Quote:
Originally Posted by BushMan
^^^^^
#6 and #7 sound great, everything else is utter bullshit IMO.
1-5 will do absolutely nothing to "solve" anything, as usual they will simply enable many people who have no business living in SF to stay here because the all-powerful "City" has deemed they are sacred cows.
Of course everyone else will pay more as a result but who cares as long as the mayor and BOS can pat themselves on the back over how "compassionate" they are.
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First off, who are you to say who has business living here or not? I'm a pretty poor person, and could potentially benefit benefit from 15,000 new affordable units, protections from evictions and protections on rent control, as could hundreds of thousands of other SF residents. Yet according to you, I don't belong here, in the city I was born and raised in, just because I don't have enough money to pay rent in a market-rate unit with these current ridiculous housing prices. Those people who you say have no business being here (the middle and lower classes, which is what 1-5 are aimed at) make up most of SF's population, and contribute greatly to one of the big things that most people love about SF: diversity. Who wants an economically homogeneous SF? Who wants an SF where most non-wealthy people have been priced out, where artists have been priced out, where most immigrants have been priced out? Not many people I've encountered. I realize this is a capitalist economy, but is it really a good thing to advocate pushing out an entire population and alter the face of a city just because a bunch of transplants are capable of paying--and willing to pay--ridiculously high rents?
Of course just building affordable housing and protecting rent control would not solve anything (and rent control does screw with the market, so maybe it could be modified so that only those who actually need it get it?), and building a ton of market-rate housing and removing restrictions on development is the real thing that will help meet demand and maybe bring prices down for everyone...and most of the 50,000 or so units in the pipeline/the 30,000 Ed Lee is talking about
will be market-rate. But it's not like helping the disadvantaged out at the same time is a useless or bad thing to do. In fact, I think it's a very important thing to make it clear that the city is worried about the future of the city's poor and middle class (AKA most of its residents), if we want to be able to allow sufficient market-rate development in the future.
When selling this plan to the people of SF, I think it's definitely smart to give extra attention to anything related to affordable housing, as the key to getting the city's widespread support for increased development at the required scale (increased height limits, a lot more highrises) is to show the non-wealthy majority of this city that they're not being ignored. A lot of residents see the large amount of highly expensive market rate stuff going up currently, and think "where's the stuff I can afford?" They think prices like that are how it might be forever with increased development, because they don't realize how supply and demand works. So we build a lot of affordable stuff, and even more market rate stuff, and everyone is happy. If we neglect to build sufficient affordable stuff and protect rent-controlled units (which house a huge amount of SF residents who could not afford the city otherwise) along with building tons of market rate stuff, It also gives the wealthy NIMBY commanders of SF more propaganda to throw at un-informed people: "nothing is affordable! Stop all new development now! Save SF!" ...which is a tactic that's has been proven to work, as 8 Washington showed us.
The people worried about views and traffic and such will always complain, but we can at least get a lot of those NIMBYs simply worried about affordability to get on board the development train if we prove that things are getting built for the poor/middle class as well as the wealthy. And of course, once enough market rate stuff goes up, market rate rents will drop. SF will still be relatively expensive, as it always has and will be, but will be more affordable for all.
So I see all the affordability-related stuff in that plan as not just important for poor residents of SF, but also as an important political move on the city's part, that could possibly kill some NIMBYism and end up benefiting all residents in the city, rich, poor, and middle class alike, by opening up the door for more housing development, taller height limits which leads to more units per development, etc. We should probably clamp down on all the air BnB style tourist rentals too, which have apparently taken thousands of units off the market.
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