A better plan for integrating the homeless into the community by subsidizing rents would be a start (right now the homeless outreach is clustered, when it would be better to spread it out, putting people in real apartments). The problem is that once the subsidies end, people working minimum-wage jobs simply can’t afford to rent within the city limits of SF. So in addition to those sorts of programs, there needs to be a plan to lower the cost of living overall, and re-zoning for higher density would be a good start.
What do you propose? We like to let people make their own choices of where to live, even if they’re homeless, yet we closely control how many homes are built. We seem conflicted about letting markets take their course. If other cities were more attractive places to live there would not be so much pressure on the hot coastal cities.
I’m not conflicted about letting markets take their course; I’m quite certain that that will lead to bad results. You assume that markets would produce sufficient for housing that would be affordable to all, yet that is not how markets work. Markets produce goods and services at a price that is profitable for the producers. Markets don’t really care who can or can’t afford it. There are, for instance, homeless people everywhere, in virtually every city of any size, regardless of zoning or available housing inventory. The market has failed them; the market will always fail them. Manhattan has Manhattan-density development, obviously, at yet it remains one of the most expensive places to live. There’s no amount of development that’s going to change that.
1st it’s not just coastal cities dealing with this right now. Nearly every every non-rust belt city is at least at the beginning of this particular trend. The major coastal (or near coastal, think Philly) are just older, in more populous states, And started earlier.
2nd people are packing into cities because that’s where the work is. I live in, And grew up in a more rural area not far from a major city. The are no jobs outside of municipal work, construction and low paid service jobs. And the density of cities brings certain kinds of amenities and benefits that can make life more affordable and generally easier. Density can also be a hell of a lot more environmentally benign than sprawl or rural development.
The issue most cities are dealing with is that after decades of population stability or drops follow the great white flight. Suddenly a lot more people need to live within a certain distance of, or with in these cities then they have the housing and commercial space in place for. That leads to more expensive housing, more expensive commercial spaces, lower quality housing, affordable housing that’s further from the jobs. Basically just drives cost of living up across the board. Increases segregation (both ethnic and economic), stresses ill maintained infrastructure. And so on. Non coastal and smaller cities are just as subject to that dynamic as anywhere else. As are small towns (like mine where something very similar is happening due to a refusal to build any multi unit housing or new commercial spaces) .
Did you actually read the article? It posits allowing density everywhere is what’s needed, then the demand will stabilize. If you only provide supply in the wealthiest enclaves, it doesn’t work because it draws residents from outside the local pool.If NYC allowed dense construction anywhere in the 5 boroughs, that picture would change. The WHOLE POINT of the article is housing cost is artificially driven up by land costs, which are in turn driven up by zoning restrictions.
Urban sprawl is worse for the environment overall than increased urban density. When you have a lot of people living in a small area you don’t have to use nearly as many resources on transportation, food distribution, etc.
The carbon footprint for 100 people commuting to work on an electric light rail is a lot smaller than the carbon footprint for 100 people driving cars from the suburbs 40 miles away.
One reason it can actually be greener to live coastal is that you don’t need air conditioning. Sprawl in the valley isn’t a good solution either (not that you’re suggesting that). I don’t want to see a megalopolis in the Bay Area either, but we can’t stop people from coming, we can only make a plan to mitigate the excesses of over-population. A massive overhaul of transit is a huge priority IMO.
When I first started looking for a place in California I found someone selling the rights to a water meter in Bolinas for $100,000. It came from a burnt down house that you couldn’t rebuild.
That’s not even specifically it. NYC, Frisco, other cities are adding less housing units than would be necessary given the number of new residents they’re gaining. It’s an astoundingly simple metric, that’s been pointed out repeatedly over the last decade. NY gained 110k residents but only added 74k units of housing. Frisco gained 78k residents but only added 20k units. I mean those are fake numbers for examples sake. But you can look through past news coverage of the issue over the last decade and see it over and over. Month to month more people are moving into cities than Those cities are adding housing for.
What your describing comes in with the housing that does squeak through. The rare section 8, addition that doesn’t impact overall rents (and you see what some of the residents share of subsidized housing is in NY these days and it’s shocking). Subdivision of existing buildings into addition units (means less space at the same or higher rents). And luxury developments. Especially condos and coops. Seem to be the only things that can eek through the restrictions on housing projects. None of which helps the middle class or drives rents and purchase prices down. I know a family that owns a coop apartment in upper Manhattan. The unit cost over a million dollars. And the coop fees for all those amenities exceed most rents in the area. So even if you can afford to buy that unit. You need to essentially swing rent and a mortgage at the same time.
