I couldn't agree more. I'm originally from the Twin Cities and we solved (parts of this) problem years ago with a regional government called the Metropolitan Council. When you have a metropolitan area that spans multiple local governments, coordinating efforts around transportation, development, and environment is critical. And coordination is difficult without some sort of central authority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Council
Originally from Minneapolis. Farmlands extend infinitely outwards in all directions. The real Met Council power is over the sewer pipes, which allows them to limit sprawl and set a growth boundary. Maybe things have changed, but it used to be run mostly by real-estate types who wanted "controlled growth". (that is, it was a racket.)
In San Francisco, the situation is entirely different. We have a massive greenbelt surrounding a geographically constricted urban area, which is 99% developed. Californians have a long history of anti-growth "pull up bridges" politics. It is not so simple as putting some enlightened developers in charge.
Not really. There's plenty of room to build a ton more in San Francisco.
Just because there's already, say, a parking lot or a Burger King with a drive-through on a block in the city doesn't mean that it wouldn't be possible to build apartments there instead.
Geography and existing land use do not prevent building more housing in SF. Anti-building regulations are the only meaningful reason why the housing supply is so restricted.
Actually, I was quite surprised during a recent visit to Japan. There aren't many cars, but most of them are big saloons (lots of Crowns). Then again maybe if you can afford a car in Tokyo or Osaka, you can afford a big one.
That sounds an awful lot like you're suggesting that people who have already acquired the rights to a piece of property shouldn't be allowed to keep them if a housing developer wants to put a high rise where your Burger King is.
Also, I wonder if you would make the same argument for places that are also generally though of as real-estate constrained. Like Manhattan, or Tokyo. Or the part of Brooklyn where I live.
Here in Japan your neighbour can build pretty much anything they want (within zoning constraints) and there is little you can do about it.
The zoning here is pretty different than in the US though. The government created a national, unified zoning standard consisting of 12 zones.
Local governments can split their land into more-or-less arbitrary regions, and choose which zone type they want each region to have. They also have some control over how large the resulting buildings can be in each region by mandating the maximum ratio of floor space to land area for each region.
The main difference between Japanese and American zoning rules is that in the US, the zones are exclusive where-as in Japan they are (mostly) inclusive.
We not only have zones, but we layer on historic districts, parking minimums, setbacks, etc., going further than just not mixing commercial and residential. We mandate certain lifestyles in a pretty big way. A big shock vs. living in Japan where one can choose very different lifestyles.
I also miss the freedom Japanese architects seemed to have, where a building shaped like a treehouse would be just one of several interesting buildings.
It would be interesting to see if this is related to Japan's slightly bizarre real estate market. As I understand it, Japan has a culture that heavily emphasizes purchasing a newly built residence to live in for life. As such, the resale market for homes is limited.
Lots of NIMBYism is inspired by some level of home value protectionism. It's possible that if you don't expect to resell your home, you don't have to worry so much about protecting its value.
That makes no sense. GP is saying that the owner of the land, whether it's a parking lot or a Burger King, can decide to do something else with it like build a high rise. It's their land after all.
It's not like a random housing developer can come and kick you out just because they want to build condos.
If the problem is severe enough I see no reason in theory to not apply Eminent Domain in such cases. In practice what would likely happen is a local councilman's friend gets the lucrative development plot in an act of corrupt capitalism.
"Not really. There's plenty of room to build a ton more in San Francisco."
"Anti-building regulations are the only meaningful reason why the housing supply is so restricted."
Prove your claim. The GP is right that there is essentially no undeveloped land in SF; a huge part of the housing moratorium debate centered on the fact that there are only a half-dozen or so vacant parcels in the Mission. This is true across the city.
You're arguing about underutilized land, which is a subject that cannot be addressed with simple assertions. In most cases, that "parking lot or burger king" is a contrived example that doesn't really exist: either the lot really is being developed (and you just don't know about it), or the owner of the land doesn't want to redevelop it (i.e. they're making more money with the current use than they would otherwise), or the land is in a place where a developer can't make a building work (pollution, neighborhood, etc.), or any number of other practical reasons.
