Silicon Valley housing is also exorbitant--and completely unregulated. No, San Francisco's unaffordability is due to three decades of insatiable demand for housing coupled with three decades of outrageously inadequate supply, and exacerbated by the rest of the Bay Area's stubborn refusal to build a sufficient supply of truly urban housing in vibrant, walkable/transit-oriented areas.
There's a carrot and stick at play here, and San Francisco's genuine urbanity is the carrot. True, old-school urbanity is in demand from coast to coast, and nowhere more than the Bay Area. But the land area covered by that coveted old-school urbanity here is miniscule relative to places like New York and Chicago--and that's the stick in this scenario. People who want to live in an old-school city environment in these parts have lots of choices--as long as they choose San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and some of the region's small downtowns. The rest of the Bay Area, with few excpeptions, is relatively low-density and suburban, because local governments have essentially outlawed constructing urbanity.
Bay Area governments, yoked by NIMBYs, won't zone for a sufficient supply of dense, truly urban districts that could relieve pressure on SF and provide more affordable options around the region. The region's governments still mainly zone for, and developers build, ever-more tightly packed single-family homes and low-rise apartment complexes in auto-oriented, suburban areas. None of that stuff appeals to the folks bidding up SF prices--but that's not the half of it. All those good jobs in Silicon Valley induce people to pay through the nose for whatever housing they can get nearby, and what they get is an overpriced piece of land with a middling suburban house rather than a more affordable condo or apartment in a more compact development.
It's never going to be cheap to live here, but it's possible we could build our way to more affordability than we have now if the political calculus changed. What this region really needs is a massive increase in density and height and transit infra in large swathes. Western San Francisco? Yes. Central Oakland and Berkeley? Absolutely. But I'm also talking about the entire length of El Camino Real, and up and down Mission Boulevard, and at stations along current and future SMART, Muni, Caltrain, BART, VTA, ACE and Capitol Corridor lines, and in all the region's respective downtowns, and in newly-created redevelopment zones. NIMBYism has so far stopped that from happening in most alll those places, and NIMBYism is why this is such an unaffordable region.
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"You need both a public and a private position." --Hillary Clinton, speaking behind closed doors to the National Multi-Family Housing Council, 2013
Last edited by fflint; Oct 17, 2013 at 7:12 AM.
Reason: Misspelled 'exorbitant' after having two glasses of red wine. What? I took the day off!
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