7 ms·

San Fransisco has a lot of land zoned single family. http://www.sf-planning.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=9016 http://www.sf-planning.org/modules/sh

by hglman 11y ago

San Fransisco has a lot of land zoned single family. http://www.sf-planning.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=9016 http://www.sf-planning.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documen... You could easily rezone and up the density by a factor of 4 or 5.

wpietri 11y ago
Have you tried asking people living in those homes about your "easy" plan? The one that would involve them living somewhere else for a couple of years during construction and then moving back to a smaller, less appealing place? As I said, San Francisco residents mostly seem pretty happy where they are.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  Several of the people I know living in the western half of the city are living with 3–4 roommates in one single-family house, because they can’t afford separate apartments. Because they have rent control, they can continue to afford to stay in places where rents have doubled in the last few years, but they can’t afford to move to a new place, and might have to leave the city entirely to e.g. get married and start a family. Some of them don’t drive, so the excessive parking requirements are useless, but are constantly and bitterly complaining about how slow and unreliable the Muni buses are (the ones who drive complain about traffic congestion instead). Many such people would be pretty happy to have an independent one bedroom apartment in a 5 story building in the same neighborhood at a similar price, assuming some improved transit.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    I agree they would be pretty happy to have apartments. But even they wouldn't be happy to be kicked out of their current place now so that in two years some entirely different people could have 1-bedroom apartments on the land where they once lived. And that's not even considering the current owners or all the neighbors. Your friends are likely to be new arrivals, and so have little connection to the people around them. But for many people living out there, those are their childhood homes, and their neighbors are important parts of their lives. Personally, I also think a lot of land west of Twin Peaks is underutilized. But I think it's important for people not to be glib about the fact that a lot of the people living there think it's just fine, and that even for those who want something different we're talking about incredibly disruptive and expensive change.
- bzbarsky 11y ago
  No one would be forcing them to move. Now some might _choose_ to move because they could sell their single-family home for a much higher price to someone who would then build a multifamily building on the lot. But that's obviously their business. But to the main point of your argument, about happiness: it's a general truism that people in low-density-zoned areas are happy there and oppose any sort of upzoning anywhere nearby. Upzoning nearby but not on their actual lot is particularly bad, because it would reduce the value of their real estate; people fight _that_ tooth and nail. The result is that everyone who is already there is fine; it's people who are trying to enter the market, either via moving to the area or by growing up and trying to move out of their parents' house, who get screwed. But since by and large those people don't vote (the young for demographic reasons; the not-yet-residents because they're not yet residents), it's the incument residents who get to control the zoning rules to their exclusive (perceived, at least) benefit. Which is all fine, but then prices get out of hand and people panic and start introducing things like rent control and whatnot, which makes prices get even more out of hand anytime someone actually moves. And then we see the current San Francisco real estate market.
  - teacup50 11y ago
    People don't fight upzoning because it reduces the value of their real estate; in fact, it almost always does the opposite. People fight upzoning because they like where they live, and upzoning would destroy what they like about it. As for "people trying to enter the market", upzoning makes it that much harder; condos are generally a worse investment, so most high-density developments are rentals. If you think housing prices are high, try the cost of a buying a rental building. Lastly, the "incumbent residents" bit is hilarious. I believe that's called "a citizen", or "a community member" -- as in, the people who are paying the taxes and electing representative leadership to serve in the interests of their established community.
    - bzbarsky 11y ago
      > People don't fight upzoning because it reduces the value of their real estate You didn't read what I said carefully enough. People fight _nearby_ upzoning because it reduces the value of their real estate. Upzoning of their actual land increases its value, of course. Agreed on people fighting upzoning of their own land because it would change the surroundings in a way they find undesirable. By "people trying to enter the market", I mean the housing market, not the real estate purchase market. That is, people trying to find a place to live. It's quite rare for people first moving out of their parents' house to do so by buying a house themselves; they typically rent. The result is that there are tons of places in the US (including San Francisco) where people have to move far away from their relatives when they move out on their own because there is nowhere nearby that is a viable place to live. As for that last.... that's true if you exclude the interests of the children of the community (which are nearly always excluded; once the kids finish college they're on their own and typically shut out of the community). It's also true if you ignore the fact that some of these