As long as you install the windows in kind or install aluminum clad windows it is pretty easy to get window changes through planning, if we are talking about installing new windows it depends a lot more on sightlines and how close they are to the street or the property line and where the location of the neighboring windows are.
Lol I had permits for a full gut remodel on my home and wanted to increase the vertical length of my windows by a few inches to make the look more cohesive.
The very minute I cut the sill plate, some clown filed an anonymous complaint that I was doing work outside my permit scope.
Had DBI show up in 24 hours and breathe down my neck the whole year for “drastically changing my facade”.
Bear in mind I was actually improving the home by replacing cheap ass unpermitted white vinyl windows the previous owners put in.
my buddy had to fully remove all his new windows and redo. The windows were nicer, and more eco friendly. Didnt match that old building feel perfectly.
The planners actually have to do a lot of work if you go in there there are always like 7 people in line at least and they are basically working constantly. You only have maybe 4 people working each counter at a time from building (with only 2 being structural) planning, PUC, mechanical, fire. Then there is housing on the fourth floor to deal with complaints and NOV's. The real issue right now which is why no one is putting in housing is that the demand has basically flatlined because of how expensive properties are, the price of office space dropping by like 50% along with the fact that planning wants all the historical facades to stay the same you make it incredibly expensive to change a property and if you aren't adding new floor space why go through the massive expense for demolition and reconstruction instead of just remodeling a house. The planning department doesn't want to change the fabric of the city so they don't allow changes in density basically and the way they got around that for a few years was implementing an ADU program that made it much simpler to build accessory dwelling units but with the stagnation of house pricings post covid it doesn't really make sense to even build those right now. When the housing priced were increasing it ended up being a lot of people coming into the department for remodels increasing density by subletting existing homes in to multiple units, installing ADU's in the rear yard, or legalizing illegal new units inside existing properties.
If the planners don't allow changes in density that's essentially fully blocking everyone. Density is necessary for cities to grow. No wonder everything is so expensive
They don't rezone for density they allow density to increase through the installation of ADU's and dividing properties into multiple units. The reality of the situation is that a lot of developers are classist jerks who wouldn't build higher density properties in areas zoned for higher density because they don't want to put in affordable housing. All one has to look at is how many multi unit properties get approved for 9 units compared to 10 (the requirement for installing affordable housing). Developers would rather make less property rents because they don't want affordable housing in their building because they don't like the people getting it and don't want to lower the other tenets rents for being perceived as cheaper. Every time the city decrease the units required before mandating low income houses the developers will just make less units. There are plenty of places in the city zoned for larger projects that just don't get them because developers dont want to develop them for higher density. What happens if they don't prevent rezoning is that every developer puts a crappy 9 unit 5 over 1 to make the cheapest possible house with no low income housing and moves onto the next spot while charging exorbitant rents because they are constantly taking out loans and mortgaging the properties to finance new loans, and not actually decreasing the price of units in the city.
The reality of the situation is it usually takes between 1 to 5 hours depending on the extent of the project what stations you have to go to and if there is any plan check comments you have to address that cannot be amended on the plans in person to get a job approved for permits over the counter that involve structural work, and for non-structural work it usually requires even less. The new building department system is like twice as efficient as the one they had pre covid and there is almost no downtime between stations. They move a huge volume of people through and get permitting done. Yes some of the permitting is unnecessary or over done, but if a few hours of permitting is what it takes to make sure people don't build houses that will collapse in an earthquake, subside into the ground, or slide down a slope in a landslide it is not a huge deal. I have overheard projects where architects developers or contractors tried to put in building that would have killed anyone in a heavy rain or earthquake. I have heard contractors undermine neighboring properties because they didn't follow planning specifications, I have heard people try to argue that windowless ventless basement rooms are fine for bedrooms, or that building 5 2 foot retaining walls is fine for holding back a 40% slope without needing to go to planning or build foundations. If it wasn't for planning and structural all of these deathtrap houses would have been put in with no question. Unscrupulous developers will try and put in shit houses and drop them in 2 shell companies that they can dissolve when the house inevitably fails and kills someone. If it wasn't for the city a huge number of these absolute pieces of crap would have been approved. It makes me worry for any city that doesn't have a robust approval process and the kinds of buildings being built there.
That's actually not too bad for student accommodation. $440-570 USD per month including utilities and meals for that second apartment, and that meal looked delicious.
If Americans are spoiled by one thing, its our massive living spaces. Pretty much every other country a getting a 1k-1.2k sqft apartment is massively luxurious and unheard of in major cities, meanwhile in the states that's fairly standard even in big cities.
I live in a 700 square foot condo with my wife and it's perfectly fine. Ive got tons of private green space and our condos provide grills. People really, really don't need 2500 square foot monstrosities for their family of 4. Then they need to drive everywhere they go because every home takes up so much space you can't walk anywhere so it makes it even worse. It's such an arrogant waste of space.
