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>we've had the opposite problem: lots of highly paid tech firms moving into SF.

Quite the problem ... the kind of problem that multitudes of cities and regions in the world are desperately trying to recreate.

>This has changed the nature of San Francisco in a way that many dislike, including me.

This is where progressives don't live up to their name. The nature of cities is constant change. Meanwhile the activists are desperately trying to keep change to a minimum so that the character of neighborhoods never changes. It's an interesting dichotomy.

>because rents have gone up so much, and also it's just not as fun, it's crowded and stressed.

Rents will drop if you increase density ... but that would mean building higher density housing and thereby accepting that the character of cities and neighborhoods change.

>I am aware that I am a part of the problem: my wife and I are white, yuppie, dink tech workers. :)

The fact that you're white and a tech worker isn't the problem. It's that you had the opportunity to move to San Fransciso for work due to the tech boom, and now you're trying to pull the ladder up so others cannot do the same.

I see nothing in the OP's post that suggests that they're against re-zoning, building high density housing, or other measures to remove barriers against cheaper housing.

I didn't say he was but he used language that evoked San Francisco losing its character due to tech professionals moving it. It brought to my mind the language that anti-housing activists use to prevent new housing development in districts like 'The Mission'.

I have never seen a high density city have low rents. Mumbai, Hong Kong, London, NYC. Is there any factual and proven example of a city that has increased density and housing became affordable and cheaper as a result of more units?

I'm glad you pointed this out. I've had this thought floating around in my head for a long while. The only affordable high-density cities I can think of are in Thailand, Africa, and maybe Eastern Europe? I think NYC is our best comparison though... it's actually much more expensive per square foot to buy in Manhattan than it is in SF, and the rental prices are approximately the same.

Auckland, NZ is another example of a high density real estate hub gone bad. Mortgages are lower than rents but lack of housing stock.

Tokyo

Tokyo is consistently ranked as one of the most expensive cities in the world.

yet rent is less than half of that of San Francisco or New York

Japan has falling birth rate.

The rents in high-density areas of Seattle before the pandemic were about 30-50% less.

Singapore

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3dBaEo4QplQ

Singapore has public housing. You don’t own the unit. You lease it from the govt. I think it’s 99 year lease transferable.

Most residential units are not used or traded as a speculative asset.

[..] The majority of the residential housing developments in Singapore are publicly governed and developed, and home to approximately 78.7% of the resident population.[..]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore

>Rents will drop if you increase density ... but that would mean building higher density housing and thereby accepting that the character of cities and neighborhoods change.

I keep hearing proponents of strict exclusionary zoning laws arguing that they don't like the risk of having the value of their investment decrease because of this. SF will be a great example of how change happens weather you like it or not and allowing dense housing is what makes the change good or bad. You either sacrifice some of the view or sacrifice not having homeless camps.

I have never seen rents drop due to high density. If anything, rents are cheaper in sparsely populated areas. Examples abound. Rents won’t become cheaper if we build more. However, building more will certainly mean more property taxes for the government.

San Francisco gets several millions of dollars to spend from which they spend a measly amount on the homeless(and that’s over 350 million/annum)..where is the rest? Even the money spent on homeless solutions is mostly going to contracted non profits(look at their board..probably has ex-city employees as board members) or more public sector employees.

With 350 million, I would have created a new sustainable village to house 1000 people with jobs inside. Instead, SF still huffs and puffs and spends tax dollars on piffle and squat.

>I have never seen rents drop due to high density.

You think housing is somehow immune to supply and demand? If that's the case, you can't claim rents are rising due to increase demand from young professionals. Which then raises the question: "What does affect rental prices?"

I am questioning the claim that we need to build more affordable housing by going high density.

Yes you did. You wrote: "Rents won’t become cheaper if we build more." ... If Rent rates are not a result of supply and demand, then where do they come from?

I live in one of the most wealthy counties in the US and rent here stays low because they push for building high density housing constantly.

which city?

> the kind of problem that multitudes of cities and regions in the world are desperately trying to recreate

I always tell people that, "it is a nice problem to have." Totally agree with you.