I used to believe, like you, that "regulations" were the reason that SF has a housing problem. Then I started looking into it. Regulations make a difference on the margins, but the root cause of SF's housing crisis is simple economics: too much money chasing too little land. No matter what you do, it's going to be expensive.
SF city occupies approximatively the same area as Paris, with only a third of the population. Most of Paris is developed with a 37m ceiling, hardly skyscrapers.
Cost of land goes up with density, but that's the point. You build more and spread that cost among more units. Up to a point, it is economical to build higher in that situation (then for skyscrapers you start to see cost per unit going up again). Look at all the 3 or 4 stories apartment buildings sprouting in the city right now. Most of them could be double the height without increasing construction costs per unit.
If your artificially reduce the number of units that can be built on a plot of land, you're forcing to spread the price of land among fewer units and you increase their cost.
> Look at all the 3 or 4 stories apartment buildings sprouting in the city right now. Most of them could be double the height without increasing construction costs per unit.
I'm not sure that's correct. I think the reason that you see a lot at that height is because building codes change quite a bit as you go past a certain height and the costs go up as well.
The height limit you're thinking of is higher. The IBC allows for five stories of wood construction over a multi-story concrete podium (often one or two stories).
AFAK this is what the codes are. When I see building frames under construction, I see an awful lot of "three floors of wood framing above a steel base" (usually mixed-use commercial 1st floor with residential above, but I'm assuming things here)
"SF city occupies approximatively the same area as Paris, with only a third of the population."
And so? Is it affordable live in Paris? No, it is not. I just looked up rents there, and a 500sf studio will run you around $1300-$1500USD a month. Given average salaries in the area, this does not compare favorably to SF. (As a matter of fact, the city of Paris has just enacted strict rent-control laws, because rents were seen as unaffordable.)
Also, be more specific: what part of SF are you talking about? If you're talking about the 1/3rd of SF that could be characterized as "city", the density is already quite high. Increasing the density of already dense areas won't meaningfully impact rents. But meanwhile, average density numbers completely ignore that the western 2/3 of SF looks like suburbs:
That's in the city of San Francisco. I dropped a pin randomly in the west side of the city. You can see Sutro Tower!
When we talk about density in SF, these are the areas that matter. But even if you could build higher density in these areas, you'd still have to buy the land (which would suddenly be much more expensive), build transit, infrastructure, and so on. There is no inexpensive solution to this problem.
> But meanwhile, average density numbers completely ignore that the western 2/3 of SF looks like suburbs
Yeah, lots of discussion treats SF as if it was the "downtown" urban core of the Bay Area, but in fact only a part of SF is that way, and a lot of SF, if still urban, not the kind of core that it is often compared to.
Yep. I make this point constantly on HN, and routinely get down-voted to -1. People just don't want to see data that contradicts their preferred narrative.
I'm actually not opposed to higher density or building up. I'm just pointing out that it isn't a panacea, and certainly won't work if you focus on the wrong places.
There are a lot of vacant buildings being sat on by property speculators, with very little property tax to motivate use thanks to Prop 13 (and because existing tenants hurt resale value).
Uh, this definitely falls under "citation needed". I've lived in SF for the better part of a decade, and I've never personally seen a vacant building that wasn't vacant for a reason (i.e. condemned, slated for demolition, etc.)
"or the owner of the land doesn't want to redevelop it"
I don't know the English terms here, but that kind of situation where individuals are earning massive profits because everybody else built city around them, is just wrong. That unearned rise in the property value should be taxed away.
So, just zone more apartments in that area and put big enough property tax on underdeveloped land area. That way the economic incentive of the property owner aligns with the interest of the whole city.
> That unearned rise in the property value should be taxed away.
That is so wrongheaded I don't know where to start. Increasing property taxes is the exact reason you have older folks be forced out of their homes after having lived there most of their life.
No one should have a continuously growing tax burden over time.
