In a bid to address the city's drug crisis — and the crime and homelessness that come with it — San Francisco voters shifted right in Tuesday's primary, approving ballot measures that aim to boost enforcement powers.
As a Guardian report on the phenomenon noted, YIMBYs are not anti-capitalists. They are allies of developers
This is priming. It’s relying on the association “developers bad, therefore YIMBYs bad”.
The idea, generally, is that the problem of affordable housing is a problem of supply. Thus zoning restrictions should be rewritten to allow for more development. There is little interest in having the government build new public housing. Instead, when YIMBYs say “we need more housing,” they mean “we need to allow developers to build what sells.”
Why? Unexplained, hoping you’ll just assume “it’s because they’re capitalist scum in the pockets of the real estate developers”.
And even though they talk a lot about the need for affordable housing, they tend to be opposed to requiring developers to make housing affordable, assuming that the Invisible Hand of the free market will take care of that.
This time they explain it, but they lie. (for reference, the actual reason for relying on private developers is because the entire housing crisis is caused by government obstruction. If government wanted to build more housing, it would have done so. It doesn’t want to. Private developers are the only option left. It’s obvious if you understand the cause of the housing crisis, but the article deftly avoids talking about that.)
But what is called the “logic” of Econ 101 is often a fairy tale
Never EVER trust an article that tells you that a professional science is flat out wrong. This should ring alarm bells.
and it is only when you think a bit harder (i.e., when you get past the “101” class) that you realize it might be false.
Aka “do your own research”, but for intelligent leftists. Same message though: the experts are wrong.
Consider the pencil towers. Let’s say that
What follows is pulled from the author’s ass.
There were 30 single-family units in the old building. Our new pencil tower is 100 floors high and has 100 units. All of our pencil tower’s units are full of state-of-the-art appliances and high-end fixtures, and cost $2,000,000 each. They are swiftly bought up, 20 by rich people who live in the city, 30 by rich people lured to the city by its new pencil tower, and 50 by rich people who have no intention of living in the city but think pencil tower condos are an asset worth owning in a swiftly-gentrifying city.
The main point is that induced demand applies when something is free, such as roads. It does not apply to $2 million condos.
It’s important to note that induced demand is the shaky foundation of the entire article you linked. That’s why it’s a tier 3 falsehood: it takes a lot of detailed reading, preferably with someone who already opposes the premise, to understand that this is the single concrete mechanism by which increasing housing supply doesn’t work. There’s a bunch of ad hominem attacks (evil developers!) and tugging at heartstrings (grandma gonna get evicted!) but you have to ignore that. The central thing that the entire argument rests on is induced demand, and that theory is wrong.
Just to quickly addrrss some other points:
Neighborhood character: dog-whistle
Eviction for the purpose of development: not legal in CA
“we communities of color, we poor people and immigrants, we working-class queers” literally cultural appropriation. Working class people need housing more than anyone, it’s the fucking bourgeoisie who are anti-housing, and it’s a little sick that they pretend to be one of the people in a blatant call to leftist sympathies. The average homeowner in San Francisco is a millionaire.
“Any understanding of the desirability of development depends on deeper questions like: whose backyard are we talking about? Who is saying yes? To what? Why?”: delay, deny, muddy the waters. Above all, anything that threatens the status quo is to be resisted.
Thank you for your response and for being civil. I still think development should be a negotiation between the government and developers but your argument has pulled me more to the developers side. I still don’t trust them because fundamentally developers don’t care about housing affordability, the environment or neighborhood culture but people do and the only way for those voices to be heard is through the government. The government does have it’s excesses and those should be eliminated but to say that we should always side with the developers and let them decide everything will not end well.
The case for this is induced demand which contrary to what you said is a thing. The study that the other article references doesn’t deny induced demands existence, in fact it has a chart proving that more high income people migrated to the area then the control, it just says that this doesn’t counteract the downward pressure on rent the increase in supply caused. It does blunt the effect though, and raises the question can we increase the supply without inducing demand, maybe with policies that make it so only low to middle income people can rent there. The study is also just comparing building a market rate building vs no building, more relevant to prop c though would be a market rate building vs an affordable housing building.
The study is also an average of over 100 different cities and San Francisco is not an average city. The real estate market is uniquely speculative, SF is ranked 3rd world wide behind new York and London for real estate investment, no link but this is from “pictures of a gone city” p. 211, I’d also recommend his entire chapter on the housing crisis if you want a more in depth empirical explanation of the progressive take on the housing crisis. The city also has the one of the highest income and one of the highest inequality in the country. So there’s a lot more of those rich people moving in and a lot more investors buying property to sit on as shown by the high vacancy rate, that the author of the article mentions, probably not as much as they’re hypothetical, but enough to further blunt the impact the increase in supply a new building creates.
