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Comment by drawkbox | Hacker News Reader

Costs indicate it is full. Going there is like going to Disneyland when it is over occupancy, too expensive and not enough efficiency at that scale to have a good time. The housing/rental market of SF is screaming "get out", unless of course if you own real estate property.

All SF tech companies promote how with technology you can be anywhere, but apparently there is a single point of failure on physical work locations, or on the flip a nice real estate funnel for above market rates. SF is part tech play part real estate, the smartest investors are investing and collecting the rents of those investments and salaries.

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> Costs indicate it is full

The city of SF is half as dense as Brooklyn and there are a lot of empty lots here. There is a lot more room for development. The problem is that the current political situation makes it easy for people to block new housing.

As an example - there is a 600-acre empty lot near the Bayshore Caltrain station. The developer wants to build 4400 units. The city wants to build 0 units and build an office park instead. Which will get built? It's not clear - the 5 people voting on it will probably be swayed by how many people show up to the meetings and advocate one position or another. I showed up last Thursday and one city resident said we should not build housing there because an earthquake may cause the buildings to fall over.

You have agency in this situation.

I wrote about this a little more here: https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/sf-housing-politics/

The cost signal is what, not why. From the perspective of a potential buyer/renter, it doesn't matter if the cause is "density" or "politics."

"Full" is a really meaningless term. It would be pretty easy for rents to rise a further 20%.

I am just pointing out that tech workers are generally apathetic about the housing supply and the local politics, because we can outbid everyone.

At some point the high prices will become a problem for the tech industry as a whole. It's already a problem for me.

I also want to point out that we have agency in this situation; we can lobby for SF supervisors and city council members and state senators that will implement more pro-housing legislation, and we can show up to the meetings where new housing gets denied and lobby for it.

Costs indicate it is full.

This is quite an oversimplification, on multiple fronts.

For one, the reason Brooklyn has higher density has far more to do with historical building patterns than the current political situation, by any calculation for example. In Brooklyn, already by the 1930s, they built multistory housing throughout a much greater portion of available lots than they ever did in SF, for example. And then came the all the massive, federally subsidized housing projects in the 40s-70s (again, at a much greater scale than in SF).

The current political situation may not be helping much (from a growth perspective) -- but that's the just the current velocity you're talking about, not the starting point (i.e. the vastly greater stock of historical housing in Brooklyn over SF).

I showed up last Thursday and one city resident said we should not build housing [at the Baylands site] because an earthquake may cause the buildings to fall over.

Sounds like you're trying to paint this person as some kind of nervous nellie (or just another kneejerk NIMBYist). And yet it's easy to verify[1] that the lot you're referring to lies in a high-susceptibility liquefaction zone. So his concerns don't sound misplaced at all.

So again (and again, and again with these debates): Yes, NIMBYists exist, and the political situation isn't very particularly fun and often feels counterproductive, etc. But these aren't the root causes of the problem. Building (at scale) in mature, established cities is just, well, "complicated". And building in cities with a wealth of historic (and never, ever to be rebuilt) historic architecture -- which also just so happen to straddle one of the most dangerous fault lines on the planet -- even more so.

This really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

[1] http://gis.abag.ca.gov/website/Hazards/?hlyr=liqSusceptibili...

> Sounds like you're trying to paint this guy as some kind of nervous nellie (or just another kneejerk NIMBYist). And yet it's easy to verify[1] that the lot you're referring to lies in a high-susceptibility liquefaction zone. So his concerns don't sound misplaced at all.

The resident in question was a woman.

I agree that liquefaction is a potential problem. But the developer is also aware of the problem and has a vested interest in ensuring that the condos they sell don't fall into the ground; I'm pretty sure that they won't sell condos that will fall into the ground.

> Building (at scale) in mature, established cities is just, well, "complicated".

Buildings on the East Coast are much older than San Francisco and yet they get referred for additional review much more rarely than San Francisco; in general it's much easier to build a new project as long as it fits the zoning guidelines. They also are not subject to CEQA lawsuits.

The resident in question was a woman.

Yeah, meant to correct that but got distracted.

But the developer is also aware of the problem and has a vested interest in ensuring that the condos they sell don't fall into the ground; I'm pretty sure that they won't sell condos that will fall into the ground.

Like the developer of that tower downtown that's been slowly sinking since the day it was built, you mean?

And seriously -- are you really saying we should take the recommendation of the condo developer of that of the USGS on matters like these?

BTW "fall into the ground" is hyperbole of course. I think you're aware of the fact that all kinds of nasty things can happen to you if you're in caught in a large building during a liquefaction event, even if the whole building doesn't outright "fall into the ground." Either way, there just wasn't anything out of line with the observation that resident brought up.

If anything a building sinking into the ground is more signal that developers need to take this seriously. It's unfortunate, but people in the building have already filed a lawsuit and it's not clear that they are not going to get a good resolution from this.

The resident was using that argument to say "we shouldn't build," I think it should be at best a warning to the developer to build carefully. If the developer builds and people want to buy there it's not clear where the market failure is.

It also ignores that the city wants to get a deal done and either housing or offices will get built. As far as liquefaction matters it needs to be an argument for offices or for housing. The land isn't going to sit empty.

The city is not full. Cost indicates that supply has been artificially restrained for a long time. San Francisco has the same size as Paris for a third of the population.

Until you have an idea of where to put that additional 200% of our current population, yes, SF is full.

> Until you have an idea of where to put that additional 200% of our current population, yes, SF is full.

At the margin, there's a lot that could be done - density bonuses, putting teeth into the Housing Accountability Act (SB 167), approving 4400 units in the Baylands, upzoning along transit corridors, approving ADU's (granny units).

Developers have lots of ideas about where to put people but are generally blocked by NIMBY's at every turn.

You can call your supervisor about all of this.

The way we do it now: redevelopment. If you remove obstacles to redevelopment, you can easily do it.

The hard part is not where to put all these people, but to invest in the infrastructure to serve them.

Or just put them where the infrastructure already is -- i.e., around our transit hubs: http://imgur.com/a/UHYYj

http://imgur.com/a/UHYYj

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