
These 95 Apartments Promised Affordable Rent in SF. Then 6,580 People Applied - spking
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/12/upshot/these-95-apartments-promised-affordable-rent-in-san-francisco-then-6580-people-applied.html
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Can somebody explain why Affordable Rent exists?

Living in San Francisco, or New York, or London is not a human right.

Note: I'm not trolling, I'm a left leaning person which favours basic income
and national health insurance, I just don't understand why living in a mega-
expensive city should be subventioned by the state. If you can't afford a
Ferrari, you buy a Toyota. Why not move to a less expensive place?

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navytank
You can't fill a city entirely with bankers, tech workers, and other
professionals. What about teachers? Police? Those in the restaurant industry?

I don't think anyone is claiming that everyone should have a "human right" to
live in SF. But when looking at the city as a systems problem, creating a
sustainable system may require these kinds of measures to allow the right mix
of people to live in the city.

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kofejnik
> measures to allow the right mix of people to live in the city.

So, human engineering, with totally good intentions. Can you define 'right mix
of people' in a non-totalitarian way?

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lovich
Can you survive in a city with no one but bankers and tech people? No police,
no resturaunts, no firefighters, no cleaners, app because the closest place
they can afford is 4+ hours away? Are you going to take turns with your co-
workers to clean the bathroom everyday, take out the trash, and clean the
floors? Are you able to pull the long hours tech jobs require and still have
time to cook food everyday? How would you even get that food if supermarkets
can't keep employees around to stock the shelves?

This is all the extreme end of the situation, and we're not there yet, but
it's the path we're on in many cities with San Francisco being at the
forefront.

You can't have every worker specialize in to a narrow niche and then suddenly
remove half of those niches from your society with no replacement and expect
it to run smoothly

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kofejnik
Wow what a nice strawman you have here! All the horrors you've described in so
much detail can and will be fixed very nicely by market pressure (if no one is
there to clean the bathroom, suddenly janitors will be in high demand and
command a nice salary, etc).

Forcing 'the right mix of people' _reeks_ of totalitarian state. Who gets to
decide?

Are there going to be income/education quotas? Male vs female? Racial quotes?

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lovich
Market pressures aren't fixing it, at least not fast enough to prevent a lot
of pain to actual living humans. Yea in the long term it might be fixed, but
in the here and now people are hurting. When I was out of college and stuck in
retail I had to decide whether I was stealing food or medicine that week or
going without, because those jobs don't pay enough to live. I am lucky enough
to be talented enough at software to get a job doing it, but you can't expect
everyone in the population to have those skills.

Expecting market pressure to take care of everyone is condemning people to
die. I agree that the market is more efficient, but that efficiency comes
without any sort of humanity. There are people who have no talents that are
worth enough in our current economic configuration to earn enough to live at
market clearing wages. Should we just let them starve or go homeless because
of it?

I also agree that planning a 'right mix' of people does reek of
totalitarianism, but the other choice isn't any better.

I don't see how letting the rich choose who gets to live a decent life based
on whose most useful to them is any less totalarian when our society is
channeling more and more wealth everyday to a small group of people.

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tripletao
(1) The usual argument against below-market housing here isn't "screw the
poor". It's "this is an ineffective show at a fix for a problem that the
market would resolve if we could build to the higher density that current
zoning prohibits".

(2) Even if you have only market-rate housing, that doesn't mean the people
who can't afford it end up homeless. You can just give them or their landlords
money. In the USA, that's Section 8.

Economists generally like Section 8. It gets a bad reputation, because the
apartments tend to be shabby; but that's a question of the amount of the
subsidy, not the delivery mechanism. For a given total to spend, I'd rather
put two people in a run-down $1.5k apartment each than flip a coin, put one of
them in a $3k apartment, and leave the other on the street.

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kofejnik
> I'd rather put two people in a run-down $1.5k apartment each than flip a
> coin, put one of them in a $3k apartment, and leave the other on the street.

Do you want to get USSR? Because one committee plays God and regulates who
lives where. Then some other committee, no doubt well-intentioned, will apply
the same logic to groceries. And cars. And salaries. And this is how you
become USSR.

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tripletao
We're discussing this in the context of people who can't afford market-rate
apartments. If the government doesn't step in, then some fraction of these
people will work harder and strive, and make it on their own. A different
fraction will die on the street.

I don't want people dying on the street. I think more permissive zoning laws
would solve a lot of our housing affordability crisis, but not all of it. For
the rest, I think subsidies for market-rate housing (like Section 8) are the
most efficient and transparent solution, and much less USSR-like than what the
linked article describes. What do you think?

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jimrandomh
This is what happens when construction is heavily suppressed by zoning
restrictions. Let people convert all the vacant lots and one- and two-story
buildings into midrises and highrises, especially near transit, and market
rents will fall and make lottery-housing unnecessary.

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boulos
This actually occurred quite successfully in the SOMA neighborhood of San
Francisco over the past few years. Several thousand units were built, and lo
and behold rent was flat to downwards depending on the part of SOMA.

Many people don't want to live in SOMA though, and the zoning in most of the
city doesn't allow for the same kind of rapid, high-density construction.

At the same time, Weiner's plan to designate everything as "transit rich" was
effectively crazy and DOA. If you're on the Market Street corridor, it makes
sense to have denser housing. Being up to a mile away from "transit" in a city
that is only 7 miles wide was a poorly reasoned stretch. He sadly threw the
baby out with the bathwater, setting back any rational discussion of upzoning
near actual transit.

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DrScump
Where, specifically, are you seeing _decreasing_ rents in SOMA?

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pg_bot
In the case of housing affordability crisis in California, government is the
problem. San Francisco has the second highest construction costs in the world
with an average of $330 per sqft to build[0] These high costs are due to the
city's overly burdensome approvals process and delays caused by housing
opponents.

If San Franciscans want cheaper housing all they would have to do is allow
building the housing already permitted under current zoning laws, and get rid
of rent control.

The prices in San Francisco are absolutely insane. My mortgage on a 8,400 sqft
commercial building costs as much as renting a closet in SF.

[0]
[http://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/San_Francisco_Const...](http://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/San_Francisco_Construction_Cost_Brief_-
_Terner_Center_January_2018.pdf)

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jeremyt
SF should be ashamed of the way they treat the poor and middle class.

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mlazos
This is what I’ve observed in ultra liberal (mostly white cities) on the west
coast especially: all of the local residents are for helping the poor, until
they realize that helping the poor implies they have to do more than discuss
social issues with their children at dinner. When it comes to supporting
policies, it becomes pure self interest and “preserving the character of my
city” ie everyone is white and wealthy.

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murkle
> a laptop sat in place of the bingo drum. Kenneth Biby, the property manager
> at Natalie Gubb Commons, clicked a button, sending the lottery numbers to a
> randomizing website.

Surely not?

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sudouser
have seen people in need apply for this at Twitter’s ‘neighbor nest’, filling
hundreds and hundreds of forms... wish I had a solution to help them