I only started calling it Frisco after I first visited the and hated it. I was only there for about 18 hours to check in with some family. But what I saw was like a warped tech bro nightmare. Might be a nice city but the current atmosphere seems heinous.
It’s all the same ecosystem, restrictive zoning and high land prices reduce construction of affordable housing. Look at it this way, here’s an example that’s common in my city. A one or two family house on a 50 by 100 foot lot is torn down. By code only two two family houses can be built there. But if zoning allowed it they could easily put up low rise 16 or 20 units on a lot of that size. The cost of land, foundation and roof are fixed, allowing the additional units to be built at relatively minimal additional cost.
Do that enough times and your supply problem starts to ease. What’s ironic is scattered all over these areas are four to six story apartment buildings with 30-60 units that were built before the zoning restrictions. Some of them are stunning art deco.
Number of new units compared to the number of new residents tells only the smallest sliver of the story. Manhattan hasn’t recovered its population to where it was in 1970, let alone its peak year of 1910. The numbers are similar (with different peak years) in most of the city. Only Queens and Staten Island are at their peak population. The biggest driver of costs in most major cities is incomes. Someone in the San Francisco metro spends an average of 32% of their income on housing, in Detroit it is 29%. In fact when you factor in Transportation costs, Detroit is more expensive, relative to incomes than San Francisco is. Median household incomes in San Francisco grew by almost 9% between 2015 and 2016. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SANF806PCPI Relative to inflation incomes roughly doubled between 1970 and today. In the same period the population grew by about 10%.
I think you may have misread me. My question was in earnest: I really do want to know which cities have effective programs to reduce homelessness that we could use as a model, and I certainly agree that we can and should do better. Is there something specific that the municipal government of Dhaka is doing that you think SF should try to emulate?
That said, Dhaka certainly seems to have room for improvement as well. From a 2009 report:
“An estimated 3.4 million people live in the overcrowded slums of Dhaka, and many more live in public spaces lacking the most basic shelter.”
Yeah. It’s not that it has to be everywhere though. You can behave areas. Historic districts or what have with restrictive zoning. So long as there are enough units going in over all (preferably more than you need to push rents down at this point). And those units are put in appropriate places. It doesn’t much help to place to place that sort of development out on the outskirts, bedroom communities, areas that are cut off infrastructure wise. That’s how you get Phoenix and LA. That’s sprawl rather than density. But so long as its practically placed and there’s enough of it.
Because once you’re behind that’s when you start to see the limitations in the income level of housing really explode. If you’ve got a lot, And you can’t build up or out. And it’s already peaked in value. How do you practically increase its value or extract more profit from it? You build more expensive.
Which is where that income disparity comes in. Most of those wage gains in cities like NY and SF are going to the already well off. Wages are falling and stagnating from the upper middle class down ward. Particularly among the young. Using NY as the example it takes something like $46k/year to break even in NY. Average salaries are still below that. Starting salaries still sit well below that. And people aren’t generally getting raises while staying at the same job. Including salaried white collar jobs young people are moving to NY for in droves.
Manhattan hasn’t hit it’s peak population yet. And neither have some of the outer boroughs. But queens Staten Island. Many areas outside queens on long island and bits of Jersey CT and the Hudson River valley have. Your also no accounting for the fact that housing units were removed after the 70s peak.
There are still fewer housing units than the population needs. Fewer units are added than added residents. The middle class and impoverished are pushed out of central and down town areas (Manhattan for NY, increasingly Brooklyn) And into the surrounding areas. Especially those further out with less infrastructure support. Where it’s more expensive and less practical to get to those central/downtown areas where the work is.
The only reason Jersey City is approaching Peak, and its still tens of thousands away, is that the Waterfront of Downtown that was once all Rail Yards is now predominantly residential high rises. Density is actually dropping in other areas and thousands of Brownstones have been converted from multi-family to single-family in the past 20 years, countering the growth. Pre-war Queens actually wasn’t dense the way Brooklyn was, parts were even rural.
