
Blame Zoning, Not Tech, for San Francisco's Housing Crisis - jseliger
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/03/are-wealthy-neighborhoods-to-blame-for-gentrification-of-poorer-ones/473349/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAtlanticCities+%28CityLab%29
======
ThrustVectoring
Honestly, the end of the article gets into what's actually necessary to change
to fix the housing situation. There's a ton of locally-optimal but globally-
detrimental decisions to not build places - so what's necessary is a regional
zoning czar for the Bay Area that can tell people to shut the hell up and
allow people to build.

Nobody really has the power to do this, and the voters are demanding NIMBY
policies, so I'm not holding my breath. The next best strategy is coming up
with an acceptable measure of how many people a certain plot of land "should"
house and taxing/subsidizing landowners based on how much housing they
actually provide on the land. That's technically not an ad-valorem tax, so
would dodge Prop 13, while still pricing out people who really should make
room for better use of the land.

~~~
foota
That's an amazingly good idea imo.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
The devil's in the details. It's hard to come up with measures and targets
that are both fair and easily communicable.

If you go with number of people, well, that's the wrong measure (and hard to
enforce // easy to fake). Number of bedrooms is also incorrect, as is square
footage. Number of rentable units is also weird, since it encourages studio
apartments and the like at the expense of splitting bigger units and sharing
areas.

Another option is using a baseline of "however many people currently live
there", but that favors parking lot owners and the like. "Average density of
the local region" is unfair in that it suddenly imposes a new cost on the
density hold-outs.

You can calculate a target based on something like distance-to-transit and
local zones, but that gets complicated and political in a hurry. Land-value
would be a good choice, since the price conveys really useful information -
but that is likely illegal due to proposition 13.

My next-best idea is collective punishment: charge zoning districts based on
the difference between how their residential and commercial/industrial
construction. Mountain View is much less likely to vote to let Google expand
their campus while blocking commensurate housing construction if it means they
have to start subsidizing the places those workers start commuting from.

~~~
dilemma
"Once it reaches a certain threshold, the process of institutionalization
becomes counter-productive." \- Ivan Illich

This is an example of why planning doesn't work. And the unforeseen side-
effect of any policy is an example of why central control is not just
inefficient but often counter-productive -- why hiring processes to identify
high-capacity creative individuals select for the opposite; why the school
system produces not learning but limits it so as to produce ignorance; why
housing policies aim to improve cities and lower inequality makes cities like
San Francisco and Stockholm some of the most unequal in the world.

[http://p2pfoundation.net/Counterproductivity](http://p2pfoundation.net/Counterproductivity)

~~~
specialist
_This is an example of why planning doesn 't work._

You misunderstand.

Any system taken to its logical extreme then becomes its opposite.

Ivan Illich advises pragmatism over dogma.

~~~
dilemma
You're right. My comment went a bit far.

------
tptacek
No matter where you'd like to pin the blame for the SF housing crisis, be it
zoning, NIMBYism, new money, gentrification, or anything else, there is one
thing I think we can be pretty confident about:

The only _solution_ to the problem is for the city to build its way out of it.

There is no rent control regime that will, in the medium term, prevent money
from ultimately swamping local concerns. Real estate is a good, not a moral
principle, and most people who own real estate have a number.

I would be interested in anyone with a counterexample of a US metro area that
withstood sustained market interest, without extensive new building, without
skyrocket housing prices and the demographic shifts that come with them.

~~~
pj_mukh
Talking to a few activists about this solution and most of them say that
"building your way" out of it only makes sense if you are also building
affordable housing.

I don't see a builder voluntarily building low-cost housing in the Mission
district, just more luxury condos. A municipal ordinance that removes
restrictions while imposing a requirement to build affordable housing along
with more luxury condos might be the right solution.

~~~
twblalock
> Talking to a few activists about this solution and most of them say that
> "building your way" out of it only makes sense if you are also building
> affordable housing.

They are incorrect. Building luxury housing will take some of the demand
pressure off of non-luxury housing (which constitutes the vast majority of the
housing in San Francisco), thereby lowering its price.

The only way this wouldn't work is if nobody could afford to live in the new
luxury housing. But we know for sure that there are plenty of people who want
to, can afford to, and are moving into the newer luxury developments as soon
as they are available. The lower-quality housing those people move out of is
now available for people who can't afford the new luxury housing.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> They are incorrect. Building luxury housing will take some of the demand
> pressure off of non-luxury housing (which constitutes the vast majority of
> the housing in San Francisco), thereby lowering its price.

