If the city would rezone all of the single family homes into higher density buildings, this wouldn't be a problem. Flood the area with supply and the cost will go down to reasonable levels.
This is a problem all across the nation. Everyone wants a single family home, so this leads to two things: outrageously high costs of homes, or people moving out to the suburbs and thus worsening the rush hour traffic and smog issue.
Having lived on another island, with the same woes of SF (limited land, high growth), the problem is always the same - even though it's been on a much smaller scale.
The people that have owned for the past 30-50 years, are completely unwilling to give up on their single family homes, gardens, etc. They basically demand to live a nice and cushy suburban life, in the middle of a big city.
It then takes forever to build vertically, because for every projects that's proposed, there are hundreds, of not thousands of protests from neighbors that'll lose some sunlight, depreciation of property value, and what not - or they just don't like the modern architecture. So it can take YEARS to just get the first shovel in ground, because these projects go through so many rounds in city councils and what not.
That's how you end up with extremely partisan / one-sided city councils, consisting of established home/land owners, that will fight tooth and nail to impose draconian zoning laws, and general NIMBY-politics.
> unwilling to give up on their single family homes
I think that expecting people to "give up their homes" is more than unreasonable. The reasonable compromise being that builders can build in more densely once the current owners sell it.
Absolutely. Upzoning never forces owners to "give up their home"-- maybe the issue is owners don't want their neighbors to be able to sell their homes to developers either.
That's absolutely it. People not only are unwilling to sell - as in their right - but also insist that everyone else be unwilling to sell. If they are willing, the permitting process is made to be as painful as possible, in an effort to discourage everyone involved.
Not necessarily true. An upzoning will likely increase the value of the land, which will result in higher property taxes (assuming this is a normal city with no prop13 nonsense).
The higher taxes could effectively force a land owner to sell their property.
Often part of what existing land owners are fighting for is preferential zoning which artificially keeps the "highest and best use of land" a low density detached house, which keeps land values relatively low.
If the developer can get permission to build 3-5 story apartments on the lot, then their land suddenly becomes way more valuable than the single home ever was. Most retirees will gladly sell and live in luxury elsewhere. If a few don't, it won't make a difference.
If the developer can get permission to build 3-5 story apartments on the lot
wouldn't that only work for a single unit? Like, yes, if inside a single-family-zoned block a unit would get a special permission to be the only one to build high density, sure that piece of land would be more valuable than before.
But if the whole block gets rezoned, then there's a race to the bottom.
Many single family home owners will strenuously object to having a developer build a 5 storey apartment building next door because they don't want additional noise, traffic, and people looking down into their private back yard. It directly impacts their quality of life.
I was having a conversation with a person in my HoA. She complained that, when THEY moved in, the "big" houses (gesturing at my 2-story) didn't exist, and they had a lovely view of the fields past my side of the street.
Well, lady, if you wanted the view, you should have bought my lot.
The concept of air-rights is a good one - if a developer wants to build higher, they can acquire the air rights of the properties close by, at a price the residents find acceptable (for losing their unobstructed views etc).
The population in San Francisco is at an all time high. I wonder why the popular solution is to transform the city against the wishes of its long time residents into something that newcomers want, and not develop new urban centers elsewhere for newcomers. People act shocked that residents advocated for the kind of city they want and not the kind of city other people want.
Honestly I'm surprised no other city in the bay area has taken the baton and aimed to overtake SF in terms of relevance by becoming the densest, most thriving city in the region. Oakland is at least trying to cope with demand in some neighborhoods. I'm rooting for that.
Some have, e.g. Daly City. The issue is that the rent is skyrocketing because people are desperate to live in that tiny patch of land that is precisely walking distance to their and other startup HQs. It’s a massive network effect.
I would say it’s basically impossible to recreate a dense city based on today’s codes of construction requiring numerous safety/ADA measures in the US.
In an existing city, the cost to purchase land and buildings that would need to demolished, rezoned, and rebuilt as a higher density area with accompanying infrastructure is astronomical and wouldn’t be possibly by anyone other than the federal government only because they can print money. And politically, that effort would be dead on arrival.
