History is certainly valuable, and I do think we should try to preserve truly outstanding examples of history, but this sort of determination too subjective, and often the balance swings too far into a realm of preserving things of dubious value.
One way I look at it: in the longest of long terms, every single building will have had something significant enough about it to earn it a "historic" designation, and then you can't change anything, ever.
(Now, you just need to arrange things so that the level of government that gets to decide which building to mark as 'historic' is also the level of government that feels a decrease in land value tax revenue. But that kind of alignment is a good idea for all kinds of policies.)
For example, Aspen Colorado can certainly just ban all new construction outright and collect taxes accordingly. But it would owe the state Colorado tax revenue based on the theoretical land value of Aspen's total land.
This preserves local control as much as possible but forces communities to fairly compensate the rest of the country should they choose to purposely under utilize their land. E.g if SF doesn't build more housing then Austin now has to build more, etc.
At the same time, since the Federal gov owns 90% of Nevada, Nevada as a state wouldn't be forced to make up the tax revenue for that land since all of its rules and restrictions come from a parent government (Federal/BLM rules).
OTH the examples of history already most likely to be preserved are they outstanding ones. This creates an expectation that historical examples of building are better than the present.
Perhaps we should try out preserving the median average building, not the worst or best. That might solve the issue of rose coloured geriatric glasses.
Or if you are intent on keeping a record of the built environment, we could mandate saving every building, but just encourage adaptive reuse and revision. There is more value in reworking than deleting. And more community buy in. I mean, who wants to do a clean rewrite every 20 years..
My opinion, the whole city burned down once, and it kept on going. It will be ok to lose a couple “historic” buildings.
The city needs to stop living in the past
You have it backwards — the push for density is bottom-up, coming from the people who want to live in SF. The top-down elements are the regulations imposed to keep the city from changing.
Part of the reason San Francisco is so desirable is because it's iconic, it would be a great irony to make room for more people by removing what makes it special.
It always felt to me like if we want more San Francisco then we should build more beautiful cities, there's a lot of amazing coast in California.
If those existing residents don't like the changes, then they're free to follow your advice and live somewhere else.
I generally agree with your position when it comes to undeveloped places that people moved into specifically because they weren't hyperdense. But I don't think the same applies to cities-- you specifically chose to live in a very dense and congested place.
Better to densify places that are already dense.
San Francisco has slightly more opportunity for me than the 2,000 persons village my family lives in. Not many tech companies there, though I must admit both are walkable!
No they shouldn't. Private property is private property. Demonstrate a specific harm like pollution or you don't get to tell other people what to do with their real-estate.
These folks who have uprooted themselves from their existing homes to make a better life have as much right to live wherever they want to (considering a country and or society with freedom of movement; e.g. USA) as those who currently occupy the space.
I’m not saying your position is incorrect. I’m saying your argument is flawed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Color_of_Law
You can also read more the 1920’s SCOTUS case ‘Euclid vs Ambler’ where the justices agreed that apartment dwellers were essentially a public nuisance and thus apartments could be regulated.
Nowadays it’s not so much skin color, but rather social class or the ‘wrong’ sort of minority that people want to keep out. Whatever the reason, the type of restrictive zoning the OP is advocating for has major repercussions for equality by restricting access to well paying jobs and other amenities like hospitals and schools.
It really doesn't look good (especially in SF) when most of those long-term residents are white and the newcomers are more demographically diverse. Pretty much all of the defining traits of segregation
> It’s basically taking away from the people that have put down roots for newcomers.
The only thing you lose (materially speaking) are property values. What's the point of complaining to other people about your property values? Why should we care?
The folks complaining the most from what I remember were the Latinos?
Sounds interesting, but I wonder how you would get at those values?
Also, you would probably also want to extend what you say to include both locally enforced restrictions but also locally provided amenities.
But how do you decide who gets to benefit from eg having the Google campus next door? Or having a famous artist live in your community?
> For example, Aspen Colorado can certainly just ban all new construction outright and collect taxes accordingly. But it would owe the state Colorado tax revenue based on the theoretical land value of Aspen's total land.
> This preserves local control as much as possible but forces communities to fairly compensate the rest of the country should they choose to purposely under utilize their land. E.g if SF doesn't build more housing then Austin now has to build more, etc.
That seems much more convoluted and prone to abuses than just letting Aspen collect its land value tax and keeping the whole thing, but also having that level of government pay for most things by itself.
Have a look at Switzerland: their system minimises vertical transfers, ie every level of government mostly only spends what it earns (in taxes).
(They do have some horizontal transfers between richer and poorer regions of the country, or richer and poorer people. But not much between eg Cantons and the federal level.)
I've lived in SF for 14 years and I don't think "because it's iconic" is in my top 10 reasons for liking it here.
Also consider that cities always change. SF in 1924 looked a lot different. It was desirable then. It changed. It's desirable now. It'll change again, and still be desirable.
