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San Francisco does not have enough places to live. Sonja Trauss, a local activist, thinks the city should tackle this problem by building more housing.
This may not sound like a controversial idea. But this is San Francisco.
Ms. Trauss is a self-described anarchist and the head of the SF Bay Area Renters’ Federation, an upstart political group that is pushing for more development. Its platform is simple: Members want San Francisco and its suburbs to build more of every kind of housing. More subsidized affordable housing, more market-rate rentals, more high-end condominiums.
Ms. Trauss supports all of it so long as it is built tall, and soon. “You have to support building, even when it’s a type of building you hate,” she said. “Is it ugly? Get over yourself. Is it low-income housing? Get over yourself. Is it luxury housing? Get over yourself. We really need everything right now.”
I don’t understand. Why don’t they just blame the Chinese? It’s solved all of our problems.
They blame the techies instead, who are widely believed to be unsophisticated libertarians from inferior cities in the Midwest, who will all leave as soon as the tech industry is supposed to inevitably collapse completely and then it will be the summer of 1967 again, forever!
As opposed to Vancouver, San Francisco actually has a large and robust tech industry. One that doesn’t consist of branch offices employing those who can’t get US visas. The fact that the local economy there is driving house prices is proven by correspondingly high rents. But if you actually want to believe it’s Aunt Tillie from Tofino scooping up $3 million bungalows here and buying all those Maseratis, go right ahead.
What housing problem?
http://www.businessinsider.com/san-franciscos-condo-boom-turning-into-bust-2016-4
One commenter summed that up nicely:
To me, this actually looks like really good news. Because 0% growth in prices is not necessarily a bust – it looks like price stabilization. And the fact that one of the reasons it happened is because more supply is coming on line is also a good thing – it means the absurd increases in prices can be controlled by doing something about it. Like, you know, building more supply. Thanks Business Insider, for spinning a positive development in the worst possible light!
Duh !
Economic 101: supply and demand determine price. So, reduce demand or in the absence of that, increase supply.
California really has hollowed out the middle class. Excessive regulations, minimum wage hikes drive out employers: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-garment-manufacturing-la-20160416-story.html and well funded or wealthy green activists oppose every development, be they industrial or residential.
Toyota relocates to Texas, for example, due to cost of housing: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/12/15/Big-Reason-Toyota-Moving-3000-Jobs-California-Texas
Exactly what need to do in Vancouver. If not, people of average and low incomes will be forced totally out of the City. That is fundamentally unfair.
Time to stop the blame game and scapegoating and get on with it.
We are a popular city to a growing Economy. There is really not other option but to build.
Both Vancouver and SF have housing issues but they don’t share the same problems and causes. A severe lack of new unit construction combined with an influx of high wages has caused rents in SF to spike to multiples of what we have in Vancouver. At the moment in Vancouver there’s a tightening of vacancy, and rents are rising, but in general, the region has been building new condos fairly steady for quite some time, and this has kept rents in line.
What hasn’t been built in Vancouver however is family oriented, ground level housing. Townhouses are being built in Surrey and Langley but in Vancouver and other cities in the region there’s been very little movement away from detached single family houses. Accordingly we’ve seen prices for “not condos” spike.
In condo developer friendly Metro Vancouver we may not have as much of a need for a VARF organization in the same way as SF does, but maybe we need one oriented toward pressuring our cities to end restrictions that mandate large areas of exclusive low density single family houses.
Last week a software techie asked me why there are no new townhouses being built in Vancouver. We were in Surrey and he really liked what is available. He had been staying with friends for a couple of weeks in the Morgan Heights neighbourhood and described it as a community.
He’s lived and worked in Yaletown and he wants a townhouse.
A good question, especially considering the vast ocean of low density detached homes on open lots south of Vancouver’s 16th Ave. Not to mention the massive lots in Burnaby, Coquitlam, Richmond, etc.