Although I generally agree with the sentiment of the article, I strongly disagree that we need specifically "affordable" housing. State-subsidized "below market rate" housing that enables people with low salaries to occupy highly-demanded space is incredibly inefficient and also likely doesn't serve the interests of the people it is supposed to help.
I don't see why the ability to live in San Francisco is any different than the ability to afford a BMW or a Tesla. Should the government subsidize "below market rate" luxury cars too? What would be the incentive to get an education or work hard? Personally I feel somewhat offended when there are dozens of below market rate units available and I'm actually excluded from attempting to buy them because I earn too much money. Meanwhile there are hardly any homes available for people who can afford the houses without subsidies and we bid up the houses to obscene prices due to lack of supply.
Also, if the people who work in SF or other high income areas cannot afford to live there at current wages, there should be pressure on them to leave and work elsewhere. This would increase demand for their labor and drive prices up, all else being equal. (I know, there are other factors here, but those should be dealt with separately, not by adding more layers of complexity to the problem.)
Further, if those workers cannot afford to rent or buy, lowering the cost of renting or buying also reduces the pressure on employers to raise their wages.
As a recent nyc -> sf transplant, i think the best short term solution to making living in the bay area more affordable is to run one track of bart back and forth from 12am - 4am. SF needs a brooklyn, a real brooklyn, that you can get to when your shift at the restaurant/bar/other-service-job ends at 1am.
Public infrastructure is a public good, and service industry workers can't be expected to cab it to oakland when their shifts end. Heck, the bikelane on the new bay bridge segment ends before treasure island. I could NEVER have lived in brooklyn if the non-auto infrastructure was the way it is between sf and oakland.
>As a recent nyc -> sf transplant, i think the best short term solution to making living in the bay area more affordable is to run one track of bart back and forth from 12am - 4am. SF needs a brooklyn, a real brooklyn, that you can get to when your shift at the restaurant/bar/other-service-job ends at 1am.
That... sounds pretty great. As a bonus, it would make public transit usable for recreational use, and probably keep a bunch of drunks off the road.
The biggest reason why I avoided buying a restaurant in SF is because there is no answer to the problem you outline, yet. Hiring and keeping employees was a clusterfuck. A lot of them lived in East Bay or Daly City, and this was a problem I saw something like 2-3 years ago. It's probably worse now.
I have a restaurant in East Bay and I have employees on the same side of the bay that will walk 15 more minutes to save 35 cents on BART fares. I pay them more than minimum wage plus overtime and meals, and I offer to pay the 70 cent difference every day since I don't want any of them walking alone too late at night. They just pocket the 70 cents and keep on walking. Compared to my day job and my fiancé's day job and how we'll uber instead of walking 15 minutes...
It's not just improving BART service, it's also about improving public transit in general I think - including to the point that fares drop. My cousin from Seoul completely flipped out on me shortly after coming to the US. He realized that he was spending ~$10 and a couple of hours every day to get to his school in downtown SF from Alameda. Incredibly rude awakening if you're used to one of the busiest and best subway systems in the world, I guess.
From what I understand, Bart needs that 12-4 timeslot for track maintenance.
> Unlike some public transit systems with multiple sets of tracks on the same routes, BART doesn't have the duplication that would allow us to run trains on one set while performing maintenance on another. Third-rail power has to be shut down for maintenance crews to be able to operate safely and do the work that keeps the system safe and reliable. And the trains can’t run when the power is down.
It doesn't actually require extra tracks to run a 24/7 metro and also do maintenance. A very common solution is single-tracking. BART has two tracks, one for trains in each direction. What some systems do is just close one side for maintenance, and then run trains on the other side in both directions. For low-frequency service (e.g. hourly night service) it can just be a single train shuttling back and forth end-to-end. For higher-frequency service a few other options are possible. You can split the route into smaller segments (say, in half) and have one train shuttling back-and-forth on each segment. Customers change trains at segment boundaries if they want to go further. Alternately, some systems can run trains fully in opposite directions, if there is a siding somewhere along the route that can be used for passing.
