How Do They Solve The Housing Crisis In San Francisco?
They of course make it absurdly hellish for a man to build an apartment building!
Great story at Reason, about Bob Tillman's absolutely insane battle.
The Insane Battle To Sabotage a New Apartment Building Explains San Francisco's Housing Crisis - YouTube https://t.co/DPRC16hxdq
— Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) April 27, 2019
Here in Venice, "progressives," who say they are "affordable housing" are for it -- until anyone wants to build anything anywhere near the house they bought for $120K in the 80s. (In Venice now, a termite-eaten shack goes for $2 mill.)
Likewise, gotta love the woman at a municipal meeting, speaking against Tillman being allowed to build, who complained that it's necessary to "counteract the terror of rising fascism."
(I love when people use words with no connection whatsoever to their meaning -- and others just nod and...wait...it's SF...fingersnap!...in approval.)
Also, as a dude points out in the video, "progressives" are about as anti-progress as you can get.
And, of course, the actual authoritarians are the municipal pols stopping housing from being built at every turn.
As with Manhattan, a lot of people want to live in San Francisco, so it costs a lot of money.
After being impressed by the Shapiro's interview of Dennis Miller last week, I listened to the interview of Shapiro by Rogan today to see what he's about. In chat about Hillybilly Elegy-ish topics, he discussed how demented it is that our government is ready to put people in smaller cities on the dole once their industries leave town, rather than letting them go to where the work is.
Cosh had a column (or twitter series) about this as well... Single moms were complaining about the cost of living in Canada's most sophisticated cities, as if they felt they had a right to be there, even with government's support of their deliberately fractured households.
San Francisco is a freakishly desirable place to live, and some of the brightest people on our globe are eager to be there for business as well as for the cultural and natural attractions.
And it's very easy to believe that everyone in the market is being duplicitous and manipulative with respect to pricing and construction.
But does it matter? It isn't a small number of apartments that's going to make things appreciably cheaper. Exactly who do you want to make room for there? And which market forces will you disregard to make that happen? And when you're done, what will you do for the next tier of people, on slightly smaller budgets, who the appear and demand a place to live?
It costs a lot to live in San Francisco.
What exactly is the problem?
Crid at April 28, 2019 1:27 AM
I agree in principle, but let's be honest, those larger cities "where the work is" have a big wall around them, called the cost of living, which helps keep out the riff-raff.
It's not easy to move from a town where your small-town salary was good money to one in which it's at-or-below the prevailing wage. You'll need savings to keep you housed, fed, and clothed for those months you spend looking for work.
Big city industries are advancing technologically. So, that assembly line job in Podunk, Iowa may not have prepared its soon-to-be-former workers for higher tech jobs in the big city.
And those higher-tech jobs are looking for younger workers, not the older ones regarded by younger hiring managers as "out of touch."
Sometimes, you have no choice but to bite the bullet and move. Battling the day-to-day grime and hustle of the city beats sitting at home in your small town collecting welfare, but sometimes it seems only barely to do so.
San Francisco has always had a faction that vehemently resists any and all change. There is a vocal and powerful activist segment of the population wants San Francisco to never change; wants to "pour amber" over The City and preserve it exactly they like it for eternity.
This faction vilifies developers and builders. San Francisco makes building new housing all but impossible, all while mandating that any new development set aside a number of units as "affordable housing." The Board of Supervisors (and anti-development groups) believes that "affordable housing" can be mandated by law and is not a natural product of supply and demand.
Conan the Grammarian at April 28, 2019 7:57 AM
You can leave things nice and quaint. But then economic development needs to be focused elsewhere.
NicoleK at April 28, 2019 9:45 AM
> It's not easy to move from a
> town where your small-town
> salary was good money to one
> in which it's at-or-below
> the prevailing wage.
Absolutely. It'll be tough. Friends couches, ramen noodles, all that stuff.
Ask me about my peanut butter years in Terre Goddam Haute. Or my dozens of friends who had more courage than I did and came directly to L.A. out of college, and made lives for themselves with the sink-or-swim desperation that made them judge their own effort with thoroughgoing impatience.