Yes any new building will probably reduce rent in the area but that doesn’t mean we should build any building. Certain buildings are going to bring down rents faster and land is limited. Affordable housing projects are competing for the same land/empty office space as luxury housing projects and if those affordable housing projects have no advantage from the government then luxury housing projects will win every time since they can outbid. Like the author said it’s a matter of efficiency, not simply whether something will go up or down.
All of this requires a balancing act between making sure housing is built and making sure it’s the best to suit the communities needs. Falling into a dichotomy and always siding with one or the other is what the author warns against, it’s not just nimby or yimby.
Also would like to hear more of your opinion on public housing. That is probably what the author and most progressives have an issue with yimbyism. You seem to be against it because government hasn’t been building but that’s mostly due to lack of support due to past sabotaged projects. If the yimby movement backed public housing and lended more support then that would help to solve the issue.
I think I can agree with most of your points, within limits of course. Developers, like all corporations, are not to be trusted to have the people’s best interests at heart. They’re not the good guys. Their interests just happen to align right now with what is best for people.
Giving the people a voice is important, as is preventing a complete orgy of development, but I don’t think we’re in any danger of developers running rampant. This isn’t Florida. It’s a thing to keep in mind, but as of now “giving the people a voice” often means paying bribes to extortionary groups like Calle 24 and hoping they don’t double-cross you and sabotage your planned building.
Also would like to hear more of your opinion on public housing.
Public housing, in my opinion, is the latest red herring, a shiny buzzword that NIMBYs throw out to distract people with good intentions. It’s the same strategy as the tired old “all new development must be affordable” poison pill argument they’ve been using. I don’t see any downside to government pursuing public housing, per se, but doing it instead of allowing private development is just another shady delaying tactic to prevent development at all.
Firstly, as I mentioned, the ones supposedly running the public housing project (BoS typically) are the ones who have been obstructing housing all along. It’s the fox guarding the henhouse. I don’t want to doxx myself but there’s a public housing project going up near me. It’s taken almost twenty years to build and is just now taking applications.
Which segues into my second point: SF governance, even when done in good faith, is wildly inefficient. We desperately need some oversight in many different areas of government. There’s a whole shadow government of nonprofits and contractors that exists solely because we can’t get out of our own way, so we have to hire someone else to do it.
But to me the most important point is - and I want you to think about this for a minute - why should public housing construction preclude private housing construction? The two are almost entirely unrelated. There is no reason whatsoever that they can’t be done in parallel. Public housing requires government funds, but private construction only requires the relaxing of current zoning laws and regulations like CEQA. That’s all. It’s a false dichotomy.
The only reason for anyone to ever say “we should do public housing construction instead of private housing construction” is to try to stop private housing construction. Not out of any concern for the public good. If the people crowing about public housing actually gave a shit about housing affordability, they would be talking about it in parallel with private development. Or at the very least they would be indifferent to private development. The fact that they’re arguing for public housing instead of private development shows their true colors.
Let’s go over it in some detail.
This is priming. It’s relying on the association “developers bad, therefore YIMBYs bad”.
Why? Unexplained, hoping you’ll just assume “it’s because they’re capitalist scum in the pockets of the real estate developers”.
This time they explain it, but they lie. (for reference, the actual reason for relying on private developers is because the entire housing crisis is caused by government obstruction. If government wanted to build more housing, it would have done so. It doesn’t want to. Private developers are the only option left. It’s obvious if you understand the cause of the housing crisis, but the article deftly avoids talking about that.)
Never EVER trust an article that tells you that a professional science is flat out wrong. This should ring alarm bells.
Aka “do your own research”, but for intelligent leftists. Same message though: the experts are wrong.
What follows is pulled from the author’s ass.
There is no evidence that induced demand applies whatsoever to housing. Here’s an article, not without its own biases, but it at least backs its position up with data and rational arguments other than “suppose that such and such happens, wouldn’t that be terrible??” style bullshit: https://cityobservatory.org/another-housing-myth-debunked-neighborhood-price-effects-of-new-apartments/
The main point is that induced demand applies when something is free, such as roads. It does not apply to $2 million condos.
It’s important to note that induced demand is the shaky foundation of the entire article you linked. That’s why it’s a tier 3 falsehood: it takes a lot of detailed reading, preferably with someone who already opposes the premise, to understand that this is the single concrete mechanism by which increasing housing supply doesn’t work. There’s a bunch of ad hominem attacks (evil developers!) and tugging at heartstrings (grandma gonna get evicted!) but you have to ignore that. The central thing that the entire argument rests on is induced demand, and that theory is wrong.
Just to quickly addrrss some other points:
Neighborhood character: dog-whistle
Eviction for the purpose of development: not legal in CA
“we communities of color, we poor people and immigrants, we working-class queers” literally cultural appropriation. Working class people need housing more than anyone, it’s the fucking bourgeoisie who are anti-housing, and it’s a little sick that they pretend to be one of the people in a blatant call to leftist sympathies. The average homeowner in San Francisco is a millionaire.