The Copenhagen metro is a 24/7 system, without extra tracks, that uses this method. On maintenance nights a usual pattern is a brief complete-service shutdown 1:00-1:30am to switch from regular operation to single-tracking. One track is taken out of service and powered down, and service at ~20-minute headways resumes on the remaining track. The Atlanta subway also uses this method for longer weekend maintenance sometimes, going to single-track mode all weekend (they don't do 24/7 operation, though, I would guess due to budget issues).
It's possible BART can't do maintenance with single-track operation due to how it's set up, but their message implies it's physically impossible without having spare tracks, which is not true in other systems.
This is exactly what they did with the G train in brooklyn on the weekends. It's 2 track only, and they would shutdown one side, transfer to the other side at Bedford-Nostram. Was it a pain in the ass? Yes. Was it way better than no service... absolutely!
The biggest controversy seems to be over where private buses that don't have their own private loading/unloading infrastructure can stop and load/unload. Some cities tolerate unofficial use of public bus stops, or look the other way when buses load/unload in a blatantly illegal way (by just stopping in a lane of traffic and blocking it, as "Chinatown buses" typically do). Other cities are less tolerant of that. But when private buses actually pay for their own private loading/unloading facilities on land they either own or properly rent, like Greyhound does, then there's no problem.
No, they are not legal: "To fit under CPUC's regulatory rebric, charter party carries can't just pick passengers up on the street, like taxis or traditional buses do, which is why Leap rides need to be ordered ahead of time through the company's iPhone app."
Cities don't allow private busses to obtain curb rights in the first place.
Greyhound is intercity, not intracity. Useless for this purpose.
The only controversy stems from taxis & muni busses protecting their turf.
I'm curious how Brooklyn dealt/deals with the issue of crime and public safety. I lived in West Oakland for while, and this seems to be the general region where a 'Brooklyn' type of spot is trying to emerge. BART station is right there, and it's close to the bridge for all-night bus lines and bikers too. But it's just such a friggin dangerous place to be (at any hour of the day or night) that I wonder if it's even possible.
There are a couple places you just don't get off the train in brooklyn: east new york and brownsville, but on the whole, even areas below the JMZ: east williamsburg/bed stuy/bushwick aren't nearly as dangerous as they may seem by looking at them.
Yeah unfortunately today there really is no area in Oakland near a BART station where I would want to be walking around with a pocket full of cash/tip money late at night. There's a lot of investment and excitement happening in West Oakland, and it's interesting to watch the process. But until they get the public safety issues to a somewhat reasonable level, I don't see it. What I see are young hip people moving in, getting robbed or worse and going back to the City to live in a shared closet for 2k a month.
I don't know anything about city planning or the history of it, but places like New York must have gone through similar transitions. What worked, what didn't? I feel like there has to be a lot of history to learn from on the topic.
Things that don't work: rent control, historical preservation restrictions, burdensome light air and view restrictions.
Things that do work: letting rich people move in, letting developers build what they want, and using that massive tax base to build high-quality public transit.
Letting developers do whatever they please is a horrible idea. Most developers are crooks and do whatever they can to make the most amount of money, which is why most cities have city plans and zones to prevent developers from shitting on everything.
Secondly, historical preservation makes a city what it is. Would Paris be the same without the Eiffel Tower? Good historical preservation enhances and defines the city.
On the other hand you have Tokyo where buildings are built for a 25-year lifespan. I would not call Tokyo a boring city, it's just different. It has its own modern character. Also, Paris was planned post WWii, unlike London which is more haphazard in configuration. The Eiffel Tower was nearly demolished after the expo. It's only now that people think of that Iron monstrosity as emblematic of the city. Sometimes a blight does take on its own charm, such as the Eiffel tower, or Tokyo (radio) tower.
I also wouldn't mind if they would add some extra cars so it isn't standing room only during commute hours. How hard is it to add an extra car to an existing train? Raise my fare, I'll pay not to have to be packed in like cattle.
If only it worked this way. Fares are already set years in advance and BART management seems to have their own ideas on how they want to spend the limited resources they have.