"It's not easy" is what SJW's do when what they want to say is "It should be easy."
…And you'll never guess what component of civilization they want to leverage in order to make things easy. No. Give up. You'll never guess.
"It's not easy" is the chin-dropped, lower-lip-pouting sanctimony by which academe metastasized into uselessness... 'If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!'
We're here to do things for each other to get our own needs met. We're supposed to think very hard about what those things are, even if those we do them for haven't asked for them yet. (See— Jobs & the Ipad.)
This isn't just an incidental principle of capitalism, it's the fundament of Western Fucking Civ. You are challenged in the most personal and individual way possible.
I remember, musta been 1979, National Lampoon mocked up a new Census form. There were a lot of multiple-choice questions with the sarcastic tone you'd expect… Handsomely vulgar sex stuff.
The final inquiry seared its way into my undergraduate ego:
Crid at April 28, 2019 10:11 AM
Don't mistake my "it's not easy" for "you shouldn't have to do it." I've moved myself into more cities to find a job than most people have lived in. It sure as shootin' ain't easy. Ask me about subsisting on bologna sandwiches in Atlanta or wearing out a pair of shoes on the streets of Chicago.
I've collected unemployment once in my life - and did not apply for an extension because not getting it was a better kick-in-the-ass than telling myself that tomorrow I'd find a job.
I'm just cautioning against casually tossing off the "move to where the jobs are" mantra as an easy alternative to any social assistance.
By any means necessary, people at all levels of the socio-economic hierarchy should
Conan the Grammarian at April 28, 2019 10:43 AM
> Don't mistake my
For you personally I quite certainly would not. I'm just pissy about word choices, because I can't remember that many of them and need something to bitch about. And I hate sanctimony with all my heart, and America has been generating more of that than ever before in an era when we all need more humility. (This is really not what I'd expected for the 21st. We won the fucking Cold War and the civilizational sweepstakes. And instead of failing by being too arrogant about our success, we're oblivious to it, and pornographically enchanted by fantasies of en-wokened shame.)
It's a silly example, but the Miller interview has some impressive thoughts about perseverance in markets that aren't welcoming. In a number of interviews Andreessen talks about the grit required of SV entrepreneurs, close paraphrase: 'After you've chewed enough glass, you begin to like the taste of your own blood.'
And— 'With frequent and humbling defeat, you soon come to see that you are, in fact, still alive and free to move forward.'
Crid at April 28, 2019 11:31 AM
Conan's right - SF has a long standing anti-development bias. I'd lived there in the late 80's and later from the mid 90's and remember all sorts of controversies around new development, redevelopment, property renovations etc..
The SF city council regards itself as a big HOA and has dictated all sorts of intrusive restrictions and mandates, many of which are quiet expensive to implement. Then there are all the 'community interests' that want to meddle in what can be changed or built, what it looks like, how much rent can be etc. etc..
So in the end, very little gets built or redeveloped.
nora at April 28, 2019 4:23 PM
If your current place doesn't have jobs then yes you need to move to where there are jobs available or make new jobs where you live. And the big city may not be where those jobs are at. As Conan mentions cost of living is vastly different in different places and needs to be taken into account. If you were making $90k as an engineer in Dallas you have to make at least $165k at a new job in San Fran or you are taking a pay cut. To most people in Dallas $165 sounds like a lot more but it really isn't. That is just break even.
Ben at April 28, 2019 5:18 PM
"Taken into account."
Hmmmmm. 🤔
Aha! I have it!
There will be FREE CANDY!!!!
Provided by OTHERS!! When you move to the big city!
By 'others,' I mean people —sustaining, but often unwitting investors— not poised to benefit directly from subsequent "achievements" of the translocating party, who is, after all, only looking out for his own best interests...
Because there are things, and those things belong in accounts "into" which they must be taken.
And all this because there are people (perhaps holding their own dicks with two hands) who want you to know that one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars is not a lot of money.
In Texas.
