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Comment by jimrandomh | Hacker News Reader

This is what happens when construction is heavily suppressed by zoning restrictions. Let people convert all the vacant lots and one- and two-story buildings into midrises and highrises, especially near transit, and market rents will fall and make lottery-housing unnecessary.

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This actually occurred quite successfully in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco over the past few years. Several thousand units were built, and lo and behold rent was flat to downwards depending on the part of SOMA.

Many people don't want to live in SOMA though, and the zoning in most of the city doesn't allow for the same kind of rapid, high-density construction.

At the same time, Weiner's plan to designate everything as "transit rich" was effectively crazy and DOA. If you're on the Market Street corridor, it makes sense to have denser housing. Being up to a mile away from "transit" in a city that is only 7 miles wide was a poorly reasoned stretch. He sadly threw the baby out with the bathwater, setting back any rational discussion of upzoning near actual transit.

Where, specifically, are you seeing decreasing rents in SOMA?

Without zoning you will get a landscape like in Moscow suburbs [1][2]. That is what "affordable" (in fact not very affordable) housing looks like.

[1] https://cs7.pikabu.ru/post_img/big/2017/11/15/4/151072205515...

[2] https://varlamov.me/2017/nekrasovka/02.jpg

I'm sure everyone who lives there would rather spend 50% of their gross income on housing.

If vacant lots and low density housing were taxed more, a lot more of it would be yielded to build high density housing.

Allowing land to be treated as a gold bar like store of hoardable value will inevitably leads to a restricted supply.

The problem in SF is not that property developers don’t want to build high density housing. It’s local government and NIMBY-ism actively blocking and restricting it.

But also wealthy single family owners being heavily subsidized by prop 13.

If you were handed a pile of gold wouldn't you try to protect its value?

NIMBYism in SF real estate is all about people protecting their $2+ million investments. If the "gold bar" suddenly becomes a major tax liability NIMBYism will dissipate.

Building regs are only a small part of the story.

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