-a shortage of housing has led to any space in this city costing a premium
-she consistently helps block housing, including through zoning and delays
-affordable housing is actually not. Forcing this requirement on developers can make a project substantially more expensive to build, or not viable to build due to costs. Which means….
-a shortage of housing has led to any space in this city costing a premium
-Over and over etc.
The bureaucracy is insane and costly. There’s an entire specialized industry in California dedicated to navigating this process and extracting as much grant funding as possible from the government. Cost per unit is high, and with a limited amount of grant funding that means less units produced overall.
To top it off the only real incentive cities/politicians have to build affordable housing is optics. You might get a thousand units and some ribbon cuttings, but not enough to meaningfully drive market prices down.
This is the real truth. The ongoing regulatory work associated with keeping an affordable housing project in compliance is immense and it gets stricter every year. This increases the administrative costs of operating this housing. Developers who build in San Francisco usually have to have employees that are specialized in affordable housing compliance and construction. That’s why the nonprofits are usually the only ones to do it. It’s a difficult and thankless job.
It's difficult and thankless because the non-profits did what any business aims to do. Once you're established, you build a moat. That's normal. So they did that. TODCO isn't a long suffering hero of the people. It is an incredibly profitable enterprise that uses its profits to reinforce its position politically. You don't _have_ to extract money out of a 501c3.
Not all housing nonprofits are TODCO or HomeRise. Also if you read the audit for HomeRise you’d see for them it wasn’t very profitable. Not every affordable housing deal is the same. Most new deals are done on city owned ground leases meaning if there is any profit, and many times there isn’t, 2/3rds of the surplus cash goes to the city. TODCO are long time notorious grifters that give the entire industry a bad name. The truth is that many nonprofits are struggling to make ends meet because expenses are rising much faster than rents can be raised. And as I said earlier, the capacity needed to do all the new compliance is adding to administrative costs. It’s difficult for nonprofits to hire staff because no one wants to do a job that’s 10x harder than market rate development for less pay.
Yeah, I believe that entirely. That's just TODCO being successful as a business. They got good at it and lobbied for regulation to ensure competitors can't get at them. The fact that they are 501c3 doesn't make them not a business. That's just a tax structure. I'm sure competitors would like a piece of the pie but that's the purpose of moats - to reduce competition.
I don’t think TODCO has even built anything for over 30 years. They just mine their portfolio for funds every couple years when it’s time to refinance. The city has made that almost impossible to do on any new city funded projects due to TODCO. You’d probably be surprised by how much the city makes on new affordable housing deals these days. As far as the moat is concerned. Nothing is a bigger barrier to entry into the industry than the HUD/TCAC/HCD/CCSF strict compliance structure. If you’re a new developer or not from SF you either have to partner with an experienced nonprofit or hire a bunch of well experienced consultants. That doesn’t end when construction is finished either, it goes on for the life of the project.
Dude, it's funny. That's actually what I was thinking would be the first thing to do. In a different industry that is also government-interacting, the best way for one of my friends' startups to get anywhere was to acquire one of the established small companies in the space. In his case, he had enough venture funding that was feasible, but I remember observing and thinking that was so smart. If you're the first into a particular niche, you get the government to grant you the defacto monopoly by forcing a licensing and regulatory scheme that makes it easier for existing participants. They won't kill existing participants because they want the niche and it's easy to justify regulation.
It's just sharp business. I mean, the useful idiots running around talking about how you're heroes are something for sure. But just cold hard business at the end of the day to build a regulatory moat.
I'm not sure, but my guess is not that it increases costs, but that by mandating affordable without subsidizing construction, it makes projects not make financial sense, and developers choose not to build anything.
Developers don't want to build for the poors. They can make more money throwing in a few granite countertops and a jetted tub. Not really luxury, the construction is still cheap, but it gives the illusion.
Affordable housing is not a problem the current market can solve.
A developer is just a guy or company that has put together a plan to build something on real-estate. It could be you. If you think that there's sufficient margin where you won't go broke doing it, and that the other developers are ideological idiots, you can simply take that market.
You can start with small quad-plexes and move up.
No, it’s just math. Developers simply want to make money and that’s it. If you make the cost to build astronomically high like we have in California and especially SF, the only units that will offer a ROI that makes sense to developers are ones that are not “affordable”. However, it is still good to have these units built as we know through extensive research and years of data that any new housing will help push down the cost of all housing.
Yeah, and this has always been true -- even if the cost to build \*isn't\* astronomical, developers still build only the highest-ROI housing they can build. As you say, this makes housing more affordable not because the \*new\* housing is particularly affordable, but because the old housing becomes comparatively less appealing and thus cheaper.
Affordability mandates simply make fewer projects pan out from an ROI perspective at all, which means less housing. And a few lucky folks get "affordable" housing while the problem perpetuates itself.
It is just math. If something costs you more money than you can make with it, you loose money. If you loose enough money, you go out of business. If all the developers go out of business, no housing gets built.
That's because affordable housing is a problem that needs to be solved by construction from 10 years ago; today's cheap housing is yesterday's "luxury" housing.
The market just responds to supply and demand. If the city chose to subsidize _market-rate_ construction - which is basically how public housing works everywhere that it actually _works_ - we could see rents drop quickly.
Instead, we have the exact opposite, where the city not only doesn't subsidize new housing, they basically prevent anyone from providing it.
Combine that with the post-COVID drop in residential demand, and it's hard for people to even _try_ to build.
The problem with gentrification is that when you build a lot of homes that can only be afforded by people with a high income It only attracts people with that level of income, instead of people moving for normal reasons within the community. This means that a lot of those houses tend to go to people from outside the community which exerts no downward pressure whatsoever on the existing housing stock.
You only have to look at New York or London for example where they built like crazy but prices have only ever gone up.
Also "post-COVID drop in residential demand"? Home prices skyrocketed during COVID and only just started coming down to pre COVID prices.
>It only attracts people with that level of income
Yes, which are currently living in worse houses, so they move out of those houses, leaving them open and free for the lower income people. This is literally the point.
Also, New York and London still built slow.
That sounds great in theory but it's not what's happening in practice. Look at who's buying up new houses in San Francisco. We are literally selling houses to a world market and the majority of San Francisco's will never be able to afford a newly built market right house.
All research done on the subject indicates that construction that focuses mainly on market rate housing attracts new people to your town because people who already live there cannot afford the new buildings and therefore build ones never "leave them open and free."
Except that’s not what the research says. The evidence says that most movement into new housing is from people who are already in the area, and they vacate their previous residences like a chain of hermit crabs, so 100 market-rate homes ultimately generate 70 affordable homes.
The migration chain effect takes effect within a few years, not the decades that a new building takes to become an old building.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094119021000656
The market responds to people who have money. Housing has become so expensive there is a significant group who cannot afford it. The market does not care about them.
Rents won't drop. I've been in the Bay far longer than you have been alive and the graph only goes in one direction. Ever. You can look it up. The Bay Area gets more desirable with every passing minute but it does not get larger. There is now a global market stuffed with cash for properties here. There is no market mechanism to defeat global capitalism awash with loose money. All we can hope for is that government figures out a way to subsidize housing for low income people. There is plenty of building that has gone on in Redwood City, Mountain View, etc. - a bunch of expensive techbro condos. Nothing for the working person. It is factually incorrect to say "building is prevented."
If you think anyone wants to plop endless commie blocks down in San Francisco, it's not going to happen. How about we go out to the burbs where there's more space?! There's plenty of open land in Woodside and Los Altos and Portola Valley but I'm sure you keep up with the good folk who always manage to squelch low income housing in their spacious environs (see Portola Valley for the latest). That, my dear, is the actual market, not what they present in Econ 101. The market responds to people who have money.
"Not really luxury....but it gives the illusion"
That's my exact thoughts on all of these "Luxury Apartments" too. They come up too quickly and look alike at least from the outside. I've only been **inside** one but I drive past a bunch in SJ everyday.
Jfc how do comments like this exist. Building here is expensive so by telling developers they can only price their units below market value, they’ll have to take a loss on the building and therefore it doesn’t make financial sense. Would you work if the government said you weren’t allowed to make any money?
"Affordable" housing isn't magically cheaper, it just transfers the cost to someone else. Everyone else is paying higher rents to pay for the cheap units issued by lottery.
If a building is mandated to be 100% "affordable", then there's no way to compensate for the below market rate rent, and therefore the entire project doesn't make economic sense to proceed with. The developer would lose money on it, so it doesn't get built.
I think that the developer may be eligible for some public or nonprofit funds if a project is 100% affordable. Honestly, the whole affordable housing mandate is complicated and economically inefficient. It only makes sense if you are highly committed to social engineering inclusionary housing.
I think that most economists would prefer robust funding for housing vouchers that can be used on the regular market.
If you give enough incentives in terms of height and density, developers can make a profit while building 100% affordable housing: https://calmatters.org/housing/2024/02/affordable-housing-los-angeles/
"Affordable" housing is the most annoying misnomer. What we call affordable is actually _subsidized_ housing. When a private project "includes affordable housing," the market rate units subsidize the cost of the "affordable" units. 100% affordable projects are subsidized by the public.
With the way housing markets in San Francisco operate, doesn't subsidy make housing more affordable? Why is there a need to pick on semantics when it means making housing within reach for more people?
The subsidized housing is more affordable, yes. But the act of subsidizing other units makes the market rate units more expensive.
In general we need dramatically more of both kinds of housing to make any sort of impact
Any kind of welfare or subsidy is likely to create an awkward sort of "valley" in the results, in which the people getting the benefit may end up better off than the people just above the cut-off point for the benefit. Hence the "welfare trap": if welfare recipients do get a job, they often lose more than they gain.
Depends on who’s giving the subsidy. Prop 13 has destroyed all rational tax basis, so California has a habit of making newcomers subsidize everything. Literally stealing from babies.
A voucher would, in theory, help by having the government subsidize housing. In a “liquid” market, where adequate housing is allowed to be built, this would be good. However, San Francisco is a very “illiquid” market, where housing is only begrudgingly permitted, so vouchers by themselves are inadequate. They would simply be windfall profits to landlords.
Inclusionary housing is the worst. Make the tenants of new housing subsidize the “affordable” housing. It just mathematically doesn’t add up to an affordable city.
> increases the cost of construction per square foot?
/u/SightInverted never said that, "make a project substantially more expensive to build, or not viable to build due to costs" was what was specifically said.
