Which is funny. Because I think 5 well places high rise apartments would level the entire playing field.

You want to place the buildings right in front of the most expensive ones today. Blocking whatever view they have.

This would instantly cut the value of those places in half or more.

Which for the left should be a huge win. Sticking it to rich people and providing more affordable housing for the normies and probably good set of the super poor.

New buildings wils have to allocate 12% or so of their units to low income housing. Think apartments rental units mixed with ownable ones. Or just all rent.

I wouldn't read too far into the beliefs and philosophies of the "local far left".

Most local politicians are just struggling to placate and/or not piss off a large enough cross-section of those few weirdos that are actually active in local politics so that they can continue their career in politics.

If scarcity is causing high prices, why did San Francisco rents balloon from $2300 in 2008 to $3600 in 2016 when the population size only grew modestly at the same time? The idea that supply scarcity is responsible for what is clearly a tech-driven event is some serious head-in-sand reasoning. I watched this happen; tech boomed in SF after 2008, and prices boomed with them. The population, meanwhile, did not boom significantly. This has little to do with scarcity.

There is nuance that you're not considering. Increasing supply only results in a decline in prices at the point that supply is so plentiful that sellers are obligated to drop prices to increase revenue. This very article inadvertently explains why this will not likely be the case in San Francisco for the foreseeable future, regardless of development. People waiting tables were making $70,000-$80,000. This is edging towards 300% of the US median personal income [1], for being a waiter! If there was affordable and available housing here, along with getting paid $75k to wait tables, you'd see a massive surge in migration. And you'd rapidly end up in the exact same boat again as the newly expanded supply would be insufficient and prices would continue to rise.

People use Japan as an example of smart planning leading to more reasonable housing prices over time. In reality what happened to Japan is this [2]. That's the GDP of Japan. Many people do not know that Japan is now going on 30 years in recession. Their GDP was higher 25 years ago than it is today. And so prices naturally declined over time. The reason I mention this is because the same is true of San Francisco. If you want housing prices to decline you'd need to see a general recession sending all prices, including wages, down. Otherwise anytime you create affordable housing it will quickly become affordable as people race to spend somewhat sane prices on housing while earning $75k waiting tables.

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

[2] - https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp

The fight between the upzone & affordable vs NIMBY & rent control coalitions in my jurisdiction (not SF) has been illuminating, disappointing.

I'm as commie pinko liberal as can be, aka pragmatic (maximum benefit most efficient way possible).

From where I'm sitting, there is no "Left". Just some temporary coalitions around some topics. I've heard some of the most patronizing, condescending views and beliefs from otherwise "liberal" people. Not even "conservative" (eg traditional principled defensible positions). Just regressive beliefs.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that outside of a small basket of issues, "left" and "right" is case by case, and a person's position on one issue is a poor predictor for other issues.

For every renter, there's an owner that they rent from. That owner has the same incentives as other owners, plus the incentive of having the rent keep going up.

Renters outnumber owners, and could in theory outvote them. But I don't think they will. Renters have a different mind-set from owners. Owners are in for the long(er) haul; renters can leave at the end of the lease if they choose. So owners tend to care more about politics and the future of the city, and therefore vote in higher numbers. Or so I suspect, with exactly zero evidence to back it up.

Renters are more transient, so less willing and able to exert political pressure. And they usually have fewer resources to advocate for their own benefit in the first place.

But you still make a great point. Long-term renters must at least sometimes vote on the side of the "NIMBYs". If you've lived in a unit for 10 years and have rent control, do you want low-income housing or giant view-blocking structures put up in your neighborhood? Maybe not.

It depends where. Before the present housing shortages, in most American municipalities, more people lived in owner-occupying households than rentals. I think a lot of politicians in the most housing-constrained metros haven't really started assuming as a background expectation that their average constituent is not now and can never realistically be an above-water homeowner on a non-shared unit without drastic political and urbanism reform.