When I asked about the rapidly increasing cost of rent and how it's driving people out, he told me, paraphrasing,
"People don't have a right to live in San Francisco."
Another way of saying that you should only live there if you can afford it.
Needless to say, I'm inclined to believe that NIMBY's cannot be reasoned with.
Which is true, although the flip side is that people shouldn't have the right to prevent others from building new housing. At least not for reasons like "it might cause my property value to stop wildly increasing".
In short, at the extreme, the school teacher or SF state professor who was able to support a family and buy a 4 bedroom house in the sunset in 1975 wants the new professor in 2016 to be able to buy a a 4 bedroom house in SF and support a family, and is unhappy that this is no longer possible.
They also tend to believe, rightly or wrongly, that "density" would just mean lots of high end expensive apartments that nobody in the "middle class" can afford. In short (and again, I'm guessing), they are very cynical, perhaps irrationally so, about what development will do.
There are, of course, some pretty horrendous examples of redevelopment projects and so forth in SF. I know, you're already reaching for the keyboard to explain the difference, but you'd be preaching to the choir here. I'm just trying to explain why it's not really a desire to maximize the value of a real estate asset that drives so much of opposition to new housing and development. The whole thing has a very bad reputation in SF.
There is such a thing as YIMBY in San Francisco, often people who have seen their friends and children priced out.
That would be wrongly.
Supply and demand are real. The fact that SF is now more expensive that NYC proves it. Restrict supply long enough, and prices will go up.
People who refuse to believe in simple, verifiable facts deserve what they get, "sinister" or not.
Because of prop 13, property owners are largely insulated from the downside of a sudden spike in housing prices, and because their new neighbors pay far more in taxes, they get to enjoy a higher tax base without contributing to it.
Renters are more vulnerable. Rent control laws are strict in San Francisco, but people who lose their rent controlled apartment after decades are pretty much hosed. It's a risky gamble that works out for some, but not all. Many renters feel they never had the means to get into the housing market, not then, not now, so this gamble wasn't really a choice. This seems to have caused renters and tenants groups to double down on rent control rather than agitate for an increase in supply. Again, this is probably because they perceive new development as catering to the very wealthy.
The "needless to say" bit was on the presumption that SF should not try to imitate Dubai.
I think what these people mean is not that SF belongs to the rich, but that arrogant startup kids have no right to reshape a city that's been theirs for decades, just because said kids really, really want to live there.
I've been to many cities around the world that are practically defined by their lovely architecture, their comfortable streets, and their astounding views. Were I living in one of those cities during a tech boom, I would fight tooth and nail to prevent ugly highrises from taking over the skyline.
There's no ethical mandate to permanently keep growing.
(Caveat: I don't actually like SF all that much, but I totally understand where this mindset comes from.)