
What's the Matter with San Francisco? - qzervaas
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/07/whats-the-matter-with-san-francisco/399506/
======
encoderer
The problem to me is that people want an amazing city with a booming economy
and gorgeous landscapes to be "affordable" for the man on the street.

I think our progressive politics IS to blame: for deluding San Franciscans
into believing such a thing is possible.

~~~
devalier
_I think our progressive politics IS to blame: for deluding San Franciscans
into believing such a thing is possible._

Actually it is possible. But the irony is that the person who came up with
best idea that would have fixed/prevented this problem, has now been
ostracized as a "fascist" by the left-wing tech community:
[http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formali...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formalist-manifesto-originally-posted.html)

If circa 2007, San Francisco itself had been turned into a join-stock
corporation, with all the existing residents given shares, then all residents
would have grown wealthy as the city grew rich. Furthermore, the government
would have had an incentive to allow new housing, since that would increase
total tax revenues, and thus increased dividends for all residents. Right now,
the politically powerful have no incentive to improve new building, since they
do not directly benefit.

~~~
tptacek
He's been ostracized for more complicated reasons than "fascism" \--- I'm not
sure what that word means. I think it's a little misleading to suggest that
this is a case of hair-trigger political correctness.

The irony of the "fascism" dig on this thread is that the source you've
provided appears to be this person _literally arguing for privatization in
order to create a corporatist autocracy._ By that way: _that 's_ the solution
to San Francisco's problems you find promising? Or am I misunderstanding you?

I think the author's "practical" political ideas are comical and worthy of
ridicule, but that they alone don't make the author problematic. The virulent
strain of scientific crypto-racism that seems to run through their writing
though; that's a problem for me.

~~~
devalier
" _the source you 've provided appears to be this person literally arguing for
privatization in order to create a corporatist autocracy. By that way: that's
the solution to San Francisco's problems you find promising_"

The joint-stock form of government works extremely well for companies that
make software operating systems, so I would like to see it tried for companies
making physical operating systems (a city being an operating system for
people). I don't go as far as moldbug's proposal (and I'm not sure if Moldbug
goes as far as Moldbug's proposal, he always likes to frame the debate by
making the most extreme argument in one direction). I don't want the
corporation to operate the courts or to run the army. There should be an
independent court system and the city government would have to follow rule-of-
law. But in general, I think formalizing ownership over the city would lead to
more pareto optimal solutions, and I think that would be good for the existing
residents.

------
wyclif
It seems to me one of the biggest problems is rampant NIMBYism.

~~~
nemo44x
This was voted down and is something of an inflammatory comment but there's
truth to it. You see it throughout the Valley and the entire Bay Area. It's
why there is little density in the Valley in my opinion, why the public
transit isn't very good among other things.

I'm afraid it's hard to change. People who paid so much for their Valley homes
certainly do not like the idea of the supply dramatically increasing and their
pleasant, small communities becoming drastically urbanized. And I understand
that.

But the progressive nature of this area has always seemed face value to me as
an outsider who travels to this region often. It's incredibly nice here but I
believe it is time to begin building lots of high rises (scaled for quakes) in
some city near SF and urbanizing areas while creating mix zoned housing and
commercial similar to what you'd see in NYC. It's time for an experiment like
that in the Valley somewhere.

~~~
x0x0
But a big piece of it is sf getting fucked by the nimbyism elsewhere.

viz Mountain View: they just authorized something like 3.4 million ft2 of
office space between LinkedIn, Google, etc while _supposedly_ they're giong to
add 1.5k to 5k housing units. In the future. Where are the other, say, 15 to
20 thousand people going to live? Mountain View doesn't give a shit, but a
bunch of them are going to have to life in sf, because that's where there's
housing.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
How about just having the state use eminent domain to seize half of Atherton,
hook it back up to CalTrain, and build dense urban housing there, with easy
commuting to Mountain View and Redwood City?

I jest... partially. Atherton is _horrible_ for the whole area.

