
San Francisco Progressives Declare War on Affordable Housing - joshlittle
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-02/san-francisco-progressives-declare-war-on-affordable-housing
======
VanillaCafe
The article lost me on the first line, "The U.S. is running out of places for
people to live."

That's just not true.

An trending increase in the national average monthly cost of rent shows that
people are competing more for housing. But, that can be explained by a
migration to major metropolitan centers and/or tech centers. Which is a
totally different mechanism than "running out of housing".

~~~
woah
Mid-brow dismissal. You're focusing on one phrase and yelling "gotcha!".

Let me make it easier to understand: "The U.S. is running out of places that
people want to live."

We're realizing that living in an anonymous suburb on a tract of cheap land a
90 minute drive from where we work is stupid. It's terrible for the
environment, it stunts social and business opportunities, and it is boring.
More people in cities is good for the environment, good for economic equality,
and good for sanity.

There are an infinite number of places that you "could" live, so your use of
"running out of housing" is a straw man. By your definition, it's not even
possible to "run out of housing".

~~~
vinceguidry
So build more cities.

~~~
collyw
Let people work remote. I would be happy to live in the mountains, but there
ain't any jobs there.

~~~
Fifer82
You have my vote for president!

~~~
collyw
I always get the impression that a large number of techies are into the
outdoors / outdoor sports. I am surprised no one has tried setting up
companies an remoter places with good access to the mountains. Instead they
set up in the most expensive places, and need to pay much more to cover for
the costs.

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ergothus
> Progressives on the city’s Board of Supervisors recently called for certain
> height limit restrictions to be lifted only for developments that include
> 100 percent below-market-rate housing (the current policy sets the number at
> 30 percent). Obviously, developing housing at entirely below-market rates is
> impossible without heavy government subsidies, so this proposal would
> effectively stop all new construction in many areas of the city.

I must be missing something - housing prices are combination of "affordable
minimum" due to costs, and "what the market will bare". In a market with
scarce housing and huge housing prices, it should be very doable to offer
below-market-rate housing and still be profitable, all without subsidies.
Right?

That said, I'm all in favor of increasing density. I forget where I read it,
but I saw a great analysis about how it's "cheap" to get city councils to pass
limitations on future growth (Nimby), but getting them to pass actions (new
housing, etc) often requires they show how it is paid for. As those
limitations have an opportunity cost, they too should be justified.

Still though, I don't understand the above part of the article. Help?

~~~
enf
"100% affordable" means that every apartment is priced below market rate, and
in this case is also below the cost of buying the land and constructing the
apartment. The extra money has to come from somewhere.

With "30% affordable," the extra money comes from making the other 70% of the
apartments more expensive. With "100% affordable" there is no built-in source
for the extra money so it needs to come from some other source.

~~~
eschaton
You're conflating the cost to construct and maintain the landlord's building
with the amount of money the landlord can charge to rent the apartments in it.
The construction and maintenance costs just put a floor on the rent below
which the landlord would lose money. The market-rate rent is otherwise
unconstrained, and the difference is the landlord's profit.

Just because the supervisors are saying they want below market rate housing
doesn't mean they're saying they want landlords to actually lose money.
They're instead saying they want landlords to be willing to make some amount
less than the theoretical maximum profit on some number of units (whether 5%
or 100% of units in a building) in exchange for being allowed to build a whole
lot more of them.

That doesn't seem like such an unfair trade-off.

~~~
enf
"100% affordable" doesn't just mean "less expensive": it has legal
significance. It means that it costs a household with 55% to 60% of area
median income at most 30% of their income. There is a table of the allowable
rents at [http://sfmohcd.org/inclusionary-housing-bmr-rental-
program-o...](http://sfmohcd.org/inclusionary-housing-bmr-rental-program-
overview). If you want to build a studio to rent at cost for $1070 a month,
you need to be able to build it for around $230,000, which is basically
unimaginable with current SF land and construction costs.

~~~
akiselev
Who builds a single studio in San Francisco? You'd build a hundred studios on
10 floors or something which means a maximum of $23 million. The land is a
fixed expense since you're still buying x acres for the building and a lot of
the costs going into planning and construction (permits, procurement,
transportation, labor, etc) have large fixed costs but much smaller marginal
costs and great efficiencies of scale. I don't know the cost per sq ft of the
average project in SF but at 800 per studio (500 sq ft of space plus 300 for
estimating overhead) you can spend almost $300 per sq ft. Assuming that number
drops to 650 sq ft if you build a thousand studios you can now spend closer to
$400 per sq ft which is in the realm of mid-2000s construction costs in
Manhattan [1]. I'm pulling numbers out of my ass for the estimate but it
should be clear how the math can still work out for developers.

[1] [http://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/nycs-construction-
cra...](http://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/nycs-construction-craze/)

------
notadoc
SF needs to approve and build a ton of high rise condos and apartments.
Period. Problem solved.

