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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

Recently I was in SF for the first time. I was pretty shocked to see the endless rows of tiny one story + garage houses separated by impossibly wide streets. No wonder housing is so expensive. The city could easily double its density by building more apartment buildings.

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Yes, I'm inclined to believe that rent control is a symptom, not the cause. The cause appears to be ridiculous zoning and building restrictions. If more housing is available such that the price drops, then rent control isn't even needed.

It also appears to reduce the amount of available rentals.

http://conference.nber.org/confer/2017/PEf17/Diamond_McQuade...

100% agreed. There is no "by right" construction in San Francisco. If you want to build a building that fully within the intended zoning and use of the space as currently determined by the city, it is still subject to conditional approval and even environmental review. If someone in the neighborhood objects (100% odds of that happening), then they can tie you up for years, extracting concessions (often making the buildings smaller, and unfortunately often making them uglier).

I'm particularly excited about some of the new legislation that's just been passed that allows for by right construction if a city isn't meeting its housing needs, because it just may streamline the process of getting things built here.

I have rent control in Los Angeles but they're demolishing my place to make way for luxury condos, most likely for absentee owners. You can't find an apartment for under 2,000 a month in LA anymore but the way in which they demolish perhaps run down yet affordable apartments to make way for high end condos is a huge factor in the utter lack of affordable housing here. Not like people get rich in LA there is not even the income potential you have in SF and no stock options outside of Snap. I was born here so I have been treading water for life here but its getting harder and harder for people on salary to even afford to live here at all.

Ask a renter why rents are so high and they'll say a lack of rent control, because it brings their rent down.

Ask a property developer why rents are so high and they'll complain that ridiculous zoning and building restrictions are preventing them from building enough new supply (...and coincidentally reducing the amount of profit they will be making).

Ask a landlord why rents are so high and they'll complain that rent control is keeping the market from building enough housing (...and coincidentally reducing the amount of profit they will be making).

If you ask me, it's untaxed land - the costs of holding on to those tiny one story + garage houses were made artificially low - among other things, by prop 13. They impose a cost on others for monopolizing that land, but they aren't paying that cost, so the market signals that would fix the problem (getting them to sell up to somebody who would build denser housing to avoid a large tax bill) are severely restrained.

Prop 13 also means my parents can afford to retire, as outside forces have come and multipled property values many times, and the city has very high property taxes. Otherwise to pay 1+% on some of the worlds most expensive real estate without active income is insane.

I liked Cambridge, MA’s model... the first 250k of your property value is removed from property taxes. Doesn’t make a dent in big expensive houses, but makes property ownership more affordable on the lower end.

Keep in mind that property taxes are only soft linked to property value. If everyone's property doubles in value, and the city needs X revenue to run, it is still divided by the relative value of everyone's property. The only time increased property value causes taxes to go up is if there is a lot of other property that doesn't go up in value (or taxable value), which is what you have with Prop 13. Also, if one area becomes more affluent than another one (increasing its value), then they will pay more taxes.

>Prop 13 also means my parents can afford to retire, as outside forces have come and multipled property values many times

I'm all for older people being given hand outs so that they can afford a comfortable retirement.

In general I'd prefer hand outs to be allocated via need rather than a real estate driven lottery, but I can understand how winners of that real estate lottery could feel like it was a fair and just system.

If they aren't allowed to build denser, then taxing the underutilized land more won't result in more housing.

In SF, the resistance to denser housing comes from the same people who are not paying enough tax for the land they are occupying. Ramp up the taxes and the incentive they have to fight the denser housing will dissolve. They'll just move somewhere cheaper (or into denser housing).

> In SF, the resistance to denser housing comes from the same people who are not paying enough tax for the land they are occupying.

You should be careful with "the same people" arguments. They're almost always fallacious.

> Ramp up the taxes and the incentive they have to fight the denser housing will dissolve.

Ramp up the taxes and the incentive they have to fight the taxes will increase proportionally. Why wouldn't they capture that just like they captured zoning?

The real problem behind zoning is jurisdictional. As long as it is done on a city-by-city level, cities only have to be held accountable to the residents, not the people that they displace across their arbitrary borders. A regional jurisdiction would force zoning decisions to take into account everyone in the region, containing all the suburban residents with terrible commutes that are made worse by NIMBY protections.

>Ramp up the taxes and the incentive they have to fight the taxes will increase proportionally.

Of course. The rich will fight tooth and nail to keep their entitlements. Always have done, always will.

>Why wouldn't they capture that just like they captured zoning?

They would. However, zoning is an easier process to derail because it's more localized and easier to come up with plausible sounding bullshit reasons why something shouldn't happen. In politics you shouldn't attack the shield, you should go for the jugular.

Also you could "fix zoning" and it would still be palliative at best if valuable land is ultimately still being hoarded.

Property developer profits would be higher though.

I have lived in Brooklyn for a few years, it's largely the same here.

A while back there was a proposal to build a large apartment building in my neighborhood, which at the time did not have any tall buildings. Locals tried to stop it, literally putting "No Towers" signs in their windows and on their doors.

Thankfully they were not successful, so the neighborhood will soon be able to support hundreds of more people.