I'd imagine the length of the train is limited to the shortest platform it has to support. Not from SF, so not sure if there really is room for expansion.
Frequency might be another answer - run the trains closer together, but again there are limits there too.
I've never seen a BART station shorter than ten cars, though many rush hour trains only use eight or nine.
I seem to remember that BART has an outdated and overwhelmed computer system which requires greater spacing between trains (and sometimes fails all the way down to manual control). At least new cars will have three doors instead of two, which should get a train out of a station faster.
I think I've been on trains in Japan (albeit not in Tokyo) where the first two cars didn't fit on the platform, and passengers were alerted to switch cars if getting off at that station.
Not sure how well it'd work given commuter congestion, but it warrants some consideration.
When I lived in Barcelona there were some low-traffic platforms shorter than the trains that went through them. I think the cars at the end of the train had big warning signs that they wouldn't open at station [X].
The issue is not "I want to move to San Francisco", the issue is "I've lived in this neighborhood my entire life, and now I can't afford to any longer." Let's not even get into how expensive it is to actually move, all of the complication and complexity involved in moving a family with children to a different school district, all of the paperwork that needs updated... it's nontrivial.
You shouldn't be surprised when people who are currently being colonized against their will and having their entire lives thrown into upheaval without any upside are a little bit upset about it.
Perhaps the person should have bought a house instead of rented? If they're renting (I still rent) they should understand that rents go up and they may not be able to afford to live there.
Let's say they can't buy. I am not indifferent to their problem, but I don't see why having lived in a place for a given length of time should mean that person has a right to live permanently in a place they can no longer afford. And I don't see why it should deny someone who can afford to live there the ability to do so.
> I, personally, don't feel that those with money should be able to run roughshod over those who don't.
What other method of allocating scarce resources did you have in mind? Random selection seems less fair than high income, because income is at least somewhat correlated with producing value. I mean, if you disagree with this, you basically disagree with the free market. I agree our current market is imperfect but I don't think randomly gifting scarce housing space to people is better.
Whether or not free markets are the best way to allocate housing is another debate in of itself. I think they are, but the question for you is what specific method of allocating housing would be better? The beauty of free markets is that they are often, given time, self-correcting (not in all situations, which is one reason we have regulation in general). In any other market, rising housing prices would stimulate developers to build more housing; the problem is that in SF, local govt regulation stymies expansion, both vertical and horizontal.
> In any other market, rising housing prices would stimulate developers to build more housing
It's not clear to me that this would actually bring down prices, and existing empirical evidence of how development increases in urban cores affects prices is pretty mixed. If all else were held equal, adding supply would bring down prices. However all else tends not to be equal, and development sprees seem to often generate their own upward-spiraling demand, which sometimes actually increases prices above what they previously were, by attracting more demand than the newly added supply satisfies. Some of the concern over gentrification (though often poorly investigated) is about what those mechanisms are. One pattern is upgrading of housing stock, e.g. replacement of 100 mid-range old housing units with 200 high-end new housing units, which often has the effect of increasing all three quantities: price, supply, and demand. That can then lead to some circular migration, as wealthier people move in to the city and poorer people move to formerly-well-off suburbs which as the houses age and deteriorate, become poorer (common in "inner-ring" suburbs of American cities).
That can be good for other reasons, if you see more dense housing as a good in itself. Even if SF ends up more expensive than before, you might prefer an SF with 1 million people over one with 825k. However other people disagree that this shuffling around of rich/poor people is a net improvement. That's something of a subjective debate. However on the more objective question of whether redeveloping SF will solve the specific problem of housing costs, I'm skeptical: I suspect redevelopment of SF will not have much impact on its affordability.
This is a tough one. No doubt about it. No easy answers here.
I just bought a house in Berkeley (used to rent in Glen Park). I'm curious what you think about rent control laws. I know a lot of landlords are abusing Ellis Act evictions but outside of those, rent control laws do a fair job at protecting the types of renters you mention.
The city budget is flush with revenue driven from the tech boom. I am not against them using a portion of this to help with housing issues. But it seems mostly to be a lack of ideas that's stopping that from happening.