It "is just break even."
Crid at April 28, 2019 5:47 PM
In his beating, pulse-y pulse-y heart, every Trump voter is a socialist, so far as his own financial outcome is concerned. Trump & Bernie & Warren are all the same guy.
Crid at April 28, 2019 5:49 PM
You are living with a swarm of morons, Amy. Leave California now, before they drag you down onto their poopy sidewalks.
mpetrie98 at April 28, 2019 9:00 PM
Crid, I took unemployment once in 1999. I stopped making claims when the state threatened a new part-time employer with a $1,500 dollar fine if he did not verify that I was indeed employed there. I was so pissed about the state's heavy-handedness that I did not do a very good job that day. Why should I continue to be in bed with such a-holes, as it were?
I'm frankly not worried that much about a guaranteed outcome. Nothing in life is truly guaranteed on this earth, including a financial outcome, and quite frankly, none of us deserve one. I certainly did not vote for Trump for "free candy", as you put it.
mpetrie98 at April 28, 2019 9:11 PM
Sleeping on friends couches requires having friends in said local, and is pretty impossible if you have a family. Yes we were all poor when we got out of college and we all lived with roommates during the grad school/early professional years. That stage of life doesn’t count, everbody moves then.
The bigger problem is adults with families. If society is at a point where families have to keep moving all the time because jobs keep going under, then that society is a failure.
Nicolek at April 28, 2019 9:45 PM
> That stage of life doesn’t
> count, everbody moves then.
The topic is precisely those who don't.
Big cities are tough. You gotta bring the goods, especially if you're a hillbilly. (I have experience with this pattern, in metropoles of increasing population; newbies are always expected to prove themselves.)
In the first decade of this century, Thomas PM Barnett called the movement of people from hinterlands to the cities of China "the greatest migration in human history." I've been listening to a lot of economics podcasts lately: It was either Sowell or Cowen who pointed out that people moving to the city tend to do so to live more peacefully, cooperatively and productively than in the lives they left behind.
In the second decade of this century (late last year in fact) someone (will try to find it) suggested that no single social change had done more to diminish violence to women, sexual and otherwise, than this movement of Chinese women toward urban factory work. That's feminism, okay? Perhaps the best feminism ever.
Across culture in all respects, people are discouraged from stoicism and from asking more of themselves. We so often whine about academe on this blog: These children, having never built anything or even met someone who did, are being told that they carry every ethical insight they could need to take command of the lives of others, without further investigation or struggle.
It may offend them to learn the truth: Even this weird and unforeseen hour, you gotta test yourself, and earn your pride, in the arena.
Crid at April 29, 2019 2:27 AM
OK, I see your point. People who never, upon finishing school, bothered to look around for opportunity and got into some sort of job track, missed their chance. I agree.
Is that really who most of the poor are, though?
NicoleK at April 29, 2019 3:36 AM
I don't think anyone's ever missed their chance so long as they deliver the goods when they go to town. Certainly not all of these women in China were prom queens.
More about the poor in a couple hours
Crid at April 29, 2019 5:51 AM
Do you really want to argue with me that different places have different costs of living Crid? Troll on I guess.
Ben at April 29, 2019 6:08 AM
"Is that really who most of the poor are, though?"
I don't think so. I remember reading something about welfare claims a few years ago: the majority of people who apply for welfare will be off of it within a year. However, of the ones that remain on welfare for three years, the bulk of those will live the rest of their lives on welfare. Keeping mind that we've upward-defined "poverty" since WWII, I see the poor consisting of three groups:
1. The people who are poor because they are severely disabled and incapable of working. This is a pretty small group, and for the most part, the system seems to do a decent job with them. (Excepting the homeless, most of whom are homeless due to mental illness. But the nature of their illness pushes them to dodge the system that would otherwise take care of them.)
2. The temporarily poor. These are the people who are between jobs, or who are trying to pay their way through school, or are poor due to (often) some combination of bad choices and bad circumstances. Most of these people will end up pulling themselves back up by their bootstraps. I think this is the largest group, but it's hard to pin down because the faces are always changing.
