San Francisco Is Suffering From The Excesses Of Its Own Liberalism

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

We are talking about housing for the poorest of the poor here. In San Francisco and in the US generally, the earliest post-war model for housing the poor in bare bones high rises simply didn't work. It concentrated them and their problems turning such buildings into frightening war zones where even the police wouldn't go.

I believe you have some of this in your banlieues.

So San Francisco has, by now, torn just about all those buildings down and replaced them with low rise and garden apartments having individual entrances--no common hallways or elevator lobbies or elevators where trouble makers congregate. A few such buildings were converted to senior housing or housing for other less problematic residents than families with teen children.

And there's another difference with the new generation of homeless housing. The old model of a Public Housing Authority to build and run the housing has been abandoned, at least in SF, in favor of the model of having non-profit private developers build it, run it and continue to own it. These outfits seem much better able to maintain and enforce rules in what they actually own.

Co-op housing in high-rises work fine. Mixing subisidized units with market units. The problem is only when the high-rises have low-income people only. The problem is not the high-rise itself. Building higher is not equal to concentration of low-income. To justify height limits and less housing supply to help low income people is just backwards.

[Yuri]

It's a shame to learn the wealthiest city in the world in such state. We are optimistic about material progress as we believe it makes things better, cleaner, more civilized. Unfortunately is not the case.

I think São Paulo with its 12,000 homeless already unbearable, I can't even picture how bad things are for dwellers trying to carry on with their daily activities.

[cannedairspray]

Basically, it comes to down to whether you think the city enables this behavior by not disincentivizing it

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by cannedairspray

Basically, it comes to down to whether you think the city enables this behavior by not disincentivizing it

Which they most certainly do. The govt officials literally do the opposite of what they should be doing

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Doady

Co-op housing in high-rises work fine. Mixing subisidized units with market units. The problem is only when the high-rises have low-income people only. The problem is not the high-rise itself. Building higher is not equal to concentration of low-income. To justify height limits and less housing supply to help low income people is just backwards.

Nobody is justifying height limits per se based on anything to do with the problems of public housing. This is a straw man and not at all unique to San Francisco. St. Louis's Pruitt-Igoe is probably the poster child for this and many studies have shown the design answers include not having interior spaces where crime can happen such as elevators, lobbies and other features of traditional high rise buildings, but not limiting the height per se.

You'll have to explain what you mean by "co-op" in reference to low income housing. To me, that term has to do with a form of ownership where residents own the building together rather than owning their individual units as in a condominium. The sort of housing under discussion here is rental, not ownership, and the rents are very low and based on ability to pay (typically a few hundred dollars a month in a market where similar units would rent at marekt rate for over $2000/month).

San Francisco, just so you know, has a different model for relatively low income working people who, in most of the country, would be considered middle class. This is called "affordable" housing and is often included in new high rises. In fact, the law now requires 30% or so of new housing projects of any height be "affordable" units that can only be purchased by people whose incomes fall below a certain threshhold which varies for each development. This type of housing can be either rental or for sale (in which case either the rents or the sale price are limited to well below market levels).

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

Which they most certainly do. The govt officials literally do the opposite of what they should be doing

Check . . . and that is the point.

[MidTenn1]

In answer to the title question, no.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

It's a shame to learn the wealthiest city in the world in such state. We are optimistic about material progress as we believe it makes things better, cleaner, more civilized. Unfortunately is not the case.

I think São Paulo with its 12,000 homeless already unbearable, I can't even picture how bad things are for dwellers trying to carry on with their daily activities.

Brazil is 4 times as large as my own country, like we're only a widget on the world map compared to it.
It's unfortunately a bit excessively corrupted, but still full of enlightened people showing some great common sense and intelligence; it's been in the hype here, and your city of São Paulo has some fine advanced industry...

I don't think you have to wait for others to make future for yourself.
The wealthiest ain't the wisest in common experience.
You can make future on your own.

[dubu]

Sf doesn’t have a effect on me. It’s fun to visit. But unless it becomes a smart city and it’s cashless then I’ll be worried.

[mhays]

Pedestrian, do you suppose maybe HOW those highrises were/are run has something to do with why the older ones haven't worked?

It's bizarre that a site could house twice as many people but doesn't...would it be sad if it were due to some odd theory like that.

Construction cost would be a valid reason, as concrete is more expensive than woodframe. But SF's land prices would seem to be a much larger cost impact. They should go way denser.

[Eightball]

Originally Posted by The North One

I don't think SF is suffering because of liberalism at all, the problem is there's a lot of faux liberalism in SF. Preventing housing in your neighborhood just because you want your property to have an inflated value isn't liberal or progressive or socially democratic in any sense.

damnit this your best post in the history of SSP. Facts manne

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Crawford

But why wouldn't we count rent controlled units? What is the point of talking about relative rent burden if you wish to arbitrarily exclude a huge cohort of renters?

Actually, it's very logical to speak of the average rent burden to a newcomer making the average (relatively high) newcomer's annual income.

If you take a given city where half the people pay nearly zero property taxes due to the fact they bought decades ago, and the other half pay skyhigh property taxes, the figure that matters to someone who considers moving there or not isn't the city's average, it's the average of the half who pay skyhigh prices.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by mhays

Pedestrian, do you suppose maybe HOW those highrises were/are run has something to do with why the older ones haven't worked?

