Comment by xenadu02 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xenadu02 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> The question is: “what if you have to knock down N affordable units to build M market-rate units?”

No it isn't. No one is seriously proposing knocking down N affordable units unless they're also including N+X affordable units + M luxury units in the new structure. Any such plan would be a massive waste of time because it has zero chance of being approved.

This article is addressing protesters against "The monster in the mission!!!!1" who marched against replacing an empty warehouse and a Burger King with 16 stories of housing. It is also addressing people like Dwyer who thought they were untouchable and important enough to work against building more housing without suffering any consequences.

I've noticed some attitudes starting to shift out in Sunset as lifetime SF residents find their kids coming home from college or getting married, yet being forced to live hours away. Suddenly the anti-development stance is less attractive when it means never seeing your grandkids.

Ultimately I don't think the Bay Area can muster the political will to solve the housing problem. Too many people benefit from eternally-rising housing costs or have a "screw you, I got mine" attitude. The state government will have to step in and remove local zoning control.

The Bay Area will never solve this on their own. The only solution is to repeal the cap on property taxes at the state level to force current owners to pay based on assessed value. And that's one hard sell.

Repealing Prop 13 is a transitional measure to a full land value tax, collecting all rents on the unimproved value of land. Then you've really got it solved.

> N+X affordable units + M luxury units in the new structure

How does that work in a way that someone that really needs the affordable unit gets it, versus, say, a thrifty young (well paid) engineer?

Are they held back only for people with HUD vouchers or something? Or is "affordable" just a relative term?

Asking because I've never lived somewhere like SFO.

"Affordable housing" is a very specific term - it means city-subsidized housing that is restricted to tenants within a certain income bracket (and usually applicants are selected by lottery). There are sometimes requirements that new developments must set aside a certain % of units as affordable housing.

It might be a very specific term clearly defined that way by certain government programs or NGOs, but most people using it just mean housing that people with low incomes can afford as a reasonable portion of their income.

In San Francisco it absolutely means that.

There's often a weird negotiation/ battle that goes on between developers and the city over what percent of units in a new building ate affordable vs market rate. It has nothing to do with them being small or Spartan or anything like that, and everything to do with income requirements and rent caps put on them

I think it's not used like that in regards to SF because no one is proposing plans that would make that possible without government rent control.

Most people discussing it on the internet do not actually live in SF. This here is the internet. I just checked. I am not in San Francisco and I am talking about it.

Sure, I don't live in SF either, but afaict SF is the most discussed city with regards to housing affordability.

The comment I was replying to did not specify "in this case" or "in this context" or "when we are talking about San Francisco." Saying that the term is very specific and specifically means X without, yourself, specifying the conditions under which it means X reads as holier than thou, not as let me helpfully clarify this technical term for you.

I actually studied housing issues in college because I was pursuing a BS with a concentration in housing as I wanted to be an urban planner. I am fully aware of the fact that the term is used that way in some situations and stated so in my comment. But, I write a fair amount about affordable housing and that isn't how I use it.

Good communication starts with context. This is the internet. It is not San Francisco.

Fair points, I'm sorry for my somewhat pithy original reply.

There are essentially no development projects in SF that don’t involve demolishing existing housing. While I grant you that some such projects have (ridiculous) community resistance, these still aren’t the norm.

In most places in SF, the resistance comes when housing is being replaced and/or the developer doesn’t want to build low-income units (instead preferring to donate to the low-income housing fund). It’s not a clean story.

In both Oakland and SF, there's been significant resistance to projects that propose to replace things that are not housing at all with things that are. If memory serves, the "Monster in the Mission" was proposed for an empty lot. I saw significant resistance to putting a tower in a literal hole in the ground at MacArthut BART.

In SF, the resistance often seems centered on the idea that however much subsidized housing the developer proposes isn't enough for the interest groups fighting it. Often the push is for 100% subsidized, plus assorted "community benefit" donations to non-profits.

Yup. There is another project trying to get approved that will replace a parking lot and a laundromat (the owner owns the land and says his business has been going down for year).

Jesus Christ, you wouldn't believe the opposition to it. The preschool next door will be shaded for 2 more hours! The proposed mural doesn't align with the community.

Unbelievable! This would bring another 90 units to the Mission with 15 of them for low income residents.

People opposing the tower at MacArthur BART claimed it would block views. Of what? The lovely highway and classic BART station architecture?

Even 100% affordable housing gets objected to: https://sf.curbed.com/2016/10/6/13189882/1296-shotwell-affor...

To be honest, people like to extol the virtues of Bay Area liberalism, but to me the housing policy in the Bay is one of the most systematic (and regulated) form of prejudice. Cities like SF are losing their minorities, their middle class, all to fatten the paycheck of existing landowners. Almost the entire black population has emptied out of SF. It's one of the most pervasive form of class discrimination I've seen.

It comes down to incentives. With the current policies in place, there isn't much incentive for incumbents / existing residents to allow more housing.

If you are a home owner or landlord, reduced supply results in asset appreciation.

If you are a renter with rent control, then building more housing in your neighborhood may not seem like much of a benefit either.

Policy makers are always looking for piecemeal solutions, e.g. let's give teachers a rental subsidy, tweak the % of affordable housing that must be build, etc.

Lawmakers really need to create incentives so incumbents have a reason to want more housing.

  Almost the entire black population has emptied out of SF.

Bayview / Hunters Point is still part of S.F. I have black friends whose parents still live in the same homes for 50+ years.

This is patently untrue, especially weighted by number of units. There may be a lot of small rebuilds of single family homes into duplexes, but the projects that add the great bulk of housing units to the city are usually built on empty lots, parking, or small-scale commercial/industrial. 1515 Van Ness, 1 Oak, the 16th St. BART project, etc.

If people cared about affordable housing, why are there protests again projects which are 100% affordable housing? You can see the hypocrisy here:

https://sf.curbed.com/2016/10/6/13189882/1296-shotwell-affor...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com