3. The structurally poor. These are the people who are never going to find work or do anything else to improve their circumstances, as long as welfare remains available. Many of them now are fourth- or fifth-generation welfare recipients, and have never known any other life. The pathologies here are well documented so I won't repeat them. This isn't the largest group, but by far it is the group that gets the most attention.
Note the once-large group that doesn't appear in this list: the elderly poor.
Cousin Dave at April 29, 2019 6:54 AM
As far as San Francisco: Crid is right in that it's a market situation (albeit an artificial market, to a considerable extent) that will end up sorting itself out. However, the manner in which it does so may end up with the city government and voters wishing they'd chosen a different path. San Francisco is about to be become economically hollowed out, the way New York was in the 1970s and the way Detroit is today. When the middle class flees, nothing good ever comes out of that. Fun fact: The population of the Detroit Metro Statistical Area today (4.4M) is 10% higher than the MSA's population in 1960 (4M). However, the population of Detroit proper, which was 1.670M in 1960, is 673,000 in the 2017 estimate -- a decline of 60%.
Cousin Dave at April 29, 2019 7:09 AM
As to "moving to where the jobs are" there is in fact lower regional movement than 50 yrs ago (although it still exists). One reason is occupational licensing--a nurse in one state must go back to school to nurse in another. Even a hair-stylist. Another is people prioritizing life-style (ie San Fran). There are high paying jobs right now in oil/gas fields across the West. Very high paying.
Interestingly, Tokyo has no zoning. They just try to adjust the roads to keep up with what builders do. It seems to work.
The idea that san fran will "work itself out" is technically true (every system comes to equilibrium) but the housing shortage is at least in part artificial. Sure, no amount of building will make it as cheap as Starkville, MS, but it could be drastically improved with some new housing.
cc at April 29, 2019 9:19 AM
To add on CC, cultures across the US are diverging. I don't know how many people I've seen move from California to Texas for work and then move back a few years later. If they aren't moving into the Austin area they don't seem to last. I don't know for sure but I get the feeling that isn't how things were 50 years ago.
Ben at April 29, 2019 10:47 AM
$165K, scraping through
Crid at April 29, 2019 2:31 PM
I'm guessing that is directed at me Crid. Yes, if you are an electrical engineer with more than 10 years experience and making under $165k/year while living in San Fran, you need to move. You are getting shafted by management. Find a job at another company that pays fair wages for the work you do. And maybe get out of California. There are lots of engineering jobs out there. You can easily make more than that when adjusted for local cost of living.
Troll on Crid. Troll on. And maybe do your homework while you are at it.
Ben at April 30, 2019 9:05 AM
San Franciscans love the poor (that's why they support policies that produce more of them) but only at a distance. The problem is, you can either make your own sandwiches and haul your own trash, or accommodate people in your community who do those things, on what you are willing to pay them to do it, at least until we have cheap teleportation devices to bring them to work.
bw1 at May 2, 2019 7:50 PM
San Francisco is already running into problems in that department; mid-level chefs are leaving.
The people who work in fast food, cleaning services, and other minimum wage jobs cannot afford to live near their work and cannot afford to move out of state.
Even the nearby suburbs are out since SF is a peninsula, and down the peninsula is Silicon Valley. So, the nearest "affordable suburb" where one can get a single-family residence for less than $800,000 is currently Brentwood, 55 miles away in the East Bay. Even a brand new zero-lot-line townhouse in Martinez will run you $600,000 or more, an older one slightly less.
Brentwood is a one-hour one-way BART ride (if no delays) costing $8.00. So, at least three hours a day on a train (15 hours a week) and $16.00 a day ($80 a week) is the cost of working a minimum-wage job in SF if you don't want to live in the Tenderloin (and you don't). At a minimum wage of $15 an hour, that computes to over an hour of work needed just to pay for getting to and from work. And the long commute means the work week is now almost 60 hours long.
Conan the Grammarian at May 4, 2019 7:31 AM
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