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Comment by guimarin | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty typical of SF. Try and solve a problem they are not well suited to solve at the city level. SF has a ton of Fog, building solar panels would not be as beneficial to the city as increasing density and allowing people to have roof-decks.

Another great example is homelessness. Homelessness is actually something which should be addressed at the Federal (for Veterans) and State (for people who should receive medical help) levels, not the city. Oh well.

The end result of this solar initiative will be to increase costs for the poor. The 'real' solution is for CA gov't to stipulate that all dwellings of X and Y quality that receive Z amounts of sunlight are required to offset A% of their annual energy consumption with Solar/wind energy. You can either build it on your own home or buy a share in a solar/wind farm.

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While I agree that this is perhaps a symbolic gesture at best, one can’t claim that costs are being “increased for the poor” when this will only apply to new buildings which are certainly not being built by or rented to “the poor”

New buildings for rich people lower prices for everybody. Apartments are fairly fungible: if nice apartments aren't available, rich people rent not-so-nice apartments, pushing up the prices of those.

See here for an example of this concept, although this is about buying rather than renting: http://sf.curbed.com/2015/10/8/9913302/victorian-disembowele...

My favorite misconception!

Here in Ithaca NY, Collegetown used to be a sleepy neighborhood of large divided houses rented to Cornell students.

About 20 years ago they began densifying like crazy. 2-3 story houses for 8 people became 8-floor apartments and studios. And you know what? Rent is higher than ever! Everywhere!

Once you build up you can charge higher rents, which means the landlord next door can charge slightly higher rents, and so on.

Building housing almost never lowers rents for the non-rich, unless there is a massive recession (Florida), or an equivalent rise in wages. People build dense housing because they expect people to keep coming...

This is wrong. Both the students at Cornell and Ithaca university got wealthier, and more people moved to the area/stayed as a result of the schools expanding over the last 20 years. There was a natural increase in demand, which resulted in new construction, and which ALSO resulted in higher rents. If housing in Ithaca had kept up with demand prices would not have exceeded inflation and quality of the unit.

> Both the students at Cornell and Ithaca university got wealthier, and more people moved to the area/stayed as a result of the schools expanding over the last 20 years.

Evidence? In the last ten years the typical apartment in Ithaca has gone from $550/mo to $1500/mo, which seems far in excess of the extra 1,500 people or so spread across the city, especially given they've been building new apartments like crazy the entire time.

So you're saying supply went up and they just started charging more and got it?

Well that's what I was trying to figure out, but as far as I can see (based on a quick look at their population growth figures) that's basically what happened.

You seem to be assuming that new housing caused a rise in rents, while ignoring that the reason substantial new housing is built in a short period somewhere is because people want to move there.

If a lot of people want to move somewhere, rents will rise with or without new housing!

>About 20 years ago they began densifying like crazy. 2-3 story houses for 8 people became 8-floor apartments and studios. And you know what? Rent is higher than ever! Everywhere!

So developers started building houses, which caused more people want to move there and rising rent prices? You sure you have the right cause and effect there? It sounds like 20 years ago demand for housing prices started to rise and the supply never kept up.

Today's new building for the "rich" is tomorrow's housing for the poor.

Nice quip. So what? Are you suggesting that today’s “rich” shouldn’t build homes with marble countertops because that will someday in the unforeseeable future be somehow absorbed by the “poor”?

No, the suggestion is that something that discourages building new homes for the rich now, will also have the future impact of reducing the amount of housing available for the poor. A building that houses rich people today could easily house middle class people in 25 years and poor people in 50 years as it becomes less desirable as it ages.

This viewpoint is 100% not supported with evidence from any jurisdiction on the planet. The only way to lower rents/costs for the poor without disastrous social consequences is to increase supply of market rate units. There is not other solution which works.

I found it amusing, deplorable and brilliant when I found out how SLC handles a lot of their homeless problem... given the homeless bus tickets to AZ, NV, NM, etc... effectively making it someone else's problem.

At the city level, it's hard to strike a balance, because if you do too good, then other cities will make their homeless your problem. In the end, I wish that more were done all around, I don't know what the answer is.