~~~
nemo44x
Honestly, that would be a great place to start. Build lots of streets with
high rises with light rail and commercial and residential stacked.

With a location near Palo Alto/Stanford and the region I would bet it becomes
unbelievably high in demand.

Obviously this could never happen there!

------
coldcode
It's very difficult to build a city to serve two populations, one rich and one
poor (or at least average). I would love to work in SF but have zero desire to
live there because it's too expensive for everyone but the IPO crowd.

~~~
Pyxl101
There is another way to look at this. The city serves two populations: people
who currently live in a city, and people who would like to immigrate to the
city.

As a resident of a growing city, I find it somewhat puzzling and inconvenient
that it's taken as an article of faith that large city growth is a good thing.
Growth is good, but it's also bad: it brings congestion, filth, and higher
housing prices. Even with the development of affordable housing, housing
prices still rise. Furthermore, the traffic associated with high-density
houses places a strain on the transit system and other public infrastructure
and services that the city is usually unequipped to handle. Transit is often
upgraded far too late, long after congestion has negatively impacted the lives
of residents. It's happening to me right now in my city: coworkers have
reported their commute rising considerably over the past year.

So as the resident of a city who is happy with the way that it was, and is
increasingly unhappy with the way it's becoming, what I'm wondering is: why
should I not vote to block and prevent this growth? A lot of city politics
talks as if growth is naturally a good thing that should always be pursued,
but talk far less often of quality of life for residents. Growth often comes
at the expense of current residents. (Gradual growth is healthy and necessary,
but excess growth harms everyone.)

If discouraging high-density housing means higher housing prices, but buys me
less congestion and a higher quality of life, then that seems like a good
tradeoff to me as a resident. Otherwise, I get higher housing prices _and_
more congestion and a worse quality of life. Cities should serve their current
residents first, and prospective future immigrants second.

I suspect that the strategy that San Francisco residents are pursuing is a
strategy designed specifically to make it expensive to live there, to
discourage further immigration that they do not want.

~~~
secstate
That's all well and good, but you missed the fact that what made SFO the
melting pot that it's known for today was a liberal immigration stance and an
egalitarian mindset. What you're describing is conservative immigration and a
preservation mindset, which is fine, but the opposite of what made San
Francisco, San Francisco.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

------
SeoxyS
> It invented new models of delivering affordable housing and health care. It
> invested deeply in public space, from parks to bike lanes. It adopted a
> transit-first policy

Is that really true? San Francisco, as much as I love it, never struck me as a
particularly forward-thinking place when it comes to public transportation,
bike-friendliness, healthcare, or housing policies. Compare it to any European
city (e.g. bike lanes in Amsterdam, transit in London, health care in
Switzerland, or Germany in housing policy), and San Francisco looks pretty
weak. The only thing it really has going for it is its population density and
diversity.

Don't get me wrong, I adore this city. But I feel like it has succeeded
_despite_ its policies, not because of them.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
California has always managed to think of itself as forward-thinking because
they've never asked what anyone else thinks.

------
smtddr
I just had a discussion about this with a coworker.

