Interestingly, Strong Towns published an article a bit more than a week ago about why mandating ground-floor retail is also not the best way to go:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/8/mixed-up-priori...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/8/mixed-up-priori...
Edit - one of the really cool things about the growing movement that - broadly - includes YIMBY's, Market Urbanists, Strong Towns and so on is that it really crosses the ideological spectrum. For instance, this quote:
"Reforming local land use controls is one of those rare areas in which the libertarian and the progressive agree. The current system restricts the freedom of the property owner, and also makes life harder for poorer Americans. The politics of zoning reform may be hard, but our land use regulations are badly in need of rethinking."
From https://www.brookings.edu/research/reforming-land-use-regula...
Edit 2 if you're interested in Strong Towns, it's a pretty cool group, with Slack ( https://www.strongtowns.org/discussion-board/ ) and local groups that are starting to form: https://www.strongtowns.org/local/
YIMBYism is more center-left than progressive.
Affordability and gentrification are interrelated, but so is quality. I live in a relatively low-density neighborhood of mostly 80-110 year old houses. Lately, we're getting new development in the form of cheap older rentals being torn down, and large-for-the-lots (typical lots are 1/10 acre) new houses being built. These new houses are considerably more expensive than neighborhood average. My above-average house is worth about $300, but a new house two blocks away just sold for $475k before construction was completed. So I have concerns. On the other hand, that new house replaced a run-down rental. A lot of these old houses simply have worn-out bones and will never be good again. Left on their own, they'll contribute to the neighborhood drifting "bad", with cheap rentals.
And developers? There's no money in building "affordable" housing. They'll build upscale if they can, because it's much more profitable.
What do I want? A better neighborhood, yes, but one where the people who already live here can continue to afford to live here.
http://www.sightline.org/2018/01/18/every-month-portlands-in...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/1/how-luxury-hous...
The key issue here is that this cycle works best in the long term, but can cause pain in the short term. Additionally, if the new housing doesn't match the complete incoming demand for the neighborhood, the prices of the old units rise as well furthering displacement. In turn, she advocated for the removal of zoning, for as it stands right now, there is an extreme demand for housing in neighborhoods that are zoned in such a way that restricts their density from matching the demand in addition to pushing commercial activity to fixed locations where prices will always be high due to demand to living within walking distances to stores.
There's deregulation; deregulate anything that isn't explicitly for safety purposes. Schools and sewers and congestion and all of that should ideally be paid for with impact fees, not reflexively blocked out of hand. Every additional regulation is a cost on the developer passed down to the owner and the renter, and with enough small costs eventually you start pricing people out.
There's also more regulation; a lot of the current appreciation is because America places a lot of strange emphasis on housing as an investment product, rather than a commodity. It wasn't always this way; go back a few decades and property performs more like a bond than a stock, none of this speculation and house-flipping BS. And in most housing markets, housing works this way. Tax or restrict purchases of non-primary homes and such.
And then there's the final thing; lot size regulation. You can cap how big a lot can be for a project of a given size. You could build a very comfortable house at 1/10 an acre, or even 1/20th of an acre; it's hard to justify a single-family house much bigger than that. And in general, buildings should take up at most a quarter of a normal city block.
I think it's because San Francisco was "progressive" back in the 60s, which means that there's been time for the past couple generations of progressives to become entrenched NIMBY's with a vested interest in the status quo while still maintaining their "progressive" identity. It's a very weird yet oddly lovable city.
Therefore, if you're worried about protecting the security of renters (who constitute about 2/3 of residents) and especially low-income renters then unless you know any better the predominate political narrative is to oppose new development.
The narrative is deeply entrenched. For example, the narrative says (among other things) that new development destroys rent controlled properties as any building newer than 1995 is exempt from rent control under state law. But rather than lobby to change the state law to make it easier to expand rent control (i.e. some sort of quid pro quo--expand rent control at the same pace as new development so total rent-controlled units stay the same) people just reflexively oppose new development.
Because homeowners have co-opted the disparate opposition groups, the potential for compromise and novel solutions is stonewalled and never communicated through normal channels (community groups, neighborhood papers, ballot initiatives, City Hall backrooms, etc). All the voters know is to oppose development. Full stop.
It doesn't work if you throw up isolated pockets of mixed-use buildings in the suburbs that one still has to use a car to traverse.
I feel especially bad for entrepreneurs that open places like bakeries or restaurants in these islands. Those are the sorts of places you draw passerbys in with colorful window displays and hunger-inducing smells. People whizzing by in their cars aren't enticed by either as they speed by. These places all close shop within a year or two, and we end up with empty retail shops on the ground floor for years.
I'd heard this argument before that places are kept vacant to justify loans, but no-one had mentioned the key point that these buildings are financed with 3-5 year loans that need to be constantly refreshed, which makes the charade make more sense.
If they were willing to offer the space to a dive bar for 1000 a month, they would have no problem finding a tenant. The issue is they are asking for far more than that, where they only want tenants such as boutique stores or restaurants that are relatively clean.
#1 is a cop-out. We can't require mixed use retail because none of our developers (who are experts at residential leasing) will admit to having the expertise to do mixed use retail leasing. Its not that different nor is it rocket science.