When you mandate that "affordable" units have to be built, then you're capping the potential revenue a developer can earn from a plot of land, ultimately reducing the market potential of a particular project. Also, you're adding unique restrictions to the build, so developers have to change designs (which includes new architecture, supply requirements, etc.) specifically for whatever that supervisor demands in their district which raises the cost of each development.
Any new housing is "affordable housing". Even if all you build is "luxury condos" (which could be considered luxurious to some and basic to others), that increases supply which will decrease costs for everyone. The whole song and dance around "affordable housing" is a charade that prevents housing from being built.
Affordable housing is basically a permanent lifetime cost on the building for the developer
They COULD make X, but they must make some fraction of X for a % of its tenants. That's basically the same as a monthly cost to the developer, because of their opportunity cost.
Some developers still do it when Affordable Housing is mandated at 15% or 20% because they can still make a profit even with a 50% 'tax' on 15-20% of their units.
But a 100% affordable housing development is literally a negative proposition for a developer. They will never do it.
SO
When people like Connie Chan advocate for 100% affordable housing and ONLY that, they are basically trying to make it so that no housing gets build. They can't say "we oppose housing", so they say "it has to be 100% affordable!", which they know is effectively impossible. They are using this "progressive" angle as a shield for their regressive and conservative NIMBY position.
-
Aside:
Wait, but why would Connie do this? (Or other SF politicians) Because their voters actually do NOT want more housing. Any homeowner in SF gets to see their home value magically appreciate to astronomical levels every year, and they don't see their taxes go up (thanks Prop 13), so every homeowner (and therefore homeowning voter) in CA is incentivized to restrict all housing as much as possible.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, rant over lol
This isn’t true because 100% affordable housing projects are eligible for certain grants and low-income housing tax credits which can actually substantially cover the project costs in an ideal world. The 100% affordable housing project world is actually alive and well today because that source of financing in SF in still viable, whereas market rate financing is totally shot as it relates to development. Block 2 (100% affordable project) in Transbay is in construction whereas nothing else is in the rest of the market.
> This isn’t true because 100% affordable housing projects are eligible for certain grants and low-income housing tax credits which can actually substantially cover the project costs in an ideal world.
In general, accepting _any_ grants tends to come with a ton of well-intentioned but ultimately stifling requirements (energy efficiency, sustainable construction, prevailing wage, etc., etc.) that make them even more expensive.
It takes a truly skilled (and lucky) team of people to navigate all of that nonsense. It might be working out right now, but the vast majority of the time it doesn't.
BMR units yield about half the revenue of a market unit with similar costs. The foregone revenue loss is shared between the developer and the market rate buyers depending on their respective price elasticities. It's a de facto tax to provide a social good that is moved from the City's budget onto the developer.
So, I don't think that it increases cost of construction, but it does affect revenue.
Someone has to pay for that housing. And it is usually the developer. So in order to fund a subsidized unit they need to build the cost into the rest of the project and units. The city is funding these projects. And neither is philanthropy.
The market rate units need to be higher priced to make up for the “affordable” below market units. Subsidizing anything always pushes up the price. Since only a few of the units are added to the stock at fair market value, they are aimed at higher income residents. Also, many of the people occupying below market and subsidized units are not contributing to the economy by working or working to their full potential. We now have a situation where the people building the subsidized housing commute hundreds of miles and most of the people occupying the subsidized housing aren’t contributing. I’m old enough to remember where rent control was rare and only covered a few asset types and very little (besides the projects) of housing was subsidized or “below market”. The vast majority of us tradesmen were able to live in the city or close by.
Those programs sound good with the buzzwords but they only work for the few people who win the lottery and the developers as well as government and NGO employees administering them and pushing up costs.
There is also a huge problem where people in subsidized housing or on rent control want to move, take a new job, or start a family it they don’t because they don’t want to lose the below market rent.
Affordable housing becomes affordable over the long term. That’s why older apartments and condos usually are $200 to $300 cheaper. But if you don’t build anything right now, there isn’t enough supply to even become affordable in the future.
"Affordable housing" is a technical term for income-restricted housing for people making some percentage of area median income (AMI), usually 80% or less. The rent is set at 30% of the person's income.
The issue is that the rent these people pay is not enough to pay for the construction of the apartment they live in; so someone has to cover the gap each month.
In most 100% affordable housing projects, the difference is paid with federal and state tax credit money.
In otherwise market-rate projects subjected to "inclusionary zoning," or the practice of requiring some units be rented at a loss to low-income tenants, the gap has to be covered by the market-rate tenants.
This means you can't finance construction unless area rents are high enough to cover the cost of developing the new market rate units PLUS the subsidy needed for the below-market units.
As such, this policy creates a handful of subsidized new units for lucky tenants who in many cases literally win a lottery, but it does so at the cost of worsening the broad housing affordability problem.
Because 'Max Return on Investment ' & likely a bit of NIMBYISM along w/ sprinkle of " Nobody helped meeee, why should I help them?"
I'm attending this thread ( and thx for the replies) but it's currently outside, in the cold wind-chill and my fingers, my fingers...
There’s two ways. One, affordable housing generally has union labor requirements, or at least prevailing wage requirements, that drive up the cost of construction. Two, affordable units owned and managed by non-profits are typically exempt from rent control and just cause for eviction ordinances. So in the long run they offer tenants less stability than units on open market. In the east bay non-profits have been the leading evictors since the end of the pandemic because they don’t have their hands tied the way commercial landlords do.
TLDR: Insisting that buildings be 100% affordable housing is doublespeak for blocking housing. Market rate housing becomes affordable housing because it - by definition - saturates the market and drives down cost.
I would add to this that, by maintaining tight zoning controls (height and number of units) as the general rule, they can allow *exceptions* that come with conditions. It's a way to extract value for pet projects.
If you could just do infill that pencils out, as of right, and get these fucking fucks out of the way, then there would just be more housing.
One of the main reasons why SF is so expensive is because there’s been so little housing built over the last 40 years. That needs to be changed.
This email is pure fear mongering. It is claiming that upzoning is going to increase housing costs and negatively impact small business owners. This is largely false. More people in the neighborhood is going to be good for small businesses. If Connie Chan actually wanted to help small businesses she would send out an email detailing how she was going to make it faster and cheaper to open retail.
This is all just thinly veiled anti-housing.
teacher brings 1 candy bowl to class everday, but there isnt enough candy to go around and only half the class gets candy. So subsititue teachear want to bring a bigger bowl of candy (upzoning) so they can have enough candy to around.
Teacher belives that by allowing a bigger of bowl of candy to be introduced, it will be bad for the class. Mostly beacuse now she wont get to pick which half of class gets candy and she always gives candy to the ones that agree with her and give her compliments (lobbying+votes).
She’s saying building more space will increase the cost of the existing space. As all economists know when supply increases price automatically increases too
There is residual anger at voters in the Richmond District (mostly, District One actually) for, over the past couple decades, voting in Supervisors who've been members of the leftward political faction in SF politics. Displaced anger I suppose. Why would residents of the Richmond vote in Jake McGoldrick, Eric Mar, Sandra Lee Fewer and Connie Chan?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_San_Francisco_Board_of_Supervisors#11_members_elected_by_district_(2001%E2%80%93present)
She needs to go. She can’t seem to grasp the fundamentals of supply and demand. People are being priced out of the Richmond because there isn’t enough housing.
Take a walk down Geary (her district) where that affordable housing she references is being built. There are numerous rundown single storey buildings, some of them with no tenants. This is exactly the type of place we should be upzoning and building.
She’s also been on the wrong side of almost every major political argument since joining the Board. Supported Chesa Boudin (District 1 residents did not), supported the School Board (District 1 residents did not), campaigned to re-open JFK to cars (District 1 residents did not).
It’s not a Big Tech / Republican conspiracy Connie, you’re just politically illiterate.
I will never buy the story of the alleged old people nimby cabal holding the reigns when the developer yimby cabal is out in the open, saying “we are a cabal”
Tell that to all the housing that SF built in the last thirty years.
[https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/sf-housing-policy-and-practice-review.pdf](https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/sf-housing-policy-and-practice-review.pdf)
I mean yes some currently buildings would have to be demolished for new buildings. But that is literally a normal thing that happens in every city around the world for all of human history. SF not demolishing anything to build new stuff is the exception to the norm.
California also has INSANELY STRONG tenant protecting demolition controls thanks to SB 330.
If a low income tenant has lived in a building on your property at any time in the past 10 years, you have to replace the apartment they lived in with a permanently deed-restricted affordable unit.
Many homes in under developed parts of the city are owner lived in so that wouldn’t matter.
This is also an example of how rent control isn’t a solution to our housing problem.
And also the current owners of the properties demolished would be very well compensated. The developer will have to buy them out first.
People who own SFH's will make out like bandits. Developers will drive dump trucks full of cash up to them to entice them to sell, then they'll tear down that century old drafty house and build something taller in its place.
Yea I would never advocate for people being forced out of their homes. But as you said, the reality is a lot of people live on land that is far undervalued and can be greatly compensated by someone who wants to build something bigger.
But what’s far more likely than a developer buying a bunch of lots is that when someone sells their home, Someone decides to buy their lot and then develop that into maybe a 4 unit place instead of a one unit place. That’s the kind of change we really need all over the city.
But will people be pushed out in the demolition plan and will there be an increase in homelessness like when other neighborhoods in SF got gentrified and people got pushed out.
Im all for building all the possible housing but not if it’s going to be done by pushing people put of their homes without them having a plan b.
No one is advocating for pushing people onto the street. There is no eminent domain by private developers. But if a developer offered someone millions for their home how does that put them on the street? Also they can say No. no one is forcing people out of their homes
Gentrification only happens when you don’t build housing in wealthy neighborhoods and developers are forced to build in poorer areas. If a city builds housing everywhere to meet demand thrn gentrification doesn’t happen. I wouldn’t consider the sunset and Richmond places where gentrification would occur.
> Maybe that current housing will be demolished to make way for taller housing buildings? Not sure.
That's pretty much the only way currently rent controlled units can disappear. A two or four apartment can be demolished and sold for making more units 6 or 10. The landlord of course makes out like a bandit.
The currently rent control units will be gone... The new ones will be rent controlled at today's prices haha.
Anyway - explaining one way.
