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The socially accepted answer is "no". I don't just mean in the regional sense (san francisco), but the literal sense (your neighbor's yard). Property can be owned, ownership can be transferred/negotiated, and rights tied somehow to that ownership are necessary for occupation.

But you're asking the wrong question, IMO. The right question is "do we have a moral obligation to make housing as accessible as it could be for the largest number of people?"

I think we do, at least to a point. Some places take it farther than others, but the general consensus is that SF's prices are a result of malleable policies and past decisions, not just hard facts of life (though the "water on 3 sides" thing is a hard fact for sure).

People aren't complaining that they're magically entitled to live wherever they happen to be standing. They're complaining that a system capable of helping more people live better is performing pretty poorly.

I think that's great that there's uproar. Personally I fear the day we stop demanding that the world around us get better.

I agree with your question: "do we have a moral obligation to make housing as accessible as it could be for the largest number of people?"

I say the answer to that is yes. But if you make the question specific to a particular area, my answer would be no. Just about anywhere in the US is cheaper to house people than SF (other than NYC). It'd also probably be better for the economy to develop other urban and even suburban areas, because there would be more jobs related to people living in those areas (think cashiers, gas stations, places to eat, etc.)

While some places are hard to live, because there's no water, no medical services, etc, there's a lot of places to go live.

The big question now is about jobs. There's a lot of jobs in SF, and not a lot of jobs in small affordable towns, and people need jobs. But I think that's a self fulfilling cycle, in that tech jobs can really happen anywhere. You don't need a railroad, or factory, or have a port.

Overall I feel like people in SF are complaining that they can't afford to live in SF. Not where they are standing, or in a great neighborhood, but they want to live in SF. And most of them are blaming the tech companies completely.

I'm also not sure what system is helping or hurting people here. It seems to be simple economics. And while I'm all about helping people, knowing some of the ways people get around rent control in both SF and NYC, you're really fighting the clock to get things back to a normal equilibrium.

I'm all about people demanding things get better, but it just seems like people are angry that things suck, and while there are things that we can do (both people and government), nobody is budging.

"The big question now is about jobs. There's a lot of jobs in SF, and not a lot of jobs in small affordable towns, and people need jobs."

This is ameliorated to some extent by the increased feasibility of telecommuting. If you can telecommute, then you can work from almost anywhere.

Unfortunately, there are still prices to pay for telecommuting, even if your workplace allows it. It's not for everyone. I have a friend who did it for a long time, and they got regularly passed over for promotions vs people who worked in the home office, but they got to live in a much more beautiful and much cheaper place than SF. Some people can't concentrate when they work from home. Some miss having coworkers they can socialize with in-person, and so on. But if you can swing working remotely, and don't mind the downsides, then it can be a much saner and more affordable way to go.

I completely agree with you on this one. Telecommuting can change everything, because suddenly a town with no outside basis of jobs could support a community and have a tax base.

(Also, some people work better remotely, away from politics and open office nonsense)

I like your framing of the question, "Do we have a moral obligation to make housing as accessible as it could be for the largest number of people? I disagree that the answer is yes. Some places are desirable precisely because of their lack of density, and making them denser (a.k.a. less desirable) seems like the wrong answer. There's still plenty of space elsewhere. This is most often derided as NIMBYism, but I don't agree. We could instead focus on making other locations more favorable.

Devil's advocate: So why not kick out tech workers instead? What makes us so special? Because of the Facebook/Google/Apple lottery?

Honestly, I feel like the market works. If you want to sell your home, you sell it to the highest bidder. If I want a spacious home, I have to compete with everyone else who wants one. If I had the money for it, I might buy a 2000 square foot home in SF, but I don't and that's ok with me. It doesn't feel unfair. Because I would like something like that, I'll end up moving somewhere cheaper in a few years. I'm 100% ok with that dynamic. I feel like changing the landscape for the people who are already there just because I can't afford it is the wrong solution. They settled down there because they like it, and I'd rather move than ruin it just so I can stay. There tons of second order effects, and I'm not arguing for a complete "let the market decide all things" libertarian stance or a "don't ever change things" stance either, but I don't like the other extreme either, where we are willing to discard the character of a place because jobs are dense there.