communities (and the Bay Area is particularly bad about it) try to create lots of employment opportunities but without the corresponding housing. This leads to hellish commutes for everyone, including the members of the community in question, lots of complaining, and poorer quality of life than you would have otherwise. There are some unpleasant tradeoffs here, for sure. The problem is that some people refuse to acknowledge that the tradeoffs even exist and to discuss what the right tradeoff is. They insist that nothing must ever change, period, and it never occurs to them that this means that their commute will suck more and more and their kids will not be able to live near them. Note that I say this as someone who lives in a suburb. I like it here. I would not be terribly happy with upzoning myself. And yet I'm watching a lot of the resulting problems play out (including people who grew up in the town being completely priced out of it). It's not pretty, and upzoning sure would help some of those problems.
- abritinthebay 11y ago
  Congratulations! You're the exact cause of the problem SF has had for nearly 30 years now! How are you finding that has worked out for SF overall?
  - teacup50 11y ago
    Were you even in SF 15 years ago, when the .com bubble popped and housing prices returned to a degree of sanity? If you want to see the cause for "the problem SF has had for nearly 30 years now", look in the mirror.
    - abritinthebay 11y ago
      Just like every NIMBY. People like you have complained about this in the same way in SF since the 1900s. They've never been right. Just conservative and regressive selfish fools with no ability to look at the bigger picture to help their fellow man (and themselves)
      - wpietri 11y ago
        You are certainly demonstrating your desire to help your fellow man by anonymously being a dick to actual fellow men. Bravo, sir, bravo.
        abritinthebay 11y ago
        Well the important thing is that you've found a way to feel superior. Bravo sir, bravo.
    - wpietri 11y ago
      I agree, and the maddening thing for me is that my fellow people in the tech industry so rarely say, "Why yes, we are the problem. What can we do about it?" I wrote this more than a year ago: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-some-San-Francisco-residents-angry-with-technology-companies-and-their-workers/answer/William-Pietri?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-are-some-San-Francisco-residents-a... As far as I can tell, the willful obliviousness is just as bad as then, and maybe worse.
dragonwriter 11y ago
Sure, you could easily upzone and fit 4 to 5 times as many people into the city. Not so easy to upgrade the infrastructure (transit and otherwise) to handle 4-5 times as many people living in (and traveling out of and back into) the city, OTOH. And if you do that, best case, you've got 4-5 times as many people living in the city, at similar costs, in smaller living spaces. Where's the gain?
- Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago
  > Not so easy to upgrade the infrastructure (transit and otherwise) to handle 4-5 times as many people living in (and traveling out of and back into) the city, OTOH. Actually, this is the part where cities shine: infrastructure costs in cities are lower per-person than they are in suburbs. It's much more efficient to have a dense enough city that people can reasonably get around on foot or bike, for instance, than a suburb that requires driving everywhere. It puts way less wear and tear on the roads and requires fewer of them. The suburban cul-de-sac generates traffic by making everyone take the same big roads. Cities can redirect traffic in any number of ways given a well-connected road network. With a mix of uses the need for heavy infrastructure decreases, as many trips that might in the suburbs require a car merely require a body healthy enough to move. Less driving can actually save lives, given how dangerous driving is. And those who drive in cities are probably less likely to die, given that speeds are much lower. In large cities, transit becomes more efficient than building highways. For example, the DC Metro just got an expansion for ~$3 billion. Meanwhile, a single highway interchange in Virginia was redone with a cost of $.25 billion. A railroad can move way more people than 12 interchanges. > And if you do that, best case, you've got 4-5 times as many people living in the city, at similar costs, in smaller living spaces. Where's the gain? You've got lower infrastructure costs per-person than if 1x the people lived in the city and the other 3x-4x people lived in the suburbs, ultimately saving money. A lot of suburbs are long-term financially unstable as growth occurs because their infrastructure costs grow faster than economic growth grows the tax base to pay for said infrastructure. Loudon County, Virginia, for instance, has drastically lowered its willingness to approve single family housing because it's realized that each new SFH actually gets a large net tax subsidy unless its value is above a certain threshold. More SFHs = budget death. Apart from infrastructure cost savings due to the economy of scale, the other huge benefit is actually to economic growth: denser cities are more economically productive than less dense cities. In cities with good human capital, the effect is even stronger with higher density. It's easy to see why this might be. For starters, for people and jobs in a given area means every person has access to more jobs than they would otherwise. In a spread out region, more jobs would be outside of reasonable commuting distance, meaning a good portion of workers would not be willing to take the jobs, due either to time or cost concerns (especially for the poor who will be less likely to afford a car, bus / train fare, etc.). So yeah, the benefits are large. We founded cities for a reason thousands of years ago.