Government subsidizes all sorts of things in all sorts of ways: Teslas/Priuses with credits, home loans with the mortgage deduction, student loans, Twitter moving to SF, and so on. Not saying these are good or bad, just indicating that subsidies are a pretty core part of our society and a case could be made for justifying or denying each.
Some rationales for subsidizing affordable homes specifically: fewer slums, greater social mobility for low income families (expensive areas also tend to have good schools), more stability for the elderly (who make up an astonishingly large proportion of low income folks as they can often no longer work).
A society where the raw effects of market forces were allowed to act on people would be really unpleasant (I grew up in one and have been to several) - free markets are a fantastic way to generate wealth but a poor way to ensure balanced social outcomes.
If we follow your logic to its conclusion, San Francisco becomes a city of the uber rich, with the rest of the rabble scattering across the bay area.
So, what would that look like.. Some thoughts..
Good luck staffing jobs at the current SF minimum wage. You want baristas and servers and bar backs? And you want them to commute into the city? You'll get some (as you do now) but enough to run all of the cities establishments? We're talking a massive number of jobs. Sure, people will do it, for the right wage. So you're seeing wage inflation that will hurt small business owners a great deal.
Ethnic diversity would take a big hit. You'd see asian american and caucausions pushing out other groups that are on balance less affluent.
You can easily see NIMBY taken to an even further extreme that it currently is.
Commercial rents would presumably follow residential rents, further reducing low-margin businesses (like restaurants) in favor of high end retail and similar. (See: the Grove in Marina closing for this very reason).
I could go on, and certainly I am not listing the positive consequences of such a transformation. But I see strength through diversification and so I can't shake the feeling that this would be a weaker, less desirable San Francisco.
And if that were the case, if it truly did make it a less desirable place, well, now you have the positive feedback loop moving in the opposite direction, leading people OUT of the city until an equilibrium is found.
Your concerns are really unfounded. Manhattan is basically already the way you hypothesize (with lower-income people commuting in from the other boroughs), and it works just fine.
as people have pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, the transit situation in NY is an order of magnitude better than SF. I agree with the SF is to Manhattan what the greater Bay Area is to the boroughs of New York analogy. But there's a pretty massive difference when it comes to public transit.
> Should the government subsidize "below market rate" luxury cars too?
People have families and lives built around geographic locations, not cars. I'm not saying we should or shouldn't subsidize housing (I lean libertarian personally), but it's disingenuous to suggest this is like the car market. What's at stake for many people is a foundational part of their lives.
They can build families and lives somewhere else if they can't afford to live here, right? Do people have a fundamental right to raise a family in San Francisco rather than Omaha or Austin? Are other places so horrible that we should use taxpayer money to ensure that the largest number of people possible can live in SF? And we should make it easier for the moderately low income to live here rather than people with higher income because ... why? Because people who work in technology don't deserve to raise their families here? Because despite education and hard work we really should make the ability to raise a family in a great area a random selection?
I actually think the car analogy is useful. Not subsidizing housing in San Francisco does not deny people the ability to start families. They can still start them in many other fine places that they can afford. Not driving a BMW or Tesla doesn't deny people the ability to get to work. A Honda or Toyota does that just as well.
NOTE: "Affordable housing" does not apply exclusively to people who have lived in the area for N years previously as far as I know, and even if it did I don't see why that would be fair. If you rent, you rent. When your lease is up, if the price goes up, that's how rent works. Also, there are already rent control policies that would serve this purpose.
It doesn't apply so well. It's not just about the kids you raise. It's about the fact that people's parents and grandparents and uncles and cousins live nearby. It's about friendships built over years. It's about community. What you're saying is this:
Fuck those people - they don't deserve community nor the benefits of it they worked for, because they can't afford the prices you are willing to pay to kick them out (despite most of them being decent citizens with jobs and everything).
It's kinda messed up. Not saying I have a solution, just pointing out a real problem.
So the ability to live in San Francisco should become an inherited right? Or at least being first in line for housing? Oh, I see, your parents lived here Mr. X, so even though Mr. Y is offering more money, I'll cast that newcomer aside. He isn't one of "us", who belong here.
