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Comment by ProfessorLayton | Hacker News Reader

Part of me is still trying to understand why the housing shortage in the Bay Area is so severe. I understand NIMBYism from the homeowner's perspective, but there are a lot of renters in the SF Bay.

SF is 63% renters, and should be able to outnumber NIMBY homeowners easily to have a lot more dense housing built. Alameda County is in 2nd place at 47% renters [1], so only a small percentage of homeowners need convincing that this housing shortage is bad for everyone in the long term.

[1] http://www.towncharts.com/California/Housing/Alameda-County-...

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Because renters dont vote. They either dont have residency, are foreigners, or live transiently.

I think it is a terrible strategy to try to convince homeowners that its best for them to forego clear economic benefits for blurry future profits. The solution is land value tax: just remove city sales taxes and add a tax on land. That will make low density units more expensive, the tax burden is relieved from the renter and lands on the homeowner and renters see their income increase immediately.

Renters do vote (I'm a renter, rent a house in Oakland, before that rented a place in San Francisco for 13 years). Buuuuuuuuuuut, that place was rent controlled. So it didn't seem like an issue to me. SB827 would have made my Bart commute worse but it seemed like the right thing to do.

You don't need residency to vote in the US. You just have to be a US citizen. Now you do register based on where you live but that's about it.

Well, you can't just throw up condos all over the place and assume that alone fixes the problem. You have to build schools and other infrastructure changes, such as water and electricity to support the influx of a population.

Activism to push change requires a lot of energy and time. Most of the people who live here are busy with their jobs and families and do not have time to invest in it. So the activists who have the time to push usually want radical changes, such as 100% low income housing or homeless shelters. These are fine ideas, but for communities of upper middle class families, the change is scary and usually unwelcome. So then those families suddenly find the time to show up and protest and that's where you meet NIMBYs.

Change like this really requires the will of the local governments to make progress. Yet I think they get elected on other platforms such as, building better schools, or improving roads or downtown small businesses. YIMBY seems to be the first political wave of politicians actually running on a platform of more housing.

75% of SF rental units are rent controlled.

And it's illegal to put new construction under rent control, thus incentivizing everyone with a rent-controlled apartment to become a bloody NIMBY.

NIMBY is the state of nature. Biased rent-control disincentivizes YIMBY

75%?? source?

That sounds like too much.

Maybe this is what is being referenced: https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apart...

Though, I don't think this is "rent control" in the NYC sense of the term where rents are kept way under market rate.

Rather, it seems to be a set of ordinances around what landlords can and can't do, largely pertaining to rent increases: http://sfrb.org/rent-ordinance

In NYC terms, I believe "rent control" in SF is more akin to "rent stabilization."

this source claims 72% is more accurate: https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apart...

Wow this law is so ridiculous, it basically applies to most the stock.

I don't think most people enjoy this benefit of rent control, it wouldn't make sense to rent out properties. I wonder what is the effective rent control rate (that which has affected price significantly). Maybe a rental turnover rate would hint at a solution.

rent control is what's keeping san francisco, barely, san francisco. it isnt going away. its also whats keeping my landlord from doubling my rent, thank you very much.

People that don't have (effective) rent control do not feel the way you do.

Congratulations, you've got a new kind of arbitrarily allocated ownership.

Its still difficult to understand, even if one is under rent control, it is still beneficial to push for more housing units. Additionally, single family homes do not fall under rent control in Alameda County, where nearly half of the housing units are rentals.

Problem is that if there's more development, you may end up being forced out of your rent-controlled place to make way for a bigger building.

How is it beneficial? It removes the vast majority of the benefit at the very least

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