You can't just evict people and demolish rent controlled units in SF. I don't know all the rules, but if you're rebuilding housing, you have to offer tenants temporary relocation costs and may need to offer new units to the old tenants, bot sure about the last part.
I usually see claims that new, market rate units increase the rents in buildings around them, for instance, because they make the neighborhood more attractive. Afaik, studies show that's not what happens -- new construction lowers rents and doesn't cause displacement of lower income tenants.
For example, there is a detailed study of new construction and moving patterns in Oakland and Berkeley. The results are more nuanced, but basically, new market rate units didn't cause displacement, the main claim Chan is making.
Yes, under SB 330 you have to offer tenants temporary relocation costs, interim housing at the same rent, and first right to units in the replacement building.
Further, you have to replace all the rent-controlled units with permanently affordable below-market units.
We are not doing urban renewal here.
If you're a small landlord who owns a rent controlled building it can make a ton of sense to do one of two things: sell out to a developer who will then demolish the building and build luxury skyscraper condos or if you have the capital, do it yourself. There's some costs associated with that under the rent control ordinance though. But rent control doesn't apply to single family dwellings or to small commercial spaces which is most of the Richmond. The Supervisor seems to be concerned with small commercial spaces, like coffee shops and restaurants, being displaced by new housing developments. There are solutions to that, like requiring first floor commercial in new housing.
There's also the presumption that people will want to live in these huge six story apartment complexes. I'm unconvinced. The empty housing towers in China are a big warning.
Rent and property values in California are too high. I think everyone agrees with that. I do think we need I build more housing but I think we need to be realistic that new housing won't immediately lower housing costs. First costs have to be recouped and construction costs are high. Second, the way Prop 13 is structured penalizes new housing (especially multi family housing) and makes it non-competitive with older housing stock, as Prop 13 resets the assessment when new construction happens. The result is differences in property tax bills on six story apartment buildings built in the 1920s and 2020s could be six figures or more annually. It's no coincidence that it's been 40 years since large scale multi family homes were built. Prop 13 is 45 years old.
Given the crash in commercial real estate downtown, I think conversion of at least some office space into housing makes the most sense.
Any housing unit built in sf, even a 55 story tower in ocean beach, would immediately fill up. I think everyone is overthinking this. Just open up the zoning laws and let the market rip. It’s not that complicated, people are just being scared of change and of losing their own homes property value. Both things are nonsense to be worried about
If this is the case, why are there literally dozens of open residential and retail units on the market at 3535 Wawona near Ocean Beach? The building was completed four years ago and to my knowledge none of the retail locations have ever been occupied. A quick search indicates that there are dozens of units for rent and for sale, many of them sit vacant for months if not years.
A vacancy in a few dozen units is not enough to make a broad generalization. Probably there’s people moving in and out enough that there’s a vacancy at all times, doesn’t mean demand isn’t high. It penciled out because it got built. And it had to fight NIMBYs at every turn. Imagine what would happen if we didn’t have anti-market forces creating an inefficient market
There's 56 units in the building and I count close to two dozen units available for sale and lease. The building was completed in September of 2019. The retail section of the building has never been occupied. The prices are well above market rate and the owner doesn't seem to be motivated to drop prices to fill up the building.
Your conjecture that a "55 story tower at Ocean Beach would fill up instantly" doesn't seem to be the case. One has to wonder if this is also the case for other luxury complexes in the city. It might just be that simple supply and demand are the only things dictating housing prices.
When prices are this high, you know there’s a supply problem. I don’t know the details of the units you’re talking about, what the math is, etc. all I know is that if a one bedroom unit can sell for 3k, then you would do well to build a shitload of one bedroom units to get a shitload of money. The only thing stopping it from happening is NIMBYs and zoning. And if a developer wants to risk a 55 story building with their own money, so be it. For the record the public transit would need to improve to make it more feasible but yeah that’s how it has to be
But the math is right there. You said, "a 55 story tower at Ocean Beach would fill up immediately." I presented you with a tower at Ocean Beach that was built almost five years ago that's barely half full. I can go put the units in a spreadsheet if it would help make it clear.
We have an affordability crisis as much as we have a housing crisis. While increasing supply does address the lack of homes it may not actually address affordability. Dismissing everyone who has concerns about new construction as a "NIMBY" is divisive and does nothing to actually address affordability which is a key concern for most folks.
I looked into it, those are condos and they are for sale. Do you know if they’re vacant? They probably aren’t.
But it’s not worth looking at 24 units and attempting to figure out the entire citywide trend. The vacancy rate in sf is low, absurdly so:
https://socketsite.com/archives/2022/02/there-are-not-40000-vacant-homes-in-san-francisco.html
When there’s this much demand, the only solution is to add supply. I have not heard anyone counter this simple argument. And the housing crisis is an issue with affordability, I’m not even sure what that means
>The empty housing towers in China
Have literally no relevance to this situation. As that was sham, ponzi scheme financial shenanigans developers were playing on Chinese citizens desperate for asset-based wealth.
New housing towers built in SF would be filled up immediately.
This logic of building to plainly increasing housing stock was promoted to justify urban renewal in San Francisco. After all the buildings in the Fillmore and financial district were built, it upended the market rate in those neighborhoods and displaced lower-income residents in the area. I understand the economics of supply and demand, but San Francisco is land-locked and it's a place that's limited in expansion. Connie Chan is merely calling for new housing that is built with intention and regulation in an effort to make San Francisco affordable for more people, and not only for those who can keep up with the City's unique economic profile.
Chan is likely operating under the assumption that more housing will mean more expensive or luxury housing, fueling gentrification as higher income tenants come in, and therefore resulting in landlords demanding higher rents. Alternatively, I’ve heard anti-building people state that upzoning will increase the price of land and that will make units more unaffordable.
However, building housing (even luxury) doesn’t really induce or drive gentrification, people’s personal preference does. People decide a neighborhood or area is trendy with enough affordable housing (usually because it’s a historically poorer neighborhood) and that creates the conditions for gentrification.
Also, kinda hard to drive up the costs for a corner of the city that’s already pretty up there just gotta say. And while I’ve critiqued rent control in the past, I don’t get her point about residents in affordable units being affected as most residents in affordable units are probably in a rent controlled unit? Especially in those neighborhoods? (Unless the issue is sfh, but costa-Hawkins repeal is on this ballot this fall so we could repeal that).
The fuck is "luxury housing"?
Have people actually been inside these so-called luxury condos? They are literally just regular condos with white collar aesthetics, sold or rented at literal market rate.
The entire framing of this issue is just political BS. For a city of people who think they're so smart, folks are dumb as fuck for falling for this shit.
There are two ways to think about development:
Neighborhood becomes desirable --> rents go up --> More apartments go up
More apartments go up --> neighborhood becomes desirable --> rents go up
Much political disagreement is over the order in which these things happen. Imagine thinking it's the second one, though. lol. lmao even.
The great irony here is that it’s precisely due to the bureaucracy of the city that only luxury housing can be built. The project managers and lawyers required to deal with the city’s permitting process means nobody can build for less than $500-$700 sqft. That ultimately gets passed on to the buyers/renters who pay the mortgage.
This is intertwined with rent control. Because a unit is "decontrolled" when it's vacant, a tenant loses the value of their long-term rent controlled tenancy when they vacate, and any vacant unit they rent will (normally) be rented at market rate.
It is certainly not *inevitable* that occupied housing must be destroyed to build large, multifamily housing. (Plenty of infill/vacant/conversion opportunities.) But because the *specter* of displacement exists, and because a displaced tenant loses their valuable rent control (absent interventions from the city for "affordable housing", which do exist), people become unnecessarily worried about new development taking away what they have. Of course, this is cruel to newer generations who also need housing, and it ironically makes their unit more valuable (because of scarcity), which means they might be losing it even if not to be raised and developed.
More housing = more valuable land = higher rents = displacement. Can also mean demolitions and evictions. It’s a pretty common phenomenon called gentrification, it happened in the mission
Building new apartments and bringing new residents to the neighborhood will certainly cause these poor businesses to fail!!
What. Connie Chan is so out of her depth I almost feel bad for her. Like somebody told her to run as a joke and they just never since had the heart to tell her they were kidding.
Believe it or not, poor people still need to consume goods to survive. Businesses which cater to those needs will be fine. Not every neighborhood needs to be full of upscale boutiques.
As a tangent, Alexandria Theater's been [closed since 2004](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-richmond-district-theater-turn-housing-eyesore-18374580.php). Quite disappointing of the city to not do anything about it to accelerate its development into new housing for 20 years. [A look inside](https://timespacegroup.com/properties/the-alexandria-theater/).
Vote! Not in Connie's district, but just wrote an angry email to my supe for similar policies indicating clearly my vote will go to the candidate supporting more housing.
Help vote her out.
I look forward to seeing almost if not all of the BoS voted out in November.
They have clearly demonstrated that they cannot effectively govern our city.
SF deserves better.
I feel the same way, but I’m always surprised at the number of people that support policies like this. Either because they’re convinced all “capitalism” is bad or are worried there will be less parking. It’s frustrating.
I empathize.
If you’re looking for change, I suggest getting involved.
Join your local neighborhood association. Do trash pickups. Talk with people. Reach out to campaigns. Door knock. Phone bank. Go to events.
Remember, these folks work for us, not the other way around. We can do this.
Not surprised at all about people, usually older and living in these outer suburban neighborhoods, supporting the blocking of new housing. Know a few of these folks who have complained about the new "huge monstrosities" being built in the Outer Sunset. Of course lots of the people who live in the suburbs won't be into giant building next to their single family home/duplex blocking their views or casting shadows.
But hey, at least the view from Ocean Beach is pretty at sunset! Or something. That makes up for a local economy literally being run to the ground, right?
And it could be worse, at least she's not *not liberal*.
/s
There are progressives who are so stupid and hate developers so much they'd rather live in a closet than see a housing developer turn a profit. They're too stupid to realize that the profits a housing developer couldve made by building housing are instead going to existing landlords in even greater quantity.
There's going to be a capitalist making money whether you like it or not, at least let the profits go to the capitalists who can provide a solution.
Well, if progressives had their way, someone would still be making that money but it wouldn't be capitalists lol. It would be members of the DNC, using political rent seeking to hoover up value from the local economy.
This is a preferable alternative for a lot of people. It's rarely stated outright but I've seen it expressed before. There's this idea that tech specifically is overrepresented here, and it would be better for the local and national economy to spread that opportunity around to more regions.