by hglman 11y ago

wpietri 11y ago

Have you tried asking people living in those homes about your "easy" plan? The one that would involve them living somewhere else for a couple of years during construction and then moving back to a smaller, less appealing place? As I said, San Francisco residents mostly seem pretty happy where they are.

jacobolus 11y ago
Several of the people I know living in the western half of the city are living with 3–4 roommates in one single-family house, because they can’t afford separate apartments. Because they have rent control, they can continue to afford to stay in places where rents have doubled in the last few years, but they can’t afford to move to a new place, and might have to leave the city entirely to e.g. get married and start a family. Some of them don’t drive, so the excessive parking requirements are useless, but are constantly and bitterly complaining about how slow and unreliable the Muni buses are (the ones who drive complain about traffic congestion instead). Many such people would be pretty happy to have an independent one bedroom apartment in a 5 story building in the same neighborhood at a similar price, assuming some improved transit.
- wpietri 11y ago
  I agree they would be pretty happy to have apartments. But even they wouldn't be happy to be kicked out of their current place now so that in two years some entirely different people could have 1-bedroom apartments on the land where they once lived. And that's not even considering the current owners or all the neighbors. Your friends are likely to be new arrivals, and so have little connection to the people around them. But for many people living out there, those are their childhood homes, and their neighbors are important parts of their lives. Personally, I also think a lot of land west of Twin Peaks is underutilized. But I think it's important for people not to be glib about the fact that a lot of the people living there think it's just fine, and that even for those who want something different we're talking about incredibly disruptive and expensive change.
bzbarsky 11y ago
No one would be forcing them to move. Now some might _choose_ to move because they could sell their single-family home for a much higher price to someone who would then build a multifamily building on the lot. But that's obviously their business. But to the main point of your argument, about happiness: it's a general truism that people in low-density-zoned areas are happy there and oppose any sort of upzoning anywhere nearby. Upzoning nearby but not on their actual lot is particularly bad, because it would reduce the value of their real estate; people fight _that_ tooth and nail. The result is that everyone who is already there is fine; it's people who are trying to enter the market, either via moving to the area or by growing up and trying to move out of their parents' house, who get screwed. But since by and large those people don't vote (the young for demographic reasons; the not-yet-residents because they're not yet residents), it's the incument residents who get to control the zoning rules to their exclusive (perceived, at least) benefit. Which is all fine, but then prices get out of hand and people panic and start introducing things like rent control and whatnot, which makes prices get even more out of hand anytime someone actually moves. And then we see the current San Francisco real estate market.
- teacup50 11y ago
  People don't fight upzoning because it reduces the value of their real estate; in fact, it almost always does the opposite. People fight upzoning because they like where they live, and upzoning would destroy what they like about it. As for "people trying to enter the market", upzoning makes it that much harder; condos are generally a worse investment, so most high-density developments are rentals. If you think housing prices are high, try the cost of a buying a rental building. Lastly, the "incumbent residents" bit is hilarious. I believe that's called "a citizen", or "a community member" -- as in, the people who are paying the taxes and electing representative leadership to serve in the interests of their established community.
  - bzbarsky 11y ago
    > People don't fight upzoning because it reduces the value of their real estate You didn't read what I said carefully enough. People fight _nearby_ upzoning because it reduces the value of their real estate. Upzoning of their actual land increases its value, of course. Agreed on people fighting upzoning of their own land because it would change the surroundings in a way they find undesirable. By "people trying to enter the market", I mean the housing market, not the real estate purchase market. That is, people trying to find a place to live. It's quite rare for people first moving out of their parents' house to do so by buying a house themselves; they typically rent. The result is that there are tons of places in the US (including San Francisco) where people have to move far away from their relatives when they move out on their own because there is nowhere nearby that is a viable place to live. As for that last.... that's true if you exclude the interests of the children of the community (which are nearly always excluded; once the kids finish college they're on their own and typically shut out of the community). It's also true if you ignore the fact that some of these communities (and the Bay Area is particularly bad about it) try to create lots of employment opportunities but without the corresponding housing. This leads to hellish commutes for everyone, including the members of the community in question, lots of complaining, and poorer quality of life than you would have otherwise. There are some unpleasant tradeoffs here, for sure. The problem is that some people refuse to acknowledge that the tradeoffs even exist and to discuss what the right tradeoff is. They insist that nothing must ever change, period, and it never occurs to them that this means that their commute will suck more and more and their kids will not be able to live near them. Note that I say this as someone who lives in a suburb. I like it here. I would not be terribly happy with upzoning myself. And yet I'm watching a lot of the resulting problems play out (including people who grew up in the town being completely priced out of it). It's not pretty, and upzoning sure would help some of those problems.
abritinthebay 11y ago
Congratulations! You're the exact cause of the problem SF has had for nearly 30 years now! How are you finding that has worked out for SF overall?
- teacup50 11y ago
  Were you even in SF 15 years ago, when the .com bubble popped and housing prices returned to a degree of sanity? If you want to see the cause for "the problem SF has had for nearly 30 years now", look in the mirror.
  - abritinthebay 11y ago
    Just like every NIMBY. People like you have complained about this in the same way in SF since the 1900s. They've never been right. Just conservative and regressive selfish fools with no ability to look at the bigger picture to help their fellow man (and themselves)
    - wpietri 11y ago
      You are certainly demonstrating your desire to help your fellow man by anonymously being a dick to actual fellow men. Bravo, sir, bravo.
      - abritinthebay 11y ago
        Well the important thing is that you've found a way to feel superior. Bravo sir, bravo.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    I agree, and the maddening thing for me is that my fellow people in the tech industry so rarely say, "Why yes, we are the problem. What can we do about it?" I wrote this more than a year ago: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-some-San-Francisco-residents-angry-with-technology-companies-and-their-workers/answer/William-Pietri?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-are-some-San-Francisco-residents-a... As far as I can tell, the willful obliviousness is just as bad as then, and maybe worse.

