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Comment by ThrustVectoring | Hacker News Reader

A huge, unmentioned part of the problem is that SF has settled on housing policies that makes low-end housing unavailable or unaffordable. The people who can only afford to live in a single-room occupancy aren't going to magically disappear when you restrict the number of SROs available. They're going to go onto the street.

Yes, it's bad that someone can only afford a 60 square foot room to live in. The solution isn't to make it illegal to let out a 60 square foot room to them, or to force market-rate housing to subsidize a few lucky winners.

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The policies that would solve the supply/demand problem are things people don't want. The cities aren't priding themselves on unaffordable housing, it's the NIMBYs that are the problem.

A 10 story building blocking MY view? No way!

You want to add 1,500 more cars to the street in front of my house? But my children play in the front yard!

We can't tax or deny foreign ownership of property! That unfairly targets immigrant entrepreneurs!

(I'm not saying these arguments aren't valid in some peoples minds, but they are the root of the problem)

Don't forget that these are enforced by continual lawsuits. Neighbors sue each other for violating HOA regulations in my neighborhood. Don't even try to change the roofline on your crappy-looking 50s stucco house.

If what everyone actually fights for is a conservation approach to the legacy housing market, is it really any surprise that we get a conservation approach to it? The sad thing is that the city otherwise has good policies, but housing is a morass of entrenched self interest.

"A 10 story building blocking MY view? No way!"

There are quite a few skyscrapers in SF, actually. A new huge one was built for Salesforce recently. Building affordable housing isn't a priority, though, apparently.

skyscrapers are in SOMA. try to build one in mission/avenues

Because there are no homeless people in SOMA, right?

because there is zoning

Sure, in the downtown commercial areas. Every city I know of does not allow those skyscrapers to have apartments for rent, it is all for offices. (this is one of the reasons nobody in the US walks to work: there is no legal way to get a place to live near work for most people)

Note that a skyscraper is probably expensive enough to build that they would not put tiny apartments in it anyway, but the more moderate sized buildings downtown could be a mix of apartments and offices resulting in a usable city.

> Every city I know of does not allow those skyscrapers to have apartments for rent, it is all for offices.

Seattle, NYC, LA, Portland?

NYC is filled with plenty of residential skyscrapers.

Compare this with midtown ATL, where there's a huge residential explosion around an equally blooming tech sector.

It's what happens when the city government steps back and lets progress happens.

> Building affordable housing isn't a priority,

But why should it be? Why is creating low cost housing in the bay area better than spending that money in, say, Sacramento? What are the individual, societal and area benefits of doing it on the bay area vs anywhere else in the state of California?

I am being contrarian to be sure, Full disclosure: Australian with no dog in this fight.

So I ask because Tyler Cowan (https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/patrick-collison...) made the point that the Bay Area makes a lot of great global goods, and loosening housing regulation is effectively a tax on the current, extremely productive people that live in the Bay Area.

Given that these people pay taxes in California, why not find somewhere else to house less well to-do people? Somewhere less expensive, less productive and less likely to be problematic for the residents, would seem ideal.

$1,000,000 in SF buys sweet FA, but that would 3 median priced houses in Sacramento, and it is less than 100 miles away.

So I just wonder what the correct level is to do these things at: country, State, City, Suburb or street? I just think there are only so many dollars, why is the argument about where they are spent, rather than how effectively?

> loosening housing regulation is effectively a tax on the current, extremely productive people that live in the Bay Area.

That's an utterly ridiculous claim.

It's not my claim, it is Tyler Cowan's claim. In case you are unsure who he is, pretty much everyone who is anyone holds Tyler as a hero, Malcolm Gladwell for one.

So not ridiculous, not held by a random internet nobody, but thanks for your input ;)

> loosening housing regulation is effectively a tax on the current, extremely productive people that live in the Bay Area

No, it's a tax on the landlords. How many producers of value are homeowners and not renters? (At least one person on HN, but I mean proportionally.)

Figure out a way of discouraging renters and landlords then. Disallow people from renting homes out or something.

Prop 13 and rent control are taxes that I, as a younger renter, pay to subsidize older less productive homeowners and renters.

Because the cost is in satisfying local rent-seeking, rather fundamental physical restrictions. If the cheapest housing unit costs three times as much in SF because of earthquake-proofing, HVAC, and density, then sure, build in Sacramento instead. However, roughly speaking, the price differential is because people in SF voted to have houses that cost three times as much (because they own houses and get to make those decisions consequence-free).

>Building affordable housing isn't a priority, though, apparently.

Man, this is infuriating. San Francisco isn't under a magic spell that makes affordable and market-rate housing distinct. They can be the same, like they are in the rest of the country, with enough housing.