I don't really know what I'm rambling about now, I just don't agree with the extreme of "make housing as accessible as it could be for the largest number of people." I'm happy to be priced out of places were I would love to live, and prefer that to the alternative of making them places I wouldn't want to live, I guess?

"A lot of people want to live in SF, which is a very small geographic area"

San Francisco has a land area of 47 square miles.

Manhattan has a land area of 23 square miles, with 4 times the population density per square mile of SF.

Manhattan is also exorbitantly expensive. Even more so than SF, with more people. This also relates to the skyscrapers argument mentioned by a sibling thread.

Average rent for a 1 bedroom in Manhattan is $3,400.00 / month. That seems to be about on par with the 'city' parts of SF. In Manhattan you also get a much better public transit system, more restaurants, and more museums.

There's also a much, much better night life in NYC, way more going on artistically and culturally. There are far more people in NYC (which could be a good or bad thing, depending on whether you like city life). NYC also feels way more alive to me, and SF has the feel of a sleepy backwater town in comparison. NYC is a much bigger terrorist target than SF, though.

SF has better weather too, or at least different weather. Plus if you like surfing, SF is probably your choice.

Rents above Central Park and Columbia University are lower, but of course the neighborhoods are less "desirable".

I've never been to a Bay Area, but NYC's subway system means you can live in a cheap area in Brooklyn or Queens and still have a reasonable commute to a Manhattan job.

BART gets you into Oakland and Berkeley which are cheaper than SF proper, but it is certainly not as extensive or reliable as NYC's. What really bugs me is how early BART closes...

> BART gets you into Oakland and Berkeley which are cheaper than SF proper, but it is certainly not as extensive or reliable as NYC's.

Having lived in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and now SF, it really feels like it's not even a comparison. I certainly haven't been to all parts of the east bay, but from what I've seen there a couple of stops in downtown Oakland and Berkeley that have a significant amount of housing near the bart (but worth noting that some of these places have much higher crime rates than a lot of Brooklyn does today). Every further stop in every direction becomes very suburby, with a tiny amount of housing walkable to the bart stop, and the majority of commuters going by car to SF or at least driving to the bart station.

In that regard, it's not too much of a stretch to say that SF has no equivalent of the NYC subway service to Brooklyn and Queens. Bart to Oakland/berkeley is kind of the equivalent of the PATH train to Hoboken & Jersey City, and further areas more like the NJ Transit/LIRR commuter trains from the suburbs.

Given that it seems basically impossible to build significantly more rail lines in the bay area in the next 30+ years, it's such a waste that more effort isn't being spent building up more dense, downtown areas near all the existing bart and caltrain stops. Unfortunately all these areas have absolutely no accountability to SF or improving the bay area in general, and instead put all their effort into maintaining their sleepy suburb feel.

West Oakland, 12th Street, 19th Street, and Lake Merrit definitely don't feel like the burbs, it is probably closer to commuting into Manhattan from Queens than from Jersey into Manhattan (source: lived in Manhattan and Astoria at various times in my life). Those stops barely have parking lots!

Downtown Berkeley too.

> Manhattan is also exorbitantly expensive. Even more so than SF, with more people.

I've lived in both and Manhattan was considerably cheaper. YMMV.

Edit: Specifically, my rent for similarly-sized two bedroom apartments were $3,600 in Manhattan (Upper East Side) and $5,200 (Mission-Dolores).

> Honest question here: Do people have the right to live wherever they want? [...] But the real question is, for people that can't afford to live in SF, and are constantly protesting that fact - do you have the right to live there, or should you just move somewhere else?

Short answer: no. However I, and probably you, come from a place where we're able to obtain jobs fairly easily in other parts of the country. Mobility is something we expect and are actually privileged to. For those protesting, the idea of leaving San Francisco may be a completely outlandish thought for them.

I'm not saying one way is right, but I think there's a level of emphathy that needs to be used when we're talking about the concept of "home." Abstracting this into simple economics seems callous when we're talking about displacing people.

Also, the audience here might not be the best source to get an answer from a person/family being forced out.

I totally get this.

This is also personal to me, in that I personally moved out of CA to NV because of the cost of living. If it was just as cheap to live in CA, I would live there, with my friends.

I get that this can be an emotional issue, but while economics may be callous, so is the harshness of reality. The same could be said for the cost of health care, and other rising costs that people are struggling to pay.