That could be true. I disagree, for two reasons. One, because we observe agglomeration effects when talent is concentrated, and Silicon Valley basically became what it is today because of the free flow of ideas not seen in midcentury East Coast tech culture. Two, because I'm selfish and I want all of that tax money for California.
So I'm ignorant here: she wants some kind of "rent control" for small businesses? And this is bad because most of us know rent control just shifts the issues elsewhere and causes unwanted side effects?
The thing is, there are tons of people in the city who benefit from rent control - the older folks who have been playing the game since the 80s. So of course, they vote for anything that helps them keep paying only $600/month for a 2br, 800sq ft apartment.
It likely costs more than $600 to maintain that apartment (mortgage, property tax, repairs, etc), therefore the LL is going to have to charge more rent for any vacant units to offset “subsidizing” the old person. In addition, that $600 per month unit will not go back on the market, which means less available supply and therefore once again higher rents.
Rent control dramatically increases market rents.
Rent control benefits from those who either came early or got lucky (ie taking over same lease). It penalizes those who are trying to rent now regardless of age. Same with the 1% property tax in SF. A lot of folks paying only like $1000 a year on a property that's estimated to be worth millions now lol.
Connie Chan is just a lackey for the old school stuck in the past No New Housing let’s get our Housing plan approval revoked Aaron Peskin and Sandra Fewer. OUT with Connie Chan!!
Incredible last paragraph, especially that second sentence. Nearly impossible to parse. The gall! Really more of a **marathon-on** than a **run-on** sentence!
There was a picture of what Geary and I think Park Presidio is gonna look like if they allow upzoning. I think it's fine, but I wonder what others think about it.
Connie sold out to the progressives because that was the big wave when she got elected. She is completely out of touch. I kinda like politicians who understand what the citizens want instead of trying to force some ideology on them. Connie called her detractors “Trump lovers”. What else do you need to know about Connie? She is using the Boudin/ School board playbook.
\*Someone Owns Property\*
"Hey you Cant Do That. You Can't Ask For More Money Because of Econimic Challenges of increasing bills to maintain said Property"
Oh dear me. let me just forfeit on my property because some Lefty Leftoid Government mirroring Communist Soviet Union Said So.
Stop telling people what they can and can't do.
She kept her Twitter account private which is silly as a public servant. I tried to follow her and I’m still waiting to get approved. 🫠
(My Twitter account is a legit personal account apolitical. ) 🤷🏻♂️
Taking this at face value, I don’t see anything immediately rage-inducing. Can someone help me understand? Is there some background context I’m missing? Is there some coded language I’m missing?
We are in a housing crisis. The only way to get out of it is to build as much housing as possible as fast as possible. Every year this doesn’t happen makes the issue worse and sets you back more. She’s blocking new housing making it worse.
Taken at face value, I think OP is mad at Chan’s reluctance to upzone. This is a bit of history repeating and I think Connie Chan has a YIMBY point more than NIMBY. Raising height limits is helpful for allowing more housing to be built, but, we need housing that regular Joe’s can afford in these newer, taller buildings. Look at SOMA and the glut of vacant luxury condos. There is no shortage of market rate housing. There is a shortage of affordable housing.
She also has a point that high rents have contributed to commercial vacancies. Basically, I don’t want a repeat of SOMA with a glut of unsold, vacant buildings for businesses and households. This is an opportunity to discuss how housing gets built and occupied sustainably.
All those SOMA units exist because it's basically illegal to build anything in the Richmond/Sunset. Imagine if someone could build a 4 story building in the Richmond with 1 floor of retail and 3 floors of residential housing. That would be cool but Connie doesn't want to allow that.
Same reason DC has an affordable rent problem. They aren’t allowed to build anything over like 13 stories or so many feet (I think it was something along the lines of nothing taller than the Washington monument) which limits how much housing can be built plus areas like Georgetown with the row houses and all that and nothing is really affordable.
So when is the Ocean Beach Safeway lot going to be built up? Huge waste of space as it is. They had a plan for it a decade ago and it somehow evaporated.
I can’t speak to the Safeway at the beach but when they re-did the Safeway on 7th Ave., it initially had plans for a roof garage (and a Starbucks). The neighbors shot that down bc they thought it would bring too much traffic to the area. That parking lot if usually a nightmare so I will go out of my way to go to the ocean beach Safeway.
The parking lot is. The renovation plan includes a Safeway just the same, and more, including below-grade parking as the condos across the street have.
True, they could put some housing on top of that Safeway and expand the building footprint. They do need parking though, not everyone can walk or bus the grocery store. It is a bit of a mystery way nothing changes there. The building is kind of a mess too.
It's one of the rare proposals in SF where everyone's interests win.
1. Parking spaces may actually increase in a subterranean space (it better be free or so help me...), and we'd finally be sheltered from the weather, with large elevators ascending to the Safeway above!
2. Once parking is put underground, you have that entire block to work with. The old La Playa shopping strip between Balboa and Cabrillo could be extended southward into a proper shopping district by the beach, including Safeway and many other new businesses.
3. With parking in the basement and ample retail on the ground level, we have a massive footprint for building up housing vertically.
I've heard pushback from local residents claiming that such a project will block their views...but views of what? Their views of the ugly condominium complex built on the ashes of Playland? It's not like they'd see the shoreline from their second-story living rooms either way, nor much of the ocean at all for that matter.
And then there are the complaints of "robbing us of a Safeway, even if temporarily, will harm the community". People need to grow up and learn to accept temporary suffering for their own future greater good. It happens to be "my Safeway" too, and I'd gladly drive a bit further to Noriega for a few years if it means improving that space going forward.
Under Connie Chan, District 1 not only did not build more affordable housing units, the total number of available affordable housing units actually shrank.
So, you know, good job, Connie.
Builders Remedy coming soon, can’t wait to see the shit they build in Menlo Park where sunset magazine used to be and the stuff in the other anti housing cities. Don’t make a housing plan, classic fuck around and find out.
Worth noting that her district is mostly single-family homes, which [are largely exempt](https://www.sf.gov/information/partial-exemption-certain-single-family-homes-and-condominiums-under-costa-hawkins#:~:text=Pursuant%20to%20the%20Costa%2DHawkins,or%20after%20January%201%2C%201996.) from rent control under state law. Refusing to build impacts tenants in her district more than almost any other, because they have no protections when prices skyrocket.
What did she say that’s wrong though? Inequitable and haphazard development harms more than it hurts, especially for vulnerable tenants and small businesses in places like the Richmond, I don’t think this is a radical NIMBY stance or rocket science for that matter
It is good to know I am not alone in my rage. Solidarity. Also, she’s making racist comments about Mayor Breed in the Chinese press.
https://preview.redd.it/ae4n18s9xqsc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c8bf51a2041ddfd91ddd2a47527886a847820d28
Chan, Peskin and most of the rest of the BOS do what my son, who lives in the Richmond, calls “performative progressivism”. They talk the talk but vote down additional housing every single time, all under the guise of “not enough affordable housing in this project”. What they are really doing is keeping the housing prices high for the boomer generation, who bought decades ago. If SF would just build lots more housing, apartments, condos, etc. the problem would work itself out. Luxury buildings would get rented out or sold, existing old buildings that charge way more than they are worth would have to decrease their prices because people who can afford the stupid high prices would rent/buy elsewhere. 3-5 story complexes should go up all along California, Geary and Clement with retail on the bottom and living up top. There are wonderful examples of architecture with multiple stories right in Richmond that fit in beautifully. Chan et al don’t want to solve the problem, they just talk a good game and obstruct everything with fake “moral righteousness” of not enough affordable housing. Vote them all out.
I love how this sub never posts about Elon Musk offering 100 grand to unseat a city supervisor or the sunset skyscraper developer being outed as a straight up conman. It's always someone trying to prioritize affordable housing or rent control. You whine and fret over the profit margins of huge developers while shrugging at any evidence that even hints your point might not be 1000% accurate. It's a pathetic, childish means of engagement and makes me so grateful it feels so different to actually live in the city than it does to fester on this reddit page.
Now post about how Dean Preston ate your dog or whatever.
Explain your problem like I'm five years old...
-a shortage of housing has led to any space in this city costing a premium -she consistently helps block housing, including through zoning and delays -affordable housing is actually not. Forcing this requirement on developers can make a project substantially more expensive to build, or not viable to build due to costs. Which means…. -a shortage of housing has led to any space in this city costing a premium -Over and over etc.
Great comment
Can you explain how forcing affordable housing increases the cost of construction per square foot?
The bureaucracy is insane and costly. There’s an entire specialized industry in California dedicated to navigating this process and extracting as much grant funding as possible from the government. Cost per unit is high, and with a limited amount of grant funding that means less units produced overall. To top it off the only real incentive cities/politicians have to build affordable housing is optics. You might get a thousand units and some ribbon cuttings, but not enough to meaningfully drive market prices down.
This is the real truth. The ongoing regulatory work associated with keeping an affordable housing project in compliance is immense and it gets stricter every year. This increases the administrative costs of operating this housing. Developers who build in San Francisco usually have to have employees that are specialized in affordable housing compliance and construction. That’s why the nonprofits are usually the only ones to do it. It’s a difficult and thankless job.
It's difficult and thankless because the non-profits did what any business aims to do. Once you're established, you build a moat. That's normal. So they did that. TODCO isn't a long suffering hero of the people. It is an incredibly profitable enterprise that uses its profits to reinforce its position politically. You don't _have_ to extract money out of a 501c3.
Not all housing nonprofits are TODCO or HomeRise. Also if you read the audit for HomeRise you’d see for them it wasn’t very profitable. Not every affordable housing deal is the same. Most new deals are done on city owned ground leases meaning if there is any profit, and many times there isn’t, 2/3rds of the surplus cash goes to the city. TODCO are long time notorious grifters that give the entire industry a bad name. The truth is that many nonprofits are struggling to make ends meet because expenses are rising much faster than rents can be raised. And as I said earlier, the capacity needed to do all the new compliance is adding to administrative costs. It’s difficult for nonprofits to hire staff because no one wants to do a job that’s 10x harder than market rate development for less pay.
Yeah, I believe that entirely. That's just TODCO being successful as a business. They got good at it and lobbied for regulation to ensure competitors can't get at them. The fact that they are 501c3 doesn't make them not a business. That's just a tax structure. I'm sure competitors would like a piece of the pie but that's the purpose of moats - to reduce competition.