I'm a homeowner here, and would absolutely love it if many many more people had the opportunity to own homes in SF, without mortgaging their entire life.
Hell, I wouldn't mind my home value dropping all that much, either. Sure, I'd lose money when I eventually want to sell, but at least my property taxes would go down. (But honestly, I don't think my home value would drop all that much, if at all. Demand so far outstrips supply here that we'd probably have to double or triple the housing stock before home prices would drop all that much.)
https://www.apartments.com/303-e-43rd-st-kansas-city-mo/q2fj...
Or put another way: the housing market is illiquid, neighborhoods are ossified with older buildings and the units in them turning to squalor and the rent is too damn high.
Personally as a long time resident of SF I fight for density now in the hope that these efforts bear fruit before my 5 year old and 2 year old grow up. I want an SF where they don’t have to be ML engineers to live in the same city as their parents when they grow up
In practice you are probably right, but I'm still wondering if you are right in theory.
Let me explain: there's so much pent up demand in SF and SV that any individual location allowing more building won't make much of a dent in overall housing costs.
One can certainly see that as a problem. But it's also an enormous opportunity: real estate developers in that community can build and build and build without worrying about oversupply ever dropping prices.
A booming local construction industry would also create lots of blue collar jobs, even if it never makes a dent in housing prices. Or rather, exactly when it doesn't make a dent in prices: because then the booming local construction industry can just keep on booming forever.
Now my question is: why does it look like all cities in the area are colluding against this? What keeps even one city from breaking ranks and allowing massive amounts of construction?
Is it that they can't find ways to benefit from the extra commercial activity? (I heard that eg property taxes are capped? And they have no creative ideas for how to otherwise benefit?)
Is it that there are bay area wide mechanisms that keep communities from allowing more building?
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Btw, the whole discussion reminds me when back in the years of the Great Recession after the Global Financial crises inflation was--as hard as that is to believe today--stubbornly low, and people saw that as a problem, instead of an opportunity:
At a minimum you can have your central bank buy up the whole national debt with newly printed money, and if that still doesn't raise inflation, you can start buying up the rest of world dollar for dollar. (Eg index funds are happy to take your newly created money.)
At some point, either your country's central bank owns the world in return for some data base entries, or inflation will pick up. (If inflation picks up too much, you can always soak up some excess money by selling things off your balance sheet. Standard central bank operating procedure.)
Instead of seeing this opportunity, people mostly just.. gave up?
Btw, orthodox economists suggested more or less exactly what I laid out above to Japan during the 1990s Lost Decade, but this was not a popular policy recommendation during the 2010s.
Some minor city allowing massive construction isn't magically going to make lots of high-paying jobs appear there. Over time, it might make the place an attractive destination for migration, but it's far from certain. Think about it this way: if Toledo, Ohio allowed massive housing construction, would lots of tech companies flock there and try to get tech employees to move there? Or Fargo, ND? I kinda doubt it.
Even within the Bay Area (which is composed of a bunch of municipalities like SF, Oakland, Cupertino, San Jose, etc.), one city allowing more construction might not help you much if your job is elsewhere, because it's too far to commute and the commuting infrastructure sucks.
The problem is that until all unmet demand at the upper end of the market has been satisfied, builders won't start building at the more affordable ends of the market.
If one small city allows more construction, the overall impact on the market will be tiny, this is why the "urban villages" approach doesn't help bring down housing prices, throwing up a few dozen new apartment complexes doesn't help when thousands upon thousands of new complexes are needed.
My preferred solution is to weaponize HUD. Use it to offer low interest loans to developers. Build a couple hundred thousand per year of mixed use multi-family. Where it'll do some good and add to muni's tax base. Keep building until busted out landlords are jumping out windows.
(Full disclosure: I'm a homeowner in SF, and want us to build build build build.)
Yes. Because this country has the first amendment. It is a matter of law that you can and may (within the law).
If you (and I am not saying you do) not agree with people being able to push for such changes (via speech as it is defined and interpreted by our court via the first amendment), then please state your reasons for disagreeing rather than posing a loaded question.
Yes. The high paying white collar jobs are already there in the bay area.
(My earlier comment mentioned jobs mostly in the context of new blue collar jobs for people during the construction.)
> Think about it this way: if Toledo, Ohio allowed massive housing construction, would lots of tech companies flock there and try to get tech employees to move there? Or Fargo, ND? I kinda doubt it.
I agree, but I don't see how that's relevant for the bay area.
> Even within the Bay Area (which is composed of a bunch of municipalities like SF, Oakland, Cupertino, San Jose, etc.), one city allowing more construction might not help you much if your job is elsewhere, because it's too far to commute and the commuting infrastructure sucks.
I don't even live in the bay area, so it doesn't help me at all. At least not directly. But I also don't see how that question is relevant?
As long as it helps some people enough that they are willing to pay enough to keep local house prices high, my argument still stands.