But denial doesn't help either. In the end, you end up racking up a lot of debt, then you move/declare bankruptcy/become homeless anyway.

In the end, I find facing the facts, and acting on them a much more reliable strategy for success. I feel too many people think they are "entitled" to these things, instead of taking reasonable actions to improve their situation.

I agree with everything you said. It's my personal philosophy, too: "adapt or die."

And like you, I'll most likely move out of here because to put nearly a million dollars on a rotting woodframe TIC flat in an earthquake zone isn't the most financial prudent decision. But dammit, I do love this stinkin' city.

> A lot of people want to live in SF, which is a very small geographic area. The simple law of supply and demand shows that prices will be high

Rather: The complicated zoning laws show that prices will be high. Otherwise one would simply build skyscrapers.

It's true, if there were more supply, the prices could theoretically come down, but I've rarely seen a cheap apartment in a skyscraper. Usually developers would only build such a thing if they can make a huge amount of money and get the highest (or at least current) rates for most of the occupancy.

In short, people would stop building skyscrapers once they didn't make financial sense anymore for the developer, and that doesn't necessarily mean when it's affordable for a tenant.

At first skyscrapers (or generally new housing) are expensive. They attract the more wealthy people, freeing their current locations for other people.

That makes a lot of new housing, which is always good when there isn't enough.

The effects comes in later. People with enough money to afford the best new buildings refuse to live in the older ones. The price of the older places go down (or at least is put down by the new building).

Fast forward 30 years. The "old skyscrapers" are not the best place anymore, there are newer better places, they become more affordable, while the newest place is more expensive. (who knows what will be the expected standard of living in 30 years?)

That's long term planning. You need luxury skyscrapers now to control pricing later for the cheaper buildings.

This of course assumes the rent for older places goes down, but it seems like rents are kept artificially high (well the last person paid X) and almost never go down for a region.

Over time I agree, that economics will take over, as long as there aren't even more people wanting to move in, but that doesn't seem likely.

Well, I know secondary cities where the price are going down. Over time, the new constructions pushed down the prices of the older ones.

In SF/NY. There is so much immigration and lack of housing that prices won't go down any time soon, but the rise would at least be slowed down by new taller buildings.

> Usually developers would only build such a thing if they can make a huge amount of money and get the highest (or at least current) rates for most of the occupancy.

A nice (but small) two bedroom apartment in a brand new skyscraper condo in Toronto costs ~CAD$2400/mo to rent. Not cheap, but less than half of what a (much) shittier place costs in SF.

"It's just economics" will make sense when there is by-right authority to build arbitrarily dense housing everywhere in the city.

As it stands, existing residents can't afford to buy out all potential high-density development, but are asserting their right to preserve low-density neighborhood character all the same.

It shouldn't be a right to live where you choose, but it is something society should optimize for. It shouldn't be a right to block urbanization either. If we took away the capability to block urbanization, a lot more people would get to live where they choose.

That isn't an honest question. The honest fact in this case is that decades of anti development activism have resulted in a huge gap between demand for housing units and available supply. If large numbers of people choosing to move to an urban area were fundamentally impossible then Tokyo and Hong Kong would have overheated and melted down a long time ago but they didn't because their rules for development are different and do not have this failing.

They are both having problems: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/hayman-s-b...

The Japanese asset bubble is also a classic, and some would say the Japanese economy is still recovering from that these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)

People don't have the right to live wherever they want but in the United States the government(local or federal) should not be able to limit immigration of citizens between regions inside the country.

I fail to see the difference between visa requirements for foreigners that wish to live in the United States and a rent requirement to live in the Bay Area. Obviously San Francisco and the Bay Area are not sovereign so they can't require visas and border control but they have instituted a system that has the same effect. Notice that I assume government regulations are the sole cause of high housing costs in the Bay Area.

Another question worth asking would be how stringent do your housing regulations have to be to be considered a violation of other citizens' freedoms?

Maybe people shouldn't run over people who are in the road

Everyone does have the right to live in SF. Anyone is free to earn the money required to afford a place here.

The people who earn 100k+ didn't win some sort of lottery... they choose to work in industries that pay well. They get up everyday and go to work like everyone else. Yes, some people are born into families with better support than others - but everyone has the opportunity to go to college and study STEM. Any student with decent grades and lack of capital qualifies for financial aid and scholarships.