But it is still a problem nonetheless. It's fair enough to raise taxes to try to solve some of the problems which hugely successful businesses have created by displacing people.

Building more housing: YES, more dense housing: YES, programs for homeless people: YES -- on the back of such success, we should have all the money we need to maintain San Francisco.

YES my presence is symptomatic of the problem but, being self-aware, I try to address that by genuinely loving San Francisco, paying more taxes myself when I am asked to do so, participating in local art and culture, and not treating it like a transient place but rather my home and a treasure.

Regarding your statement that I'm trying to block others' advancement: proposition L is about taxing companies whose CEOs make 100-600x more than the median at their company. I am not hurting other regular folks by supporting this, furthermore I'm not even hurting the CEOs (they make 100x more than normal folks). If you benefit from society to the point where you're the leader of such a company, for goodness sake, give a little back gracefully, that's progressive taxation and it has been one of the foundations of our society since 1862.

SF is a liberal, expensive place, because supporting such population density and giving everyone a high quality of life is hard and requires work and money. If we categorically define all taxation as bad, we lose all basis for collective action. America is getting lost in the labyrinth of its own arguments.

> If you benefit from society to the point where you're the leader of such a company, for goodness sake, give a little back gracefully, that's progressive taxation and it has been one of the foundations of our society since 1862.

100%. I think we agree on more that we disagree about, but we happen to be talking about Prop L.

The question on L is what's any of this have to do with the amount of money made by a CEO's employees? Should a CEO of a small number of highly paid employees be taxed less than the CEO of a large number of blue collar employees? That doesn't make any sense.

People talk about the ratio of employee to CEO pay because it's a quantifiable indicator of underlying causes. Trying to change the indicator directly misses the point. Why is the city so unaffordable to the working class? That's not being solved by this.

> The fact that you're white and a tech worker isn't the problem. It's that you had the opportunity to move to San Fransciso for work due to the tech boom, and now you're trying to pull the ladder up so others cannot do the same.

This is quite the ad hominem. I may have missed it, but I'm not sure where OP said anything about density or housing. Is there something wrong with not wanting the city that you love to be invaded by the human version of a swarm of locusts?

Ah yes, men and women who look at human needs and decide to serve them in exchange for compensation on the basis of voluntary exchange are just like insects that being multitudes into destitution and misery.

>Is there something wrong with not wanting the city that you love to be invaded by the human version of a swarm of locusts?

He is, by his own admission, one of those locusts.

As it turns out, not everyone who works in tech in SF is an opportunist. There are plenty of kind folks who just want to make a life for their family, but like any boom, it also attracts a multitude of people who are just here for the money and don't give a damn about the city or region.

Around 2007, a gentleman named Steve Jobs invented the iPhone and unleashed another tech boom, driven primarily by the increased adoption and use of the smartphone and apps within them.

The spoils from this boom primarily benefited companies and people based in and around the Bay Area. People there didn't realize that the rest of the country (and much of the developed world) were still struggling and haven't fully recovered from the 2008-10 recession. The increased prosperity and resulting tax base growth papered over the fundamental mismanagement and poor governance in that area. Some of the highest incomes and highest taxes in the country and yet some of the most dilapidated infrastructure, highest poverty rates and poorest quality of life in the country. "European taxes and third world quality of life" is how I describe the area to people.

Yet, people moved here for the jobs and then new jobs followed the people.

14 years (i.e. half a generation) since then and at the beginning of what is another major recession and economic reset, it's perhaps difficult for most people to imaging that the appeal of the area has diminished and that things aren't magically going back to 2019. People have moved out, companies are hiring elsewhere, the tax base is down >50% and budgets are deep in the red. The local governments can try and raise taxes to squeeze a few million more here and there, but fundamentally, they will have to cut waste and cut spending in the next few years to survive.

I'm not saying SF is going to become the next Detroit, but I remember NYC in the 70s or Seattle post-Boeing (also, early 70s) as an example of what happens to cities when a major industry leaves town. It's a death spiral of lower tax collection -> poorer services -> more people leaving.

>The increased prosperity and resulting tax base growth papered over the fundamental mismanagement and poor governance in that area

This applies to sooooo many cities. I think money beyond the level required to provide basic services just gets wasted and the citizens see nearly nothing from it. It's so common it seems like some fundamental law of the universe.

