How San Francisco's Progressive Politics Led to Its Housing Affordability Crisis

We voted down such an idea a century ago http://www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/20080709_19991377isreg...

This is already happening - there's significant outflow from the Bay Area to other relatively progressive cities like Seattle, Portland, Boulder/Denver, Asheville NC, Austin, etc. In many cases they've turned those cities even more progressive in the process. My very conservative aunt in Portland complains about all the Californians moving in with their liberal politics. Colorado was a Republican-leaning swing state when I was in college, but it's turned quite Democratic lately.

They're replaced by domestic migrants from the Midwest, South, and farm belt, and by international immigrants from China, Taiwan, India, Vietnam, the Middle East, and many other countries. Interestingly, this "Bay Area conveyor belt" is perhaps the best thing that could happen for progressive politics, as many people newly arrived in the Bay Area come from very conservative regions, they often pick up more liberal values in the area (this is helped by selection bias - typically you don't pack up and move to a whole new city unless you are somewhat open to new experiences), and then they move on to other areas that were previously swing states.

Or Singapore,which apparently has a right-wing, de-facto single party state, yet has 82% of people living in housing built by the state (down from a peak of 87% in 1990). They also recently took the step of capping the number of cars allowed in the city.

I think “progressive” is a fairly American term, and puts a certain sheen over left politics. It’s tough to say whether it’s socialist or not because it never seems to matter. It’s more of a feeling, or a vibe, than a critique. It describes the unconscious desires of a demographic very well, but falls short on political content. In this sense, it may have been an OK choice of words.

San Francisco's Progressive politicians are huge supporters of "cheap housing projects" as a percentage of permitted development (i.e. by blocking other projects), but are so far apathetic towards radically increasing the absolute number of below-market units built, which is what it would take to actually improve affordability overall. As it stands, below-market programs give disproportionate rewards (rent subsidies worth thousands per month) to a handful of lucky winners drawn off the waiting lists.

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.

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.

Housing and transportation politics are severely under-appreciated. Your local zoning and public transit authorities have far greater impact on your life than anything happening in Washington D.C., yet federal politics get all the airtime. Decisions about local government are made by very small groups. Until recently, the politics of development have been project-by-project skirmishes between the developer and a few opposing neighbors. The rest of us were not necessarily aware that this was happening, or how the pattern of outcomes in hundreds of these block-level skirmishes over decades could hurt us.

"Complaining," as you put it, gets people thinking and talking about the issue in a general way, and it doesn't necessarily take that many people doing so to create radical change in municipal governance. There's potentially a large constituency that's fine with seeing more multifamily structures and on board with supply-and-demand market dynamics, but doesn't necessarily know or care about their municipal regulatory regimes until the impact is explained. Activating these potential pro-growth voters is a worthwhile project. It worked on me.

Rent control created an disincentive to build new rentals, increasing the cost for new renters....laws against building made it worse.

People complain because they work low wage jobs in the city and need a place to live. If they don't have an affordable place to live they won't be able to do the work that needs to be done.

> They can create a bohemian utopia somewhere else if they want that.

Anyone who has the means to create a bohemian utopia generally has no need to do so.

> If you grew up there and feel sad that you can't afford to anymore, then recognize that property rights exist to give the owners priority access to land so anyone who doesn't obtain property ownership has to expect that one-day they'll be forced out.

That's...kind of an oddly circular argument. "If you don't like the situation, recognize that the rules are set up to reenforce the situation."

The overwhelming majority of San Franciscans live in "trickle-down housing." It was the solution to their problems until they took it off the table for future arrivals.