> San Francisco has seen huge growth but constructed basically no new units.
This is why San Francisco doesn't work anymore and isn't equitable until the electorate decides to build new housing. We shouldn't downplay a move to cities like Austin, Charlotte, and Atlanta that have no qualms with building lots of housing and affordable housing.
Why have a non-trivial percent of funding go to rent seekers, anyway?
It should be noted that San Francisco is surrounded by bay and ocean on 3 sides and also contains a significant amount of land which is not really seismically sound, and 50% of which is protected parkland.
Those other 3 cities have significantly more capacity both to build up and out. Blame the electorate all you want but geography is geography.
I understand the "build more" concept, but a city (any city) shouldn't grow too fast. There's a huge risk in growing too quickly.
SF's infrastructure doesn't seem that it can handle more people. traffic is bad. Restaurants are full (have you been to a brunch?). Buses are full. More homeless than ever.
Letting the price rise, so people/companies will go elsewhere seems like an okay strategy.
> I understand the "build more" concept, but a city (any city) shouldn't grow too fast. There's a huge risk in growing too quickly.
Well, it's pretty clear from the explosion in housing prices that it's not growing nearly fast enough. I'd love to see some citation as to what "too fast" is and why you think SF is at risk of hitting that number.
> SF's infrastructure doesn't seem that it can handle more people. traffic is bad. Restaurants are full (have you been to a brunch?). Buses are full. More homeless than ever.
More housing = more people = more revenue. That revenue turns into more infrastructure, more restaurants, etc. In fact more density makes infrastructure more economical to operate on a per capita basis. Think Hong Kong.
Part of the reason there's more homeless people is they can't afford houses, which building units would help alleviate.
> Letting the price rise, so people/companies will go elsewhere seems like an okay strategy.
More housing = more people = more revenue. That revenue turns into more infrastructure, more restaurants, etc. In fact more density makes infrastructure more economical to operate on a per capita basis. Think Hong Kong.
The cost of upgrading infrastructure in a busy city is enormously expensive. San Francisco is on a peninsula with no room at all to expand outward. The only solution is to build up and that’s a real problem in an area prone to earthquakes.
Plus there are a lot of people that like the character of their neighbourhood and don’t want to live in an apartment building. It isn’t their fault that SF became the global tech capital.
> The cost of upgrading infrastructure in a busy city is enormously expensive.
So having more people to split that cost with would help! To be clear Hong Kong island is far harder to build on.
> Plus there are a lot of people that like the character of their neighbourhood and don’t want to live in an apartment building. It isn’t their fault that SF became the global tech capital.
They’re also not entitled to that. In a democracy the many decide.
> They’re also not entitled to that. In a democracy the many decide.
Actually, yes they are. San Francisco is a participatory democracy. Between a large # of ballots voted for each November, we elect our board of supervisors and attend supervisor meetings to tell them how to vote.
Nobody is entitled to a view or a property value. It’s not written down, it’s not codified, it’s not an entitlement. It’s a side effect of poor policy.
I say that as someone who owns property in San Francisco.
The many struggle to organize themselves as effectively as the few. This is how it’s always been in politics. I’m not aware of any recent development that would change that dynamic.
Colonialism: the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.
However, with that in mind, I'm alluding to the kinds of people in a city like San Francisco. The older, rich, land-owning class tends to be very activist and tends to vote. The younger, less-wealthy, renter class tends not to vote. Therefore, the needs of the few are outcompeted by the needs of the many.
> The cost of upgrading infrastructure in a busy city is enormously expensive. San Francisco is on a peninsula with no room at all to expand outward. The only solution is to build up and that’s a real problem in an area prone to earthquakes.
People always ignore this fact. Infrastructure isn’t free. When all is said and done the Central Subway extension will likely have cost over $2bn for 1.7 miles of subway. [1] The new transit center cost $2.2bn [2]. Rebuilding 1/2 of the bay bridge cost $6.5bn. [3]
Consider that money for all of this is artificially restricted by Prop 13, and by California being a net-giver state, paying about $40bn per year more to the fed than we receive back, effectively being a piggy bank for poorer states.
