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Comment by sethbannon | Hacker News Reader

There is clearly a problem with the rapid rise in inequality and the tensions gentrification create within a community like The Mission District, but what's the solution? Have there been successful efforts elsewhere that have helped moderate the negative effects of such rapid changes?

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There have been successful efforts in Pune (India) to moderate those effects. It's called "build enough houses for everyone":

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B8cMeVTIMAEMyzk.jpg

For comparison, a nearby city (Mumbai) takes a more SF-style approach - height/FSI restrictions, rent control, etc - rent there can exceed a lac/month (yes, Mumbai rent is a little less than NYC rent).

Gentrification would still exist as the previous owners and renters would be forced to live in the perifery of their towns, as newcomers would settle in their neighborhoods.

Only if you don't build enough houses in the central part of town.

These housing issues work out to nothing but simple arithmetic - if N people want to live in a region and you have K < N houses, N-K people are unhappy. Set K=N and all the problems are solved.

Old buildings have to be demolished and new ones built, which may not be in the range of the former tenants. Old residents have to leave either way, which is both the problem itself and the root of other ones.

Anyway, it's the mutation of a city into another one, there are too many variables. Higher density sounds appealing but it may bring other problems, and the old residents end up displaced anyway. It's not going to be pretty, and the result is not going to be the San Francisco everyone loves, but well... it's not my city so why do I care.

Edit: quite a few edits

If you can build arbitrary amounts of new housing the only way that anyone will be displaced is if (marginal cost of building new unit, amortized to a monthly rent) > (what old tenant can pay).

You are right that new Pune isn't the same Pune it used to be (or so I'm told) - now there are Gujus, Punjabis, Africans, white dudes and other non-Marathis there. As an American I'm a bit unsympathetic to "there goes the neighborhood".

Buildings take time to build, do I have to make that clear?

Also, it's not about ethnic make up, it's about culture and identity. The neighborhood can go in a wildly different direction, and that's what people are lamenting, specially if it's culture-producing centers (let's admit it, the most that tech nerds produce are open source libraries for other tech nerds to consume). Anyway, urban centers come and go, SF's death will be a sad thing, but it happens all the time.

>Buildings take time to build, do I have to make that clear?

That largely depends on how quickly you want to build. Chinese companies can build whole skycrapers within weeks. http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/14/8608039/building-timelapse...

Can there be a solution? I don't really think so. More people want to live there than the area can fit. Someone has to lose out. The newcomers think they should get to live there because they have a lot of money to pay for scarce resource. The incumbents think they should get to live there because they were there first. Right or wrong, one group loses.

If you presuppose that an entire group must win and the other lose, then there probably can't be a solution. Any real solution would prevent that outcome.

The only thing I'm presupposing is that more people want to live there, than the area can fit. Maybe too many even if they built lots of high density housing, which SF won't allow anyway.

It won't happen on a purely group vs. group basis, that's just a simplification for the purpose of forty-word internet comments.

Here's a politically infeasible solution: Make the pie bigger. People want to live in San Francisco because Silicon Valley is an awful alternative. What are some concrete steps we could take to increase the stock of housing?

* Repeal Prop 13. While Prop 13 stands, cities have a huge interest in combating new residential development because it'll erode the tax base. It serves as a tax on newcomers and discourages people from moving and downsizing.

* Prohibit rent control, it's the surest way to destroy housing stock short of bombing.

* Strip local zoning authority from municipalities. Los Altos Hills has a 1 acre lot requirement and prohibits multi-family construction. Menlo Park has a 30' height limit and a 15' curb setback requirement.

* Institute land value tax. It's inexcusable that 24th Street is surrounded with two-story construction. Compare it with Central Square in Cambridge: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.365178,-71.103326,3a,75y,273...

People want to live in San Francisco because Silicon Valley is an awful alternative.

Maybe that's the answer right there. San Francisco doesn't need to fix itself if Silicon Valley can be made attractive, and Silicon Valley has a lot more space than San Fran.

the only construction i see is in redwood city. the rest refuse to change.

An article on HN just a week or two ago argued that allowing more building is one approach, and gave Miami as an example. The old neighborhoods there stay as they were, while a lot of the new influx of people go to a small set of newly-built hi-rise luxury buildings.

I'm sure it's not as simple as that, but it makes sense that if building is very constrained, as in SF, then it increases the pressure and raises prices.

Supply and demand. Build more high density housing and it should help alleviate demand.

> Have there been successful efforts elsewhere that have helped moderate the negative effects of such rapid changes?

Redlining definitely worked for a long time.

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