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    cheerful_exgirlfriendHamilton Nolan
    3/18/15 1:25pm

    Somehow I never see the protests when a McMansion or new office building goes up but even the mention of a small affordable housing complex (40 units!) and suddenly people are crying about urbanization and traffic.

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      JeffKentsMustachecheerful_exgirlfriend
      3/18/15 1:30pm

      Excellent point.

      My hometown nearly imploded into civil war recently because of proposed rent controlled development. All of this despite the fact that the development was aimed at the middle class - nurses, police officers, blue collar workers, etc.

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      cheerful_exgirlfriendJeffKentsMustache
      3/18/15 1:35pm

      Same here, there is a falling-apart strip mall where a proposed retail/low-income apartment complex was defeated so we are left with an unsightly, unsafe, useless strip mall while the freeways stay full and teachers are sometimes late because of the traffic since they have to live out of the county because of how crazy expensive it is here.

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    Frankenbike666Hamilton Nolan
    3/18/15 1:48pm

    San Francisco isn't the best example, because its geography conspires against it.

    California's real estate prices are driven up by investors. If you're a long term (15 years plus) investor, it is impossible to lose money on California real estate.

    The problem with affordable housing, is that you can't build new affordable housing. First, it can't be built cheap, because earthquakes. The cost per unit can't go below a certain point, and that point is higher than affordable, for any new housing.

    A good example of this is the Playa Vista development. Massively dense housing over a large area. Condo units there are selling for over $1 million. A large apartment development near us in Venice has 1 bedroom apartments going for $2500 a month.

    If you look at a city as a selfish natural organism, it would want to rid itself of the poor. Who are poor because the work available isn't in sync with the skills they have in large enough numbers. Considerable resources must be expended for them, where the wealthy don't need much in the way of city services beyond transportation needs, supplying water, power and sewer services, and picking up the trash. Cities don't need the poor to live in them, and when they need low wage workers, they can be imported from elsewhere.

    This is largely what's happening in land locked areas like SF and the City of Los Angeles (with the city divided by a mountain range). It's the organic nature of cities. It will take someone very very clever to figure out a way to reverse this, and fight an upstream battle against natural economic forces. We've tried public housing, which without exception turned into crime incubators. We've tried rent control, which in the long run exacerbated the housing shortage by making mass housing construction far less profitable for nearly two decades. We've tried subsidized housing on new construction.

    Mass housing construction has begun again, but the cost of that new housing is never affordable, and on top of it, it has no impact on the cost of the existing rental stock. If anything, it drives the price up in neighborhoods with new apartment construction, because the area becomes revitalized with high paying jobs and desirable activities and shops and the neighboring old housing stock becomes more valuable and drives out the poor.

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      Hamilton NolanFrankenbike666
      3/18/15 1:59pm

      Thanks for a thoughtful comment.

      I would say re. public housing—we haven't really tried public housing that is well integrated with other economic strata of housing. Diverse neighborhoods are stronger than exclusively rich or poor neighborhoods.

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      Cam/ronFrankenbike666
      3/18/15 2:04pm

      San Francisco isn't the best example, because its geography conspires against it.

      Yep, a lot of people forget that SF is quite tiny. It's a 46 square-mile city that's 18 percent parkland. Good luck trying to cram more than 850,000 residents into that town.

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    Jujymonkey3Hamilton Nolan
    3/18/15 1:21pm

    At least we won't have to worry about fixing this issue one California's water supply runs out next year!

    See? Glass half-full (not with water, tho).

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      ╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯< Woke and BokeJujymonkey3
      3/18/15 1:35pm

      Exactly. Running out of water will simultaneously solve all our housing, overpopulation, and Boston transplant issues. I look forward to it.

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      BirdDroppingsJujymonkey3
      3/18/15 1:35pm

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    victornightingaleHamilton Nolan
    3/18/15 1:39pm

    Hamilton, you should check out this story. It was on the news a couple of nights ago:

    http://abc7news.com/realestate/san…

    This woman's monthly rent is going up from $2,145 to $8,900!

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      Max Contrarianvictornightingale
      3/18/15 1:46pm

      She should move someplace cheaper.

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      victornightingaleMax Contrarian
      3/18/15 1:54pm

      Yeah, I suspect that thought has crossed her mind considering she doesn't have much of a choice.

      The point is that Bay Area real estate business is dirty and totally out of control, and this particular case is a great example of that since the owner of the property made some very calculated modifications to it in order for this ridiculous increase to be legal.

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    LtCmndHipsterHamilton Nolan
    3/18/15 1:44pm

    San Francisco is a 49 sq. mile peninsula bordered by mountains to the south. It physically can only grow up. Its also the most beautiful city in America, and would be a shame to completely ruin it with massive housing skyscrapers. Nobody has a right to live in San Francisco.

    The being said, the lack of high-rises apartments in areas like the Sunset makes zero sense.

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      sfmountainbikerLtCmndHipster
      3/18/15 2:40pm

      It's already happening, as I've watched my view of the Bay Bridge almost completely obscured by new high-rise apartments over the last 7 years.

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      Paul DimitrovLtCmndHipster
      3/18/15 2:42pm

      Seattle and Salt Lake are just as pretty as SF.