I very strongly agree with this article. Diversity does not survive in
expensive areas and I strongly believe that is worth preserving in San
Francisco. I understand the problems rent-control causes, but if it were
removed and all residential areas jump up to market price then diversity would
be completely destroyed. That might not mean anything to a lot of people who
work in tech _(the feeling I get when I talk about it with coworkers)_ , but I
think it means a lot.

~~~
Lazare
> Diversity does not survive in expensive areas

Arguably true.

> I understand the problems rent-control causes, but if it were removed and
> all residential areas jump up to market price then diversity would be
> completely destroyed.

As a matter of theory, it's hard to see that rent control actually protects
diversity. And emperically, it's absolutely not doing that, in San Francisco
or in other cities which have tried it.

Here are you choices:

1\. Remove restrictions on building. Housing will be plentiful, diversity will
be expanded, but what currently makes the city special will be lost (and maybe
it'll end up even better, but it'll certainly change). 2\. Maintain
restrictions on building. Housing will be scarce, diversity will be lost, but
the city won't change.

Rent control is entirely orthogonal to this. _IF_ you have scarce housing,
_then_ you must allocate it among the people who want it. One way to do this
is via the market. If you do not like the way the market will allocate it,
then you can cap the rents and allocate it in some other fashion. But as a
society, we are extremely bad at allocating things fairly (hence why we rely
on markets so much; it's not that they're very good, it's that we're really
crap).

Which means that the way housing under rent control will inevitably be
allocated _isn 't going to preserve diversity._ Rent control makes the lucky
few who get to live in the city even luckier, but it doesn't tell you who ends
up being one of those lucky few. But we know, from decades of experience, that
the lucky few end tend to up being the already privileged.

Notice that San Francisco—with strong rent control laws—is actually not a
diverse city. Oakland—with weak ones—is one of the most diverse cities in the
US. Similar patterns can be seen across the US. Your assumption that rent
control aids diversity is supported neither by theory nor evidence; the fact
that rent control _could_ enable the poor to afford to live in a city doesn't
mean that it _will_. And it doesn't.

What really helps diversity is having a _lot_ of housing relative to the
number of people who want to live there. San Francisco has scarce housing.

~~~
ectoplasm
Rent control is about not increasing rents by too much each year while you are
living there. Once you move out, the landlord can agree to a new lease at any
amount. The only way to circumvent this is to assign your lease to the next
tenant when you move out. Most people just move out after a while and the
apartment goes back on the market. You get some very long term tenants, but so
what? It's a small percentage of the population.

Given this, I think rent control is fairly ineffective at preserving
diversity, but I like it because it means that people can't be forced to move
all of a sudden because their landlord puts the rent up by $500 a month. I
don't believe that the already astronomical rents in SF would go much higher
if rent control was abolished anyway.

That said, building more housing obviously helps. As does making nearby cities
nicer places to live.

------
ectoplasm
The problem is that San Francisco is/was at the epicenter of two cultural
explosions (the hippies and the hackers, to put it bluntly), and they kind of
clash just a little bit.

~~~
fapjacks
Please don't confuse the frat boys with business degrees with the hackers who
have strong roots in hippie culture.

~~~
ectoplasm
Don't worry, I took some discrete math, and I know that A is a subset of C and
B is a subset of C does not imply A intersects B.

~~~
fapjacks
Your response reads like you're saying that the frat boys in tech management
are somehow a subset of or descended from hippie culture. I know better than
to think you're actually saying that, though, because that is insane.

------
Tiktaalik
Are there any good brownfield (old industrial land) sites left in SF that can
be rezoned to high density residential? If you build residential in those
sites then you'll typically get little to no push back from progressives as
you are not evicting existing, low income, residents in order to build more
expensive housing.

By extensively rezoning vast swaths of downtown industrial land to residential
Vancouver got around these problems SF is currently encountering for a few
decades.

~~~
joeyo
Presumably this is what will happen to the entirety of the Central Waterfront
from Mission Bay to Candlestick point.

------
baddox
> The city’s devastating affordability crisis has an unlikely villain—its
> famed progressive politics.

Who deems that unlikely? Isn't that the widely-accepted answer?

------
caseysoftware
Austin is going through some similar issues. After a generation or two of
anti-growth city leaders and crazy growth the last ~10 years, our roads are
crowded, the public transport is a mess, and housing is going through the
roof. Now they're playing catch up trying to make up for 25 years in the next
few.. and it's physically impossible.

* I moved here 5 years ago, so I admit to "being part of the problem."

------
vinceyuan
This One Intersection Explains Why Housing Is So Expensive In San Francisco
[1]

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-housing-is-so-
expensiv...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-housing-is-so-expensive-in-
san-francisco-2014-4)

------
ams6110
_the city reveled in its diversity, with groups claiming distinct
neighborhoods_

~~~
caseysoftware
So I'm not the only one who thought that was an odd line?

