
San Francisco must end its self-inflicted housing woes - nerfhammer
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/San-Francisco-must-end-its-self-inflicted-housing-13525307.php
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simonw
I live in San Francisco.

Every time I visit pretty much any other city in the world I'm reminded of how
refreshing it is to be somewhere that people who aren't on insane software
engineer salaries can afford to live.

The selfish perspective is this: I can afford it here. My quality of life is
greatly reduced by the fact that hardly anyone else can.

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etrautmann
This captures my feeling exactly. I used to view SF as the ideal place to
live, but economic forces that push SF towards an engineer-only tech
monoculture make those who can afford to live there worse off as well.

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clay_the_ripper
I am constantly arguing with people in the SF area about housing. The most
common arguments I hear (and these are not from NIMBY type entrenched
interests) are that “if we build housing it will just be ultra-high cost
housing for the rich” or “it will just be more gentrification” or “it will
ruin our neighborhoods” (the implication being that new buildings will all be
unappealing cookie cutter malls or something. I am constantly finding that
your average run of the mill resident actively is against ANY kind of “pro
building” arguments. It’s really quite astonishing. Anyone else in the area
find this attitude? I find hn to be generally pro “build more”, so I’m
wondering if anyone here has any links to studies, evidence or arguments to
refute these seemingly ubiquitous views.

I find it incredibly frustrating.

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7e
Those people already have housing, and like SF enough to remain. They've
already made it.

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clay_the_ripper
Although it’s not like these people are homeowners. They are ALL renters!
Suffering from the same incredibly high rent that we all do. That’s kind of my
point, I would expect homeowners to have this attitude, but not my fellow
renters who are getting reamed every month by exorbitant rents.

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samatman
> Suffering from the same incredibly high rent that we all do

Are you certain about this last point? SF has rent stabilization, so someone
who has been in the same unit for many years might well be paying rents
substantially below market.

Naturally, this makes rents that much higher for those who arrived recently or
decided to move, and often leaves those with rent control ‘trapped’ in a
situation where they can only afford to stay put.

It’s a classic case of ameliorating a first-order effect while making second-
order effects worse.

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Semiapies
Or not, and techies and others can just move to more sanely-run cities instead
of rushing the Bay area like lemmings.

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peteretep
It’s a shame this is downvoted. Allowing people to vote with their feet seems
the better solution here.

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paulsutter
Why aren’t there dozens of class action suits against the city?

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mc32
People keep on electing the same kinds of supervisors. They hate the way the
city of SF is run, but we keep electing the same kinds of people who
perpetuate the problem.

Most of the mayors, including the current one, typically want to build, but
the Supes have other "priorities" and loathe that developers might make a
profit. Then, of course, we have neighbors who don't want to allow progress
and want to nix most housing developments.