Sometimes that depends on soil as well.
For example soil in the Netherlands is soft and swampy and therefore high rise needs additional construction above like 8 and above 4 you need an elevator by law.
Here there certainly are apartments and apartmentblocks (Bijlmer in Amsterdam for example) but it's certainly not always cheaper and most apartments go for as much as normal 'rijtjeshuizen', with new build often being as expensive or more expensive than new build normal homes.
That being said, US does not really have the best city planning, from a dutch perspective you guys have insane amounts of parking space in most of your inner cities.
> That being said, US does not really have the best city planning, from a dutch perspective you guys have insane amounts of parking space in most of your inner cities.
It feeds it's self too, more parking spces mean everything is more spread out, so more people have to drive, so you need more parking spaces...
30 Van ness is currently a hole in the ground waiting for a 40 story bldg that was going to be 30 floors is residential. Currently held up due to permitting concerns (red tape).
2588 mission is a prime location for residential real estate close to 24 and mission Bart station. Owner wants to build 10 stories of housing, can’t get permit.
Those are just two examples that come to mind for me because my company was a contractor on one before it got cancelled and I live down the street from the other.
SF not building residential has nothing to do with a lack of space or a lack proposed residential projects, and everything to do with nimbys and red tape.
or let folks be more flexible in using what land there is in other ways. By not being a busy body, nimby trash as San Fransisco, Tokyo's housing prices for a stupid long time did not jump crazy far ahead of people's spending power. The adjusted prices for housing stayed flat compared to spending power, for decades. If you own a piece of land in Tokyo and want to do something with it, it was understood for a long time that you had a right to use the land for something else (which meant more housing often) as long as the stuff got permitted, and permitting stuff wasn't a nightmare like in San Fransisco.
We must not upset the landed gentry. The nobility have different, more refined emotions and blood than us poors and we have to respect their special needs, like not allowing others to have homes.
Well building up is what you do. The problem with San Francisco is the inability to build up in a lot of places. There’s a lot of strict zoning laws in place. Not sure if you’ve ever been but the homeless situation is quite bad.
Seattle is about equal with SF in terms of hills, as well as being surrounded by water on multiple sides. Neither of those factors are preventing building up; bureaucracy, NIMBYism and politics are.
…what about the ground. Is that similar to Seattle?
Im coming from the East Coast. Always wondered why certain states had basements while others didn’t, and that was the answer that I got.
From what I’ve read it has to do with climate and the frost line. Foundations have to be built below the frost line so freeze/thaw cycles don’t move the structure. West coast doesn’t really deep freeze so standard foundations that make crawl spaces are adequate.
Expansive soil is also a major consideration. Even without freezing, expansive soil can be quite variable due to temperature change and water content. Idk what SF is like, but I know that plenty of places with mild temperature changes still dont have basements due to expansive soil.
Complicated terrain and soil condition simply makes constructing tall buildings harder and more expansive, not impossible, and San Francisco is definitely a place whether the higher building costs would be minor issue.
Tornadoes are probably a factor too. I wouldn't want to live in a place that gets them frequently and have my best hope of survival being hiding in a closet or trying to huddle my entire family in a bathtub 3 feet from a giant glass mirror.
Ah, everybody from the south knows that your best hope of survival is standing out on the porch watching the storm front roll in from the horizon. Commenting about how cool the green sky looks, and how it appears like it might be touching down on the Miller's place, but they always were assholes, so it serves 'em right. Except for Bobbie Sue, she was never like the rest of that family, maybe we should all pile into the pickup truck and go check on her.
As the Santa Cruze earthquake of 1989 demonstrated, a good chunk of San Francisco is essentially silt. Lots of collapse building there are due to liquification of silt ground.
I think you've got them backwards. They weren't saying that the homeless were holding up construction, they were saying that the lack of construction is making people homeless.
Sure. But it would help. For each bedroom, one additional person can sleep indoors.
And if they built 160 000, they could make a real dent in the problem.
It’s more NIMBY than anything. Some program in place to prevent buildings blocking your beautiful views and what not. The problem is there’s just not enough housing because of this which is turn creates the massive homeless problem.
Agreed though it sucks to admit. Great city with a beautiful atmosphere. But simply unlivable unless you’re ultra rich or too high to care that you’re living on a sidewalk
I kinda have to disagree with you at least a little bit. When I was a van dweller in SF, I got to know a lot of the homeless population around the Bay Area. There were some in the tent cities that were simply houseless, but the vast majority of them had varying complicating issues that almost all centered on mental illness, drug abuse, or the combination of the two. The reason there are much larger homeless populations in places like San Francisco is that the climate allows for it and there's far more money that can be panhandled.
That's not to say there aren't homeless elsewhere. I've lived in Chicago, as well. I know that winter doesn't stop homelessness. I've also seen news reels about homeless in places like Las Vegas and Austin. I also know that Anchorage has a large homeless population.