I'm not sure how solar panels will decrease emissions in SF, or how much carbon emitting fuel is used for SF electricity. I understand that it leaves more for others that would use carbon fuels, coal, etc. Just the same, I think there are more impactful measures that could be taken... requiring EV charging posts be placed for 50% of the parking spaces in addition to solar requirements. Requiring placement of commercial grocery location (even bodega, convenience stores) within walking distance (under 1.5 miles), etc. The latter would probably do more than current public parks requirements.

how SLC handles a lot of their homeless problem... given the homeless bus tickets to AZ, NV, NM, etc... effectively making it someone else's problem.

SF does the same thing. Citizens of nearby cities like Turlock, Modesto, and Stockton complained about it. Now SF requires homeless people to demonstrate that someone will pick them up in their destination city.

In the mean while, SLC has started giving houses to homeless people: http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic...

I was also thinking the same. With the fog and other taller buildings blocking the sun, this initiative seems very limited. I'm not sure what they are trying to achieve.

Do any supes live in the outer sunset or do they only live in the sunny places?

Google Sunroof proves this theory to be mostly false. Check out 2nd street roofs for example: https://www.google.com/get/sunroof#a=2nd%20Street%2C%20San%2...

About 2 years ago we paid $2k to have a solar study done on our house. This is just one data point but the results of that study and Google Sunroof are an order of magnitude apart. And this was from a solar company trying to sell us solar panels.

Homelessness is actually something which should be addressed at the Federal (for Veterans) and State (for people who should receive medical help) levels, not the city.

Citation needed.

How is that not completely self-evident, given that most cities' response to the homeless is just to put them on buses to other cities.

It's a pretty strong claim that a city should ignore a problem as severe and idiosyncratic as homelessness is in San Francisco.

Of course there should be state and federal help, but it's nowhere near self-evident that San Francisco should simply sit on its hands.

If San Francisco improves its homelessness programs, LA will just bus even more homeless up to SF. If there were a federal stipend for each homeless person then that would no longer be an issue.

It's a classic example of the prisoner's dilemma - the best outcome is gotten from everyone working to solve the problem, but it's in everyone's individual self-interest to fuck others over.

As a suburban dweller in Oregon, I benefit enormously from Portland taking one for the team - Hillsboro and Beaverton's Finest can harass the homeless with a purpose, knowing that they will eventually get sick and tired of the mistreatment and move back to Portland. Thanks, Charlie![1]

This is the entire origin of NIMBYism - "It'd be great if we could put in a methadone clinic / halfway house / homeless shelter / whatever to deal with our social problems, but what it actually means is that every other nearby region will just dump their own burdens on us."

How do you fix it? Fuck if I know.

[1]https://www.portlandoregon.gov/toolkit/article/562215

I did a very nice researched blog post on how to solve homelessness in SF and then decided not to publish it. The problem is that I'm very analytical and logical about solutions to social problems and most people, including the internet mobs, are not. It's very difficult to convince people that what they are doing in the short term is actually disastrous when the thing they are doing satisfies an emotional need they have now. The best we can do is make arguments that shift the burden of responsibility from one civic agency to another.

To answer homelessness, we need to understand the responsibilities of our civic institutions, the limits of their theoretical jurisdictions and the underlying causes of homelessness. Ultimately, your view on who is responsible stems from your understanding of the purpose of different forms of government. My views start from a strict constitutionalist point and then evolve as various judicial outcomes have moved the goalposts.

> I did a very nice researched blog post on how to solve homelessness in SF and then decided not to publish it. The problem is that I'm very analytical and logical about solutions to social problems and most people, including the internet mobs, are not.

Upvoted for being the most HN intro ever. Could only be more at home on Reddit.

If it's that compelling, you ought to publish it.

I'm sensitive to your viewpoint, but it's one thing to argue that state and federal institutions ought to take the lead on solving homelessness and quite another to suggest that the city ought to contribute nothing to the solution.

This comment is well-written, but doesn't seem to have any actual substantive content beyond "other people are wrong about this subject, because reasons".

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