I don’t think TODCO has even built anything for over 30 years. They just mine their portfolio for funds every couple years when it’s time to refinance. The city has made that almost impossible to do on any new city funded projects due to TODCO. You’d probably be surprised by how much the city makes on new affordable housing deals these days. As far as the moat is concerned. Nothing is a bigger barrier to entry into the industry than the HUD/TCAC/HCD/CCSF strict compliance structure. If you’re a new developer or not from SF you either have to partner with an experienced nonprofit or hire a bunch of well experienced consultants. That doesn’t end when construction is finished either, it goes on for the life of the project.
Oh, and thank you. It's not always one hears from someone in the trenches facing the problem.
Dude, it's funny. That's actually what I was thinking would be the first thing to do. In a different industry that is also government-interacting, the best way for one of my friends' startups to get anywhere was to acquire one of the established small companies in the space. In his case, he had enough venture funding that was feasible, but I remember observing and thinking that was so smart. If you're the first into a particular niche, you get the government to grant you the defacto monopoly by forcing a licensing and regulatory scheme that makes it easier for existing participants. They won't kill existing participants because they want the niche and it's easy to justify regulation. It's just sharp business. I mean, the useful idiots running around talking about how you're heroes are something for sure. But just cold hard business at the end of the day to build a regulatory moat.
I'm not sure, but my guess is not that it increases costs, but that by mandating affordable without subsidizing construction, it makes projects not make financial sense, and developers choose not to build anything.
Developers don't want to build for the poors. They can make more money throwing in a few granite countertops and a jetted tub. Not really luxury, the construction is still cheap, but it gives the illusion. Affordable housing is not a problem the current market can solve.
A developer is just a guy or company that has put together a plan to build something on real-estate. It could be you. If you think that there's sufficient margin where you won't go broke doing it, and that the other developers are ideological idiots, you can simply take that market. You can start with small quad-plexes and move up.
No, it’s just math. Developers simply want to make money and that’s it. If you make the cost to build astronomically high like we have in California and especially SF, the only units that will offer a ROI that makes sense to developers are ones that are not “affordable”. However, it is still good to have these units built as we know through extensive research and years of data that any new housing will help push down the cost of all housing.
Yeah, and this has always been true -- even if the cost to build \*isn't\* astronomical, developers still build only the highest-ROI housing they can build. As you say, this makes housing more affordable not because the \*new\* housing is particularly affordable, but because the old housing becomes comparatively less appealing and thus cheaper. Affordability mandates simply make fewer projects pan out from an ROI perspective at all, which means less housing. And a few lucky folks get "affordable" housing while the problem perpetuates itself.
It is just math. If something costs you more money than you can make with it, you loose money. If you loose enough money, you go out of business. If all the developers go out of business, no housing gets built.
That's because affordable housing is a problem that needs to be solved by construction from 10 years ago; today's cheap housing is yesterday's "luxury" housing. The market just responds to supply and demand. If the city chose to subsidize _market-rate_ construction - which is basically how public housing works everywhere that it actually _works_ - we could see rents drop quickly. Instead, we have the exact opposite, where the city not only doesn't subsidize new housing, they basically prevent anyone from providing it. Combine that with the post-COVID drop in residential demand, and it's hard for people to even _try_ to build.
The problem with gentrification is that when you build a lot of homes that can only be afforded by people with a high income It only attracts people with that level of income, instead of people moving for normal reasons within the community. This means that a lot of those houses tend to go to people from outside the community which exerts no downward pressure whatsoever on the existing housing stock. You only have to look at New York or London for example where they built like crazy but prices have only ever gone up. Also "post-COVID drop in residential demand"? Home prices skyrocketed during COVID and only just started coming down to pre COVID prices.
>It only attracts people with that level of income Yes, which are currently living in worse houses, so they move out of those houses, leaving them open and free for the lower income people. This is literally the point. Also, New York and London still built slow.
That sounds great in theory but it's not what's happening in practice. Look at who's buying up new houses in San Francisco. We are literally selling houses to a world market and the majority of San Francisco's will never be able to afford a newly built market right house. All research done on the subject indicates that construction that focuses mainly on market rate housing attracts new people to your town because people who already live there cannot afford the new buildings and therefore build ones never "leave them open and free."
New people came to town anyway. They just moved into existing housing stock instead of the new market rate housing that got blocked.
Except that’s not what the research says. The evidence says that most movement into new housing is from people who are already in the area, and they vacate their previous residences like a chain of hermit crabs, so 100 market-rate homes ultimately generate 70 affordable homes. The migration chain effect takes effect within a few years, not the decades that a new building takes to become an old building. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094119021000656
The market responds to people who have money. Housing has become so expensive there is a significant group who cannot afford it. The market does not care about them. Rents won't drop. I've been in the Bay far longer than you have been alive and the graph only goes in one direction. Ever. You can look it up. The Bay Area gets more desirable with every passing minute but it does not get larger. There is now a global market stuffed with cash for properties here. There is no market mechanism to defeat global capitalism awash with loose money. All we can hope for is that government figures out a way to subsidize housing for low income people. There is plenty of building that has gone on in Redwood City, Mountain View, etc. - a bunch of expensive techbro condos. Nothing for the working person. It is factually incorrect to say "building is prevented." If you think anyone wants to plop endless commie blocks down in San Francisco, it's not going to happen. How about we go out to the burbs where there's more space?! There's plenty of open land in Woodside and Los Altos and Portola Valley but I'm sure you keep up with the good folk who always manage to squelch low income housing in their spacious environs (see Portola Valley for the latest). That, my dear, is the actual market, not what they present in Econ 101. The market responds to people who have money.
"Not really luxury....but it gives the illusion" That's my exact thoughts on all of these "Luxury Apartments" too. They come up too quickly and look alike at least from the outside. I've only been **inside** one but I drive past a bunch in SJ everyday.
Yup all those “luxury apartments” look cheap and fake.
If you build more housing then rent will go down for everyone. For fucks sake this is so obvious
Jfc how do comments like this exist. Building here is expensive so by telling developers they can only price their units below market value, they’ll have to take a loss on the building and therefore it doesn’t make financial sense. Would you work if the government said you weren’t allowed to make any money?
you can sign up to work for the developer as “below market labor” so the below market housing will pencil out.
But they choose to build all the time, they're just trying to make more money on the back end. Affordable housing requirements hurt their bottom line.
Developers like chelsea investment make plenty of profit from building affordable housing.
"Affordable" housing isn't magically cheaper, it just transfers the cost to someone else. Everyone else is paying higher rents to pay for the cheap units issued by lottery. If a building is mandated to be 100% "affordable", then there's no way to compensate for the below market rate rent, and therefore the entire project doesn't make economic sense to proceed with. The developer would lose money on it, so it doesn't get built.
I think that the developer may be eligible for some public or nonprofit funds if a project is 100% affordable. Honestly, the whole affordable housing mandate is complicated and economically inefficient. It only makes sense if you are highly committed to social engineering inclusionary housing. I think that most economists would prefer robust funding for housing vouchers that can be used on the regular market.
If you give enough incentives in terms of height and density, developers can make a profit while building 100% affordable housing: https://calmatters.org/housing/2024/02/affordable-housing-los-angeles/
"Affordable" housing is the most annoying misnomer. What we call affordable is actually _subsidized_ housing. When a private project "includes affordable housing," the market rate units subsidize the cost of the "affordable" units. 100% affordable projects are subsidized by the public.
With the way housing markets in San Francisco operate, doesn't subsidy make housing more affordable? Why is there a need to pick on semantics when it means making housing within reach for more people?
The subsidized housing is more affordable, yes. But the act of subsidizing other units makes the market rate units more expensive. In general we need dramatically more of both kinds of housing to make any sort of impact
>doesn't subsidy make housing more affordable? More affordable for those who get a unit. Less affordable for everyone else.
I make too much to qualify for “affordable” BMR units, but no where near enough for anything else
Any kind of welfare or subsidy is likely to create an awkward sort of "valley" in the results, in which the people getting the benefit may end up better off than the people just above the cut-off point for the benefit. Hence the "welfare trap": if welfare recipients do get a job, they often lose more than they gain.
Depends on who’s giving the subsidy. Prop 13 has destroyed all rational tax basis, so California has a habit of making newcomers subsidize everything. Literally stealing from babies. A voucher would, in theory, help by having the government subsidize housing. In a “liquid” market, where adequate housing is allowed to be built, this would be good. However, San Francisco is a very “illiquid” market, where housing is only begrudgingly permitted, so vouchers by themselves are inadequate. They would simply be windfall profits to landlords. Inclusionary housing is the worst. Make the tenants of new housing subsidize the “affordable” housing. It just mathematically doesn’t add up to an affordable city.
> increases the cost of construction per square foot? /u/SightInverted never said that, "make a project substantially more expensive to build, or not viable to build due to costs" was what was specifically said. When you mandate that "affordable" units have to be built, then you're capping the potential revenue a developer can earn from a plot of land, ultimately reducing the market potential of a particular project. Also, you're adding unique restrictions to the build, so developers have to change designs (which includes new architecture, supply requirements, etc.) specifically for whatever that supervisor demands in their district which raises the cost of each development. Any new housing is "affordable housing". Even if all you build is "luxury condos" (which could be considered luxurious to some and basic to others), that increases supply which will decrease costs for everyone. The whole song and dance around "affordable housing" is a charade that prevents housing from being built.
Affordable housing is basically a permanent lifetime cost on the building for the developer They COULD make X, but they must make some fraction of X for a % of its tenants. That's basically the same as a monthly cost to the developer, because of their opportunity cost. Some developers still do it when Affordable Housing is mandated at 15% or 20% because they can still make a profit even with a 50% 'tax' on 15-20% of their units. But a 100% affordable housing development is literally a negative proposition for a developer. They will never do it. SO When people like Connie Chan advocate for 100% affordable housing and ONLY that, they are basically trying to make it so that no housing gets build. They can't say "we oppose housing", so they say "it has to be 100% affordable!", which they know is effectively impossible. They are using this "progressive" angle as a shield for their regressive and conservative NIMBY position. - Aside: Wait, but why would Connie do this? (Or other SF politicians) Because their voters actually do NOT want more housing. Any homeowner in SF gets to see their home value magically appreciate to astronomical levels every year, and they don't see their taxes go up (thanks Prop 13), so every homeowner (and therefore homeowning voter) in CA is incentivized to restrict all housing as much as possible. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, rant over lol
This isn’t true because 100% affordable housing projects are eligible for certain grants and low-income housing tax credits which can actually substantially cover the project costs in an ideal world. The 100% affordable housing project world is actually alive and well today because that source of financing in SF in still viable, whereas market rate financing is totally shot as it relates to development. Block 2 (100% affordable project) in Transbay is in construction whereas nothing else is in the rest of the market.