~~~
abannin
Not necessarily high rise, so much of the city below 4 stories. Just upzoning
to 8-12 stories would triple density.

~~~
rorykoehler
If you're going to build 12 why not build 30 or 50 etc?

~~~
cam_l
Sun, wind, views.. And by views i don't mean distant views, i mean not looking
into another apart 10 metres away.Even ignoring these crucial environmental
factors, structurally at 50 stories the efficiency ratios drop down
significantly.

Highrise is not the panacea most people think.

~~~
amazingman
And earthquakes. Let's not forget earthquakes.

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rbanffy
I'm confused by the use of the word "progressive" here.

~~~
alwaysdoit
You know, the standard definition of progressive: trying to put things back
the way they were, to make SF great again.

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vinceguidry
> The U.S. is running out of places for people to live.

Just when you thought you heard it all, journalists find another way to sound
supremely stupid. The US ranks 182 out of 244 on the list of countries by
population density.

If you took the entire world's population and crammed it into the continental
US, we'd be midway between Bangladesh and Taiwan.

~~~
Anasufovic
As mentioned by others its more about desirable places to live. People are
moving to cities and the cities are not keeping up.

~~~
vinceguidry
And as I already said, we can simply build more cities. It's what already
happens anyway.

------
HillaryBriss
> _If we’re going to create cities where everyone can live and work, we need
> density -- there’s just no way around it._

Is it safe to say that, in US cities, quality of life generally gets worse
with increases in population density?

If so, is it because US local and state governments are pretty bad at managing
population increase, in general?

~~~
Retric
I would say the opposite, quality of life increases with density. NYC being
the prime example. It's just not linear and takes good infrastructure. DC for
example is a horrible 'city' due to height restrictions and poor
infrastructure, but it's suburbs are much worse.

The advantage to density is people don't need to travel as far to do things so
you can support a lot more niche activities. Making it easer to connect with
people and get a bite to eat at 4AM.

Or put another way, you need density to overcome the downsides. Sprawl means
you get the same amenitys as a small city which has better traffic and lower
costs.

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kafkaesq
What a puerile and intellectually dishonest rant.

Basically they're taking a situation that is notoriously complex and
entrenched, with multiple interlocking tradeoffs and feedback loops; cherry
picking a few of the driving factors, and throwing in a few offhand
observations about the positions that "progressives" (as if this were an
identifiable, let alone unified group) supposedly take in regard to these
issues; and concluding with the innuendo that this "Them", this "Other", is
"declaring war" on not just affordable housing, but on economic growth and
progress itself.

And also:

 _Unlike progressives in New York City, who are often big supporters of
density, San Francisco progressives have decided to focus on kicking the tech
industry out of the city._

No, not bending over for every regulatory or other concession certain elements
of an industry might want does not equal a drive to "kick them out." This is a
scare card, pure and simple; it's meant to befuddle and distract, and sheds no
light on the complex issues at root.

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beatpanda
Oakland passed an eviction moratorium because there is an epidemic of illegal
evictions of long-term tenants from rent-controlled units, and activists
wanted to force the city government to actually enforce the city's laws.
Characterizing this as part of a move to "kick tech out of the city" misses
the point by several thousand miles.

It is true that San Francisco's "left" is against housing construction. It is
also true that San Francisco politics are an inverted world where "left" and
"right" cease to even have meaning. So we need competent writers to try to
sort this out. But writing articles like this that just plow through the
nuance and make elementary mistakes, like apparently not even reading the
language of or rational for Oakland's eviction moratorium, make it harder to
get to a bargain on this stuff.

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chris_va
This is not a well researched article. Various sweeping comments like:

"Rent control is in effect, but that has just increased the incentive for
evictions"

... ignore so many issues that it makes it hard to believe the core argument.

~~~
paulddraper
Yes, the biggest problem with rent control is not evictions, but shortages.

Price ceilings cause shortages. Always.

------
paulddraper
I apparently don't know what "Progressive" means anymore.

Maybe I'll start calling everyone progressive. They all have opinions about
something.

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gozur88
I don't think it's unreasonable for people who like a place to try to preserve
the things they like about it. People living in San Francisco would be living
in Manhattan if they wanted to live in Manhattan. Why would you expect them to
quietly acquiesce to efforts aimed at turning SF into Manhattan West?