Your description made me think of California as the Xerox of the US

I've seen people take that position and I see a fundamental mistake. Look at rust belt cities. Look at NYC in the 70s. When employers leave the people left behind are not better off. This doesn't mean we need to kiss big tech ass, but we have a city where getting a job is a solved problem. Very few places on earth have that.

Rent prices are the underlying problem pushing people out. Underlying _that_ problem is a lack of supply. SF zoned for and issued permits for a large number of offices, but not the corresponding residential structures to house those new workers. So they came here and were forced to compete with existing residents for a place to live.

The fix is to keep the economic prosperity and build more housing.

> Meanwhile socioeconomic disparity is an oozing sore in San Francisco

I'd argue that mixed income neighborhoods are the best kind. Many of the mechanisms for disadvantaging poor communities require geographic segregation. School quality, policing practices, etc

> Underlying _that_ problem is a lack of supply

And underlying that problem is Prop 13 - the insane multi billion dollar tax break that Californians bestowed on all land speculators. Until it's gone nothing will change.

Prop 13 is fucking horrible. We can't blame it for everything, though. It doesn't stop SF from zoning for more residential units or allowing the existing ones to be subdivided. All of those new units pay full freight.

Zoning laws aren't laws of physics. People make those up to align with what works best for them. Prop 13 strongly incentivizes less housing (because it boosts voters asset values with no downside to homeowners) and more commercial (because cities now rely on sales taxes to stay functional).

Until the landowners start to feel some downside from the housing disaster don't expect anything to change.

Landowners are a minority in the city. The divide is deeper than just property values because 100% BMR units are obstructed the same way.

if landowners are a minority of the city, then how do laws pass that benefit them so much at the cost of the majority?

Look at this year's no on 15 campaign. If you lie, but lie loud enough, even people who are hurt by your tax cut will support it.

> The fix is to keep the economic prosperity and build more housing.

That makes sense to me. I don't keep up with exact SF policies but I'm guessing there are zoning and the NIMBY factor to deal with.

Underlying this problem is? Money, influence and power? I know a soon to be ex-POTUS that might be the perfect man for the job! He can come in and cut all deals needed. Then SF is saved and then he goes from city to city and country to country to redeem himself.

Yes, NIMBY zoning and a planning process that makes even zoning compliant projects difficult to impossible.

The Board of Supervisors are elected from districts instead of city wide. This means they're heavily influenced by neighborhood associations with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Throw in the normal, human fear of change and... the result isn't pretty.

Proposition L is not enough tax to take away the economic prosperity.

I am all for building more and more dense housing. I'm not sure how to accomplish it. The way I see it, SF either becomes more dense, or it becomes even more of "a toy city for rich people" & loses all hope of economic diversity.

I grew up in Michigan. I am well aware of how cities can fall into decline. My wife on the other hand grew up in Minnesota. So in my mind, I often compare Detroit with Minneapolis. I think the problem with Detroit is that, it never diversified. It was all auto industry. Minneapolis's economy has several pillars: finance, insurance, healthcare, industry. You can ask yourself whether or not SF is either Detroit or Minneapolis in this example. I tend to think of SF as the New York of the West coast. It has very unique geographical advantages. It will have ups and downs, but will continue to be reborn.

> we have a city where getting a job is a solved problem.

This is the case for the tech industry, not categorically. Important distinction there.

I'm not saying it's _easy_ to find a job, but the city's unemployment rate was 2%. That's unheard of.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CASANF0URN

> if SF wants to tax excessive income disparity, I say, fair enough.

None of the billionaires here made that money from their salary. This will not touch them at all.

> If they do leave, I don't see that as a bad thing.

Chasing away jobs and the tax base will not end well. There is a decent chance SF enters a financial death spiral from its pension obligations. At the very least, massive cuts are in order. SF will not be transformed magically back to the year 2005, but it could very well wind up back in the 70s.

The text of the measure refers to "compensation", of which it gives a specific definition that includes commissions, bonuses, and equity (specifically mentioning stock options). The $1 salary CEO isn't excluded if they also have a huge equity package.

