Wednesday, July 30, 2014

SF Housing: The Problem is the Peninsula

I've heard numerous claims as to why San Francisco has a housing crisis, and numerous solutions proffered. Few of them address the main source of the problem: San Francisco is facing an enormous housing crunch because of The Peninsula's land use and development policies.

Valley cities keeps building office parks and tech campuses, and yet they build no housing to accommodate the increased number of jobs in their city. Why? Because tech buses, and massive highways, and dense urban housing in San Francisco means they don't have to. Selfish home owners clinging to some false sense of suburban utopia (and skyrocketing home values) put pressure on the local pols to not create any rental housing. Local pols bow to pressure and shit-can any proposed rental and/or dense housing. Have you looked at rental rates in Mountain View or Palo Alto or any of the valley communities? The funny thing is, in the long run, these communities are cutting their own throats. But in the short run, San Francisco and its residents suffer.

Here's the rub: Its not that all tech workers are a bunch of hipster who want to live next to the urban cool kids in crappy sub-divided Victorian half units with bathrooms in the kitchen and no parking. Some of them do, but not all of them and certainly not the majority. It's that rents in Mountain View and Palo Alto and Sunnyvale and the rest of the valley are ridiculously expensive.  And if you have to pay a lot of money to live in the burbs, why not pay a the same amount of money, and live in San Francisco?  Especially since your employer will drive you to and from work for free. There are plenty of tech workers who would chose to live near their jobs instead of the cultural magnet of San Francisco... it's just that they can't because there is no cheap suburban housing available to them. Regional occupancy and rental rates bear this out.

So Fuck Peninsula politicians and home owners. I'm tired of being Silicon Valley's bedroom community. Anything and everything that allows people to work down the peninsula but live in San Francisco should be taxed and regulated to pay for low income housing, and bribes (see below).  Any commercial buses that are used for commuting but spend more than 50% of their time outside of San Francisco city limits should face a huge tax for the privilege of using our streets. And that tax should pay for below market housing and bribes.

Cal train Riders? Northbound routs into 22nd street and King should have an extra couple of dollars per rider surcharge if you are coming from outside of zone 1. Sorry. Gotta pay for housing  and bribes some how, and if that extra couple of dollars means you live in South San Francisco instead of San Francisco, all the better.

At this point, I'm almost ready to agree to toll booths going into San Francisco at the 280 and 101, as long as that money was used for housing and bribes, and not highway funding. Since the city can't actually control toll booths on state and federal highways, I recommend putting said toll Booths on the exit ramps.  Sure it will fuck up traffic badly, but that could be another dis-incentive to living in the city and working in The Peninsula. Anybody commuting in from adjacent cities can just take surface streets to avoid the tolls.... We aren't trying to tax them.... we are trying to tax the people working in the Valley. As such, the tolls should be reverse commute tolls that capture the valley workers... Driving into the city between 4 and 7 on the 280 or 101? Pay a toll.

And here's were the bribery comes in. San Francisco should bring its enormous financial and political pressure to bear on peninsula communities to build some apartments.  I'm open to incentivising this with cash - cash that could come from the above dis-insensitive taxes and fees.

The disparity between demand and supply won't be fixed quickly... but it will never be fixed completely until The Valley is dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, housing and land-use policy wise. Until then, all San Franciscans will continue to suffer.

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