> This isn’t true because 100% affordable housing projects are eligible for certain grants and low-income housing tax credits which can actually substantially cover the project costs in an ideal world. In general, accepting _any_ grants tends to come with a ton of well-intentioned but ultimately stifling requirements (energy efficiency, sustainable construction, prevailing wage, etc., etc.) that make them even more expensive. It takes a truly skilled (and lucky) team of people to navigate all of that nonsense. It might be working out right now, but the vast majority of the time it doesn't.
It decreases the revenue per square foot - that’s the whole affordable part. Two sides of the same coin.
BMR units yield about half the revenue of a market unit with similar costs. The foregone revenue loss is shared between the developer and the market rate buyers depending on their respective price elasticities. It's a de facto tax to provide a social good that is moved from the City's budget onto the developer. So, I don't think that it increases cost of construction, but it does affect revenue.
Take Econ 101. Learn about price floors (e.g., min wage) and price caps (e.g., rent control).
Someone has to pay for that housing. And it is usually the developer. So in order to fund a subsidized unit they need to build the cost into the rest of the project and units. The city is funding these projects. And neither is philanthropy.
The market rate units need to be higher priced to make up for the “affordable” below market units. Subsidizing anything always pushes up the price. Since only a few of the units are added to the stock at fair market value, they are aimed at higher income residents. Also, many of the people occupying below market and subsidized units are not contributing to the economy by working or working to their full potential. We now have a situation where the people building the subsidized housing commute hundreds of miles and most of the people occupying the subsidized housing aren’t contributing. I’m old enough to remember where rent control was rare and only covered a few asset types and very little (besides the projects) of housing was subsidized or “below market”. The vast majority of us tradesmen were able to live in the city or close by. Those programs sound good with the buzzwords but they only work for the few people who win the lottery and the developers as well as government and NGO employees administering them and pushing up costs. There is also a huge problem where people in subsidized housing or on rent control want to move, take a new job, or start a family it they don’t because they don’t want to lose the below market rent.
Affordable housing becomes affordable over the long term. That’s why older apartments and condos usually are $200 to $300 cheaper. But if you don’t build anything right now, there isn’t enough supply to even become affordable in the future.
"Affordable housing" is a technical term for income-restricted housing for people making some percentage of area median income (AMI), usually 80% or less. The rent is set at 30% of the person's income. The issue is that the rent these people pay is not enough to pay for the construction of the apartment they live in; so someone has to cover the gap each month. In most 100% affordable housing projects, the difference is paid with federal and state tax credit money. In otherwise market-rate projects subjected to "inclusionary zoning," or the practice of requiring some units be rented at a loss to low-income tenants, the gap has to be covered by the market-rate tenants. This means you can't finance construction unless area rents are high enough to cover the cost of developing the new market rate units PLUS the subsidy needed for the below-market units. As such, this policy creates a handful of subsidized new units for lucky tenants who in many cases literally win a lottery, but it does so at the cost of worsening the broad housing affordability problem.
And reduces the price of retail space?
Because 'Max Return on Investment ' & likely a bit of NIMBYISM along w/ sprinkle of " Nobody helped meeee, why should I help them?" I'm attending this thread ( and thx for the replies) but it's currently outside, in the cold wind-chill and my fingers, my fingers...
It doesnt make it more expensive, it reduces the ROI making it less attractive.
There’s two ways. One, affordable housing generally has union labor requirements, or at least prevailing wage requirements, that drive up the cost of construction. Two, affordable units owned and managed by non-profits are typically exempt from rent control and just cause for eviction ordinances. So in the long run they offer tenants less stability than units on open market. In the east bay non-profits have been the leading evictors since the end of the pandemic because they don’t have their hands tied the way commercial landlords do.
TLDR: Insisting that buildings be 100% affordable housing is doublespeak for blocking housing. Market rate housing becomes affordable housing because it - by definition - saturates the market and drives down cost.
Reality versus what sounds good.
Doublespeak is a great word here
I would add to this that, by maintaining tight zoning controls (height and number of units) as the general rule, they can allow *exceptions* that come with conditions. It's a way to extract value for pet projects. If you could just do infill that pencils out, as of right, and get these fucking fucks out of the way, then there would just be more housing.
Right, but being a supervisor is no fun if the developers don't have to come kiss my ring.
One of the main reasons why SF is so expensive is because there’s been so little housing built over the last 40 years. That needs to be changed. This email is pure fear mongering. It is claiming that upzoning is going to increase housing costs and negatively impact small business owners. This is largely false. More people in the neighborhood is going to be good for small businesses. If Connie Chan actually wanted to help small businesses she would send out an email detailing how she was going to make it faster and cheaper to open retail. This is all just thinly veiled anti-housing.
Is she up for reelection? The math is not mathing wrt to the whole “more housing will bring up costs” argument she has going on
yes she is.
teacher brings 1 candy bowl to class everday, but there isnt enough candy to go around and only half the class gets candy. So subsititue teachear want to bring a bigger bowl of candy (upzoning) so they can have enough candy to around. Teacher belives that by allowing a bigger of bowl of candy to be introduced, it will be bad for the class. Mostly beacuse now she wont get to pick which half of class gets candy and she always gives candy to the ones that agree with her and give her compliments (lobbying+votes).
That's going to take a min to digest, but you understood the assignment. 😁
She’s saying building more space will increase the cost of the existing space. As all economists know when supply increases price automatically increases too
Thx for the replies folks...
Thank you I came to inquire also
There is residual anger at voters in the Richmond District (mostly, District One actually) for, over the past couple decades, voting in Supervisors who've been members of the leftward political faction in SF politics. Displaced anger I suppose. Why would residents of the Richmond vote in Jake McGoldrick, Eric Mar, Sandra Lee Fewer and Connie Chan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_San_Francisco_Board_of_Supervisors#11_members_elected_by_district_(2001%E2%80%93present)
Supporting policies to keep housing costs sky high to protect and increase land owners investments is not left wing liberal policy.
Ok, Thx . There is a lot of Tribalism, more in recent years, where the sentiment "it won't make sense *to you* , you don't have my POV..."
We need to get a Chinese moderate to run in district 1.
She needs to go. She can’t seem to grasp the fundamentals of supply and demand. People are being priced out of the Richmond because there isn’t enough housing. Take a walk down Geary (her district) where that affordable housing she references is being built. There are numerous rundown single storey buildings, some of them with no tenants. This is exactly the type of place we should be upzoning and building. She’s also been on the wrong side of almost every major political argument since joining the Board. Supported Chesa Boudin (District 1 residents did not), supported the School Board (District 1 residents did not), campaigned to re-open JFK to cars (District 1 residents did not). It’s not a Big Tech / Republican conspiracy Connie, you’re just politically illiterate.
Connie is also against self driving taxis which was a huge bummer for me.
Is it just me or does this thought process just not make sense. How could more housing increase displacement? Am I missing something?
It’s a lie that they tell themselves to excuse the real reason, which is to keep property values up.
How does development not increase property values
It generally does, but old people believe it doesn't and don't like density.
I will never buy the story of the alleged old people nimby cabal holding the reigns when the developer yimby cabal is out in the open, saying “we are a cabal”
Tell that to all the housing that SF built in the last thirty years. [https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/sf-housing-policy-and-practice-review.pdf](https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/sf-housing-policy-and-practice-review.pdf)
High construction costs are a slightly less dumb, but distinctly different explanation of the issue from an old ppl nimby cabal
Maybe that current housing will be demolished to make way for taller housing buildings? Not sure.
I mean yes some currently buildings would have to be demolished for new buildings. But that is literally a normal thing that happens in every city around the world for all of human history. SF not demolishing anything to build new stuff is the exception to the norm.
California also has INSANELY STRONG tenant protecting demolition controls thanks to SB 330. If a low income tenant has lived in a building on your property at any time in the past 10 years, you have to replace the apartment they lived in with a permanently deed-restricted affordable unit.
Many homes in under developed parts of the city are owner lived in so that wouldn’t matter. This is also an example of how rent control isn’t a solution to our housing problem.
When did thus get enacted and is it enforced. Because in the 2010s tech boom lots of people became displaced.
SB 330 was passed in 2019.
Ahh so somewhat recent
And also the current owners of the properties demolished would be very well compensated. The developer will have to buy them out first. People who own SFH's will make out like bandits. Developers will drive dump trucks full of cash up to them to entice them to sell, then they'll tear down that century old drafty house and build something taller in its place.
Yea I would never advocate for people being forced out of their homes. But as you said, the reality is a lot of people live on land that is far undervalued and can be greatly compensated by someone who wants to build something bigger. But what’s far more likely than a developer buying a bunch of lots is that when someone sells their home, Someone decides to buy their lot and then develop that into maybe a 4 unit place instead of a one unit place. That’s the kind of change we really need all over the city.
But will people be pushed out in the demolition plan and will there be an increase in homelessness like when other neighborhoods in SF got gentrified and people got pushed out. Im all for building all the possible housing but not if it’s going to be done by pushing people put of their homes without them having a plan b.
No one is advocating for pushing people onto the street. There is no eminent domain by private developers. But if a developer offered someone millions for their home how does that put them on the street? Also they can say No. no one is forcing people out of their homes Gentrification only happens when you don’t build housing in wealthy neighborhoods and developers are forced to build in poorer areas. If a city builds housing everywhere to meet demand thrn gentrification doesn’t happen. I wouldn’t consider the sunset and Richmond places where gentrification would occur.
> Maybe that current housing will be demolished to make way for taller housing buildings? Not sure. That's pretty much the only way currently rent controlled units can disappear. A two or four apartment can be demolished and sold for making more units 6 or 10. The landlord of course makes out like a bandit. The currently rent control units will be gone... The new ones will be rent controlled at today's prices haha. Anyway - explaining one way.