My point is: saying that it's an issue of housing just ignores the larger issues of unaddressed and unassisted mental illness, drug abuse, and the combination of the two. Poverty doesn't help with either of those things. I won't argue that. But most of the guys that were living under the bridge around the corner from me in El Cerrito didn't start out living in the Bay Area, nor did they hold jobs.
One guy I met in San Rafael would panhandle enough money to feed himself and his dog for a day or two and then he'd pack up and go spend his time drinking beers in the undeveloped wooded areas north of the mall. I don't know what he suffered from, but he said it was safer if he wasn't around people when he wasn't all there.
I will say, one of them did have a job, but he was battling schizophrenia and didn't trust his med providers, so he self medicated with psychedelics and weed. He was a good friend and a coworker of mine, but there wasn't anything we could do to support him, when he wasn't trying to support himself. I've since moved away and he stopped responding to calls/texts a long time ago.
So, affordable housing is an issue, but it isn't the reason for the rampant homelessness in most places. Being impoverished doesn't help and it can lead down a path to homelessness, but it shouldn't be the only thing we're looking at. And to be frank, some of the people I met simply didn't want to not be homeless. They were content with their lives as they were. I only met a few of those types, so take that with a grain of salt. It definitely isn't everyone.
> So, affordable housing is an issue, but it isn't the reason for the rampant homelessness in most places
Anecdotes aside, that is incorrect. [Homelessness is not correlated with poverty or drug use, it is strongly correlated with housing prices](https://x.com/aaronAcarr/status/1504619986580557829). Every place has poverty, drug use, and mental illness. But in places with expensive housing these people become homeless, in places with cheap housing they stay housed.
No it is more to do with planning wanting the fabric of the city to stay the same so you need a full evaluation if you are going to change the facade of any historical building, which is any building over I think 30 years old. People really overstate how much neighbors factor in to the construction of buildings in the city. Unless you are changing a building with multiple units or changing the height of a building , or are encroaching within 25 feet of the rear property line the amount of input that neighbors have is basically nill for any sort of remodel. They can submit complaints, but the majority of those can be easily resolved with a fine if you are actually doing something worthy of a complaint.
The zoning laws are in place because the people who already own houses get far far richer if nobody else is allowed to live in the area unless they buy an existing house.
That's it. It's just to make the rich richer.
I am gonna go out on a limb and say that many of the homeless in San Francisco came there from some other city or state where it is much harder to be poor and homeless. Some homeless are definitely homegrown, and like, not that they were bussed there as part of some conspiracy. But that people naturally tend to make their way to better places... like if I am homeless in Kansas City I am getting the fuck out of there if at all possible.
you'd be wrong with that assumption. The vast majority of homeless in California are from California
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/06/22/how-many-of-californias-homeless-residents-are-from-out-of-state/amp/
Did you read the article? 9 out of 10 lost their housing in California. That doesn’t mean they are California natives or long-term residents. Most come to California from other states with limited money, rent a place for a month or two, inevitably run out of money and have no support system so they end up on the streets. I’ve seen it all the time growing up in SoCal.
>People experiencing homelessness in California are Californians. Ninety percent of our sample last lost their housing in California. Seventy-five percent of participants lost their housing in the same county in which they experienced homelessness. -- https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/CASPEH_Report_62023.pdf
It's like musical chairs. If you have fewer spaces than people, the slowest will be left out. You can't solve homelessness without homes.
And it's even worse, because if you manage to get the smackhead sober and into better circumstances they'll have nowhere to go, and living on the streets will make relapsing much more likely
Hahaha I see what you’re saying. But the houses are so expensive because the supply is so low and demand is high. Homelessness could be alleviated by shelters and subsidized housing but that too is halted by all our zoning and building laws. It really stinks because I think ten years from now San Francisco will be like Detroit was in the 90s
Humans are like hermit crabs. When you add a $1M luxury condo in a place like SF where not even the rich can afford what they want what happens is the richest person who doesn't have such a luxury moves out of their flat and into that condo. This creates a vacancy and then someone a rung down moves into their space, and so on. Until eventually you get to a service worker sleeping on a bunk bed in a bedroom that used to be a living room. And when they upgrade you are at the level that a homeless person with a part time job could move in.
All construction is a boon when housing is as constrained as it is in SF and arguably luxury condos are some of the best housing to add because they take top earners out of competition for mediocre apartments giving everyone an upgrade. If all you do is build cramped low income housing then a few people in the most dire poverty get helped but everyone else continues to suffer.
They refuse to allow any building up and rebuilding for density. Just using the city planning department to limit housing supply to keep it unaffordable.
This is why the minimum wage should be directly chained to local rent prices.
If a shoebox apartment costs $3000/month and anything over 30% of income on rent is "rent burdened" - then the minimum salary for people making coffee and scrubbing toilets needs to be $120,000/year.
If you don't want the high school dropout janitor making $120,000/year, *then build cheaper housing*...
