to
| transit and parks -- so your preferences and theirs are in
| strict conflict. If you want space and outdoors, feel free to
| buy a place with those features. Making it illegal to build
| anything but your preference is insane.
| darrenoc wrote:
| That's a ridiculous expectation for a city. Urban housing needs
| to be dense. The kind of housing you're describing belongs in
| the suburbs.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Since 65-70% of SF residents are renters from what I can gather,
| how/why exactly do these laws keep passing that restrict housing
| and increase home prices and rent?
| leafmeal wrote:
| They touch on this sort of indirectly, but homeowners aren't
| the only objectors. Often NIMBYs don't like development because
| they don't want to live next to a tall apartment building with
| lower income people, for example.
| lopatin wrote:
| Why is it that our Chicago buildings that keep collapsing?
| Robelius wrote:
| Reading *Golden Gates* by Conor Dougherty right now! If anyone is
| deciding on a book to read about the history of housing policies,
| then I recommend it to anyone in California over *The Color of
| Law* (which is also a great book).
|
| Does a great job of painting how decades of decision making led
| to this point despite decades of warnings.
| zzapplezz wrote:
| Seconded. Well researched goodie. He spoke with a wide variety
| of sources to get his data right. From essentially homeless to
| Eli Broad - the B in KB Homes.
| leafmeal wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check this out!
| mdoms wrote:
| You'll find similar statistics in almost any city.
| rm_-rf_slash wrote:
| No city is as expensive and as associated with social
| egalitarianism as San Francisco.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Then the title should talk about that, rather than a
| statistic of dubious relevance.
|
| (More than 90% of people who drank water have died.)
| umeshunni wrote:
| This isn't really a problem. Building new housing is illegal in
| 80% of San Fransisco anyway:
| https://twitter.com/erikbryn/status/1006159415970549760
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| It always baffled me how people make expensiveness mandatory by
| law so nobody can get a home without at least some decades of
| mortgage. Some times I envy primitive people who would just build
| a hut when and where they need from what they find around and no
| authorities would come after them and say "you must buy a landed
| spaceship to live in and spend the rest of your life paying for
| it".
| neolog wrote:
| That's probably true everywhere. If you build for certain
| requirements, your building won't meet a different set of
| requirements.
| kazen44 wrote:
| i would assume so. Atleast in my experience (in a northern
| european country with many 120> old houses) almost no houses
| are strictly "up to modern standards" in terms of building
| regulations. Usually it is something minor or energy
| inefficient. Using single pane windows for instance.
|
| Most dangerous regulations are taken quite seriously however,
| Electrics are usually old(80's and later) but not ancient(pre-
| ww2 - reconstruction).
|
| Water and gas supply is usually in good order because of the
| strict laws regarding those regulations.
| closeparen wrote:
| You might naively expect a booming area to zone for more
| capacity over time, not less.
| ethagknight wrote:
| Whoaaaaa whoa whoa, not in my backyard, pal! Build that stuff
| in THEIR backyard!
|
| That's the refrain.
| handmodel wrote:
| I don't think this is true for the reasons listed, though. It
| isn't like they are illegal because they have old pipes or
| something. The interactive shows they are illegal because they
| are duplexes or apartments where now they only allow you to
| build single family homes.
|
| I suppose you could go to smaller cities/towns and say that it
| would also be illegal to build apartments there - but the types
| of houses in suburban towns built 50 years are still very legal
| today.
| varjag wrote:
| That's also true in any old enough city and is probably what
| the GP means.
| shados wrote:
| Yeah, that's why the title is kind of meaningless here. If
| you did the opposite (make it illegal to build single
| families in an area with only single families, to promote
| density), you'd end up with the exact same issue.
|
| A title like "Zoning laws explicitly forbid increasing
| density" or something would be more interesting/accurate.
| Saying "X% of houses would be illegal OMGZ!", while true, is
| not particularly productive as it implies its bad, but the a
| solution using zoning to increase density could have the
| exact same headline.
