I've lived in SF and have heard a decade of talking heads prattling on about building housing, and then looking at the plans and they all end up being gobbledygook about "well if you do 20% Affordable, you can do 50% more units, but if it's 40% Affordable, you can do three more floors," and I keep staring at it and just think... why not just let people build more without doing anything?!?
After thinking about this for years, I realized the system is designed to keep growing property values while offering token subsidized units for literal lottery winners. When you're subsidized units are available to people making 80% of median income, you're not giving subsidized units for poor people, you're building lottery-based subsidized units for normal working class folks. That's bananas.
Just let people build more, incrementally, so homeowners feel like they aren't going to be overwhelmed, but you can still build up.
A simply, effective policy would be to, say, allow anyone to double the amount of sqft and units of the median property in the neighborhood.
That way single family homes become duplexes overnight, and when demand is high enough, duplexes become fourplexes, then when the median unit is a fourplex, you're already got density and you can build up.
None of this extractionary bullshit. None of this "yea, but developers need to pay for housing too." None of the, "well you can do this but not that." Just have simple rules so a homeowner can put a wall up in his house and make a duplex, or add a granny flat, without a bunch of bullshit.
That’s a good idea to automatically upzone to double the sqft and units of neighbors (and height too). The previous BoS president, Aaron Peskin, had the opposite idea: he proposed an ordinance that apartments should be capped at the 1× the average sqft of the neighbors within 300 ft (https://sfgov.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3781286...). Fortunately, that ordinance did not pass, but it gives you an idea of the nonsense that he promoted: scarcity in the name of affordability.
I can't agree with this. I've also lived in SF for the last 30 years and by my lights a simpler, more effective policy would be to roll up the red carpet that was rolled out to tech companies. I don't consider the problem to be one of inadequate supply. I consider the problem to be one of excessive demand from one class of higher-compensation workers more-insulated from market forces (tech workers) out-competing another class of lower-compensation workers less-insulated from market forces (everyone else).
Every major city in America is America's internet tech hub and has the highest property values in America? "Every major city in America" includes San Francisco, but it also includes Detroit. You want to think about that again?
I've lived in SF and have heard a decade of talking heads prattling on about building housing, and then looking at the plans and they all end up being gobbledygook about "well if you do 20% Affordable, you can do 50% more units, but if it's 40% Affordable, you can do three more floors," and I keep staring at it and just think... why not just let people build more without doing anything?!?
After thinking about this for years, I realized the system is designed to keep growing property values while offering token subsidized units for literal lottery winners. When you're subsidized units are available to people making 80% of median income, you're not giving subsidized units for poor people, you're building lottery-based subsidized units for normal working class folks. That's bananas.
Just let people build more, incrementally, so homeowners feel like they aren't going to be overwhelmed, but you can still build up.
A simply, effective policy would be to, say, allow anyone to double the amount of sqft and units of the median property in the neighborhood.
That way single family homes become duplexes overnight, and when demand is high enough, duplexes become fourplexes, then when the median unit is a fourplex, you're already got density and you can build up.
None of this extractionary bullshit. None of this "yea, but developers need to pay for housing too." None of the, "well you can do this but not that." Just have simple rules so a homeowner can put a wall up in his house and make a duplex, or add a granny flat, without a bunch of bullshit.