But people spouting this line will never let that happen, because the proposed projects aren't immediately cheap.

https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/patrick-collison... is a great take on this.

From the transcript, and yes, this is a long quote, but I really love Tyler, and what he says always is considered and interesting, and the full quote is deserved:

COLLISON: Restrictive urban construction and land use regulations.

COWEN: They’re terrible. We should allow much more building. Much more of this country should be like Houston and parts of Texas. But that said, I’ve become a slight contrarian on this lately. I wonder if the Bay Area isn’t the one place in the world where building restrictions might make some sense because most of you want the restrictions. Even if not you in the room, you out there in this area. So removing the restrictions would be a tax. It would be great for the people who moved in.

But if you’re all producing these amazing global public goods, and the federal government is going to raise taxes on you anyway, I promise this. I don’t care who wins the next five elections, your taxes are going up. State, city, local, whatever. And then we put this new tax on you and you all are the Atlases out there. I don’t know if loosening building here would tax your productivity or increase it. But I’d at least consider the notion. This is the one place in the world where we shouldn’t loosen building restrictions.

COLLISON: Can you apply that argument in reverse? Do you think Silicon Valley would be better off if it had half the population?

COWEN: I don’t live here. I don’t know how bad the traffic is, and I suspect the people who are the most productive have workarounds. They can afford to live where they want, for instance.

COLLISON: I think a lot of us spend a lot of time in traffic.

COWEN: But it seems to me, it’s a pretty finely honed structure. It’s evolved the way it has and to cut it in half or shrink it, it’s probably a big mistake.

COLLISON: Just to make sure I understand, you’re saying the tax would be the other people around us? Our personal experiences of the area would somehow be diminished?

COWEN: The general culture would change; it would be less intense. It would be like taking Florentine Renaissance and injecting into it 50,000 people from Naples. Nothing against Naples. I love Naples, in fact, more than Florence. But I suspect that would have been a mistake back then. So I worry, if you have too many people move into this uniquely weird, diverse monoculture, you could wreck it. Just a cautionary note, I’m agnostic, but I’ve started having this worry lately.

The argument boils down to, "more building, but not here".

This is NIMBYism, regardless of motivation.

That's a little uncharitable. NIMBYism is bad, sure, but it might enable building massive tech companies that provide massive consumer surpluses. How much you value "area supports the next Google" versus "area has 500k additional residents at reasonable housing costs", along with how much these trade off against each other, is an open question.

Cowen's really illustrating how the upper-middle-class elite will fight savagely for their interests, regardless of what it means for their principles. Affordable housing is good _except for us_, high taxes are good _except for us_, immigration is good _except for us_, diversity is good _except for us_.

I particularly can't get over his outright xenophobia at the end: "Keep the dirty foreigners out, but I still hate Trump!" He can't have it both ways; either live with immigration and learn how to make it work well (which is probably the better idea), or allow everyone else to be raging xenophobes just like he is.

You easily can do it both. I love immigrants and different cultures, but I have no desire to turn the United States into Bangladesh. How long before you can't drive to Yosemite or you have to wait years for a permit or some other stupid shit?

Glad I was lucky enough to be born here, too bad if you weren't. I do not want the population in this country to continue to rise. It certainly doesn't need any help. Move to Canada or Russia instead.

Can you quote any part of the article relating to the second half of your post? Doesn't even have to be from the end.

So true. I have thus far, seen the following comments in my (Mountain View) NextDoor feed, made by the anti-growth brigade:

-Complaints about the removal of trees to accommodate bicycle lanes

-Complaints about restriping/widening of bicycle lanes

-Complaints about how the architecture of new apt buildings on El Camino Real is ruining the character of MV

-Complaints about how the removal of historic buildings in downtown MV (by their landlords, who can no longer afford to maintain them) is also ruining the character of MV

-Complaints about why are there so many RVs and campers parked on Shoreline

-Complaints about why so many restaurants in downtown MV have a hiring shortage and quick turnover

-Complaints about why the checkout lines in Safeway are so long and there aren't enough checkers

-Complaints about the traffic on Shoreline (i.e. near Google)

-Complaints about Google's attempt to add pre-fab housing

And of course, if you imply that they should sell their $$$ house and move elsewhere, it becomes a discussion of how "my family has lived in MV for 3 generations, etc, who gives you the right to tell me how/when to move"

> -Complaints about the removal of trees to accommodate bicycle lanes

I would absolutely complain about that. Remove road lanes instead. Why would you remove trees? Are they idiots?

The rest of the stuff (ruining the character, etc...) are fine. There's no reason people can't be upset that this area they moved in to is changing because everybody else wanted to follow suit. I wouldn't want to have moved to Mountain View then all of a sudden Google shows up and now I'm dealing with all this bullshit traffic. Send Google somewhere else. They don't need to be on the coast.