| drewgross wrote:
| The map also explicitly lists "number of homes that would
| be illegal", presumably for that reason. If you make it
| illegal to build anything smaller than a duplex, on a lot
| that currently contains a single family home, the "number
| of illegal homes" on that lot is still zero.
| handmodel wrote:
| I'm aware of very limited cases in which there is minimum
| density zoning on lots. It is just that given a vacant lot
| within a demand area developers are going to naturally
| build the highest density legally allowed.
|
| I'm fairly certain you could buy an apartment building in
| Manhattan, demolish it, and build a picket-fence house
| there. It was just lose you tens or hundreds of millions of
| dollars so no one has done it.
|
| From what I can tell the way that interactive was
| constructed it would also highlight a lot if it fell into
| the category you mentioned but I can't find any where this
| is the case. It is a one-side problem and to pretend like
| it is two-sided is a bit detached from reality.
| modeless wrote:
| > These buildings aren't illegal to build because of safety
| reasons or any construction deficiencies - they are only
| illegal due to regulations called zoning laws that San
| Francisco passed to restrict the density of housing in certain
| areas, originally to keep poor minorities out of white
| neighborhoods.
| kbuchanan wrote:
| I'm reading this claim every day across so many subjects now
| --that the goal was racist in origin. Not knowing anything
| about SF myself, I am however tempted to ask if __classism__
| is the better culprit. Classism can masquerade as racism (as
| in this example), creating the same outcomes, but it requires
| a different antidote to treat.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| You're going to need some sort of evidence to back that up.
| Most of the restrictions are around keeping current
| homeowner's values artificially inflated.
| api wrote:
| Historically those two objectives are closely related, as
| people would worry that blacks moving into a neighborhood
| would decrease property values.
| themihai wrote:
| >> blacks moving into a neighborhood would decrease
| property values.
|
| I'm not from U.S but why would black people decrease
| property values? Isn't this really about poor people
| (that in the U.S are more likely to be black) decrease
| property values?
| api wrote:
| It's because racist Americans don't want to live near
| blacks, reducing demand, and because of perception of
| blacks as always being poor.
|
| Here's an example of the same house in the same
| neighborhood being appraised much higher when the
| appraiser didn't know there was a black occupant:
|
| https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/nation-
| world/jacksonville-...
|
| Money quote: "... because in the Black community, it's
| just common knowledge that you take your pictures down
| when you're selling the house."
| pembrook wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_segregation_in_the_Un
| i...
|
| _" White communities are more likely to have strict land
| use regulations (and whites are more likely to support
| those regulations).[25][26] Strict land use regulations are
| an important driver of housing segregation along racial
| lines in the United States.[25]"_
|
| Further reading:
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-
| political-s...
| neolog wrote:
| Parent is quoting the original post which links to a
| document with sources.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Source document is mainly empty conjecture.
| neolog wrote:
| it's a link to a book
| brudgers wrote:
| Around the turn of the century, I worked for the city of St.
| Petersburg (FL). More than sixty percent of the single family
| housing was non-conforming to base flood elevation
| requirements. Much of what wasn't in the flood plane was non-
| conforming to zoning because people built on the high ground
| first.
|
| And then there was Isla del Sol. Dredged from Boca Ciega Bay,
| it destroyed the incredibly productive fishery and is the
| reason the ACoE became involved in reviewing projects for
| environmental impact.
|
| That's they way cities are. They build and learn.
| jedberg wrote:
| They point out in that post that Houston for example doesn't
| this problem because they have no zoning laws.
|
| But also, the point is that SF keeps changing the rules. Places
| that don't change the rules as often won't have this problem.
| wyldfire wrote:
| Is it a problem? Or is it awesome that they were able to
| raise the bar for newly constructed residences?
|
| I've lived in newer homes over the last couple of decades.