This idea is pretty hard to square with economic incentives for infrastructure development. If the state builds a freeway or a fire station or other development, one major effect is that it enables a lot of valuable economic development. For public goods, it's hard to capture that value - even though it makes society better off, it's not worthwhile for any one economic actor to do it.
Property taxes (specifically on the unimproved value of the land) offers a way out of this dilemma. If you can do more valuable economic activity with a piece of land, you can and should pay more for it, so it'll be worth more. So if you spend $10MM/yr in financing for building a bridge, and it increases land value in the catchment area by $100MM, and you have a 12% land-value tax, the state responsible makes more money.
Why should society subsidize someone using a piece of land, when another potential tenant will pay taxes on its true value? The government has to fund itself, so a reduction in property taxes means increases in other taxes. If the replacement taxes apply to everyone equally, that means wealth is effectively being transferred from average people (who are likely in debt with little savings) to people who completely own homes often worth 800k+.
The old person will make a good amount of money selling their home, and they can use that windfall to buy a nice new home somewhere warm and cheap, so it isn't like they're being trampled on.
>The old person will make a good amount of money selling their home, and they can use that windfall to buy a nice new home somewhere warm and cheap, so it isn't like they're being trampled on.
It deconstructs communities.
This land is too valuable to allow you people to squat on it. We'll compensate you, so it's all fine and fair, now get out.
It's not hard to understand why people don't like being treated that way.
They're subsidized by building infrastructure. If the state builds a bridge that allows a homeowner in town A to commute to work to town B, this directly increases the land value in town A. The state paid for this bridge, not the homeowner. This is what the subsidy is - having access to state-provided infrastructure by virtue of location. Why should the homeowner have exclusive right to that increase in land value?
This is the gigantic pitfall of overly-individualistic property rights - that socially beneficial infrastructure development doesn't happen, because nobody has the power to siphon off enough of the value created to make it worth doing.
> I don't know the English terms here, but that kind of situation where individuals are earning massive profits because everybody else built city around them, is just wrong. That unearned rise in the property value should be taxed away.
Prop 13 prevents this, and in fact makes it so that only redevelopment or change of ownership allows increases in property value to be taxed, which is one reason owners might prefer not to redevelop.
Full value assessment (even retaining the Prop 13 limit on tax rates) would encourage redevelopment because underdeveloped properties would still be paying taxes based on value increases from potential uses.
"that kind of situation where individuals are earning massive profits because everybody else built city around them"
Like so what? Your property value, whether house or some artistic drawing, can go up or down based on other peoples actions. There is nothing wrong with that, that is how ownership of anything works.
When people loose business or work because those around them abandoned area or supermarket appears, they get no reimbursement. It is market force in practice. Therefore, when the same people earn on others coming in, they should not be punished either.
If eviction regulations and tenant laws were less strict in San Francisco there would be more property for rent. I've met quite a few home owners who don't rent because it's either a "headache" or it actually decreases the value of their home.
There are tons of vacant houses in San Francisco. Most of these homes are bought in cash from outside investors who have way more wealth than your average Bay Area citizen or tech employee.
These homes aren't rented because there are too many tenant rights and it's more trouble than it's worth to the owner.
> a massive greenbelt surrounding a geographically constricted urban area
We have a bunch of parks (which add enormously to our quality of life) surrounding massive suburban sprawl. Within the city, there is space for hundreds of residential towers without demolishing anything but parking lots and decrepit buildings. Outside the city, in most places you could easily double the density of single family units, they are so spread out.
This is a funny example to pick since the Metropolitan Council has demonstrated NIMBYism in its own right on a few topics. Importantly, the Council has been able to direct huge groups of people to far reaches of the Metropolis (with their attendant reduced bus service, higher crime, etc).
This is exactly what we lack in Atlanta, which, as you probably know, is notorious for its decentralisation and far-reaching sprawl. As a result, everything that's done in the Atlanta metro area suffers from narrow incorporated municipality focus and a total lack of regional-scale goals.