“Any understanding of the desirability of development depends on deeper questions like: whose backyard are we talking about? Who is saying yes? To what? Why?”: delay, deny, muddy the waters. Above all, anything that threatens the status quo is to be resisted.
Thank you for your response and for being civil. I still think development should be a negotiation between the government and developers but your argument has pulled me more to the developers side. I still don’t trust them because fundamentally developers don’t care about housing affordability, the environment or neighborhood culture but people do and the only way for those voices to be heard is through the government. The government does have it’s excesses and those should be eliminated but to say that we should always side with the developers and let them decide everything will not end well.
The case for this is induced demand which contrary to what you said is a thing. The study that the other article references doesn’t deny induced demands existence, in fact it has a chart proving that more high income people migrated to the area then the control, it just says that this doesn’t counteract the downward pressure on rent the increase in supply caused. It does blunt the effect though, and raises the question can we increase the supply without inducing demand, maybe with policies that make it so only low to middle income people can rent there. The study is also just comparing building a market rate building vs no building, more relevant to prop c though would be a market rate building vs an affordable housing building.
The study is also an average of over 100 different cities and San Francisco is not an average city. The real estate market is uniquely speculative, SF is ranked 3rd world wide behind new York and London for real estate investment, no link but this is from “pictures of a gone city” p. 211, I’d also recommend his entire chapter on the housing crisis if you want a more in depth empirical explanation of the progressive take on the housing crisis. The city also has the one of the highest income and one of the highest inequality in the country. So there’s a lot more of those rich people moving in and a lot more investors buying property to sit on as shown by the high vacancy rate, that the author of the article mentions, probably not as much as they’re hypothetical, but enough to further blunt the impact the increase in supply a new building creates.
Yes any new building will probably reduce rent in the area but that doesn’t mean we should build any building. Certain buildings are going to bring down rents faster and land is limited. Affordable housing projects are competing for the same land/empty office space as luxury housing projects and if those affordable housing projects have no advantage from the government then luxury housing projects will win every time since they can outbid. Like the author said it’s a matter of efficiency, not simply whether something will go up or down.
All of this requires a balancing act between making sure housing is built and making sure it’s the best to suit the communities needs. Falling into a dichotomy and always siding with one or the other is what the author warns against, it’s not just nimby or yimby.
Also would like to hear more of your opinion on public housing. That is probably what the author and most progressives have an issue with yimbyism. You seem to be against it because government hasn’t been building but that’s mostly due to lack of support due to past sabotaged projects. If the yimby movement backed public housing and lended more support then that would help to solve the issue.
I think I can agree with most of your points, within limits of course. Developers, like all corporations, are not to be trusted to have the people’s best interests at heart. They’re not the good guys. Their interests just happen to align right now with what is best for people.
Giving the people a voice is important, as is preventing a complete orgy of development, but I don’t think we’re in any danger of developers running rampant. This isn’t Florida. It’s a thing to keep in mind, but as of now “giving the people a voice” often means paying bribes to extortionary groups like Calle 24 and hoping they don’t double-cross you and sabotage your planned building.
Public housing, in my opinion, is the latest red herring, a shiny buzzword that NIMBYs throw out to distract people with good intentions. It’s the same strategy as the tired old “all new development must be affordable” poison pill argument they’ve been using. I don’t see any downside to government pursuing public housing, per se, but doing it instead of allowing private development is just another shady delaying tactic to prevent development at all.
Firstly, as I mentioned, the ones supposedly running the public housing project (BoS typically) are the ones who have been obstructing housing all along. It’s the fox guarding the henhouse. I don’t want to doxx myself but there’s a public housing project going up near me. It’s taken almost twenty years to build and is just now taking applications.
Which segues into my second point: SF governance, even when done in good faith, is wildly inefficient. We desperately need some oversight in many different areas of government. There’s a whole shadow government of nonprofits and contractors that exists solely because we can’t get out of our own way, so we have to hire someone else to do it.
But to me the most important point is - and I want you to think about this for a minute - why should public housing construction preclude private housing construction? The two are almost entirely unrelated. There is no reason whatsoever that they can’t be done in parallel. Public housing requires government funds, but private construction only requires the relaxing of current zoning laws and regulations like CEQA. That’s all. It’s a false dichotomy.
The only reason for anyone to ever say “we should do public housing construction instead of private housing construction” is to try to stop private housing construction. Not out of any concern for the public good. If the people crowing about public housing actually gave a shit about housing affordability, they would be talking about it in parallel with private development. Or at the very least they would be indifferent to private development. The fact that they’re arguing for public housing instead of private development shows their true colors.