Hacker News Reader

Comment by tlogan | Hacker News Reader

This is an excellent way to solve the housing crisis in San Francisco: sarcasm fully intended.

Stories like this just reinforce the obvious: the housing crisis is a problem of our own making. Wealthy residents and NIMBYs consistently show they have no interest in helping the poor, the homeless, or working-class people who simply want a place to live. The ones hit hardest are usually younger generations.

This should not be a political issue. Whether on the left or the right, rich people will always find a reason (legal, aesthetic, environmental, religious, etc.) to avoid fixing the housing problem. The excuses vary, but the outcome is the same.

View on HN

> This is an excellent way to solve the housing crisis in San Francisco: sarcasm fully intended.

At least for new dwellings, building without gas piping is _cheaper_ than building with it. It's very cheap to run additional 240V/60A lines from the load center to the kitchen and laundry/utility room.

Depending on the renovation, it can be even cheaper to go all-electric, for example, if the kitchen/laundry/heating is being moved.

However, renovations don't have much effect either way on the housing affordability crisis in San Francisco, because renovations don't generally increase housing capacity. Most renovations in SF are done for the purpose of converting existing lower end homes into higher end homes.

> The ones hit hardest are usually younger generations

Reminds me of prop 13. If you challenge grandma having a $3M house paying peanuts for property taxes you are a monster.

If you defend young people that are ready to start a family, "they can kick rocks and move to Bumfuck, Middle-Of-Nowhere, no one is entitled to live in the Bay Area".

Both are unfortunate situations. Neither should be priced out.

Everyone one who wants to live in SF should be allowed to live in SF regardless of their means. I don’t know how this could work in practice, however.

CA Prop 13 was an unfortunate, short-term bandaid in 1978 that didn't address excessive property taxes for elderly, disabled, and poor people who came after them. It truly was another boomer selfishness moment. The solution is to expand Prop 13 to all who meet low income requirements to make property taxes progressive rather than unreasonable "flat" taxes that punish the poor far more than the rich and moderately rich.

PS: I grew up in south San Jose, graduated from Leland, but can't afford a home anywhere near where I grew up because rich people from all over the world gentrified the Bay Area and boomers went full NIMBY on new developments.

boomers were just coming of age politically when prop 13 passed in 1978. the main culprits were actually the silent generation and older greatest gen homeowners—think postwar suburbanites who had bought in cheap and were now watching their property taxes spike in a period of wild inflation + ballooning home values. boomers were still mostly renters or too young to own, especially in california’s pricey metros.

Incorrect. They were buying homes like my parents (born in 47 and 48) did in San Jose, who benefitted greatly from Prop 13. It was the grandparents of boomers (Jarvis and the older bits of the Greatest Gen) who were initially impacted by rapidly rising property values and property taxes who pushed for it.

Older boomers benefited but were not the culprits as you say, so I don't think you can call it a "boomer selfishness moment" is all.

I won't go that far, but it's a distraction from larger problems, and it makes housing more expensive. These are the same cities charging $0.10 for paper bags at grocery stores because marginal environmental benefit?

How exactly is forcing owners to actually improve their house supposed to make the housing problem worse?

You think it’s going to put house outside of the market at their current price? It’s an insignificant dent in the profit margin.

> How exactly is forcing owners to actually improve their house supposed to make the housing problem worse?

This law makes renovations more expensive. That means use conversions, expansions and safety improvements all happen less frequently.

> It’s an insignificant dent in the profit margin

Limited supply means suppliers own the cards. There is zero chance these costs are born by landlords.

> Limited supply means suppliers own the cards. There is zero chance these costs are born by landlords.

Landlords are already pricing their rentals as high as they can so who else would bear the costs? If they could extract more, they would already do.

> Landlords are already pricing their rentals as high as they can

Reducing supply increases the price they can charge because prospective renters have fewer alternatives.

Let me give you a concrete example.

In Sunset (San Francisco), most houses still have 100–150 amp electrical panels. To support full electrification these panels typically need to be upgraded to 200 or maybe 300 amps.

That upgrade alone costs around $10,000, including labor, permitting (which is surprisingly expensive), and inspections. If rewiring the house is also required (which is often the case) that can push the total to $30,000.

But it doesn’t stop there. PG&E’s infrastructure in many areas like Sunset is already maxed out. If your upgrade triggers a red flag, PG&E may require additional capacity upgrades. However, they won’t pay for them (they’ll just refuse the work until you do). These utility-related infrastructure upgrades can cost anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000, and yes, those costs fall on the homeowner.

So in total, you could be looking at $60,000 or more for this.

This doesn’t have much to do with the cost of building housing. If it did, the south east where natural gas is non existent through out much of it wouldn’t have such cheap housing. Yes, they have propane (king of the hill style), but this wouldn’t get rid of propane cooking outside either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com