Getting a little hostile aren't you? I actually flat out said I don't have a solution, so whatever the heck you are reacting to your own insecurity at something. I merely pointed out that what you propose has problems. And that your attitude is simply: anyone who can't afford it deserves to not have their lives considered.
Honestly, you are saying that the only consideration people should have for one another is net worth and that interpersonal relationships are of no value, yet you are angry that your lack of those same things could be used to keep you from spending your money (suggesting value). This is a pretty strange.
I do think that perhaps some consideration besides "number of dollars" should be taken in situations like this, because I don't really think a group of people should be able to so fundamentally fuck over another group because they can afford to. But those are my ethics - I value respecting people on more than money.
Fully agree. I've had front-row seats to the shenanigans that are BMR housing units because my girlfriend qualifies for and has been trying to get, and the only conclusion that I can come to is that:
(1) It's a "squeaky wheel gets the grease" policy
(2) They are just sticking fingers in the cracks in a dam that is leaking everywhere to plug a few holes.
The biggest problem with mollifying a large segment of the population with a lottery system is that it legitimizes a solution that never really solves the problem.
BMR housing is typically accessible to people with 70-110% of the area's median income. For every unit, there are 100+ applicants, and those are just the ones that are aware of the program's existence. The program is also riddled with fraud, with many applicants misrepresenting their income to be eligible or adding family members to the application even when that family member isn't going to live with them in the unit.
The worst effect though is that it removes many people from becoming advocates for re-zoning and building of new units. Each of those 100 people per unit now directs their time and attention towards a lottery system instead of demanding real changes from their representatives in local government. Removing those people leaves the very rich and very poor. The poor know they don't have a chance and are living hand to mouth so they won't participate at all. The rich are either well off enough to be insulated from the issue so they complain but never do anything, or the rich are the property owners extracting rent. Ultimately the only people really participating in numbers are the landlords.
I don't see why a poorly run bank which has made bad investments in toxic assets should be bailed out with taxpayer's money when it should be allowed to fail, with good banks picking up clients and assets and growth in market share...
My point is there are few markets which are truly allowed to operate freely. If housing markets were not regulated, the uber rich would buy up every piece of real estate and then we'd all be stuffed.
> we bid up the houses to obscene prices due to lack of supply.
People can only bid what they can afford, and what they can afford is driven by loose lending and cheap credit. Tighten bank lending and housing prices will start falling.
I also wanted to say, this is really not a conflict between the rich and the poor. What ends up happening is the truly rich can afford to live in SF easily with or without subsidies. The lower and lower-middle class end up with "affordable" (subsidized) housing. The upper-middle and upper-but-not rich get stuck in the middle with no assistance and maybe being able to afford to live in the area if they save in every other area and work themselves to poor health.
I agree with you about the toxic assets and about cheap credit, but I don't see how those interventions would encourage us to add even more interventions.
>Also, if the people who work in SF or other high income areas cannot afford to live there at current wages, there should be pressure on them to leave and work elsewhere.
The problem is that people who can't afford to live where they currently live also can't afford to move.
How does that happen? We used to have a lot of stuff, but hiring movers never cost anywhere near even one month's rent. Are these the same people who are half a paycheck away from disaster all the time?
I don't see why the ability to live in San Francisco is any different than the ability to afford a BMW or a Tesla. Should the government subsidize "below market rate" luxury cars too? What would be the incentive to get an education or work hard? Personally I feel somewhat offended when there are dozens of below market rate units available and I'm actually excluded from attempting to buy them because I earn too much money. Meanwhile there are hardly any homes available for people who can afford the houses without subsidies and we bid up the houses to obscene prices due to lack of supply.
Also, if the people who work in SF or other high income areas cannot afford to live there at current wages, there should be pressure on them to leave and work elsewhere. This would increase demand for their labor and drive prices up, all else being equal. (I know, there are other factors here, but those should be dealt with separately, not by adding more layers of complexity to the problem.)
Further, if those workers cannot afford to rent or buy, lowering the cost of renting or buying also reduces the pressure on employers to raise their wages.