Nothing stops capital from rushing into non-luxury housing, acquiring it, and
then renting it at new "market rates".

You will need to swamp SFBA with housing (tens of thousands of new units a
year) in order to drive down market prices.

~~~
twblalock
Non-luxury housing is already being rented at market rates, except for the
rent-controlled units, but those are effectively not part of the liquid
housing market anyway because the tenants won't leave. Hence the recent
increase in landlords trying to force the tenants out, so the housing can be
rented at the market rate, like all other housing already is.

Everything I wrote presupposes that all housing is rented at the market rate,
including the non-luxury housing.

I suppose you put quotes around "market rates" as a form of sarcasm, but aside
from rent-controlled units, all housing rents at the equilibrium market rate
determined by supply and demand. If someone jacks up the price of older
apartments and is still able to find tenants, all that proves is that those
apartments had been rented out at a price below the market rate before now.
The market rate is quite simply the amount people are willing to pay.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> I suppose you put quotes around "market rates" as a form of sarcasm, but
> aside from rent-controlled units, all housing rents at the equilibrium
> market rate determined by supply and demand. If someone jacks up the price
> of older apartments and is still able to find tenants, all that proves is
> that those apartments had been rented out at a price below the market rate
> before now. The market rate is quite simply the amount people are willing to
> pay.

Hence, my quotes around "market rate". The tech industry can afford to keep
pouring salaries into employee pockets, therefore, tech workers will always be
able to price out non-tech workers seeking affordable rents in the bay area.

You will never be able to outbuild what Facebook, Google, and the like can pay
their workers. Zoning is not the issue, a slanted labor market is. And the
tech labor market will continue to soak up whatever housing comes onto the
market.

~~~
linkregister
The Seattle and Denver metros are managing to keep a lower deficit of
available housing than the SF Bay Area.

The high salaries of developers in the Bay Area are a reaction to that
feedback loop. The companies you listed offer lower salaries to workers
outside of the Bay Area, using what they call Prevailing Market Rate to
determine pay bands.

I don't really understand why Apple, Facebook, Google, et al. spend so much
money on hiring in the Bay Area instead of hiring aggressively outside of it
in cheaper regions. Are they benefiting from the network effect anymore? I can
understand startups needing to be close to VC funding sources, but how does it
benefit the larger players?

~~~
twblalock
Quite a few of the best software engineers in the world live in the Bay Area
and do not want to leave, and the larger players want to hire them. They could
hire engineers elsewhere for a lot less money, but they want to hire these
specific engineers, and are willing to pay what it takes.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Quite a few of the best software engineers in the world live in the Bay Area
> and do not want to leave, and the larger players want to hire them. They
> could hire engineers elsewhere for a lot less money, but they want to hire
> these specific engineers, and are willing to pay what it takes.

Unless its more financially advantageous to train new engineers then keep
paying the ones in SFBA? 7 billion people? Its not like only the brilliant
ones are in SF.

~~~
ryanobjc
It doesn't quite work like that... being a brilliant engineer isn't a matter
of "training". And because of the attraction factor, yes, a lot of the
brilliant ones end up in the bay area. For years the only place to do cutting
edge tech was here, and it's pulled them in, from far away. Out of the country
even.

So more than you think in fact.

------
mmanfrin
People don't want the truth, they wan't someone to blame. Rich 20-something
white males from out of town are a very convenient and easy target.

 _Brogrammers ruining this city._

~~~
kafkaesq
Oh, the "bros" (and less sardonically, the tech crowd in general --
independent of age, ethnicity and gender) themselves aren't to blame. They are
but passive agents.

However, the influx of their _paychecks_ is quite obviously a factor. Attempts
to deny this fact are just that... denial.

~~~
mmanfrin
Yeah, the middle class is such a damper on this city. How dare the middle
class want to live in the Bay Area.

Also, let's completely ignore that medical wages are _higher_ on average than
tech in the city, and that the major redevelopment of China Basin s/Mission
Bay/ was spurned by the med sector of the economy; tech worker's middle-class
wages are to blame.

~~~
kafkaesq
A $120k median salary definitely isn't "middle class."

And there's been nothing like an influx of medical workers that would any way
be comparable to the tech influx since the start of the century.

EDIT: Also, medical workers, though larger as a force head-count wise, appear
to have decidedly lower median salaries ($67k) than to tech workers. Based on
some quick searches, my guesstimate above appears to have been a bit off, but
not by much -- and only when we include the non-engineering component of
"tech" workers (i.e. marketing and regular admin types).

In any case there definitely appears to be a significant gap between the two
industries, in terms of median salary.