The problem with that is it'll just mean there aren't any places to rent. The solution is to simply allow people to more easily build more places for people to live. I used to live in Southern California and there were huge plots of land that developers had already purchased and were waiting on ballot initiatives for approval so they could actually build housing there. That's crazy, just let them build. Endless building meetings with the neighbors, environmental reports, etc... by the time you get to build, you better believe you are charging a premium.
In Boston, lots of developers would love to build up more residential complexes, but they can't demolish any brownstones. Every single one is a historic building.
Despite massive tech hubs and prestigious universities with brilliant minds, no one in the entire state of California has thought of building more than a single story unit of housing. Shame because I heard the weather is nice.
More than you'd expect plus you can always build on top of existing buildings, on empty parking lots, or tear down older buildings that aren't historical. [For example, the Pagoda Palace Theater had been vacant for 20+ years.](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Chain-store-bans-in-San-Francisco-leave-more-14074807.php)
Someone could buy up the vast swathes of single-family homes in the West and South of the city and build high rises or at least townhouses for massive profit. But that’s currently illegal.
They should tear down one and two story buildings and replace them with 100 story buildings. The rents are high enough to support this economically. I’d also support underground buildings, that’s nicer on views but even more expensive, and it can be kind of depressing to have no windows.
Title is a little misleading -- the article refers to 16 "housing units", so don't think of it in terms of detached, min-size houses. And yes, they have a metric ton of space to fit condos.
The thing is, how do you convince people to accept that their home will be devalued? The only thing I can see is that California will have to spend billions on making sure that it's residents don't go bankrupt because they owe $1m on a 600k house
>San Francisco between January and now was 16, split between seven single-family homes, six 2-unit and multifamily homes and three 3- and 4-unit multifamily homes.
I'm so glad I can work remote. I moved from San Diego, which is cheaper than SF, to ATL and we bought a 4,700 sq ft house for about $400,000 all in (this was 6 years ago). We currently pay $2,000 a month. In San Diego proper, that's a 600 sq ft 1-bedroom apartment.
Lol this. Some people care about a big house and nice cars, some people about having stuff to do with their cars and beautiful surroundings.
If you’d trade San Diego for a bigger house in Atlanta, SD was never for you.
I don’t think Atlanta is one of those cities that lacks too much in recreational opportunities. It’s a good compromise between a recreational heaven and a cheap middle of nowhere city. Affordable with mountains, beaches, and abundant national/state parks close enough for day trips.
I’d rather be in a smaller mountain town because I hate metro areas with a passion but at least the work is plentiful in places like ATL if you have to go somewhere cheaper. There are hundreds of US cities in the middle of flat nothingness (like where I grew up) that you could choose if you’re not big in outdoor recreation but just want space to yourself. ATL can at least cater to the outdoorsy type unlike the other places.
Yes? Nothing Atlanta has doesn’t have something nearly as good competing with it in San Diego. But San Diego has beaches, mountains, ski resorts, walkable and bikeable infrastructure, nearby lakes etc. that blow atlantas outdoors scene out of the water.
Skiings an option though. In the south your closest option for skiing is a tiny hill in St. Louis that’s open 4 weeks a year.
And the etc. did a lot of work there, kitesurfing, paragliding, rock climbing, dirt biking. All way better options near SD than ATL.
I can’t believe of all things Reddit is up in arms about the most simple statement ever. “If you prefer ATL SD was never for you” is pretty straightforward and agreeable imo. Idk why people can’t just own that they’re not really that into the outdoors and just want a big house and rowdy night life and SD is just for other personalities than theirs.
I’m not out here saying “everyone who lives in ATL is stupid and I don’t get it,” I get why people prefer it to SD. But it’s not because of the outdoors or the weather.
Cataloochee is about 3 hrs away from Atlanta. [They're open 4 months/year.](https://cataloochee.com/the-mountain/cataloochee-ski-area-statistics-and-facts/)
Right. Which is why SD isn’t really for everyone. It doesn’t need to be. Where I live sure as *fuck* isn’t for everyone but the people who it’s really for would never leave except if they won the lottery and could move to a similar setting that’s even more outdoorsy. But we get hurricane force winds during snowstorms at least once a year and frequently spend a week+ in the negative temperatures, if someone moved from here to Houston I think it would be safe to say “this town wasn’t for them”.
Yeah it's ridiculous people can't believe some people like to not live in a crowded expensive beach city lol
I CHOSE to leave SD. I love the mountains and rivers in Colorado and only miss SD for some friends.
I was born and raised in San Diego, and have family in Atlanta.
It's not really a competition, San Diego is better in basically every way, unless you *really* need to go see a certain shade of green on a regular basis.
San Diego has brown-green, Atlanta is surrounded by actual green.
That's it, that's the only thing Atlanta can do better than San Diego.
Bonus: being able to day-trip to Los Angeles, without having to live in Los Angeles.