The giant parking lots and 6 to 8 lane roads are what would need to go in order to make a place walkable on the level of SF or NYC. Additionally, a lot of the smaller, quirky high density living in these cities is because they didn’t have to comply with ADA at the time of construction. If you start adding elevators and ramps and the space needed in passages and doorways for wheelchairs to turn around, you will end up with a much larger footprint.
Granted, ADA and other upgrades in quality of life are nowhere near the big problem of the cost of reducing lot and block sizes retroactively. The design for cities made for cars and for pedestrians are fundamentally opposed, and cannot coexist.
Moving away from car-friendliness will do so much more for density and walk-ability than doing away with ADA compliance, by easily a factor of 1000. I built a house which is largely ADA compliant, and lost maybe 10 square feet, most of that was due to converting traditional doors to pocket doors, which requires wider walls. For the most part, all of the doorways could accommodate the wider door requirements without moving any walls.
If I got rid of my oversized two-car garage, I could recover maybe 400 square feet. Without a driveway, another house of the same exact size could be placed on the same lot.
Cars are antithetical to density. Discouraging their use will greatly improve city density, while also having environmental benefits.
I don't have a citation for you, but it sure seems that something requires new construction apartments in SF to devote half of their square footage to wheelchair accessible bathrooms... I'd guess every apartment I lived in in SF would be illegal to construct today due to things like clearances.
> In an existing city, the cost to purchase land and buildings that would need to demolished, rezoned, and rebuilt as a higher density area with accompanying infrastructure is astronomical
This happens all the time in NYC, though. Anywhere from a several-story small/medium apartment building to a large skyscraper.
I think the limiting factor is much more likely to be air rights and zoning than safety standards.
I’m referring to cities that are currently not walkable due to huge lots with big box stores and hundreds of parking spaces and 6+ lane road crossings.
Seems like an easy enough solution, though in an environment of plunging rents developers very quickly seem to put projects on hold and shift gears to other sorts of things. I've witnessed this first hand in my city whenever there's bumps in the road (eg. global financial crisis, recent introduction of various foreign buyer/speculation taxes).
This should intrinsically make sense. Private developers don't have to build and there's other ways for them to invest their money.
Now if the developer was a public entity with a mandate that they had to build now that would be different.
And a lot of people only want a single family home because they want a certain amount of living space. In a commodified housing market, they would likely pay less for that space in a condo.
I want a single family home because it has no shared walls and a private backyard space for my kids and dog. It's not that hard to find condos or apartments with decent floor space.
I live in a rural area, so I'm no expert...but how do you weigh the value of private property of San Fransiscans vs. the communal good of more apartment units? Surely you wouldn't "knock down" old houses, or would you? Just curious as to your thoughts.
Rezoning doesn’t force anyone out of their homes. It just lets someone sell their homes to someone who will turn around and build a larger building. Buildings in the old zone are grandfathered in.
But folks who want to live in a single family home in the middle of san francisco can still do so. Just don’t sell the house.
The best land for high density construction in SF are the smaller rent controlled buildings, not single family homes. These smaller rent controlled buildings are near lively neighborhoods and transit, and are also often at the outer edge of their useful lifespan. I have yet to see a policy proposal to open up this land for development because nobody wants to give up rent controlled units.
Increasingly, single family detached homes in the interior of SF are owned by the very wealthy who can remain in the city to shape policy over the long term, while renters come and go. So don't expect anyone at City Hall to swing a wrecking ball in the direction of Pac Heights.
The problem has solved itself already - the US is big and empty. There is little reason to stack people twenty stories high in a Zoom economy. So much talk here of policy changes, LVT etc etc...just freaking move!! That's a very trite response but it also is the best one. If anything, the pandemic has taken a wrecking ball to the entire thesis of New Urbanism and dense development...many Bay Area residents have already figured it out, don't be the last to get the memo.
This is a problem all across the nation. Everyone wants a single family home, so this leads to two things: outrageously high costs of homes, or people moving out to the suburbs and thus worsening the rush hour traffic and smog issue.