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.
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.
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
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.