~~~
linkregister
> A $120k median salary definitely isn't "middle class."

In the San Francisco Bay Area, it is.

The median household income for SF residents is $78,378. [1]

However, to purchase a home at the median price ($682,410), a family must make
$115,510. [2]

One article suggests the ceiling for middle class in the Bay Area is $170k.
[3]

It appears your focus is nationwide, and not regional.

[1]
[http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/map/PST045214/06075](http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/map/PST045214/06075)

[2] [http://blog.sfgate.com/pender/2014/02/18/how-much-income-
do-...](http://blog.sfgate.com/pender/2014/02/18/how-much-income-do-you-need-
to-buy-a-home-in-the-bay-area/)

[3]
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/03/19/394057221/how-m...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/03/19/394057221/how-
much-or-little-the-middle-class-makes-in-30-u-s-cities)

Edit: added [3]

~~~
ryandrake
What in the world? You're not buying a $682K house on a $115K salary. Not a
chance. That's like 6x your salary. Isn't the rule of thumb no more than 3x?
Assuming 20% down, what lender in their right mind is going to lend you 4.5x+
your salary to buy a house?

~~~
paulddraper
You can do much less than 20% down; you can get away with 5% down (with
mortgage insurance).

In my experience, lenders will actually lend you past what is a good idea for
you. It's possible to purchase the house on that income....if you spend all
your money on it and nothing else.

------
tryitnow
I used to support the view articulated in this article, but I'm more skeptical
now.

If higher density were the solution I would expect to see highly dense cities
have cheaper real estate than less dense cities. Instead, it's just the
opposite.

That's because of the other side of the economic equation: demand.

And therein lies the devil. I hypothesize that increasing the supply of
housing in a city actually increases demand in such a way that the supply
increase has little downward effect on housing costs.

It makes sense why this is the case. If more people live in a city, then
there's more people who are likely to move there. If you know a bunch of
classmates who are all moving to San Francisco after graduation that's going
to make you more likely to move to San Francisco too.

So yes, supply exerts downward pressure on housing costs, but I would bet that
heigthened density then causes a near commensurate increase in demand such
that the supply increase has little effect.

~~~
brighteyes
The problem is that the increased density is happening _anyway_.

It isn't that if we build more housing, more people will come, which will
bring more people in an exponential cycle. The reality is that tech workers
are coming _anyway_ , and paying whatever is required of them to live in SF.
They aren't being stopped by high rents, because high as they are, they can
afford them.

However, they are raising prices for people that can't afford it. That pushes
other people out.

The result is that whether we build or not, tech workers will live in the
city. Building more won't bring more of them. The only question is whether
other people can live there too.

~~~
Tempest1981
Similarly, I used to think that terrible traffic would discourage growth. Not
really... people's tolerance is surprisingly high.

------
HaloZero
I'm curious, how does a place like Hong Kong handle this? It's another large
city that's locked on 3 sides by water (they do have other islands but I
imagine the population is not signifiant on those).

I know rent in the city even in the fancy condos is expensive but they still
have their working class workers. Where do they live?

~~~
santaclaus
> It's another large city that's locked on 3 sides by water

Or Manhattan, for that matter.

~~~
ghaff
In Manhattan's case, there's a generally good public transit system that lets
people commute to (relatively) inexpensive communities like Queens fairly
easily.

~~~
kafkaesq
Right -- which tends to moderate the up-ending effects of rising real estate
costs in NYC to a significant degree.

That, and the fact that (within city limits) public transit is much more
affordable than BART (plus whatever secondary transit needed to get to/from
BART).

------
tryitnow
I live on the "urban frontier" in Oakland (east side of Lake Merritt) and it's
pretty nice, I don't feel endangered at all.

South of me there's just huge swaths of residential and commercial land that
can be developed - and I think will be developed. The main problem is that
there are not enough professional/middle class people living there now. But
once some move in, more will follow (as has happened in other parts of
Oakland).

My point is that the Bay Area has quite a bit of capacity for further
development once you step out of SF.

------
djillionsmix
I'm not sure why San Francisco being an enormously popular place that lots of
people want to live in is a reason why we need to raze San Francisco and build
something else there instead, vs. and not a reason why we shouldn't go to one
of the many other shite places that everyone hates, raze that, and build more
San Francsico.

Other than myopic entitlement, I mean.

------
linkregister
The amount of tech workers buying up housing is also up for debate. Though
this article focuses on cash transactions (perhaps mortgaged ones don't
contain occupational data?), it paints a picture of other white collar
professions performing the majority of cash purchases of housing in the Bay
Area.

The data was taken from a company that controls 10% of the real estate market
in the Bay Area.

[http://realestateconsulting.com/tech-buyers-only-a-small-
por...](http://realestateconsulting.com/tech-buyers-only-a-small-portion-of-
san-francisco-bay-area-cash-transactions/)

~~~
kafkaesq
Some of them -- most likely the majority -- _rent_ also, you know.

~~~
linkregister
Right, so how could they be responsible for pushing up housing prices if most
are renting?

