
How San Francisco's Progressive Politics Led to Its Housing Affordability Crisis - mpweiher
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/07/whats-the-matter-with-san-francisco/399506/
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ProfessorLayton
While SF needs to build tons more housing, a major issue is that Bay Area
cities/counties are only watching out for themselves, often to the detriment
of neighboring residents (Such as building tons of office space, but no
corresponding housing and worsening congestion).

It seems that the Bay Area would benefit a lot from NYC-style borough
designations. Doing so would allow proper residential planning and
transportation infrastructure.

~~~
0max
We voted down such an idea a century ago
[http://www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/20080709_19991377isreg...](http://www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/20080709_19991377isregionalgovernmenttheanswerfredsiegel.pdf)

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Torai
Move out. US is big.

You want to have house affordability when sharing a city with people that make
money from house price speculation and, maybe, have some influence of city's
politics?

Then propose to regulate house prices. Establish some maximum. Oh, but you
don't like it cause it would go against "free market rules"? Then stop
moaning. In a free market the most powerful dominate.

So give up on that battle and move out.

~~~
nostrademons
This is already happening - there's significant outflow from the Bay Area to
other relatively progressive cities like Seattle, Portland, Boulder/Denver,
Asheville NC, Austin, etc. In many cases they've turned those cities even
_more_ progressive in the process. My very conservative aunt in Portland
complains about all the Californians moving in with their liberal politics.
Colorado was a Republican-leaning swing state when I was in college, but it's
turned quite Democratic lately.

They're replaced by domestic migrants from the Midwest, South, and farm belt,
and by international immigrants from China, Taiwan, India, Vietnam, the Middle
East, and many other countries. Interestingly, this "Bay Area conveyor belt"
is perhaps the best thing that could happen for progressive politics, as many
people newly arrived in the Bay Area come from very conservative regions, they
often pick up more liberal values in the area (this is helped by selection
bias - typically you don't pack up and move to a whole new city unless you are
somewhat open to new experiences), and then they move on to other areas that
were previously swing states.

~~~
finnthehuman
>In many cases they've turned those cities even more progressive in the
process

Be careful what you wish for, I remember a saying from when I lived in
Vermont: "They moved here because they like it better than Connecticut, now
they're trying to turn Vermont into Connecticut."

Don't blame that attitude on the right - they'd just call them Carpetbaggers.
This is the kind of thing our non-democrat left would say (Even then-mayor
Sanders, but I can't find the youtube clip of it right now because I don't
want to listen to a bunch of hours-long interviews).

Unless the only thing important to you is turning the state from red to blue,
all this does is poison local politics.

>"Bay Area conveyor belt" is perhaps the best thing that could happen for
progressive politics, as many people newly arrived in the Bay Area come from
very conservative regions, they often pick up more liberal values in the area

If I wanted the left to continue shooting themselves in the foot, I would be
championing this too.

You're describing the same process as when kids from a strongly-conservative
upbringing come to UVM and swing left. They are inevitability full of terrible
ideas, naïve idealism and need years to mellow out into anything resembling a
tenable political perspective. They're not necessarily dummies, but their
ideas haven't been shaped by debate or tested against reality.

~~~
behindmyscreen
Well, we have that process on both ends of the political spectrum.

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incompatible
Why is progressive politics the cause? If we take "progressive" as "more
socialist", socialists are famous for their cheap housing projects.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=soviet+housing&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=soviet+housing&tbm=isch)

~~~
gt_
I think “progressive” is a fairly American term, and puts a certain sheen over
left politics. It’s tough to say whether it’s socialist or not because it
never seems to matter. It’s more of a feeling, or a vibe, than a critique. It
describes the unconscious desires of a demographic very well, but falls short
on political content. In this sense, it may have been an OK choice of words.

~~~
incompatible
Terms like "progressive" have been around for so long, and used for so many
different movements, that pinning down what somebody means when they use them
may be difficult.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism_in_the_United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism_in_the_United_States)
doesn't even mention housing, so I guess it's not a core issue.

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gamechangr
> The San Francisco Left could never come to terms with its central
> contradiction of being against the creation of more “places” that would give
> new people the chance to live in the city.

I'm not from SF, but I'm curious to know if those who live there (or grew up
there) agree with the author?

~~~
Gibbon1
I was born in San Jose. And in SF for the last twenty years.

Three things he doesn't touch on here.

1\. Proposition 13. A malign issue with Prop 13 is that it make housing a
financial drain on city and county governments. Under prop 13 property taxes
do not support the services required by residential housing.

2 There is very little opportunities for greenfield development and building
costs are high. This is especially true in San Francisco proper, but also in a
lot of other cities. When I was a little kid we used to play in the local
cherry orchards.

Here is an example, if you look in the google street view, there are three
palm trees. I know those used to be the palm trees that lined the driveway of
an old farm house surrounded by orchards. The developer dug them up and
replanted them when the housing development went in.

[https://goo.gl/maps/q8FyJdPbcfz](https://goo.gl/maps/q8FyJdPbcfz)

The housing development went in 40 years ago.

3\. Is the failure of post war neoliberal/conservative politics and social
organization in the US. There is a premium for places that have resisted it
the best. And that is fundamentally why the author moved to SF in the first
place.

That brings up that SF has no real ability to control the influx of people
into the city. Because of the tax system imposed by the state it has minimal
resources as well. The geographical constraints, very high building costs[1],
and the desire for those that control capital to live in SF is the root of the
problem.

[1] How do you build affordable housing when the building costs are $500-600
sqft? That doesn't include acquisition, design costs, permits and fees. You
end up with condo's that cost $600-750k.

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lopmotr
Isn't it strange that people always seem to complain about a city or town
suffering some problem as if it was a person. If you can't afford to live
there, then don't. If you benefit from high property prices, enjoy it. If you
grew up there and feel sad that you can't afford to anymore, then recognize
that property rights exist to give the owners priority access to land so
anyone who doesn't obtain property ownership has to expect that one-day
they'll be forced out. They can create a bohemian utopia somewhere else if
they want that. Why should it be tied to some arbitrary geographical area?

~~~
closeparen
Housing and transportation politics are severely under-appreciated. Your local
zoning and public transit authorities have far greater impact on your life
than anything happening in Washington D.C., yet federal politics get all the
airtime. Decisions about local government are made by very small groups. Until
recently, the politics of development have been project-by-project skirmishes
between the developer and a few opposing neighbors. The rest of us were not
necessarily aware that this was happening, or how the pattern of outcomes in
hundreds of these block-level skirmishes over decades could hurt us.

"Complaining," as you put it, gets people thinking and talking about the issue
in a general way, and it doesn't necessarily take that many people doing so to
create radical change in municipal governance. There's potentially a large
constituency that's fine with seeing more multifamily structures and on board
with supply-and-demand market dynamics, but doesn't necessarily know or care
about their municipal regulatory regimes until the impact is explained.
Activating these potential pro-growth voters is a worthwhile project. It
worked on me.

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gt_
A nuanced conversation on this is well within the popular imagination but
outside the limits of this article.

~~~
closeparen
The overwhelming majority of San Franciscans live in "trickle-down housing."
It was the solution to their problems until they took it off the table for
future arrivals.