> Plus there are a lot of people that like the character of their neighbourhood and don’t want to live in an apartment building.
Many commenters with a lot of hatred for San Francisco’s unique brand of dirext democracy are sadly OK with overruling the expressed will of the people not to turn our home into New York just so some tech billionaires can sell more banner ads.
Well that's just inefficiency or graft. The rest of the world is able to achieve far more for far less cost.
> Many commenters with a lot of hatred for San Francisco’s unique brand of dirext democracy are sadly OK with overruling the expressed will of the people not to turn our home into New York just so some tech billionaires can sell more banner ads.
Who's our? Generally voters tend to be older, wealthier and landowners. The large pile of younger, less wealthy, more transient renters isn't represented well. I don't think the outcome means the system works.
Furthermore, it’s not even a big city problem. California High Speed Rail has been an immensely expensive project so far, an order of magnitude more than comparable systems, and the only segment built is in Central California, not the expensive coasts.
> Well that's just inefficiency or graft. The rest of the world is able to achieve far more for far less cost.
Citation?
> Who's our? Generally voters tend to be older, wealthier and landowners. The large pile of younger, less wealthy, more transient renters isn't represented well. I don't think the outcome means the system works.
That’s how democracy works. If you don’t vote, you don’t have a voice.
All costs below are in $USD nominal per mile of fully-underground subway system.
NYC subway extension, east side: $3.7B per mile.
SF Central subway: $928M per mile.
Tokyo: $400M
Beijing: $240M
Berlin: $327M
Naples: $194M
Milan: $175M
This is backed up by a Citylab analysis:
Alon Levy at Citylab shows approximate range of underground rail construction costs in continental Europe and Japan is between $100 million per mile and $1 billion. Most subway lines cluster in the range of $200 million to $500 million per mile.
The US has a range of subway construction costs of $600 million to $2.6 billion per mile. The US median price cluster is $800 million to $1 billion per mile.
And of course plotted in Tableau [5].
> That’s how democracy works. If you don’t vote, you don’t have a voice.
Some of that is solved by dramatically increasing density, though. Nobody enjoys long commutes and a lot of people who currently drive probably wouldn't drive if they didn't have to, so presumably with enough added high density housing and public transport capacity traffic could be curbed considerably. Rideshare services are a big factor too, but that could be resolved by enforcing a cap on the number of rideshare vehicles in the city.
Buses/light rail can increase the frequency during peak hours, a bus full of riders will pay for itself pretty easily. Restaurants are about to have access to their outdoor dining parklets they have built + their existing indoor capacity, which will likely make it much easier to find a spot for brunch. Cheaper prices will allow people to live closer to work and reduce traffic.
Homeless is a tough one. I'd say that reduced housing prices would help, but I think that will just reduce the rate of new homeless. I personally thing that we need to aggressively force them to seek help or get out of the most expensive city in the world. Saving up enough to find a place in SF in near impossible, and hacks like homeless shelters are often full of crime and reduce the housing supply for low income families.
We already fucked up the housing market with prop 13 throwing off the supply, we need to build a huge supply to counter that (unfortunately repealing prop 13 remains the 3rd rail in CA politics).
It's a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg problem. If more people move to SF then more brunch places will open and the city will be able to afford to run more busses.
Maybe SF could credibly commit to adding more density in the near future, but not immediately? That way speculators open brunch places before the customers arise, and there isn't a brunch shortage?
This is why San Francisco doesn't work anymore and isn't equitable until the electorate decides to build new housing. We shouldn't downplay a move to cities like Austin, Charlotte, and Atlanta that have no qualms with building lots of housing and affordable housing.
Why have a non-trivial percent of funding go to rent seekers, anyway?