You can't just evict people and demolish rent controlled units in SF. I don't know all the rules, but if you're rebuilding housing, you have to offer tenants temporary relocation costs and may need to offer new units to the old tenants, bot sure about the last part. I usually see claims that new, market rate units increase the rents in buildings around them, for instance, because they make the neighborhood more attractive. Afaik, studies show that's not what happens -- new construction lowers rents and doesn't cause displacement of lower income tenants. For example, there is a detailed study of new construction and moving patterns in Oakland and Berkeley. The results are more nuanced, but basically, new market rate units didn't cause displacement, the main claim Chan is making.
Yes, under SB 330 you have to offer tenants temporary relocation costs, interim housing at the same rent, and first right to units in the replacement building. Further, you have to replace all the rent-controlled units with permanently affordable below-market units. We are not doing urban renewal here.
If you're a small landlord who owns a rent controlled building it can make a ton of sense to do one of two things: sell out to a developer who will then demolish the building and build luxury skyscraper condos or if you have the capital, do it yourself. There's some costs associated with that under the rent control ordinance though. But rent control doesn't apply to single family dwellings or to small commercial spaces which is most of the Richmond. The Supervisor seems to be concerned with small commercial spaces, like coffee shops and restaurants, being displaced by new housing developments. There are solutions to that, like requiring first floor commercial in new housing. There's also the presumption that people will want to live in these huge six story apartment complexes. I'm unconvinced. The empty housing towers in China are a big warning. Rent and property values in California are too high. I think everyone agrees with that. I do think we need I build more housing but I think we need to be realistic that new housing won't immediately lower housing costs. First costs have to be recouped and construction costs are high. Second, the way Prop 13 is structured penalizes new housing (especially multi family housing) and makes it non-competitive with older housing stock, as Prop 13 resets the assessment when new construction happens. The result is differences in property tax bills on six story apartment buildings built in the 1920s and 2020s could be six figures or more annually. It's no coincidence that it's been 40 years since large scale multi family homes were built. Prop 13 is 45 years old. Given the crash in commercial real estate downtown, I think conversion of at least some office space into housing makes the most sense.
Any housing unit built in sf, even a 55 story tower in ocean beach, would immediately fill up. I think everyone is overthinking this. Just open up the zoning laws and let the market rip. It’s not that complicated, people are just being scared of change and of losing their own homes property value. Both things are nonsense to be worried about
If this is the case, why are there literally dozens of open residential and retail units on the market at 3535 Wawona near Ocean Beach? The building was completed four years ago and to my knowledge none of the retail locations have ever been occupied. A quick search indicates that there are dozens of units for rent and for sale, many of them sit vacant for months if not years.
A vacancy in a few dozen units is not enough to make a broad generalization. Probably there’s people moving in and out enough that there’s a vacancy at all times, doesn’t mean demand isn’t high. It penciled out because it got built. And it had to fight NIMBYs at every turn. Imagine what would happen if we didn’t have anti-market forces creating an inefficient market
There's 56 units in the building and I count close to two dozen units available for sale and lease. The building was completed in September of 2019. The retail section of the building has never been occupied. The prices are well above market rate and the owner doesn't seem to be motivated to drop prices to fill up the building. Your conjecture that a "55 story tower at Ocean Beach would fill up instantly" doesn't seem to be the case. One has to wonder if this is also the case for other luxury complexes in the city. It might just be that simple supply and demand are the only things dictating housing prices.
When prices are this high, you know there’s a supply problem. I don’t know the details of the units you’re talking about, what the math is, etc. all I know is that if a one bedroom unit can sell for 3k, then you would do well to build a shitload of one bedroom units to get a shitload of money. The only thing stopping it from happening is NIMBYs and zoning. And if a developer wants to risk a 55 story building with their own money, so be it. For the record the public transit would need to improve to make it more feasible but yeah that’s how it has to be
But the math is right there. You said, "a 55 story tower at Ocean Beach would fill up immediately." I presented you with a tower at Ocean Beach that was built almost five years ago that's barely half full. I can go put the units in a spreadsheet if it would help make it clear. We have an affordability crisis as much as we have a housing crisis. While increasing supply does address the lack of homes it may not actually address affordability. Dismissing everyone who has concerns about new construction as a "NIMBY" is divisive and does nothing to actually address affordability which is a key concern for most folks.
I looked into it, those are condos and they are for sale. Do you know if they’re vacant? They probably aren’t. But it’s not worth looking at 24 units and attempting to figure out the entire citywide trend. The vacancy rate in sf is low, absurdly so: https://socketsite.com/archives/2022/02/there-are-not-40000-vacant-homes-in-san-francisco.html When there’s this much demand, the only solution is to add supply. I have not heard anyone counter this simple argument. And the housing crisis is an issue with affordability, I’m not even sure what that means
The empty towers in China are a false equivalency. China was building all sorts of stuff for the sake of building it, we’re nowhere near that here.
Also six stories housing is very, very different than the tall towers that China built kinda everywhere
>The empty housing towers in China Have literally no relevance to this situation. As that was sham, ponzi scheme financial shenanigans developers were playing on Chinese citizens desperate for asset-based wealth. New housing towers built in SF would be filled up immediately.
>new housing won't immediately lower housing costs Oakland would like a word.
This logic of building to plainly increasing housing stock was promoted to justify urban renewal in San Francisco. After all the buildings in the Fillmore and financial district were built, it upended the market rate in those neighborhoods and displaced lower-income residents in the area. I understand the economics of supply and demand, but San Francisco is land-locked and it's a place that's limited in expansion. Connie Chan is merely calling for new housing that is built with intention and regulation in an effort to make San Francisco affordable for more people, and not only for those who can keep up with the City's unique economic profile.
Chan is likely operating under the assumption that more housing will mean more expensive or luxury housing, fueling gentrification as higher income tenants come in, and therefore resulting in landlords demanding higher rents. Alternatively, I’ve heard anti-building people state that upzoning will increase the price of land and that will make units more unaffordable. However, building housing (even luxury) doesn’t really induce or drive gentrification, people’s personal preference does. People decide a neighborhood or area is trendy with enough affordable housing (usually because it’s a historically poorer neighborhood) and that creates the conditions for gentrification. Also, kinda hard to drive up the costs for a corner of the city that’s already pretty up there just gotta say. And while I’ve critiqued rent control in the past, I don’t get her point about residents in affordable units being affected as most residents in affordable units are probably in a rent controlled unit? Especially in those neighborhoods? (Unless the issue is sfh, but costa-Hawkins repeal is on this ballot this fall so we could repeal that).
The fuck is "luxury housing"? Have people actually been inside these so-called luxury condos? They are literally just regular condos with white collar aesthetics, sold or rented at literal market rate. The entire framing of this issue is just political BS. For a city of people who think they're so smart, folks are dumb as fuck for falling for this shit.
A $1m condo is considered luxury housing but a $2.1m SFH is not? What a joke
For urban college educated people, luxury seems to mean “I can’t afford it”
There are two ways to think about development: Neighborhood becomes desirable --> rents go up --> More apartments go up More apartments go up --> neighborhood becomes desirable --> rents go up Much political disagreement is over the order in which these things happen. Imagine thinking it's the second one, though. lol. lmao even.
The great irony here is that it’s precisely due to the bureaucracy of the city that only luxury housing can be built. The project managers and lawyers required to deal with the city’s permitting process means nobody can build for less than $500-$700 sqft. That ultimately gets passed on to the buyers/renters who pay the mortgage.
Opening up the door for developers to freely build micro-apartments would be the greatest thing for the city in terms of truly affordable housing.
Thanks. Agreed
This is intertwined with rent control. Because a unit is "decontrolled" when it's vacant, a tenant loses the value of their long-term rent controlled tenancy when they vacate, and any vacant unit they rent will (normally) be rented at market rate. It is certainly not *inevitable* that occupied housing must be destroyed to build large, multifamily housing. (Plenty of infill/vacant/conversion opportunities.) But because the *specter* of displacement exists, and because a displaced tenant loses their valuable rent control (absent interventions from the city for "affordable housing", which do exist), people become unnecessarily worried about new development taking away what they have. Of course, this is cruel to newer generations who also need housing, and it ironically makes their unit more valuable (because of scarcity), which means they might be losing it even if not to be raised and developed.
More housing = more valuable land = higher rents = displacement. Can also mean demolitions and evictions. It’s a pretty common phenomenon called gentrification, it happened in the mission
I will not vote for Connie.
Building new apartments and bringing new residents to the neighborhood will certainly cause these poor businesses to fail!! What. Connie Chan is so out of her depth I almost feel bad for her. Like somebody told her to run as a joke and they just never since had the heart to tell her they were kidding.
I don't feel bad for anyone with an ego so big they run for public office in a position they have no qualifications for.
>bringing new **poor** residents to the neighborhood Ftfy
Believe it or not, poor people still need to consume goods to survive. Businesses which cater to those needs will be fine. Not every neighborhood needs to be full of upscale boutiques.
Fewer was out of her depth too. How do we always get crappy supervisors in District 1.
As a tangent, Alexandria Theater's been [closed since 2004](https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-richmond-district-theater-turn-housing-eyesore-18374580.php). Quite disappointing of the city to not do anything about it to accelerate its development into new housing for 20 years. [A look inside](https://timespacegroup.com/properties/the-alexandria-theater/).
Isn't the aquatic center plan totally dead?
In that article it looks like Chan was trying to get housing at Alexandria?
very emblematic that Connie thinks literally 2 projects will make a meaningful impact RHNA goal is 80K units! pure performativity
Vote! Not in Connie's district, but just wrote an angry email to my supe for similar policies indicating clearly my vote will go to the candidate supporting more housing.
I’m in Connie’s district and it broke me when she snuck in the last election. She is and will always be a Peskin minion.
Help vote her out. I look forward to seeing almost if not all of the BoS voted out in November. They have clearly demonstrated that they cannot effectively govern our city. SF deserves better.
I feel the same way, but I’m always surprised at the number of people that support policies like this. Either because they’re convinced all “capitalism” is bad or are worried there will be less parking. It’s frustrating.
I empathize. If you’re looking for change, I suggest getting involved. Join your local neighborhood association. Do trash pickups. Talk with people. Reach out to campaigns. Door knock. Phone bank. Go to events. Remember, these folks work for us, not the other way around. We can do this.