      SF gets more of a high profile, though, because of the transplant syndrome which appears to be endemic.

      The syndrome I'm speaking of, of course, involves Easterners and Midwesterners relocating to the city, deciding "I love it here," and somehow deciding they are native San Franciscans and that their attachment to the city is an integral part of their self identity. This despite their being in the Bay Area for all of five minutes.

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    waterwaterwaterpleasewatermusthavewaterHamilton Nolan
    3/18/15 1:26pm

    1. the people who got theirs want to keep the status quo that is working so well for them.

    2. The problem with this will be all the people who are paying taxes to pay for someone else's nice new home while they're stuck in their over priced 50 year old apartment.

    3. The central valley in California is already the fastest growing area in the state, however Bakersfield is the least educated place in the state and the entire valley rivals the Appalachians in terms of poverty, so who knows if decent jobs will follow the migration pattern.

    4. I suppose the argument here is that eventually the poor people who stay behind will have to be paid enough to make it worth their while to stick around.

    The reality is that we need lots of new construction at high density, but that isn't happening at anywhere near the rate it needs to.

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      tito_swinefluwaterwaterwaterpleasewatermusthavewater
      3/18/15 1:49pm

      Let me applaud you for item number 1. Hear hear! I own a house in SF, and it's freakin awesome. I get around $80,000 a year in home equity value increase every year. For doing nothing but sitting on my ass and paying trivial amounts of property tax. It's wonderful! Please continue doing what you are doing, SF. I admit, the city is getting really bland and boring, and my nanny seems more worn down now that she has to commute from Vallejo, but who cares? I can buy an entire neighborhood in a city with a real art and music scene! If my nanny quits, I can find another desperate worker from somewhere out in the suburban hell-zone.

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      waterwaterwaterpleasewatermusthavewatertito_swineflu
      3/18/15 1:58pm

      I hope one day to do as good as this guy:

      http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26…

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    Donald PumpHamilton Nolan
    3/18/15 1:28pm

    At the end of the day, people need to be close to jobs, but urban and suburban growth continually push people out further and further from many of those jobs. We need more mixed-use cities, more public transit etc. Otherwise more telecommuting.

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      dothedewDonald Pump
      3/18/15 1:36pm

      Those with lower wage jobs are more likely to need to live near their jobs in the service sector, as opposed to many white collar jobs which could be done remotely. I stayed home recently, got much more work done than a normal day and got to forgo almost 3 hrs of commuting. But my boss still wants me to come into the office.

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      ╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯< Woke and BokeDonald Pump
      3/18/15 1:39pm

      For the price of one high-speed rail line we could build several light rails to the exurbs of LA & SF, but I guess that's not as sexy as standing in front of a bullet train.

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    Creative DestructionHamilton Nolan
    3/18/15 1:26pm

    The only obvious solution here is to overthrow capitalism.

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      J.Creative Destruction
      3/18/15 1:36pm

      We should overthrow capitalism and let us live in those ugly Soviet style apartments that needed constant maintenance. It's not a coincidence that every prosperous nation of the past 50 years were Capitalists while every single self-professed Socialist country was poor. You can't find a socialist country where the people had high standards of living.

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      IamSpartacusJ.
      3/18/15 1:40pm

      or you can look at all of northern Europe. Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands. Those are actual places. Also socialist. Not on fire.

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    IAMBlastedBiggsLostBurnerHamilton Nolan
    3/18/15 1:29pm

    The elite, working hard to turn cities into massive country clubs! What's hard to understand, though, is why they fight so hard to restrict building, knowing damn well that there will always be a clear delineation between what they can afford and what everybody else can. There will always be real estate that is considered so desirable by so many disparate groups that they will always be the exclusive domain of the haves. Why the idea that this area of exclusivity is considered to include a buffer zone that reaches farther and farther out to the city limits exists makes no sense, other than it merely reinforcing the sense of exclusivity and importance.

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      waterwaterwaterpleasewatermusthavewaterIAMBlastedBiggsLostBurner
      3/18/15 1:32pm

      I don't think it's a conspiracy - the people who don't want new construction aren't just the elites, it is probably more the people who already bought property and have watched the value skyrocket - Things have worked out wonderfully for them, why change anything?

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      Max ContrarianIAMBlastedBiggsLostBurner
      3/18/15 1:50pm

      Rich and poor alike fear and resist change, and each have their own adorable code words for the type of change they don't want.

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    Cam/ronHamilton Nolan
    3/18/15 1:35pm

    There's always so, so much written about housing in SF and LA but so little written about places where there's quite a bit of cheap housing (i.e. Sacramento, Modesto, Fresno, Bakersfield). Hell, Sacramento is considered to be America's most integrated city. But then again, a lot of folks in the coastal cities look at those places and think, "Ew, Valley People!"

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      waterwaterwaterpleasewatermusthavewaterCam/ron
      3/18/15 1:42pm

      Sacramento and the whole delta area is nice, I like it - I don't mind Fresno so much, but there's something about Bakersfield that I did not like.

      The sunsets are absolutely gorgeous, though.

      The problem with the valley is the pollution (exacerbated by massive population growth), and getting better jobs into the region.

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      LtCmndHipsterCam/ron
      3/18/15 1:42pm

      Sacramento is awesome and cheap. People should move there.

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