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Comment by No1 | Hacker News Reader

I saw some campaign propaganda today.

One side of the flier has a guy named Aaron Peskin imploring me to vote yes on Prop F and Prop I. Prop F is the mess thoughtfully critiqued in this write-up, Prop I is a moratorium on building new market-rate housing. Oh, and he's on the "more affordable rent" campaign platform, because if you want to make rent more affordable, clearly the best way is by preventing construction of market-rate housing. It's like SF voters are brain-dead.

The flip side of the flier derided another candidate. If the point of the flier was to make me aware of which candidate to not to vote for, mission accomplished.

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The two candidates are diametric opposites regarding adding housing, improving transit, and working with the mayor. And the winner of this race will likely be the deciding vote on such issues in the Board of Supervisors, including the vote for who will be president, a powerful role that gets to appoint nearly half the members of important bodies like the Planning Commission. If you're in this district, please register to vote and read up on Julie Christensen and Aaron Peskin so you can make an informed decision in just over a month.

I can't +1 one this comment enough.

Both have track records in office and the choice can't be more clear. I'm shocked that anyone is supporting Peskin after his term of obstructionism. Esp. in contrast to what Christinsen has accomplished in her recent term.

>Prop I is a moratorium on building new market-rate housing

Are these people completely insane? Shouldn't there be propositions for denser zoning, land reclamation, or other measures that would increase the SF housing stock? Houston has famously lax zoning laws, and as a consequence has seen much greater population growth (31% vs 18% from 1980-2010 per wikipedia) yet experienced none of these same problems.

They're actually operating in a way that is very profitable to them. If you own property- a house or business real estate- you want a moratorium on new supply. Because not giving new supply will cause the value of your current property to go up. Of course its an "anti-affordable housing" position... but it's not insane.

The anti-development types are taking a very profitable position for themselves.

Actually, it would seem that San Francisco's (population density 18,187/sq mi (7,022/km2)) zoning laws worked much better than Houston's lack thereof (population density (3,662/sq mi (1,414/km2)).

However, the real problem is that San Francisco is water locked on three sides and boundary locked on the fourth. It has no way of adding housing that doesn't offend some entrenched interest.

Lax zoning laws has created its own set of problems for Houston -- infamously horrible sprawl, for one.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted.

Houston's lack of zoning laws (there are HOAs, mind) has certainly created its own set of problems. A friend of mine once described it as less of a city and more of a vast collection of suburbs connected by strip malls - and that isn't entirely unfair.

Whether you view it as "horrible sprawl" or "affordable housing" sort of depends on where you sit, I guess.

See http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2011/11/30/the_myth_of_z...

The lack of zoning in Houston has its upsides and downsides, but it has comparatively little to do with the sprawl. The sprawl is mostly a result of the manner by which Houston chose to grow: by annexing neighboring municipalities that were growing quickest to gobble up their tax dollars.

And even for all that famous sprawl, Houston is seeing the same sort of urban in-fill that every other major US metro area is seeing... it just has a lot more land to fill before it achieves similar density.

>Shouldn't there be propositions for denser zoning, land reclamation, or other measures that would increase the SF housing stock?

What, and hurt profit margins?

If you can build up, you can rent out to more people..

Prop I is just a moratorium in the mission right? Doesn't really matter, I think it's a bad idea as well.

However, I think you may find that voters are far more opposed to prop I than prop F. My guess is that if someone supports I, they will almost certainly support F, but not the other way around. Time will tell, though.

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