It depends on the part of Brooklyn. Downtown, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint are all seeing significant new units added. After lagging behind for a long time, things are finally starting to happen in Brooklyn Heights. Park Slope is mostly stangnet, but out on fourth avenue (I guess that's called Gowanus?) new units are going up. There is still plenty of Brooklyn that is stagnant, it's a very large boro, but the overall picture is decent.

True, but not everyone wants their city to be packed full or large brick cubes that block the views of everything else.

I am not sure why those people should have much say about what's going on. Most of the US already looks like you're describing.

That's a perfectly fair stance to take, but then people will simply have to accept that rents will be sky high in cities like SF in perpetuity. The high prices are fundamentally a supply issue; build enough housing and prices will inevitably fall.

That's also likely real opposition, people with inflated assets want them to stay inflated.

In don't understand this. If you can get permission to knock down a two-storey house and build a six-storey apartment block, doesn't that increase the value of your house?

Not if your house is the one next to it.

Why not? If my neighbor gets planning permission to do something, doesn't that increase the chance that I might also get such permission in future? If so, doesn't that increase the value of my house?

Only 1/N homes would be converted to apartment complexes. If 1/N * (gain for selling home to build apartments) < (average loss in home values) it's a net loss for the community.

So, the real question is how much home density are you are adding. Further, density can get vastly higher as people would be adding 20 story buildings not just smaller apartments which means most homes would not be converted.

FUCKING HELL.

The rent is 2.5k * 12 = 30k a year. If someone makes $15/h * 2000 hours a year = 30k. 100% of income on a 1BR. Is your fucking view worth the costs you impose on others?

Enjoy your artificial restrictions on supply, as everyone with even one grain of common sense moves to Texas or Washington.

P.S. Rich software morons can afford it, but just because they can doesn't mean they want to get ripped off by (30k rent) + (20k state taxes) a year. Location is sticky, but once they get the equivalent job literally ANYWHERE else, they will take it, or an internal transfer.

Surely Paris levels of density is something SF residents could learn to live with?

Paris is not something people should strive to replicate. Lack of green space, bad side walks, entirely walled off blocks. Perfect for young people with no kids and tourists but not much else.

I don't think you can see all that much from the first floor of one of those houses. Higher density doesn't have to be ugly. Compare this random small street in Berlin

https://goo.gl/maps/hvkzDG4u9Tp

with this random "small" street in SF

https://goo.gl/maps/dJzn86V9ers

It's even more stark when you compare larger streets. Berlin:

https://goo.gl/maps/hBg7aMA2Feu

SF:

https://goo.gl/maps/YFcVLSWHPzS2

I guess you can see why I thought the density in SF to be pretty ridiculous.

Low density wouldn't be so much of a problem, imho, if the zoning would be better. Why does a large fraction of the population have to commute downtown to the skyscrapers? Couldn't the offices be spread out a bit more? Why are supermarkets to far apart? I did a lot of walking while in SF and in many parts of the city I had the feeling that sidewalks were more decorative than meant for transportation, because there were no shops or small businesses for a kilometer or more around.

Berlin is half as population dense as SF, and has more surface area to spread out. SF is stuck in a single 49 mi^2 peninsula. That's not to say issues can't be solved in a variety of ways, it just doesn't seem like Berlin is a good point of comparison.

https://www.google.de/maps/@52.5351488,13.4089075,266a,35y,2...

This sort of layout in Berlin is something common in Europe that I kinda of wish existed in US cities. (Barcelona is similar too?)

I don't like comparing cities' density numbers as given by Wikipedia because many cities, Berlin included, include large areas that have really low density. Berlin for example has more than 4000 hectares of forest inside its city limits where nobody lives. If you go by these numbers, SF is denser than Tokyo.

Yeah, was trying to get at that with `has more surface area to spread out`. Suburban sprawl doesn't work as well in SF.

That seems like double-counting, then. The density numbers are based on the total area divided by the total residents. If the residents are squeezed into half the area, it should not be said that there is lower density and more space to spread out. The lower density is already because of the space.

I don't think so, the point there is that SF physically has no room for suburban sprawl because it's a single stranded peninsula. Berlin is both currently less dense, and also has further room to expand geographically. One might disagree but it makes sense that way to me

You know, you can design for green spaces with densely packed housing so the views are better - and you can build walking spaces with this. You can design buildings so they aren't plain block houses - facades exist. You don't have to make every apartment tiny.

You can also move to another city. Get another job. If your concern is your view or lack thereof, you are probably well off enough to do such a thing - which is a freaking luxury. Lots of folks are too poor to afford housing, let along going to another city. Can't get a proper bank account without an address. No drivers license in some states, nor proper ID instead. I'm not even sure if you can register a car if you are homeless. These things make you more mobile.

The whole rest of the country is out there and is exactly what you are looking for. Why should the nostalgia of a few be allowed to impede progress for a whole country? These decisions should be taken out of local, parochial hands and made at higher levels of government. That way they can be made for the benefit of all, instead for the benefit of a small group of incumbents.

As I understand it, that's how they do it in Japan. Zoning is done at the national level.

Would that necessarily be the outcome of greater housing density? Are the views of apartments in Paris or Singapore so bad?

We're working on it: https://extranewsfeed.com/my-transit-density-bill-sb-827-ans...

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