You’re mischaracterizing the left-wing / long term renter position here. This is a very common tactic among local SF “YIMBYs” for some reason.
Progressives are not objecting solely on the basis of “character of the city” and in fact regularly poll in favor of development. What they fight for is affordable housing development.
Underlying this problem is a massive income disparity between techies and working class folks. Essentially the YIMBY position is if you build market rate housing for techies it will trickle down to the working class because “supply and demand didn’tyoutakeeconomics???” But Econ 101 has within it the concept of inelasticity that explains why increasing supply does not always move the price much under certain conditions. Like those of say a massive boom economy where tons of high income earners and speculators from around the world are waiting to snatch up new inventory. SF has had many experiences with such boom/bust cycles.
It’s a real estate developer’s dream and it helps us rich-ish techies (hence heavy YIMBY presence on HN) but it doesn’t necessarily translate into lowering rents for the working class. Thus, progressive supervisors are focused on public investment in affordable housing and taxing the rich to fund it, not just serving the needs of the wealthy.
YIMBYs absolutely hate this characterization because they like to claim they are on the side of the poor. But they are 100% aligned with and politically funded by the real estate industry, and that’s why they prefer to mischaracterize progressives who are actually prioritizing the needs of the most vulnerable.
This is a mischaracterization of the YIMBY position. Most YIMBYs are not opposed to raising taxes so that the city can pay for the construction of affordable housing units. (Note that the city doesn't build housing even if they pay for it - developers still do!) YIMBYs also believe, however, that we need housing of all kinds, including market rate housing. That is where YIMBYs and progressives disagree.
Separately, developers are already required to build a certain number of affordable housing units in every development.
If you require developers to build units that are mostly or solely composed of affordable housing, those developers will not earn enough money to make it worth building the units in the first place. This leads to progressives holding up all kinds of development with endless planning meetings and environmental impact assessments. The result is no housing gets built - no affordable housing, no market-rate housing. They allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.
We need to work with developers to build housing units of all kinds, including affordable housing, rather than demonizing the very developers who are going to end up building those affordable housing developments that I think we all want.
> This is a mischaracterization of the YIMBY position. Most YIMBYs are not opposed to raising taxes so that the city can pay for the construction of affordable housing units.
This is false. YIMBYs opposed the recent prop I to tax >$10M real estate sales to fund “emergency rent relief and permanently affordable housing.”[1]
You stated that "progressive supervisors are focused on public investment in affordable housing and taxing the rich to fund it." This is not what Prop I does.
Instead, the >$10M real estate tax would mostly be paid by developers, not homeowners, because most property sales in San Francisco that are >$10M are apartment buildings rather than houses owned by rich people. Not only that, but it would be a tax paid twice by developers, because they have to buy the land and then sell the finished development.
The reason YIMBYs opposed that proposition is for exactly this reason. It wouldn't be a tax on rich people, but yet another obstacle to the construction of housing, both affordable and market-rate.
Literally is a tax specifically constructed to target sellers (not buyers) of >$10M properties, otherwise known as rich people. With an exemption for sales to affordable housing nonprofits. This issue, passed by a wide margin, demonstrated that SF YIMBY is little more than a real estate lobby front at this point.
Again, developers != rich people. Developers are just businesses like everything else, not some evil cabal. Developers build the housing units that we both claim to want, and if you make it harder for them to build anything then no housing of any kind gets built.
This is a heavy mischaracterization of Progressives. When it's 100% unit that are below market rate, it gets blocked. When it's 50% BMR, it gets blocked. When it's 20%, it gets blocked.
This is because the true position of Progressives is that any development has a chance to cause harm, and they prefer the current situation to any harm, in a messed up form of the trolley problem.
I would also urge you to capitalize the P, as the Progressive positions in SF are not really recognizable as progressive in most of the US or world. It's more of a factional battle in the culture war than about what are more generally agreed to be progressive values.
@ushanti is really amazing, pulling the Progressives kicking and screaming in to approving small amounts of housing. I have no complaints about Preston either. But they are both outliers in the Progressive camp, not the core of it!
Edit: from what I know of Preston, at least. I'm not in SF, just have to deal with the terrible politics there providing cover for conservatives in my area to be reactionary in housing. And this is the core reasons that the Progressives in SF are so bad, they say all sorts of regressive things (like seemingly supporting Prop 13?!) because they are too deep in a culture war to realize the policy that will support the progressive values they claim to support, but all too often, do not. For example refusing to make 100% affordable housing by-right.
Progressives are not objecting solely on the basis of “character of the city” and in fact regularly poll in favor of development. What they fight for is affordable housing development.
Underlying this problem is a massive income disparity between techies and working class folks. Essentially the YIMBY position is if you build market rate housing for techies it will trickle down to the working class because “supply and demand didn’tyoutakeeconomics???” But Econ 101 has within it the concept of inelasticity that explains why increasing supply does not always move the price much under certain conditions. Like those of say a massive boom economy where tons of high income earners and speculators from around the world are waiting to snatch up new inventory. SF has had many experiences with such boom/bust cycles.
It’s a real estate developer’s dream and it helps us rich-ish techies (hence heavy YIMBY presence on HN) but it doesn’t necessarily translate into lowering rents for the working class. Thus, progressive supervisors are focused on public investment in affordable housing and taxing the rich to fund it, not just serving the needs of the wealthy.
YIMBYs absolutely hate this characterization because they like to claim they are on the side of the poor. But they are 100% aligned with and politically funded by the real estate industry, and that’s why they prefer to mischaracterize progressives who are actually prioritizing the needs of the most vulnerable.