Article about San Francisco housing from ... 2002 (Richmond, Fairfield: employment, tax, living in)

[shooting4life]

Originally Posted by Bisaro TMF

I understand this, the problem is there is not enough land to build the necessary property to have prices come down. You'd need to literally build 100-200 Thousand new units to make some impact. Remembers Oakland's 10K project? Well it worked, Brown got more people to Oakland but prices went UP because of it.

Only on CD SF Bay Area would people deny the most basic and fundamental economic principle of supply and demand.

We have enough land, just need to build up. Allow mid and high rise apartments to be built instead of row homes. Convert more low use industrial area to housing. Start building more mixed use residential and commercial spaces. Re zone SFH to MFH and remove rent control on buildings that are owner occupied and less than 5 units.

Prices didn't go up because of the 10k project. Prices went up in oakland because people cannot afford SF and moved to oakland.




All I ever hear on this forum is how this problem can't be fixed. We know what we are doing now doesn't work, a reasonable person would consider doing something different.

[Ultrarunner]

Planning has a tremendous impact from design review, height limitations, coverage limitations, parking etc...

Not to mention the cost before ground is ever broken...

It's great for those that are established... not so good for others.

A very good friend spent 4 years from plan submittal to building final... he was building his personal home and said never again...

Berkeley is actually considering relaxing secondary unit regulation of granny flats... this could help immensely in terms of adding to the housing stock with little infrastructure impact.

San Francisco is a huge driver when it comes to Oakland Real Estate... almost every new tenant in the last 5 years is a SF refugee... some places in Oakland are actually quicker to downtown SF than places in SF...

In my area there have been numerous housing proposals all conforming to existing zoning... there was such a public outcry that a land is now city open space... no more tax dollars coming in and city money going out for maintenance...

[botticelli]

Originally Posted by Bisaro TMF

I understand this, the problem is there is not enough land to build the necessary property to have prices come down. You'd need to literally build 100-200 Thousand new units to make some impact. Remembers Oakland's 10K project? Well it worked, Brown got more people to Oakland but prices went UP because of it.

No land? So much flat land with ugly slabs on it. SF can easily accommodate twice as many people as it does now.

[botticelli]

Originally Posted by shooting4life

Only on CD SF Bay Area would people deny the most basic and fundamental economic principle of supply and demand.

We have enough land, just need to build up. Allow mid and high rise apartments to be built instead of row homes. Convert more low use industrial area to housing. Start building more mixed use residential and commercial spaces. Re zone SFH to MFH and remove rent control on buildings that are owner occupied and less than 5 units.

Prices didn't go up because of the 10k project. Prices went up in oakland because people cannot afford SF and moved to oakland.

All I ever hear on this forum is how this problem can't be fixed. We know what we are doing now doesn't work, a reasonable person would consider doing something different.

That's some intelligent non backwards comments.
And people pretend by building up we lose those hideous two story slabs or cookie cutter houses that are supposed to have characters?

[ServoMiff]

The biggest issue we have now isn't the housing problem. It gets the biggest exposure because of all of the people who can afford the area booting out those who can't, but the biggest problem is the infrastructure. The current infrastructure can't even handle the current population, so why is everyone clamoring about building more capacity in the city? It's rather idiotic, in this guy's opinion.

Fix the infrastructure first - then worry about increasing capacity.

[shooting4life]

Originally Posted by ServoMiff

The biggest issue we have now isn't the housing problem. It gets the biggest exposure because of all of the people who can afford the area booting out those who can't, but the biggest problem is the infrastructure. The current infrastructure can't even handle the current population, so why is everyone clamoring about building more capacity in the city? It's rather idiotic, in this guy's opinion.

Fix the infrastructure first - then worry about increasing capacity.

Part of any new development is the expansion of infrastructure, every major project takes on these issues. Plus the new tax revenue going to the city helps pay for the expansions in schools, police, fire, etc.

[HockeyMac18]

Originally Posted by ServoMiff

The biggest issue we have now isn't the housing problem. It gets the biggest exposure because of all of the people who can afford the area booting out those who can't, but the biggest problem is the infrastructure. The current infrastructure can't even handle the current population, so why is everyone clamoring about building more capacity in the city? It's rather idiotic, in this guy's opinion.

Fix the infrastructure first - then worry about increasing capacity.

Realistically, I don't see infrastructure ever coming first. The planning involved for those types of projects are ridiculously longer and more difficult than housing projects.

And these kind of things don't start getting planned until things are at capacity. Look at Caltrain...it's beyond capacity, and been beyond capacity for years. And just now are they starting to talk about how to handle this issue (as opposed to thinking ahead first and planning for this increased capacity that was obviously coming its way). The same can be said for BART and MUNI.

It's really only at this stage when infrastructure is most stressed that people in power really start taking improvements/upgrades seriously. And since infrastructure replacement/improvement projects take foreeeeeeever to plan, design, and build, we're looking at a huge amount of time where the infrastructure isn't there when it's needed most.

It's why I said on the previous page that the infrastructure improvements/expansions we need will probably lag behind housing construction by at least few decades. In other words, the infrastructure we need now won't be here for a few decades. And I'm sure by then we'll be stressing that new infrastructure to its capacity...

[dalparadise]

Originally Posted by botticelli

No land? So much flat land with ugly slabs on it. SF can easily accommodate twice as many people as it does now.

So, why is having twice as many people preferable to the current situation in SF?

[shooting4life]

Originally Posted by dalparadise

So, why is having twice as many people preferable to the current situation in SF?

Because you don't have to make 100k to not have room mates. The poor and middle class will actually be able to find affordable housing. I know, two crazy ideas.

[dalparadise]

Originally Posted by shooting4life

Because you don't have to make 100k to not have room mates. The poor and middle class will actually be able to find affordable housing. I know, two crazy ideas.

Why do you assume this is the case? Manhattan has twice the population of SF and is densely built up and...you need 100K+ to live without roommates and the poor and middle class have a tough time finding affordable housing. In fact, it may be worse than SF.

By the way, I'm middle class by SF standards and I found a place to live. It was a difficult adventure, but I have a large apartment in one of the most desirable neighborhoods of SF.