You guys act like people don't have any right to wish to have their way of life preserved. Ridiculous.

>I would absolutely complain about that. Remove road lanes instead. Why would you remove trees? Are they idiots?

Do you currently have a commute that involves Mountain View? Ever driven on Shoreline when there's both a concert and an accident on the 101? Ever gotten stuck on Rengstorff or Castro when there's a Caltrain incident?

Sure, let's remove a road lane. Then all the traffic will back up and clog the residential streets.

Ok so what do you think happens if you keep adding lanes?

Hint: traffic never gets better. It's called induced demand. I for one also don't want my world turned into a mega highway for the suburbs. Once traffic gets bad enough, people will have to find alternatives, like biking, taking the bus, or simply moving to other areas.

I never said anything about adding additional car lanes. My point was, that removing trees to add a bike lane can be a good thing. Yes, it is unfortunate to remove a historical tree, but if it makes bicycling safer and takes more cars off the road, why not?

Are there congestion charges of any sort in SF?

I almost choked laughing at the idea MV has character.

> Complaints about how the architecture of new apt buildings on El Camino Real is ruining the character of MV

That's bizarre to me. The "architecture" on El Camino in MV is strictly of the suburban-strip-mall variety. Even identikit glitzy new apartment buildings are an improvement over that, even without taking into account how they can help alleviate the housing crisis.

One contrast is the Two Worlds development on El Camino. It mixes ground-floor business fronts with upper-floor residential... and it was built thirty-two years ago.

Agreed. That ship has sailed. Meanwhile, I drive by this house (http://tinyurl.com/yblhpelz) every day. The property has been boarded up and abandoned for at least 2 years. It's within walking distance to the Caltrain, and biking distance to Google and dozens of other tech companies. Yet there it remains.

A Great Moment in Mountain View NIMBYism was when the former Emporium property at CA 85 and El Camino was optioned by Home Depot to build a store there. It would have brought millions of dollars in local tax revenue shares.

An initiative vote overturned the Planning Commission's approval -- "Big Box" stores were unwelcome (Ironically, a Best Buy now sits on the adjacent parcel).

The site became a residential care facility. Sunnyvale and East Palo Alto get that tax revenue instead.

Fascinating tidbit of local history. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah homeless people are not the same people that could afford any type of home most of the time. They're overwhelmingly people with mental and/or drug issues that prevent them from holding a job. Much more likely is that SF has many factors that make it a nice place to be homeless so these people migrate to it.

I disagree. I think there are certainly people who need mental health/drug counseling but for those that seek it is has to be impossible to get on your feet. I can see a spiral where you seek help, get better, but then you can't afford a place to live. You can't find a job since you don't have an address or you do find a job but can't save fast enough to afford an apartment. So, you go back to living on the streets and you slide back down.

Do you actually see this spiral personally or do you envision it?

> They're overwhelmingly people with mental and/or drug issues that prevent them from holding a job

Citation needed.

Homeless people with drug problems or mental illness are the most likely to be visibly homeless, acting out, and/or harassing people so perhaps confirmation bias makes you believe they represent the majority? In reality a minority of homeless people (~35%) have drug, alcohol, or metal problems.

The majority of homeless people are depressed and ashamed of being homeless and trying desperately to get off the streets. They lose their job or get evicted and don't have any family they can turn to, causing a downward spiral. Even if you have the money to rent an apartment you're fighting people who can pre-pay a year's worth of rent (thanks to large signing bonuses).

I don't know the breakdown but it is undeniable that some portion of the homeless in the Bay Area are homeless as a direct result of housing being so unaffordable.

>Much more likely is that SF has many factors that make it a nice place to be homeless so these people migrate to it.

That's wrong; 70%+ were residents of SF when they became homeless. Only 10% are from outside California and most of them said they came here on promise of a job, to find family, etc.

I've heard some statistic that the non mentally ill homeless tend to get back on their feet in about a year on average in SF. The mentally ill chronic homeless that everyone can see need mental health services.

> In reality a minority of homeless people (~35%) have drug, alcohol, or metal problems.

Citation needed.

In reality, when people are complaining about homelessness, it's the chronic homeless, not temporarily homeless. 1/3 have drug problems and 2/3 have mental or physical disabilities. Those 1/3 and 2/3 pools don't perfectly overlap, so the amount of people who have neither drug nor disabilities is very small.

https://www.samhsa.gov/homelessness-housing

Inexpensive housing opens up options, for both the public and private sector, that don't exist where all the housing is eye wateringly expensive.

It's not unreasonable to say that people get labeled as having mental issues because of not having a job, which causes a feedback loop, etc.

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