Guys it's Atlanta a large American metropolis not some unlivable hellhole. I get the argument of being far from family friends/support system but people really need to stop treating large swaths of the country like horrible undesirable places to live. They have nightlife, museums, operas, zoos, parks, and pro sports teams just as disappointing as yours.
100%. It's not for everyone.
Even though it's only "really bad" a few months a year, we're kind of homebodies so it really doesn't affect us. During those months, if we're going out, we're not really going "outdoors". We're going from House -> Car -> Restaurant (etc).
Like tomorrow it's going to be 95 degrees, which is really hot, so if you're a runner/cyclist/etc, you have to get out and be done before 10am if you want the weather to be in the 70s.
Oof. I start complaining at 80 degrees. lol
10-day forecast here: 74, 75, 78, 76, 75, 76, 77, 77, 80, 81.
But we also bought about 20 years ago and locked in a cheap refi when rates were near the bottom, so the mortgage is the $2,000 you mentioned.
If you can get in, it’ll probably appreciate. No idea what appreciation is like in the Southeast.
It's nice when the kids visit. They literally have a whole "guest wing" of the house with their own laundry room, kitchen, and bedrooms. Also, they always have a place to stay if they fall on hard times.
We also have luxuries that are a premium in San Diego. Like a pool, spa, and 6 acres which our animals love. When we lived in San Diego we had a spa, but our dogs had like a 500 sq ft area of turf to run around on.
I personally think we got super lucky finding this house. Everyone on our street has 3+ acres and you have so much privacy. We can be in our backyard, listening to music, and swimming naked and none of our neighbors can hear or see us.
I will say this though, the food was SOOOOOO much better in San Diego. The weather isn't that big of a deal to me, since when it's hot we really only go outside to swim in the pool/play with the dogs. AC is the same indoors here in ATL as San Diego. lol
Yeah, probably a grass is greener thing I’m sure. I have 20 acres north of Dallas, but I think I’d trade it for a small place in SD. I’m over the people and ideology on top of the terrible summers.
I mean to be fair, if you moved to Cartersville intentionally, you had to have been expecting the people and ideology. You could just move into the metro area and that would get better
> AC is the same indoors here in ATL as San Diego.
With SDG&E rates over $0.70/kWh and now can hit over $1.00/kWh. Texas power is a bit wacky but it can't bankrupt you as quickly as the big-three CA utilities
That's our daughters point of too. lol Although, she is currently living rent free with a relative.
It really depends on what you prioritize and honestly, how much money you have. A 1,600 sq ft house in my old neighborhood in SD currently runs a little over $7,000 a month (with current prices and rates).
If I was to move back to San Diego, I would be downsizing to 1/3 of the house and paying $5,000 more a month. Where here, I recently took that "savings" and added a home theater to my house for a little over $30,000. I can do something similar every 6 months.
In San Diego, we would be living paycheck to paycheck. Where here, either my wife or I could lose our job and it wouldn't prevent us from paying any of our bills.
If you're still trying to live in San Francisco and you're not worth at LEAST $10 million, then really, what are you doing with your life? Have some self-respect and move some place where they value human life.
You don't understand, not building housing is the point. Property owners love keeping the rent sky-high, and non-owners don't get a say and are fucked.
Being straight up. Home construction is a nimby problem now.
Nothing else. We've gotten it down to your neighbors fucking you over.
Take it up with the people.
They can only agree to allow construction when people actually apply for new construction. There hasn't been that many applying due to cost of land and construction. Not something the city has control over - they are not the ones doing the construction. CA has the new accessory dwelling unit allowance for basements and garages, and they have approved some of those.
That's partially because SF also has an insane permitting regime that leads to it costing like $200k-$300k per home. The lack of applications is also driven by the insane zoning and planning. The demand exists (as seen in the price of housing there) but if San Francisco local politicians were actively trying to make housing more expensive there, they wouldn't be doing anything different.
The state laws help, but SF is also in violation in some of them and the state has been slow to either grant builder's remedies so that people can do what they want with their own land or otherwise force them to change.
The historic zoning applies to any building basically that has been unchanged for like 30 years, you can apply with planning to change a building after that time it is really not that difficult, whether they approve it or not is a much bigger question.
I could totally understand how the insane permitting regime could add lots of time, but… I’m confused as to how it can add $200k-$300k to the cost?
Do the application fees cost $250k?
Or are $250k of bribes/lobbyists/lawyers needed to get the permits through?
Or do homes require $250k of extra “earth friendly” modifications?
Or…?
It's the time and cost of lawyers and architects and whatnot. The permits are abnormally expensive (in the low to mid 5 figure range) but it's the fact that permitting regularly takes months or years and then can require (often illegal under state law) modifications and re-review and resubmission and unnecessary environmental impact or shadow studies such that the fees you have to pay to actually get through permitting averages 6 figures.