It's bizarre that a site could house twice as many people but doesn't...would it be sad if it were due to some odd theory like that.

Construction cost would be a valid reason, as concrete is more expensive than woodframe. But SF's land prices would seem to be a much larger cost impact. They should go way denser.

Actually in many cases I think the replacement construction houses as many people as the high rises being replaced because most of the high rises were surrounded by little utilized open space and the lower rise replacement typically covers the site.

However, I do agree the management by public agencies has typically been awful, tolerating all sorts of criminal activity and abuse of the property by tenants. In a way, management of some of these projects has been sort of a microcosm of the government of San Francisco now that I think about it.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by lio45

If you take a given city where half the people pay nearly zero property taxes due to the fact they bought decades ago, and the other half pay skyhigh property taxes, the figure that matters to someone who considers moving there or not isn't the city's average, it's the average of the half who pay skyhigh prices.

That’s a severe misunderstanding of Prop. 13. Nobody pays zero property taxes. I’ve owned my condo for 35 years and the cumulative effect is that I pay maybe half what my newest neighbors pay but it’s still about 0.7% of the (crazy high) property value per year. Prop 13 not only caps annual increases for present owners to just over 2% but also caps the millage rate for all owners, new and old to something like 1.1% for the general fund plus surtaxes for certain special uses like the community college.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

We are talking about housing for the poorest of the poor here. In San Francisco and in the US generally, the earliest post-war model for housing the poor in bare bones high rises simply didn't work. It concentrated them and their problems turning such buildings into frightening war zones where even the police wouldn't go.

Public housing in the U.S. has failed, generally speaking, but it has nothing to do with high rises. The best public housing in the U.S. is almost entirely high rise.

People don't act better or worse if they're in a 2- or 20-floor building. The failure of American public housing is (mostly) a failure of funding and federal rules.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by Zapatan

Poverty, theft and violent crime (particularly in East Bay) are just through the roof.

'Particularly in the East Bay'? Theft and Violent Crime are wayyyy down in the East Bay and so are poverty levels as the poor are being pushed out to outer East Bay and Stockton. The city of Oakland has one of the highest and fastest rising median incomes of any of the 50 largest US cities.

Word on the street is that the Bay Area has slowly started to lose people, which makes total sense. Who in their right ming wants to spend 4000 dollars a month for a shoebox when there are smelly homeless heroin addicts living in a tent outside their door?

The housing market is getting tighter regardless.
https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/9...no-signs-of-slowing-down-bubble-bursting

I have no illusions about SF, but let's stick to the facts.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The failure of American public housing is (mostly) a failure of funding and federal rules.

in some places those issues were also compounded by a failure of design.

taking 5,000 of the poorest of the poor and warehousing them in several dozen single-use towers in a park stretched along a 2 mile no-man's land alongside a 14 lane expressway canyon with little integration with the surrounding community, as was the case with chicago's robert taylor homes, woefully stacked the deck against any kind of success from the very beginning.

granted, design was by no means the main failure of chicago's notorious public housing projects, but it was a contributing factor in many cases.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by Crawford

P

People don't act better or worse if they're in a 2- or 20-floor building.

I strongly disagree with this; parents can't watch their kids in the front yard from the 20th floor of a highrise as easily as they can from the front porch of a row home, leaving their children at much higher risk of getting in trouble / hanging with the wrong crowd. In fact, the Chicago Housing Authority spent years arguing this point while lobbying to tear down their high rises throughout Chicago.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

in some places those issues were also compounded by a failure of design.

taking 5,000 of the poorest of the poor and warehousing them in several dozen single-use towers in a park stretched along a 2 mile no-man's land alongside a 14 lane expressway canyon with little integration with the surrounding community, as was the case with chicago's robert taylor homes, woefully stacked the deck against any kind of success from the very beginning.

To me, Robert Taylor illustrates the failures of funding and federal rules.

While the U.S., as a whole, horribly underfunded public housing, CHA was particularly infamous. The feds basically paid for construction and localities were expected to take over, but, in Chicago, that never happened.

And federal rules required that Robert Taylor only house the poor, and, in the late 1970's federal rules were modified to give preference to jobless single mothers. That was basically the death knell.

If Robert Taylor were a mixed-income complex with semi-decent funding, I would bet it would be standing today. Yeah, the design sucked, it would probably be segregated, but I doubt it would have become a hellhole.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

I strongly disagree with this; parents can't watch their kids in the front yard from the 20th floor of a highrise as easily as they can from the front porch of a row home, leaving their children at much higher risk of getting in trouble / hanging with the wrong crowd. In fact, the Chicago Housing Authority spent years arguing this point while lobbying to tear down their high rises throughout Chicago.

The CHA was arguing this "point" because they wanted to get rid of their housing, not because they had some design epiphany. It's vastly cheaper to just give everyone Section 8 vouchers than to repair a bajillion towers with 50 years of deferred maintenance. And it doesn't even make any sense. Lowrise projects aren't going to have a playground in front of every unit.

As someone with 20 years of experience in affordable housing, I can assure you there's zero scholarship indicating that highrises are, in any way, more dysfunctional than lowrise structures. You'll notice that CHA destroyed almost all its lowrises too. Public housing agencies, for the most part, no longer want to manage housing; they just want to be Section 8 conduits.