And the opposite is also ok: if one city building would actually make houses more affordable in that area, then that just invalidates the whole premise of the grand-parent comment that individual cities can't make dent, and that intervention from higher levels of government (like the state) are necessary.
As outlined in my original comment, I don't see how that is a problem?
The whole point is that you can either you can let your real estate developers run wild and make lots of profit (and thus pay lots of taxes) building houses upon houses upon houses without any price drops from over-supply.
Or you'll eventually see price drops, and thus more affordability.
Btw, back in the old days the complaint was that greedy developers would build sub-par units to make money off poor people. Nowadays the complaint is that greedy developers will only sell nice units to the rich. How times have changed.
Any new supply is good. If you don't supply excellent units at the top, you just have rich people outbid the middle class for slightly worse (but still nice) units. And the middle class gets pushed down to outbid the lower class for even worse units.
The other way round, adding units at the top allows everyone on the ladder to move up one rung. All the way to the bottom.
Developers should just concentrate on whatever's most profitable.
> If one small city allows more construction, the overall impact on the market will be tiny, [...]
That's the first of the two cases I outlined above. I would also classify that as a (local) success of allowing more housing.
Being able to add lots of supply to an over-priced market without that dropping prices, is every suppliers' dream.
I think we are in agreement that if enough houses are built, price drops will follow.
One issue we encountered here in Seattle (or at least we believe we encountered!) is that people move, so when housing got too expensive in California, people moved from California to Seattle where housing was cheaper.
Now obviously if California reformed its housing policies, I think they could easily absorb pent up local demand along with some growth. However if a smaller locale like Seattle fixes its housing problems, I worry that Seattle couldn't absorb pent up demand for housing from California.
> Being able to add lots of supply to an over-priced market without that dropping prices, is every suppliers' dream.
Getting filthy rich is supplier's dream. Most builders (and arguably businesses) are short sighted, but if government policy makes them tons of $ they will still try to claim it was all part of their brilliant long term plan.
If every major west coast city replaced its stupid zoning laws with, say, Japan's zoning system (see https://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001050453.pdf), then prices would come crashing down and everyone would make crap-fuck-tons of money.
As a trivial example, on a 10k sqft lot right now in Seattle suburbs, builders are constructing single family homes and selling them for 2 million.
With not-idiotic zoning, that could be 6 flats selling at 600k each.
Never mind the rules that discourage constructing flats and instead push builders towards making 4 story townhomes.... (Perfect for able-bodied couples without kids who are under the age of 40! And no one else...)
Are you saying that (A) Californian's won't come, and that's why Seattle won't absorb pent up demand from there?
Or are you saying that (B) Californians will enthusiastically come, thereby preventing any price drop?
Case (A) means Seattle can solve its own housing affordability problem by allowing more building. Case (B) means Seattle's real estate developers can have an endless boom.
> If every major west coast city replaced its stupid zoning laws with, say, Japan's zoning system (see https://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001050453.pdf), then prices would come crashing down and everyone would make crap-fuck-tons of money.
Yes. But my argument is that if just a single town adopted sensible measures, developers could make obscene amounts of money in that city. Especially if the rest of the area persists in their stupidity.
So multiple cities finding sanity at the same time might be required to do anything about broader housing affordability in the Bay Area, but for a construction bonanza with insane profits it's actually better for the city that breaks ranks not to have competition from other cities finding sanity.
So my question is: why does no single city seem to break ranks?
Because city councils don't follow the laws of economics, at all!
City council members only side benefit from economic growth. Heck during the early 2000s housing boom, Seattle City Council members got negative press for "being too friendly to building developers".
As an example of this inanity, cities should be eager to have well funded efficient permitting departments, after all the faster buildings get built, the faster property taxes go up! But no, permitting departments are famously slow and awful to deal with. Simple tasks can take months, and a large complex can take years to get approved.
Every city should increase permitting costs for large projects until the building department is a profit center, and then put into place aggressive service level guarantees on response times to requests.
But that isn't what happens, my 100% ignorant guess would be entrenched power structures in permitting departments, but I honestly have no idea why.
A very large % of voters object to dense housing. I see a lot of "too many people keep moving here, we need to stop building more houses!" comments on neighborhood forums.
That is likely the other factor.
An election cycle or two ago, a candidate in Seattle who was proposing density increases lost big time. Since then, proposals have been... less than earthshattering.
IMHO a citizens referendum is needed to really change things, but it'd need one hell of an ad campaign behind it.
People in nice neighborhoods like their neighborhoods, and they tend to have enough $ to back those feelings up when it comes to political donations. Asking them to take a gamble on completely changing the area they live at, and hoping it becomes better, is a hard sell.
Builders already pay the city money to build, then property taxes go up and the city makes more money, and when the finished house is sold the city makes money from the sale.
The problem is the city council doesn't care. If they make the city a boat load of money but then lose the next election, their political career is over. Voted out of office for pissing everyone off is not something politicians are too keen on having happen to themselves.