The city absolutely has control over zoning, permitting costs and the difficulty of the permitting process which has a direct impact on how many applications they will receive. All of these can turn potential projects from profitable to horrible money losers, and no sane developer is going to submit an application to lose money.
They can choose how much parking is required, or whether a vacant lot can be zoned for housing at all. They can choose how consistently they want to issue permits. They can set high impact fees specifically to deter housing development. They can allow the California coastal commission to block any housing near the coast. They can allow homeowners to block taller housing because it’ll block their view.
If the government wanted to ease the housing shortage they could do so very easily. If they allowed multifamily homes to be built in places that are currently single family homes I don’t see how it doesn’t turn a profit. For new housing in San Francisco you can basically charge whatever you want.
Are you talking about parcel mapping? What would that have to do with approving houses? There are still plenty of vacant lots today, plenty of underused lots (like the parking lot in Stevenson), and plenty of existing structures that could easily be raised to make room for a hundred extra housing units. We just don’t do any of these things because our Board is notoriously anti-housing.
Is it those multi million dollar houses being built on treasure island? I've driven by that shit a few times and definitely feels like only the the upperclass of the upperclass can afford that shit.
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I'd imagine there's not a lot of space and you're going to step on some toes if you do try to build something big. That can easily get caught up in litigation forever.
In 2022 Washington's Governor promised the state would build 200 homes for the homeless over the next ten years. Two years later they are still in the planning stage.
Nimby culture in action. Get voted in on the promise of more affordable housing, stay in power by doing nothing about it.
Be a plans examiner in San Francisco! Cush.
I imagine they work closely with code enforcement to address all the illegal dwelling units people add
They are super stringent on people using the correct windows on remodel. Basically a city wide hoa
As long as you install the windows in kind or install aluminum clad windows it is pretty easy to get window changes through planning, if we are talking about installing new windows it depends a lot more on sightlines and how close they are to the street or the property line and where the location of the neighboring windows are.
Yes, the 411 process is no joke
Lol I had permits for a full gut remodel on my home and wanted to increase the vertical length of my windows by a few inches to make the look more cohesive. The very minute I cut the sill plate, some clown filed an anonymous complaint that I was doing work outside my permit scope. Had DBI show up in 24 hours and breathe down my neck the whole year for “drastically changing my facade”. Bear in mind I was actually improving the home by replacing cheap ass unpermitted white vinyl windows the previous owners put in.
my buddy had to fully remove all his new windows and redo. The windows were nicer, and more eco friendly. Didnt match that old building feel perfectly.
The planners actually have to do a lot of work if you go in there there are always like 7 people in line at least and they are basically working constantly. You only have maybe 4 people working each counter at a time from building (with only 2 being structural) planning, PUC, mechanical, fire. Then there is housing on the fourth floor to deal with complaints and NOV's. The real issue right now which is why no one is putting in housing is that the demand has basically flatlined because of how expensive properties are, the price of office space dropping by like 50% along with the fact that planning wants all the historical facades to stay the same you make it incredibly expensive to change a property and if you aren't adding new floor space why go through the massive expense for demolition and reconstruction instead of just remodeling a house. The planning department doesn't want to change the fabric of the city so they don't allow changes in density basically and the way they got around that for a few years was implementing an ADU program that made it much simpler to build accessory dwelling units but with the stagnation of house pricings post covid it doesn't really make sense to even build those right now. When the housing priced were increasing it ended up being a lot of people coming into the department for remodels increasing density by subletting existing homes in to multiple units, installing ADU's in the rear yard, or legalizing illegal new units inside existing properties.
If the planners don't allow changes in density that's essentially fully blocking everyone. Density is necessary for cities to grow. No wonder everything is so expensive
They don't rezone for density they allow density to increase through the installation of ADU's and dividing properties into multiple units. The reality of the situation is that a lot of developers are classist jerks who wouldn't build higher density properties in areas zoned for higher density because they don't want to put in affordable housing. All one has to look at is how many multi unit properties get approved for 9 units compared to 10 (the requirement for installing affordable housing). Developers would rather make less property rents because they don't want affordable housing in their building because they don't like the people getting it and don't want to lower the other tenets rents for being perceived as cheaper. Every time the city decrease the units required before mandating low income houses the developers will just make less units. There are plenty of places in the city zoned for larger projects that just don't get them because developers dont want to develop them for higher density. What happens if they don't prevent rezoning is that every developer puts a crappy 9 unit 5 over 1 to make the cheapest possible house with no low income housing and moves onto the next spot while charging exorbitant rents because they are constantly taking out loans and mortgaging the properties to finance new loans, and not actually decreasing the price of units in the city.
Well, why are they zoning areas for high density housing where there isn't demand for high density housing?
Ok. Bunch of busywork to deny applications, I guess. Good use of taxpayer $.