dragonwriter 11y ago

Sure, you could easily upzone and fit 4 to 5 times as many people into the city. Not so easy to upgrade the infrastructure (transit and otherwise) to handle 4-5 times as many people living in (and traveling out of and back into) the city, OTOH. And if you do that, best case, you've got 4-5 times as many people living in the city, at similar costs, in smaller living spaces. Where's the gain?

Zach_the_Lizard 11y ago
> Not so easy to upgrade the infrastructure (transit and otherwise) to handle 4-5 times as many people living in (and traveling out of and back into) the city, OTOH. Actually, this is the part where cities shine: infrastructure costs in cities are lower per-person than they are in suburbs. It's much more efficient to have a dense enough city that people can reasonably get around on foot or bike, for instance, than a suburb that requires driving everywhere. It puts way less wear and tear on the roads and requires fewer of them. The suburban cul-de-sac generates traffic by making everyone take the same big roads. Cities can redirect traffic in any number of ways given a well-connected road network. With a mix of uses the need for heavy infrastructure decreases, as many trips that might in the suburbs require a car merely require a body healthy enough to move. Less driving can actually save lives, given how dangerous driving is. And those who drive in cities are probably less likely to die, given that speeds are much lower. In large cities, transit becomes more efficient than building highways. For example, the DC Metro just got an expansion for ~$3 billion. Meanwhile, a single highway interchange in Virginia was redone with a cost of $.25 billion. A railroad can move way more people than 12 interchanges. > And if you do that, best case, you've got 4-5 times as many people living in the city, at similar costs, in smaller living spaces. Where's the gain? You've got lower infrastructure costs per-person than if 1x the people lived in the city and the other 3x-4x people lived in the suburbs, ultimately saving money. A lot of suburbs are long-term financially unstable as growth occurs because their infrastructure costs grow faster than economic growth grows the tax base to pay for said infrastructure. Loudon County, Virginia, for instance, has drastically lowered its willingness to approve single family housing because it's realized that each new SFH actually gets a large net tax subsidy unless its value is above a certain threshold. More SFHs = budget death. Apart from infrastructure cost savings due to the economy of scale, the other huge benefit is actually to economic growth: denser cities are more economically productive than less dense cities. In cities with good human capital, the effect is even stronger with higher density. It's easy to see why this might be. For starters, for people and jobs in a given area means every person has access to more jobs than they would otherwise. In a spread out region, more jobs would be outside of reasonable commuting distance, meaning a good portion of workers would not be willing to take the jobs, due either to time or cost concerns (especially for the poor who will be less likely to afford a car, bus / train fare, etc.). So yeah, the benefits are large. We founded cities for a reason thousands of years ago.