If you re-zone some significant portion of the western and southern 3/4 of San Francisco by zones that allow for e.g. the construction of 4–5 story low-rise apartment buildings (ideally allowing ground floor retail), there will be room for dramatically more housing units to be built.
Developers are currently rushing to build on every bit of available land in SF that allows medium density construction (all the bits of that map that aren’t pale yellow). All of the parking lots, warehouses, and little one-story buildings in such areas are being converted to luxury condos at maximum speed.
With better transit and municipal planning throughout the Bay Area, there are many places where it would be possible to dramatically expand housing stock and bring housing rent down to more reasonable levels.
You can't increase housing supply without affecting demand. You also can't increase housing supply to meet demand ... unless you actually make the area so undesirable that demand itself drops, meeting you halfway.
In fact, interesting yet flawed theories of supply and demand are seldom used to justify some sort of "protect existing restaurateurs' oligopoly" law. That isn't to say that it isn't valid to limit the number or type of restaurant in any particular area for e.g. safety reasons. But that has to be process-based, not just a declaration that this neighborhood has enough.
You can't argue that allowing single-family structures to be replaced by e.g. townhomes in a reasonable fashion is somehow beyond us as a society.
That's not a change in demand, that's a change in market clearing quantity.
Conversely, increasing residential capacity increases people which increases demand for services for the people which creates jobs which creates demand for residential capacity.
> If more people go out to eat, restaurants will make more money.
In total, sure. Individually? No reason to expect that.
> You can't argue that allowing single-family structures to be replaced by e.g. townhomes in a reasonable fashion is somehow beyond us as a society.
Maybe one could could argue that (or argue that doing so "in a reasonable fashion" is self-contradictory), and maybe one couldn't. But its irrelevant, because that's not what any in this thread did argue.
What has been argued is that the naïve analysis of its effects on affordability considering it only as a supply change in housing without considering the less-direct effects that has on residential demand, demand for (and price of) essential infrastructure and services which factor in to cost of living, etc., is foolishly overoptimistic.
You are responding to a comment that didn't address your argument, because it's not actually a response to anything that you wrote.
The argument says "you can't argue" a point nobody argued for in the subthread it was responding to (or, AFAICT, anywhere else in the thread, or, for that matter, anywhere else ever.)
1) Allow non-local demand? Do people fedex overnight the food?
2) Significantly increase infrastructure load? Do people live at the restaurants when they're not serving food, and thus require schools, police, parking, roads, jobs, etc?
Even then, restaurants do create demand on the city, and they are managed via zoning laws.
A more accurate analogy -- claiming that high density development will bring more restaurant patrons, resulting in more restaurants opening, resulting in restaurant prices dropping.
In the long term: rent rises.
In DC proper, rents rose.
What do you call this, the Lewis Carroll school of economics?
* Generally, in CA, unless a property changes hands, its annual property tax increase is capped at 2% per year.
* AIUI, SF could waive any property tax increases for residential properties that would have been triggered by flattening the existing structures in order to build much more rental housing. [0]
[0] I'm not convinced that there would be any if the property didn't change hands, but it has been years since I read Prop 13.
I think you are referring to the maximum increase in tax basis value (which is only equal to the maximum property tax increase if it is taxed at the maximum value already, though that's probably the case, given the low cap on property tax rates also in Prop 13.)
And you are oversimplifying in a way which is misleading in this discussion: new construction triggers full cash value assessment not limited to the annual 2% increase.
> AIUI, SF could waive any property tax increases for residential properties that would have been triggered by flattening the existing structures in order to build much more rental housing.
To the extent that they could, where would the sense be in that? Accommodating more people, but reducing the public available to provide services needed by those people?
1) That's why I listed two points, rather than just one. :)
2) According to the Alameda County Assessor's office, the situation is not as grim as you seem to paint it (for every situation except the "building flattening" situation):
"Only the portion of the property which was newly constructed is subject to reassessment at market value. For example, if a family room is added to an existing home, only that portion is reassessed and the existing home will retain its previously established Proposition 13 base year value." [0]
This might partially explain all the damned San Francisco apartments with funky vintage 1970's-era single-paned windows. :P
> To the extent that they could, where would the sense be in that?
To encourage the build-out of housing in an area that has roughly between three and ten new people move in for each new housing unit constructed annually?
1) It's not like SF is currently starving for cash.
2) In the -very, very unlikely- scenario that only the ultra-wealthy, pensioners, and property "investors" occupy San Francisco, what happens to the tax base? What happens to the character of the city?
[0] https://www.acgov.org/assessor/about_property_assessment/new...
Maybe one day Jerry Brown will find enough money to adopt Narendra Modi style initiatives to end open defecation.