Although it doesn't mention capital gains, so if the CEO owns a significant part of their company already and doesn't have an additional vesting schedule, then they could make personal income from appreciation of the business that wouldn't be counted towards this bill.

Our billionaires are billionaires from their ownership stakes in the companies they founded. For instance, Jeff Besos only makes ~2 million per year in total compensation! He would pay no more in taxes if he were to move to SF (from this particular bill, anyway).

Paper gains are not realized gains. So it’s all about timing. At what point in time do they check to do the math?

That’s fine. The SF people think is SF, that used to be SF, does really well with 700,000 people and everyone with a shitty job.

Over the time I've lived here, we've had the opposite problem: lots of highly paid tech firms moving into SF. This has changed the nature of San Francisco in a way that many dislike,

San Francisco's huge, number one problem has been and still is that it makes building new housing illegal: https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/.

Increase supply and prices will eventually fall. This is not a complicated problem and the relationship between supply, demand, and price has been known since the time of Adam Smith. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16704501

Your comment seems to lack understanding of both the tax and San Francisco's problems. The tax would not apply to Twitter, and the Mid-Market tax break was tiny at about ~$50m over its entire life. In addition, all the inequality issues in San Francisco are of its own making: the city began pricing out median income households 40 years ago while the Federal government was simultaneously subsidizing long commutes. Therefore, the only people left are those who benefit from proximity to high paying jobs or those who benefit from the city's social services more than they value moving to lower COL places like, e.g., Phoenix.

Taxes tend to increase price levels, not reduce them. Costs are passed through to every level.

It’s not that simple. You can’t pass on taxes on profits. If hypothetically charging 57$ maximizes profits then raising prices just lowers profits.

Alternatively, if some aspect of your process like sugar is taxed then companies seek alternatives like corn syrup. That extends to property taxes, executive pay, etc where companies seek alternatives to better utilize resources. Though in the case of salaries that my end up as various executive perks.

Likely true of most taxes, but not true of a tax on land value. Taxing land value heavily causes underused land to either be put to good use or sold, at a reasonable price, to someone who will build on it.

Taxing land value -- that is, collecting the lion's share of the annual rental value of the land for public purposes -- removes the speculative element, and makes it worth only what it is worth FOR USE.

That almost always creates jobs, first for construction, and then to utilize the space. It may create housing, and goodness knows, much of California is in desperate need of housing. And housing creates jobs -- houses and highrises don't maintain themselves.

Virtuous circle --- the opposite of the vicious one that Proposition has created (and which was easy to predict before it was enacted).

If you want jobs and housing, tax land value.

Otherwise, keep California doing what it does now.

I agree land value tax is a far more efficient tax than property or revenue taxes. The goal should be to raise revenue with minimal impact on commercial decisions. Punitive revenue/wealth taxes are essentially a form of sin taxes and distort the marketplace.

Prices are not determined by costs, but what the market will bear.

not 1-1.

a personal wealth tax is not felt or distributed down lane. As long as it is not a company tax, it will not be directly pointed to the buyer.

> The tax will levy an extra 0.1% to 0.6% on gross receipts made in San Francisco for companies ...

> personal wealth tax is not felt

Yes it would be. A tax on salaries, would force companies to have to pay more to attract talent.

And these are additional costs that the company would have to pay.

Same. I think it's fine if some businesses leave SF, and even more fine if their staff spread out. Given all our talk of internet-driven disruption and the world-changing nature of electronic communication, it's always been ridiculous that we had to cram everybody together in 0.01% of the US's land area.

If you think white yuppie tech workers are part of the problem, then you are indeed part of the problem.

> the tech firms are unlikely to leave, meanwhile SF can get more taxes from them (many of them were historically given tax breaks, like Twitter, to move into the mid-market area).

Twitter's highest paid executive looks like they make something in the $7M range (Dorsey's total comp is approximately zero for several years, as he is counting entirely on capital returns on his investment, not compensation from the firm); I'm doubting that their median SF pay is below ~$70K.

But they voted to screw low paid uber drivers out of employment rights - talk about "presentism"