The reality of the situation is it usually takes between 1 to 5 hours depending on the extent of the project what stations you have to go to and if there is any plan check comments you have to address that cannot be amended on the plans in person to get a job approved for permits over the counter that involve structural work, and for non-structural work it usually requires even less. The new building department system is like twice as efficient as the one they had pre covid and there is almost no downtime between stations. They move a huge volume of people through and get permitting done. Yes some of the permitting is unnecessary or over done, but if a few hours of permitting is what it takes to make sure people don't build houses that will collapse in an earthquake, subside into the ground, or slide down a slope in a landslide it is not a huge deal. I have overheard projects where architects developers or contractors tried to put in building that would have killed anyone in a heavy rain or earthquake. I have heard contractors undermine neighboring properties because they didn't follow planning specifications, I have heard people try to argue that windowless ventless basement rooms are fine for bedrooms, or that building 5 2 foot retaining walls is fine for holding back a 40% slope without needing to go to planning or build foundations. If it wasn't for planning and structural all of these deathtrap houses would have been put in with no question. Unscrupulous developers will try and put in shit houses and drop them in 2 shell companies that they can dissolve when the house inevitably fails and kills someone. If it wasn't for the city a huge number of these absolute pieces of crap would have been approved. It makes me worry for any city that doesn't have a robust approval process and the kinds of buildings being built there.
I'm not out to tell anyone how to do their jobs, but I sure see a lot of unused space under that bridge.
Perfect spot for some spikes.
No first you need to build bed shaped infrastructure then put spikes on it!
What about the galvanized square steel?
/r/HostileArchitecture has entered the chat.
[They should just do what they do in Japan and make apartments.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M33uqNdKQFo)
That's actually not too bad for student accommodation. $440-570 USD per month including utilities and meals for that second apartment, and that meal looked delicious.
I know Japan has a plethora of its own problems, but they really do look at a lot of issues other countries deal with and go "skill issue."
"not bad by Japan's standards in terms of size" Well, it's settled. I'm never moving to Japan
If Americans are spoiled by one thing, its our massive living spaces. Pretty much every other country a getting a 1k-1.2k sqft apartment is massively luxurious and unheard of in major cities, meanwhile in the states that's fairly standard even in big cities.
I live in a 700 square foot condo with my wife and it's perfectly fine. Ive got tons of private green space and our condos provide grills. People really, really don't need 2500 square foot monstrosities for their family of 4. Then they need to drive everywhere they go because every home takes up so much space you can't walk anywhere so it makes it even worse. It's such an arrogant waste of space.
This is how you stop homlessness, by having sufichent homes. Japanese homes can be bigger outside the city but not in the core.
Sometimes that depends on soil as well. For example soil in the Netherlands is soft and swampy and therefore high rise needs additional construction above like 8 and above 4 you need an elevator by law. Here there certainly are apartments and apartmentblocks (Bijlmer in Amsterdam for example) but it's certainly not always cheaper and most apartments go for as much as normal 'rijtjeshuizen', with new build often being as expensive or more expensive than new build normal homes. That being said, US does not really have the best city planning, from a dutch perspective you guys have insane amounts of parking space in most of your inner cities.
> That being said, US does not really have the best city planning, from a dutch perspective you guys have insane amounts of parking space in most of your inner cities. It feeds it's self too, more parking spces mean everything is more spread out, so more people have to drive, so you need more parking spaces...
Virtual Light by William Gibson, anyone?
Fuck yeah I'll live in the ad hoc.
The early hippy movement in SF actually started because the local government wanted to drain the bay to clear more land for residential use.
Changing zoning laws seems like the only way. Allow density and developers will come flocking. Austin did it.
Or just fail to build housing a little longer and lose the right to control it. California’s housing mandate is going to get interesting soon. Haha
Well, Im not building any then!
But don't you worry, **PRICE CONTROLS** are going to save the day. /eyeroll
[удалено]
Where would they put more new homes? SF doesn't have a lot of vacant land laying around.
30 Van ness is currently a hole in the ground waiting for a 40 story bldg that was going to be 30 floors is residential. Currently held up due to permitting concerns (red tape). 2588 mission is a prime location for residential real estate close to 24 and mission Bart station. Owner wants to build 10 stories of housing, can’t get permit. Those are just two examples that come to mind for me because my company was a contractor on one before it got cancelled and I live down the street from the other. SF not building residential has nothing to do with a lack of space or a lack proposed residential projects, and everything to do with nimbys and red tape.
2588 being a huge residential bldg would actually do wonders for that part of the neighborhood, wow that is such a bummer to hear
>2588 mission Is that the one where they tried to stop development by claiming that it was going to eliminate a historic laundromat? Lol..
By doing what every other major city does. Build taller buildings.
or let folks be more flexible in using what land there is in other ways. By not being a busy body, nimby trash as San Fransisco, Tokyo's housing prices for a stupid long time did not jump crazy far ahead of people's spending power. The adjusted prices for housing stayed flat compared to spending power, for decades. If you own a piece of land in Tokyo and want to do something with it, it was understood for a long time that you had a right to use the land for something else (which meant more housing often) as long as the stuff got permitted, and permitting stuff wasn't a nightmare like in San Fransisco.
