I find the recent uptick in progressivism in SV refreshing, and sorely needed. Then again, I've lived my entire life in liberal enclaves and do not personally identify with conservative / "family values" viewpoints.
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Conservatives have plenty of issues as well - look at Kansas or Alabama. Don't see those being discussed at a national level, though the politics that drove them into the ground as now steering the federal government.
Coming in from New York, San Francisco’s lack of attention to its homeless population is self inflicted. It’s also a problem that nobody in the city seems very much to care about.
I spent 6 years on the street. I blog about homelessness and have done at least a little paid writing on the subject. My blog and other online activities keep me in touch with homeless people. I have also been interviewed by reporters because of my homeless blog.
I firmly believe that climate is a major factor in the high levels of homelessness in SF. This plus insane housing prices become a recipe for intractable homelessness.
Some homeless travel to places like SF in part for the good weather, in part because big cities have more services for the homeless. Then once they are there, they can't afford to get into housing and leaving to go someplace cheaper is both expensive and time consuming.
I suspect SF just feels overwhelmed by events. The only real solution here would be to get housing prices under control. People don't know how on earth to solve that issue for more middle class individuals in SF. The idea of solving it for the seriously poor is just too much to even contemplate.
I am not excusing it. I appreciate you refusing to step over a homeless individual. But one of the problems is that most people talking about this issue talk about The Homeless as if this is primarily a people problem and not a housing issue. It becomes a psychological barrier to the ability to imagine making real progress. So, like the relatives of addicts get inured to it and quit trying, I think SF is getting numbed to the problem because it seems simply unsolvable.
Every time a politician tells me more housing won’t make it cheaper, I posit the hypothetical “what if we built 100,000 more units? No? How about 1 million more? 5 million more?”
The answer I get is the same: “well, we don’t want to change the character of the city. Do we really want to be like New York?”
Press the question enough and the subject will eventually confess.
Since WW2, the vast majority of our financing mechanisms and housing policy has been aimed at creating family housing because that was what the parents of the Baby Boomers wanted and needed. Meanwhile, our population has diversified away from that. Plus there are myriad zoning policies, tax policies etc at all levels of government that are pieces of the puzzle for how SF has ended up this way.
There isn't anyone on the planet who actually knows exactly what needs to be dismantled to untangle this mess and trying to do so comes at high risk. It isn't at all unusual for the baby to be thrown out with the bath water when dealing with things as complicated as city planning.
I wanted to be an urban planner before life got in the way. It is why I took a class on homelessness and public policy. I have a good grasp of what is generally wrong. I can't give you a point by pint list if instructions on how to fix it for SF.
San Francisco proper is physically much smaller than New York City, 231 sq. miles vs 468. Part of it is built on infill, reclaiming land from the waters around it. Such infill has serious structural limitations. You can't build on it like it is solid ground. San Francisco also needs to be built to withstand serious earthquakes. All of these geographic factors further constrain what you can realistically build there.
I generally agree that simply building more housing would help. But when I lived in Fairfield years ago, SROs in San Francisco were $1000/mo. San Francisco is one if the few US cities that still has more than a few SROs and it still is not cheap enough. I am not convinced the problem is as easy to solve as you suggest.
Easy fixes very often come at a hidden cost. That cost can be quite high, catastrophically so.
The infill argument is totally bogus. The majority of the Financial District, which is where the majority of high rises are today, is on the very same infill you claim cannot support high rise structures. Singapore is largely infill and is mostly high rises. Tokyo is very dense and is in an earthquake prone area.
The absolute area argument is similarly specious. That argument would be valid only if, per unit area, we were already building at a density similar to New York. Moreover, it’s irrelevant how large the city is within its political boundaries if you consider this to be a regional problem, which it is.
So I’m not really sure whose side you’re on in this matter since you muddied the waters instead of clarifying them.
The problem is entirely political. You can either help or make excuses.
Characterizing my comment as merely making excuses and being part of the problem is not good faith engagement. I am bowing out now.
From Wikipedia:
City and county 231.89 sq mi (600.59 km2)
• Land 46.89 sq mi (121.46 km2)
• Water 185.00 sq mi (479.14 km2)
So both figures are correct from some perspective, but yours is the more relevant for purposes of talking about building stuff.
SF needs an overhauled planning process and possibly a way to fast track review of housing in already over priced areas that can contribute to a reduction in median rent.
Edit: what is also clear is that the longer we delay these changes the more A) folks will get displaced that wouldn't have otherwise and B) the greater backlog of housing will need to be built to make up for past deficit and correspondingly the greater magnitude of change to the city in a shorter time (which I agree with you should be minimized to a reasonable extent)
I don't know if that I am doing will go anywhere and I don't currently have firm suggestions for SF. But it is quite hard to find genuinely viable solutions that don't have seriously undesirable side effects.
I think discussing it on HN can have a constructive purpose, but it isn't guaranteed to have one. I wish I knew how to more seriously engage people trying to come up with real solutions.
My mother always said it is easy to criticize, it is hard to create. If you have any thoughts on how I can more effectively connect, I would love to hear them. You could also try connecting with me on Reddit where I created a space called Housing Works.
I'm sure that was a typo, but a "point by pint" list (or discussion, either one) sounds pretty fun...
In SF this week there's a case of a man who owns a laundromat, and would like to turn it into a 75 unit apartment building. It sounds like he met all the objective criteria and is getting stonewalled by NIMBY's due to the usual excuses: "neighborhood character" and historical value of the building. The building is a laundromat, and by all appearances fairly mundane and not at all historical. I can think of no obvious opposition a reasonable urban planner would have to this development. Yet it's being stonewalled. What undesirable side effects would it have? I grew up in New York City, which is also dense. People love living there. What's wrong with SF moving in that direction if it means accommodating all the new residents AND providing reasonably priced housing to all the current ones. Pardon the rant, this issue hits close to home for me.
Edit: Re your earlier point on SF geography, earthquake proofing is a well developed tech. It will add some cost to development, but that doesn't make it infeasible. I live in a part of the city where they had to drill many many feet down to bedrock. It can be done.
I don't remember it as clearly as I once did, but the Aswan Dam met all its stated goals of providing electricity and controlling flooding. But it cost vastly more to build than expected, silt build up was much faster than expected, leading to a shorter lifespan than expected, it caused a terrible schistosomiasis epidemic and farmers had to spend huge quantities on fertilizer. They overlooked the fact that the icky flooding provided free fertilizer in the form of rich silt. They overlooked the fact that the icky flooding is why Egypt was The Jewel of the Nile for thousands of years. They didn't recognize that the icky flooding also kept the snail population under control. The snails are the vector for schistosomiasis, a horrifying parasitic infection.
Lots of efforts to fix things go sideways. It happens all the time.