~~~
kafkaesq
Gosh, I don't know. Maybe housing prices and market rents are like...
_related_ somehow?

~~~
linkregister
Could you flesh out your point instead of simply repeating it?

~~~
FranOntanaya
The sale price of a house is always going to be capped by how much you could
make instead by renting it. If the average rental makes $45K a year nobody
would sell that house for $250K.

------
fiatmoney
Cash inflows from overseas are also a major contributor. The exemption of real
estate from money laundering regulations makes it a sink for a lot of shady
revenues.

~~~
bkjelden
Are there any pieces of data quantifying how much of an effect this is having
in San Francisco?

~~~
linkregister
There's a very small amount of data available. It suggests that international
purchasers are around 6% of the total cash buyers of real estate.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11270279](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11270279)

~~~
fiatmoney
It is somewhat frequent for the buyer to be local, and the money to come from
overseas. Son buys a house with his dad's dubious-origin money.

And given the lack of required information & intentional ignorance ("so, Mr.
Boriskypov, would you describe yourself as an oligarch?") I'm not sure how
that dataset could reliably identify "international" purchasers.

~~~
linkregister
The dataset was from a real estate company's reports from individual realtors.
I'm confident the realtors know the origin of money.

I think a more appropriate criticism would be to focus on the narrow class of
purchases (cash only) or small sample size (n=300, though the company
represents 10% of the real estate market in the SF Bay Area). Unfortunately,
it's the only published information I could find.

------
cylinder
I don't get it. Why does everyone need to live in San Francisco?

The real story here is poor commuting infrastructure. Not enough of it and the
existing is slow or unreliable.

------
Finnucane
Sure, but if you have high prices and high demand, that's driven by money.
Where's the money coming from? And, what happens when the money runs out?

~~~
simoncion
A year or two ago, ~8% of SF's population worked "in tech".

It seems like median tech salaries are in the _very_ low six-figure range.
120k/year gross will (assuming no car or loan expenses) pay for -at most-
$3500/month rent with typical utilities, Internet, and food expenditures. Even
then, that leaves you with $2,500/ _year_ to save for emergencies or
retirement.

Where's the money coming from? It's likely _not_ coming from the majority of
tech workers.

What happens when it runs out? I... really don't know. Whatever happens, it
will take _quite_ some time for landlords to adjust their rates to match the
new reality. In the interim, I would expect even _more_ "grassroots" hate
generated for tech workers.

~~~
Finnucane
It doesn't have to come from the majority--the fact that there's a lot of it
is what causes the distortions. I live in Cambridge, and there's a lot of
money going through the biotech sector--that money is surely as unevenly
distributed as the tech money in SF, but it's a lot of money going through a
small space. Sure, you can build more housing where you can squeeze it in, but
as long as the money hose is going full blast, there's no way to keep up with
it.

The other problem that kind of gets lost here is that we have a few places
where there is a lot of money, there are jobs, housing shortages, etc., and a
lot of places in the country where the opposite is true. And that's not really
good. I don't think it's really sustainable to think that a few coastal cities
are going to be able to accommodate everyone who would like to live and/or
work in them. We could actually relieve some of the pressure on these cities
by making _other cities_ more desirable destinations.

~~~
ghaff
Bingo. This sort of dynamic has played out forever, but whatever the flaws in
housing policy in today's shiny locales, not everyone can live there however
perfect housing and construction policies were (and, of course, not everyone
will agree on what constitutes perfection). The good news is that this is
somewhat self-correcting. To the degree that a locale becomes unsupportably
expensive, people and jobs start shifting to other areas. Adding a million
housing units to San Francisco and the South Bay isn't going to happen anytime
soon whoever is setting policy.

------
tostitos1979
I have a basic question about prop 13. I though the point of not increasing
property assessments is so that if rich people start bidding house prices
around you, your property taxes don't start to increase.

But as I dug into this, this doesn't make sense. The community has certain
expenses. These get divided based on the value of the homes. If all homes
double in price but the community expenses stay the same, it is irrelevant to
have different assessment amounts on homes. I've heard the term "mil rate" and
am not sure what that is, but is perhaps relevant. Any experts willing to
clarify?

