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Comment by hx87 | Hacker News Reader

As I mentioned, she doesn't have to 'move' except in the most technical sense--she can take house a home equity loan (made possible by the house's appreciation) and convert her house into an apartment by adding another floor or converting a garage or by demolishing the house and building an apartment block in its stead. She can continue to live in one of the units, probably the first floor, and benefit from a reliable stream of income from tenants.

Oh, and BTW, this idea that "techies" aren't people, or somehow less deserving of moral consideration than everyone else, is reprehensible.

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Speaking as a "technie" myself, I feel no one really addresses the undercurrent of entitlement to live in the city. Maybe I'm wrong, but I get the sense that a lot of the housing discussion in the tech community boils down to "but... I really want to live in SF for cheap". From what I understand, it's very common for programmers to live in the (very expensive) city and commute down to the South Bay for work. That's not a pattern borne out of necessity.

It is a necessity, because the rest of the Bay Area has even higher housing costs--at least the parts that aren't subject to terrible commutes, which are in large part caused by Proposition 13 starving governments of revenue. They don't want to live in SF for cheap, but they do want to live in SF for not-soul-crushingly-sums-of-money. Wanting to live where you work is certainly not an entitlement, at least not more than wanting your neighborhood to look the way it did 30 years ago forever and ever.

But tech industry salaries are inflated in lockstep. The rule of thumb is 30% of your income for rent, which is appropriate for $100k+ entry-level salaries. Also, out of the (admittedly very small and anecdotal) subset of programmers living in SF I've talked to, most have indicated that they live in SF because they like it there, not because it's cheaper than South Bay.

You chase everyone out it means:

- Service workers (everything from baristas to cops to teachers) either disappear or have to deal with punishing commutes

- Brain drain. When even people making a decent salary get pushed out, it's bad for cities (http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/05/26/silicon-valley-e...)

- Many people believe living in the place one was born/grew up in should be a right. That's a value difference. Markets do not get to dictate everything if we don't allow that.

Luckily, the market does have a solution to the housing problem itself: build a lot more of it, and prices will drop.

Will highrises and density bring rent down? I think it's been shown that the number of houses needed to actually do that is enormous. In practice, what's likely to happen is that the city will fill up with even more of the well-off. (That is to say, people working in tech.) In a decade rent might come back down, but by then all those groups will be long gone anyway.

Personally, I don't have any vested interest SF housing, as it's really not one of my favorite cities. But I keep thinking of what I would do if this was happening to a city I did actually love and live in, and I think in that situation I would be more sympathetic to the NIMBYs than the newcomers. I don't think there's any moral imperative for cities to keep growing.

At any given density, replacing low-rises with high-rises will bring rent down, as long as construction isn't overly burdened with neighborhood review and low-income-unit requirements. Sure, a lot of units will need to be constructed for rents to come down a significant amount, but a massive swath of the western sections of the city consists of 1-3 story single family houses, maybe with a shop on the first floor, which are ripe for conversion into 5-story walk-ups. That alone will provide a significant boost to housing stock without the seismic and elevator costs of high-rises.

SF isn't my favorite city either, but what has happened in my current and favorite city (Boston) has made my less sympathetic to NIMBYs, both the high-income (I want my house to appreciate without doing any work!) and low-income (I want 20% of units just for me!/Screw the middle class!) types--they are the ones making things worse. Cities grow because businesses move there, and businesses move there because they want to be close to and network with other businesses. Employees can't exactly prevent that by staying in Nowhere, KS. I agree, there isn't any moral imperative for cities for keep growing, but for now at least, there is a practical one, and thus there is a moral imperative for cities to accommodate those to wish to live there.

It is enormous, no question. If governments and people were serious about it, it could be done, though. I don't think anyone is arguing it would be easy.

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