| It's awesome to have smoke detectors in every room, grounded
| outlets, GFCI outlets, well-insulated windows and exterior
| walls, firewalls, plenum-rated cables, safe and easy-to-
| maintain plumbing.
|
| The market would've only demanded a subset of these
| improvements. And the least expensive builders would've just
| built residences without them.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| No one is saying housing and building regulation is always
| bad; those are good!
|
| It's just regulation promoting low density is bad.
|
| Libertarians love this example to troll the statist left
| that the state can't be trusted to control things wisely,
| but I'm just happy to hope undoing these things can be
| bipartisan, because the real estate lobby is so strong it's
| needed.
| kazen44 wrote:
| Also, because land is scarce and people need a place to
| live, houses will sell, regardless of their regulatory
| condition.
|
| Also, newer homes are amazing in terms of heath retention
| and isolation. Having lived in buildings from before the
| war with either none of very little isolation.or even
| worse, i once lived in a home with a split in the wall
| thanks to a WW2 bmobin raid. The crack was not an issue in
| regards to the structural integrity, but it made isolation
| mood.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| This isn't talking about lacking safety features that make
| the properties "illegal" to build -- they are referring to
| the minimum parking requirements, minimum lot setbacks,
| maximum height limits and other zoning restrictions that
| effectively legalized single family homes at the expense of
| all other varieties of housing. None of those things are
| connected to safety, only to NIMBYish ideals.
| jedberg wrote:
| The article is about land use restrictions, not safety
| ordinances. Safety is great, but doesn't cause housing
| shortages.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| That's nonsense. Houston absolutely has the same problems and
| many many buildings and home that exist in Houston would also
| be illegal to build today under city ordinances. The reason
| Houston doesn't have the same degree of housing shortage is
| Houston has over 668 square miles of land (1779 square miles
| for Harris county) vs 40 for San Francisco.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| That definitely plays a big part, but banning high density
| housing is a major contributor to the problem SF is facing.
| jedberg wrote:
| You're confusing safety ordinances with land use.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Land use ordinances exist in Houston. To an extreme
| degree even. But its about _how_ you build and not where.
| It 's defacto zoning.
| balozi wrote:
| Remember that the people that create and enforce these rules are
| the same people in charge of all the other rules that govern San
| Franciscans' lives. Look carefully and you'll see the same
| designs in transportation, education , policing, etc. It doesn't
| stop at housing.
| rdtwo wrote:
| I'm surprised it's not 100%
| antattack wrote:
| "These days, many people who don't have explicitly racist
| motivations support zoning laws because they like the status quo,
| even though the status quo bans the construction of affordable
| housing in most of the city."
|
| I don't think status quo is the only reason. Property values near
| more dense development are likely to suffer.
| m1117 wrote:
| The best looking ones probably
| scrooched_moose wrote:
| I'd be shocked if this wasn't true in just about every city
| proper (not suburbs).
|
| For fun one time, some friends and I checked the modern basic lot
| requirements against our homes, and every single one of us failed
| some check.
|
| Almost everyone had issues with setback, some were footprint to
| lotsize ratios, and one minimum lot size.
|
| The city just found a massive plot of undeveloped land
| (hugedefunct corporate campus is being developed) and we're all
| kinda curious how different those homes are going to look, being
| the first major development of new homes in the city in quite
| some time.
| gumby wrote:
| So what? Changes to building codes and such always grandparent in
| existing construction so this statistic is likely true
| everywhere.
| ic0n0cl4st wrote:
| Nobody:
|
| HN: san francisco should be torn down entirely, including its
| parks, and replaced with 100-story soul less buildings so we can
| all work at advertising and copycat social media startups.
|
| The average HN commenter is an ayn randian fetishist who _hates_
| San Francisco and has endless drivel of right-wing party line
| bulllllshit to spew about how to ruin us.
|
| San Francisco is more than your shitty tech startup.
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