~~~
corysama
The neighborhoods in SF are very distinct. The Marina and the Mission are very
different from each other. This makes the city as a whole diverse.

Bikes of San Francisco:
[https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4084/5112789301_da50dca4bd_b.j...](https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4084/5112789301_da50dca4bd_b.jpg)

~~~
DonHopkins
I could never figure out why fixies were so popular with the SF hipsters in a
city with such steep hills. Or how fixies make hipsters so hip, for that
matter. In Amsterdam, where it's flat enough that one-speed bikes are
practical, fixies are called "Oma Fiets" for "Granny Bikes".
[http://www.workcycles.com/home-products/handmade-city-
bicycl...](http://www.workcycles.com/home-products/handmade-city-
bicycles/workcycles-omafiets-dutch-granny-bike)

~~~
corysama
I don't bike in the city. But, what I've heard is that fixies are popular
because they are so crappy and cheap that they aren't worth stealing. They are
also easy to repair.

As hipness goes, a big theme of hipsters is to work really hard at looking
like you aren't trying and don't care. Throw on some second-hand-store clothes
to ride up the hill on a crappy, completely inappropriate bike to a very
expensive dive bar to overpay for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and a dirty well
whisky because that's how much you don't care.

------
icanhackit
_the city reveled in its diversity, with groups claiming distinct
neighborhoods as their own in a modern twist on the tradition of ethnic urban
enclaves._

I live in a similarly diverse area where people of all backgrounds hang out.
The surrounding cities are ethnically homogeneous yet this one is not.
Individualism, despite some of the shittier aspects of human behavior it can
bring to the table, broke people up from being in ethnicity X and thus area X
to being defined by sexuality, political leaning, consumption habits and
expressive tendencies, seeking those who had similar traits. Ignoring any
narcissistic aspects, defining people by those traits has the benefit of
producing better social liquidity.

------
throw_away_555
For those who haven't studied economics:

When you restrict the supply of something scarce or the demand for it goes up,
the price increases.

In this case the "something" is housing. It's essentially illegal to build
anything in the bay area which means the supply isn't changing much. But the
demand is skyrocketing. Therefore the price is skyrocketing.

This would all be fixed very quickly if it was legal to buy some land,
demolish what's on there, and build a skyscraper instead. San Francisco would
look like Manhattan within two years.

If you study the 1906 earthquake, you find that a lot of people suddenly
didn't have homes. They were all rehoused within a couple of weeks. Today,
being illegal to build anything, and with rent controls on what does exist,
we'd have a lot of homeless people for a long time.

We all want everyone to have a nice life, and we intend well with these laws.
Economics concerns itself with what actually happens when you incent people
though, not what we intend by those incentives.

~~~
dylanjermiah
And when a price is artificially lowered below its market rate, there will be
a shortage. In this case, rent control. The combination of those two factors
is what makes the housing situation so terrible.

~~~
iofj
And building skyscrapers on a 2d surface doesn't scale ... so the only other
option doesn't work either.

~~~
dylanjermiah
What exactly do you mean?

------
bradgessler
What's being done to change or reverse the damage these policies have
inflicted on San Francisco?

~~~
nether
Flight to the suburbs and hope that urbanization occurs before one turns 30
(unlikely).

------
sbuttgereit
As a San Franciscan all I can say is... where does one even begin to answer
such a question? :-)

------
nugget
California: incessantly talks about the need for equality more than anyone
else in the world; creates least equal, most economically stratified society
in the United States where all except the independently wealthy feel uneasy.

