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Comment by malyk | Hacker News Reader

Of course, then it would just get "flipped" back on the market for $500k because that's what people are willing to pay.

Not necessarily. If zoning laws become such that it is possible for anyone to just build 50,000$ per unit homes, no questions asked, then the market would solve the problem.

Or if you don't believe in the laws of supply and demand, then you could just team up with a bunch of other people and pool your funds, and build your own 50,000$ unit. Who cares about the market price, if you can personally fund the building of your apartment yourself!

I agree...if you can build enough of these. I can't remember off hand, but I think that you need to build something like 40,000 more units to even start making a dent. Call me skeptical that you can build 40k of these.

You could build 40k of them, it's been done and it's called Silicon Valley. Take a look at the place with Google Earth, it's a perfect example of 50's - 60's dense Western-style suburban development. Even if you could do that, however, I think the cost of land there would be prohibitive, which I don't think was factored into the original post.

Yes, cost of land was factored in to the original post. That's what the whole section about density was about. Keeping land costs at 10k per unit defines how many units you need to put on a given plot of land, based on price paid.

Excluding political opposition the bigger problem could be scaling up the service infrastructure to keep up. I think of some management games where, if you aren't careful while scaling, you have a collapse which triggers a domino effect until everyone dies. It isn't quite that extreme, but probably no one wants to turn the bay area in to a favela.

Another big question is what is the price curve where companies hire more locally rather than branching operations out elsewhere, and then when do other companies start flooding in?

The bay area/SF is at a point where it could become a major global city. It already is critically important, no question. If accessible, the capital would flow in. It may take a major earthquake before that happens.

> If zoning laws become such that it is possible for anyone to just build 50,000$ per unit homes, no questions asked, then the market would solve the problem.

Until you ran out of space to build such homes, in which case scarcity would again be a factor. Of course, if you succeeded in making the area undesirable enough through willy-nilly construction, that might not bring the price up much -- but that's hardly a victory, either.

That's why the article spends so much time on the huge amounts you could pay for land while still building cheap living space. At those prices, you will not 'run out' of space.

Space is not a limiting factor. You will never run out of land, if zoning laws are such that you can build as high as you want.

Also, tall buildings don't make an area undesireable to live. Just go check out the Financial District sometime. Lots of people would love to be able to live there.

We just need more areas in san francisco that are like the financial district.

The laws of supply and demand hold true for housing too. Add enough supply, and those prices start to drop.

I'm fairly ignorant of the housing market in general, but from what I understand the problem in SF has more than one layer: the local government won't allow new housing to be built, the NIMBY crowd wants a one-story skyline across the entire bay, etc.

what is to be done to introduce new supply? the whole thing seems like a hell of a headache, I feel for folks trying to live in that area.

Yes, the problem is an entirely artificial, political lack of supply.

I mean, at a certain point, you get so dense that only building way, way up (skyscrapers) works to add new housing, and those are expensive. But SF is a long ways from there.

If the problem is a political one, is the only solution to fight fire with fire? Politics is a slow turning ship, so I can't imagine the problem getting better any time soon for folks who's lives are affected most.

I'd probably just settle for a much longer commute if push came to shove, but I imagine that's not an option for everyone.

Yes: http://www.sfyimby.org/

> I'm fairly ignorant of the housing market in general, but from what I understand the problem in SF has more than one layer: the local government won't allow new housing to be built, the NIMBY crowd wants a one-story skyline across the entire bay, etc.

That's not really more than one factor. That's a root cause and a mechanism by which that root cause produces the effect under consideration.

You can always build down. It's a lot more expensive than building up, but with prices where they are I'm surprised it's not feasible by now.

Maybe the earthquakes make underground habitation too dangerous?

There isn't really a place where underground habitation is feasible, even places where you can build down. New York has a well developed underground world, but a basement apartment is still a basement apartment, dark and dank.

But what if an above-ground apartment was $3,000/mo and the same apartment below-ground was $500/mo? I'd take the darkness, dankness, and $2,500/mo, thank you.

Fire safety is a bigger issue with underground construction. Above-ground, you have an easy alternative access - out the window, and down a fire escape if you're above the ground floor.

    > Maybe the earthquakes make underground habitation too
    > dangerous?

The inherent (underground) conditions anywhere make it too undesirable.

> the NIMBY crowd wants

If it's become a company town as so many suggest,[0] why isn't the company writing the rules?

I don't know much about local politics, except that the area is considered decidedly liberal. Why hasn't a pro-tech party emerged as a meaningful political force?

Or why hasn't Google migrated significant portions of its workforce to a more accommodating location?

Honest questions as an outsider, just curious.

[0] http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/26/5444030/company-town-how-g...

This is exactly why I want people to be able to build a studio apartment in SF for $50k - people can now be paid $450k per studio apartment in order to alleviate the housing shortage.

It's really easy to get what you want when you pay people lots of money for it. The problem is that we're not willing to shovel money at the people who can fix the problem.

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