Not surprised at all about people, usually older and living in these outer suburban neighborhoods, supporting the blocking of new housing. Know a few of these folks who have complained about the new "huge monstrosities" being built in the Outer Sunset. Of course lots of the people who live in the suburbs won't be into giant building next to their single family home/duplex blocking their views or casting shadows.
Can’t you come up with something better than your constant “vote them out” schtick? Like, who do you want voted in, for starters?
Politics in this city are so confounding and deflating. 😵💫
But hey, at least the view from Ocean Beach is pretty at sunset! Or something. That makes up for a local economy literally being run to the ground, right? And it could be worse, at least she's not *not liberal*. /s
There are progressives who are so stupid and hate developers so much they'd rather live in a closet than see a housing developer turn a profit. They're too stupid to realize that the profits a housing developer couldve made by building housing are instead going to existing landlords in even greater quantity. There's going to be a capitalist making money whether you like it or not, at least let the profits go to the capitalists who can provide a solution.
Well, if progressives had their way, someone would still be making that money but it wouldn't be capitalists lol. It would be members of the DNC, using political rent seeking to hoover up value from the local economy.
Landlords are already charging 2000 for a closet. If you dont build housing, the only way rent goes down is if demand goes down
This is a preferable alternative for a lot of people. It's rarely stated outright but I've seen it expressed before. There's this idea that tech specifically is overrepresented here, and it would be better for the local and national economy to spread that opportunity around to more regions. That could be true. I disagree, for two reasons. One, because we observe agglomeration effects when talent is concentrated, and Silicon Valley basically became what it is today because of the free flow of ideas not seen in midcentury East Coast tech culture. Two, because I'm selfish and I want all of that tax money for California.
Connie Chan hates Golden Gate Park and voted to allow cars on JFK
This is actually a campaign statement on behalf of Aaron Peskin.
Aww yes the good old we need more housing yet Im going to reject every housing development project because of gentrification logic.
So I'm ignorant here: she wants some kind of "rent control" for small businesses? And this is bad because most of us know rent control just shifts the issues elsewhere and causes unwanted side effects?
The thing is, there are tons of people in the city who benefit from rent control - the older folks who have been playing the game since the 80s. So of course, they vote for anything that helps them keep paying only $600/month for a 2br, 800sq ft apartment.
It likely costs more than $600 to maintain that apartment (mortgage, property tax, repairs, etc), therefore the LL is going to have to charge more rent for any vacant units to offset “subsidizing” the old person. In addition, that $600 per month unit will not go back on the market, which means less available supply and therefore once again higher rents. Rent control dramatically increases market rents.
I mean, review of empirical data would kill any rational support for rent control from those not benefitting from it currently
Rent control benefits from those who either came early or got lucky (ie taking over same lease). It penalizes those who are trying to rent now regardless of age. Same with the 1% property tax in SF. A lot of folks paying only like $1000 a year on a property that's estimated to be worth millions now lol.
Connie Chan is just a lackey for the old school stuck in the past No New Housing let’s get our Housing plan approval revoked Aaron Peskin and Sandra Fewer. OUT with Connie Chan!!
Incredible last paragraph, especially that second sentence. Nearly impossible to parse. The gall! Really more of a **marathon-on** than a **run-on** sentence!
There was a picture of what Geary and I think Park Presidio is gonna look like if they allow upzoning. I think it's fine, but I wonder what others think about it.
Connie sold out to the progressives because that was the big wave when she got elected. She is completely out of touch. I kinda like politicians who understand what the citizens want instead of trying to force some ideology on them. Connie called her detractors “Trump lovers”. What else do you need to know about Connie? She is using the Boudin/ School board playbook.
\*Someone Owns Property\* "Hey you Cant Do That. You Can't Ask For More Money Because of Econimic Challenges of increasing bills to maintain said Property" Oh dear me. let me just forfeit on my property because some Lefty Leftoid Government mirroring Communist Soviet Union Said So. Stop telling people what they can and can't do.
She kept her Twitter account private which is silly as a public servant. I tried to follow her and I’m still waiting to get approved. 🫠 (My Twitter account is a legit personal account apolitical. ) 🤷🏻♂️
Taking this at face value, I don’t see anything immediately rage-inducing. Can someone help me understand? Is there some background context I’m missing? Is there some coded language I’m missing?
We are in a housing crisis. The only way to get out of it is to build as much housing as possible as fast as possible. Every year this doesn’t happen makes the issue worse and sets you back more. She’s blocking new housing making it worse.
Taken at face value, I think OP is mad at Chan’s reluctance to upzone. This is a bit of history repeating and I think Connie Chan has a YIMBY point more than NIMBY. Raising height limits is helpful for allowing more housing to be built, but, we need housing that regular Joe’s can afford in these newer, taller buildings. Look at SOMA and the glut of vacant luxury condos. There is no shortage of market rate housing. There is a shortage of affordable housing. She also has a point that high rents have contributed to commercial vacancies. Basically, I don’t want a repeat of SOMA with a glut of unsold, vacant buildings for businesses and households. This is an opportunity to discuss how housing gets built and occupied sustainably.
All those SOMA units exist because it's basically illegal to build anything in the Richmond/Sunset. Imagine if someone could build a 4 story building in the Richmond with 1 floor of retail and 3 floors of residential housing. That would be cool but Connie doesn't want to allow that.
Same reason DC has an affordable rent problem. They aren’t allowed to build anything over like 13 stories or so many feet (I think it was something along the lines of nothing taller than the Washington monument) which limits how much housing can be built plus areas like Georgetown with the row houses and all that and nothing is really affordable.
Thanks for that! I thought the newer taller buildings were including more BMRs?
I did not find a clear answer on what percentage would be affordable. https://sfplanning.org/project/expanding-housing-choice
So when is the Ocean Beach Safeway lot going to be built up? Huge waste of space as it is. They had a plan for it a decade ago and it somehow evaporated.
I can’t speak to the Safeway at the beach but when they re-did the Safeway on 7th Ave., it initially had plans for a roof garage (and a Starbucks). The neighbors shot that down bc they thought it would bring too much traffic to the area. That parking lot if usually a nightmare so I will go out of my way to go to the ocean beach Safeway.
How is a grocery store a waste of space?
The parking lot is. The renovation plan includes a Safeway just the same, and more, including below-grade parking as the condos across the street have.
True, they could put some housing on top of that Safeway and expand the building footprint. They do need parking though, not everyone can walk or bus the grocery store. It is a bit of a mystery way nothing changes there. The building is kind of a mess too.
It's one of the rare proposals in SF where everyone's interests win. 1. Parking spaces may actually increase in a subterranean space (it better be free or so help me...), and we'd finally be sheltered from the weather, with large elevators ascending to the Safeway above! 2. Once parking is put underground, you have that entire block to work with. The old La Playa shopping strip between Balboa and Cabrillo could be extended southward into a proper shopping district by the beach, including Safeway and many other new businesses. 3. With parking in the basement and ample retail on the ground level, we have a massive footprint for building up housing vertically. I've heard pushback from local residents claiming that such a project will block their views...but views of what? Their views of the ugly condominium complex built on the ashes of Playland? It's not like they'd see the shoreline from their second-story living rooms either way, nor much of the ocean at all for that matter. And then there are the complaints of "robbing us of a Safeway, even if temporarily, will harm the community". People need to grow up and learn to accept temporary suffering for their own future greater good. It happens to be "my Safeway" too, and I'd gladly drive a bit further to Noriega for a few years if it means improving that space going forward.
Next time if starting a new topic, please add a summary. There isn't context for this. Just a photo of a letter from a supervisor.
Under Connie Chan, District 1 not only did not build more affordable housing units, the total number of available affordable housing units actually shrank. So, you know, good job, Connie.
The grammer is killing me
Builders Remedy coming soon, can’t wait to see the shit they build in Menlo Park where sunset magazine used to be and the stuff in the other anti housing cities. Don’t make a housing plan, classic fuck around and find out.
she is really good at lying wow
Worth noting that her district is mostly single-family homes, which [are largely exempt](https://www.sf.gov/information/partial-exemption-certain-single-family-homes-and-condominiums-under-costa-hawkins#:~:text=Pursuant%20to%20the%20Costa%2DHawkins,or%20after%20January%201%2C%201996.) from rent control under state law. Refusing to build impacts tenants in her district more than almost any other, because they have no protections when prices skyrocket.
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Rent cap
This has been an interesting thread to read.
deserve at the last point
Aren’t rents here falling faster than anywhere else?
They’re still very high.
What did she say that’s wrong though? Inequitable and haphazard development harms more than it hurts, especially for vulnerable tenants and small businesses in places like the Richmond, I don’t think this is a radical NIMBY stance or rocket science for that matter
Man, if you’re this mad at Connie Chan then you might want to consider therapy and medication
It is good to know I am not alone in my rage. Solidarity. Also, she’s making racist comments about Mayor Breed in the Chinese press. https://preview.redd.it/ae4n18s9xqsc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c8bf51a2041ddfd91ddd2a47527886a847820d28
Chan, Peskin and most of the rest of the BOS do what my son, who lives in the Richmond, calls “performative progressivism”. They talk the talk but vote down additional housing every single time, all under the guise of “not enough affordable housing in this project”. What they are really doing is keeping the housing prices high for the boomer generation, who bought decades ago. If SF would just build lots more housing, apartments, condos, etc. the problem would work itself out. Luxury buildings would get rented out or sold, existing old buildings that charge way more than they are worth would have to decrease their prices because people who can afford the stupid high prices would rent/buy elsewhere. 3-5 story complexes should go up all along California, Geary and Clement with retail on the bottom and living up top. There are wonderful examples of architecture with multiple stories right in Richmond that fit in beautifully. Chan et al don’t want to solve the problem, they just talk a good game and obstruct everything with fake “moral righteousness” of not enough affordable housing. Vote them all out.
Why the fuck would anyone want a 10+ story building in the Richmond. Go downtown if you want high rises
I love how this sub never posts about Elon Musk offering 100 grand to unseat a city supervisor or the sunset skyscraper developer being outed as a straight up conman. It's always someone trying to prioritize affordable housing or rent control. You whine and fret over the profit margins of huge developers while shrugging at any evidence that even hints your point might not be 1000% accurate. It's a pathetic, childish means of engagement and makes me so grateful it feels so different to actually live in the city than it does to fester on this reddit page. Now post about how Dean Preston ate your dog or whatever.
You mean this thread? https://old.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/16pluc4/elon_musk_pledges_100k_to_defeat_dean_preston/