Texas: makes fun of Californians who constantly preach about inequality;
creates a pretty equal, egalitarian society that most citizens feel
comfortable in.

~~~
tstactplsignore
Shame that this has been upvoted, because it's not really true.

The Gini coefficient of CA and TX are extremely similar [1]- CA is ranked #44
in the US, and TX is ranked #43.

However, social mobility of the poorest percentiles is significantly higher in
Californian cities [2]. In fact, of the major US metropolises, the top four
best cities for social mobility of children in the bottom quintile are: San
Jose, San Francisco, Seattle, and San Diego, in order. [2] Social mobility in
Texas is significantly lower, and extraordinarily lower throughout the rest of
the southern US. (Texas is a nice exception)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-
incom...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-income-
ladder-location-matters.html?pagewanted=all)

~~~
nugget
It's about quality of life, not relative income. I used these two states as
examples because I've spent a lot of time and have a lot of friends in both.
In Texas, a middle class income sets you up with a decent house, in a decent
hood, with a decent school district, and a fairly low stress life. You mix
with others from random walks of life. In California, it feels like you spend
every dollar just to survive, and you tend to associate with a narrower
spectrum of peers.

~~~
tzs
Is it actually possible to have a "decent school district" in Texas after what
the Texas State Board of Education has done to the history textbooks?

McCarthy's blacklists were justified because of widespread Communist
infiltration?

Slavery was just a side issue in the Civil War?

No mention of Jim Crow or the Ku Klux Klan?

Four major thinkers who greatly influenced the Founding Fathers were Locke,
Montesquieu, Blackstone, and _Moses_?

Science doesn't really fare well with the Texas State Board of Education,
either.

------
michaelochurch
_No one made San Francisco the most expensive place in the country on purpose.
That’s the tragedy._

I disagree. I've worked for a couple "limousine liberals" in New York. So has
my wife and so have many of my friends. Many of the limousine liberals are
assholes (not that he's very liberal, nor is he wealthy, and he's also
fictional... but think of Frank Underwood). Sure, they vote Democratic, but
they're nasty, elitist people who will hurt your career for any reason or no
reason at all, and who put a lot more stock into meaningless social prestige
(connections, pedigree) than typical conservatives. Their liberalism is mostly
an air they put on in order to make themselves socially acceptable since they
can't hide their wealth. (That's not to say that all wealthy liberals are like
that. The type certainly exists, though.) Frankly, it's at the point that I
don't really care about a person's macropolitics. Some of my favorite people
are conservative (I think they're wrong, but that's another issue) and some of
the worst people are nominally progressive (and probably sincere in their
support for left-of-center politics). As with religious belief, some expect a
correlation between position and ethical character, but the actual correlation
seems to be near zero.

Frankly, I think that this _was_ intentional. It has nothing to do with being
"a conservative" or "a liberal". This NIMBYism is about maintaining high house
prices; it is _about_ being a selfish piece of shit. It just gets a leftist
veneer because these people are good at coming up with an argument that other
people will listen to. End of story.

 _I think the progressive anti-growth sentiment is earnest; it’s people
honestly trying to protect their city from unwanted change._

That's the opposite of "progressive". They're _leftist_ , but that's not the
same thing as being progressive. Kim Jong-Un is a leftist. So was Stalin. So
are many of the Euro-rednecks

The U.S. is different from Europe in that our mouth-breathers, kooks, racists,
regressives, and assholes are more numerous on the right of the economic
spectrum... to the point where tropes are made of it. In Europe (and in NYC
and San Francisco) the authoritarian nutjobs and the xenophobes and the anti-
progress crowd is more evenly split between the left and right.

Some component of the Bay Area housing evil is ill-thought-out liberal
politics (see: legacy rent control systems that don't allow rents to rise even
with inflation) but much more of this stuff is exclusionary than people will
admit to.

------
jmspring
San Francisco is basically 7 miles by 7 miles. How much of what is there are
you going to tear down to accommodate the influx of tech? Since gold rush
times San Francisco has seen ebb and flow of populations and boom and bust
periods. There is continual change, that said if it allows continual teardown
of existing buildings and building of high rises, might as well be in
Manhattan.

~~~
debaserab2
Manhattan island is 33 square miles and its population is 1.6 million. San
Fransisco's population is 800k. There's a lot of potential room for growth
before it becomes Manhattan.