~~~
jowiar
"Mil rate" the number of thousandths of the property value assessed in tax
each year. i.e. 20 mils = 2% of the annual property value is taxed. The actual
property tax owed is rate x assessments.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax)

~~~
tostitos1979
Cool. That makes sense. Is there a reason they use 1000? Just
convenience/convention?

Also .. my question about prop 13 stands. Curious why increasing home values
would cause an issue if municipal spending stays constant?

~~~
wtbob
> Is there a reason they use 1000? Just convenience/convention?

Because the mill(e) is the smallest unit of currency in the United States.

------
vorg
Zoning is a demand-side control residents use to raise rents and housing
prices. Tech is a supply-side control residents use.

In other cities and countries, Tech is a proxy for Immigration -- it could be
any industry drawing people in. There's other cities in the US, as well as
virtually all of them in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where the twin
controls of demand-side zoning and supply-side immigration are used to raise
housing costs, both sale prices and rents.

In New Zealand, because the largest city, Auckland, and the smaller ones
surrounding it make up over half the country's population, this is seen very
clearly because the city government and national government are virtually the
same thing. Government representatives speak in a wink wink nudge nudge
manner, talking about fast-tracking new housing stock in Auckland and
controlling immigration, but making sure house owners know they're not serious
so they don't lose votes.

So we should blame both demand-side Zoning _and_ supply-side Tech (i.e.
Immigration) for housing crises.

------
MrMullen
Building up SF or SV is not the solution, High Speed Rail is the solution. Get
on a HSR train, travel 20 - 40 miles out of the city in under 30 minutes.
People would still have access to SF, SV and the jobs but would be scattered
upwards of 40 - 60 miles from SF, SV. It also fixes NIMBY; you can either have
HSR or be surrounded by large apartment blocks.

~~~
ilyanep
NIMBYs would just fight both. CEQA has been used to block public transit
options all over the state.

~~~
jjawssd
Now _this_ is the real tragedy

------
natrius
Low density zoning—especially suburban, single family zoning—is tantamount to
segregation. We must end it. It forces people who want to save money by
purchasing less land to live somewhere else. That is, it forces lower-income
people to live in different neighborhoods than higher-income people. And given
America's racial disparities in income, these laws segregate by race, too.

[https://medium.com/@niranbabalola/we-must-repeal-our-
segrega...](https://medium.com/@niranbabalola/we-must-repeal-our-segregation-
laws-32348d090520)

------
Eridrus
I just wish the tech industry had taken root somewhere less NIMBYish that
actually wanted growth and I'm hoping that SF gets what it wants and the tech
industry just leaves.

~~~
ghaff
The Bay area has grown enormously. There were fruit orchards in Silicon Valley
not (relatively speaking) all that long ago. No, I don't see the tech industry
leaving. A lot of people like the Bay area for reasons that have nothing to do
with tech jobs. It's also the case however that it's simply not possible (or
desirable) for everyone in tech to work and live in a geographically
constrained peninsula and people/companies need to deal with that reality.

------
forrestthewoods
This week I saw exactly one building under construction between SFO and Menlo
Park. That's utterly insane. I should have seen a couple dozen just from the
highway.

~~~
twblalock
You should have got off the freeway. There is new construction everywhere in
Redwood City, for example.

Most of the 101 corridor has been built up for decades. The construction is
not happening right next to the freeway.

------
the_ancient
The Author is 1/2 Right

>The answer is to build. Build more fucking housing, just like Nolan says. But
the answer is also to zone: To take away land-use decisions from neighborhoods

that is where the statement should end, Take away land-use decisions from
neighborhoods, and put them in the hands of property owners, if a developer
wants to build something on land they legally acquired, then they should be
free to do so even if the neighbors do not like it

~~~
pbreit
That's completely idiotic. Communities are completely within their right to
dictate terms of their community. If prospective owners don't like the rules,
they shouldn't purchase.

~~~
the_ancient
If the rules are put in place pre-sale, with the agreement of the owners
wishing to sell sure..

My problem is that communities change the rules with out the consent of the
property owners. I do not believe in Democracy, I do not believe that 50.1% of
a community has the ethical right to impose rules on the other 49.9% of a
community

------
eloff
As someone from outside the US with no horse in the race, I'm seriously
annoyed that entrenched landowners work hard to prevent new construction and
that in turn keeps housing unaffordable for a generation of young people that
are already worse off than their parents. Thanks guys...

------
imh
To really put this to the test, could we compare with cities in the bay area
with different zoning laws? I know there are tons of places around here where
housing prices have gone up like mad. Are the ones with more lax zoning
exceptions?

------
beatpanda
It is mind-numbing the extent to which everyone playing a role in this housing
crisis wants to wriggle out of their share of the blame more than they want to
actually solve the problem.

I was one of the people constantly seeking a single source of blame for this
until I read a book about systems thinking. Completely changed my life. The
problem is I now see how the competing interests of all the players make this
an almost completely intractable problem.

A huge influx of highly-paid workers _is_ partially to blame for the housing
crisis. So are activists who prevent any new construction. So are politicians
who make policies making new construction prohibitively expensive. Etc etc
etc. Everyone plays a role, but nobody wants to give anything up, so the
people who lose, as always, are the people who are already marginalized.

We need less writing like this and more writing that gives people a bird's-eye
view of the entire problem.

~~~
methodover
> Everyone plays a role, but nobody wants to give anything up,

I'm just curious, but what could new tech workers give up, exactly?

Entrenched local interests could ease up on building restrictions. That's what
they'd give up.

Politicians who make anti-construction policies could stop doing that. That's
what they'd give up.

I don't understand what migrants like myself (a programmer who moved here a
few years ago to work at a startup) are supposed to give up.

~~~
beatpanda
Instead of getting involved in bidding wars for apartments in prized locations
and driving up the price, you could choose to live somewhere a little further
away and commute, for instance.

Or VCs could give up forcing all of their portfolio companies to move to San
Francisco and allow people to build businesses wherever they are.

Or tech CEOs could give up having everyone in the office and allow people to
work from wherever they want.

Speaking for myself, I gave up a whole lot of comfort to live in a
construction site while I'm building a tiny house in a friend's backyard. I am
adding to the housing stock, instead of increasing the price of the existing
housing stock.

~~~
Kalium
> Instead of getting involved in bidding wars for apartments in prized
> locations and driving up the price, you could choose to live somewhere a
> little further away and commute, for instance.

OK. Say I do that. Are you going to thank me for it? Am I just going to be
reviled by a slightly different set of NIMBYs? Am I going to still get
lectured about how I'm personally to blame for ruining everything about
someone's multiple-decade-old memories?

In order, the answers are: no, yes, and yes.

~~~
beatpanda
Are you doing something to make a difference, or because you want to be
personally rewarded for it? If you want a medal, go train for the olympics.

~~~
Kalium
I'm punished the same no matter what personal sacrifices I do - or don't -
make out of concern for other people and a desire to make a difference.

If the people I'm trying to help are going to _actively punish me_ for trying
to help them, I'm going to quickly conclude they don't want my help. I was
taught that it's incredibly rude to force help on people who don't want it.
Since that is indeed what's happening, it's clearly time for me to stop trying
to help.

Thank you for helping me to this moment of moral clarity. I really do mean
that sincerely.

------
someguydave
San Francisco is going to be begging for the tech industry to return after it
has all left because the city failed to accommodate employees with housing.

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grillvogel
this is a myth perpetuated by "urbanists" and developer shills. none of the
new construction is "affordable". you can't build your way out of this
problem. desirable areas will always be expensive.

infrastructure and improved transit are the solutions to these problems, not
more housing.

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guelo
Whether to blame the supply or demand side seems almost like a philosophical
question.

~~~
pzone
OK, but some philosophical questions have reasonably clear answers. Here's the
philosophical difference. There's a realistic solution to zoning laws: fight
hard to remove them. There's no "solution" that involves slowing down or
constraining the growth of technology. That would not be a solution, that
would be be a disaster. Therefore, appropriate moral blame rests on zoning,
not tech.

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kafkaesq
What a simplistic article.

Any examination of the housing woes in SF will reveal multiple factors,
playing out over decades. And yes, "new money" is definitely one of them.

~~~
jdavis703
Which the article says, "The new wealthy are ruining everything because the
old wealthy decided not to let them live anywhere near them."

~~~
kafkaesq
No it doesn't.

It points to only two factors, and clearly implies that zoning (the decisions
of "the old wealthy") was the more important of the two.

As if decades of voting patterns in this (once) famously and beautifully
economically diverse city might not have also had something to do with it.

------
nether
I still hate the playas