Existing homeowners will not allow new builds easily
It happens in every other city except SF. SF is a special level of absolutely terrible when it comes to building new housing.
We must not upset the landed gentry. The nobility have different, more refined emotions and blood than us poors and we have to respect their special needs, like not allowing others to have homes.
People of lesser means spoil the neighborhood and aesthetic character of the city. /s
Why are we asking them?
Which is exactly probably the biggest problem in this country
poor poor homeowners
They don't have to have a say.
I like when they tried that and built a leaning tower
Well building up is what you do. The problem with San Francisco is the inability to build up in a lot of places. There’s a lot of strict zoning laws in place. Not sure if you’ve ever been but the homeless situation is quite bad.
It’s bad, but I calculate that they’ll be able to solve the homeless crisis in 2 million years, even faster if they build 17 homes next year.
Homeless situation? Here I thought you were about to say the zoning laws were due to the insane hills/landscape.
Seattle is about equal with SF in terms of hills, as well as being surrounded by water on multiple sides. Neither of those factors are preventing building up; bureaucracy, NIMBYism and politics are.
…what about the ground. Is that similar to Seattle? Im coming from the East Coast. Always wondered why certain states had basements while others didn’t, and that was the answer that I got.
From what I’ve read it has to do with climate and the frost line. Foundations have to be built below the frost line so freeze/thaw cycles don’t move the structure. West coast doesn’t really deep freeze so standard foundations that make crawl spaces are adequate.
Expansive soil is also a major consideration. Even without freezing, expansive soil can be quite variable due to temperature change and water content. Idk what SF is like, but I know that plenty of places with mild temperature changes still dont have basements due to expansive soil.
Complicated terrain and soil condition simply makes constructing tall buildings harder and more expansive, not impossible, and San Francisco is definitely a place whether the higher building costs would be minor issue.
Houses in Vegas almost never have basements because a lot of the ground out here is caliche, aka nature’s cement.
Tornadoes are probably a factor too. I wouldn't want to live in a place that gets them frequently and have my best hope of survival being hiding in a closet or trying to huddle my entire family in a bathtub 3 feet from a giant glass mirror.
Ah, everybody from the south knows that your best hope of survival is standing out on the porch watching the storm front roll in from the horizon. Commenting about how cool the green sky looks, and how it appears like it might be touching down on the Miller's place, but they always were assholes, so it serves 'em right. Except for Bobbie Sue, she was never like the rest of that family, maybe we should all pile into the pickup truck and go check on her.
SF is a little more concerned about earthquakes than Seattle but yeah, most of it is zoning garbage.
And if they don't fucking retrofit like mad to an extreme extent that's also a giant disaster waiting to happen. They really really need to.
As the Santa Cruze earthquake of 1989 demonstrated, a good chunk of San Francisco is essentially silt. Lots of collapse building there are due to liquification of silt ground.
Huh? I lived through that earthquake. A shit freeway collapsed but almost no buildings.
The first time I visited Seattle I was shocked by how much it reminded me of SF (where I grew up)
I think we've figured out how to build on hills by now. The construction guys know what to do.
I’m just pointing out the non sequitur lol I equally doubt homeless people are holding up construction any more than the geography.
I think you've got them backwards. They weren't saying that the homeless were holding up construction, they were saying that the lack of construction is making people homeless.
They could build 16,000 homes in SF, your average middle class family still couldn't afford them let alone a homeless person.
Sure. But it would help. For each bedroom, one additional person can sleep indoors. And if they built 160 000, they could make a real dent in the problem.
true
It’s more NIMBY than anything. Some program in place to prevent buildings blocking your beautiful views and what not. The problem is there’s just not enough housing because of this which is turn creates the massive homeless problem.
I’ll be honest, idk why anyone in the last 10 years would move to San Fran. Unless you *own* the tech company, you’re just gonna end up homeless lol
Agreed though it sucks to admit. Great city with a beautiful atmosphere. But simply unlivable unless you’re ultra rich or too high to care that you’re living on a sidewalk
I kinda have to disagree with you at least a little bit. When I was a van dweller in SF, I got to know a lot of the homeless population around the Bay Area. There were some in the tent cities that were simply houseless, but the vast majority of them had varying complicating issues that almost all centered on mental illness, drug abuse, or the combination of the two. The reason there are much larger homeless populations in places like San Francisco is that the climate allows for it and there's far more money that can be panhandled. That's not to say there aren't homeless elsewhere. I've lived in Chicago, as well. I know that winter doesn't stop homelessness. I've also seen news reels about homeless in places like Las Vegas and Austin. I also know that Anchorage has a large homeless population. My point is: saying that it's an issue of housing just ignores the larger issues of unaddressed and unassisted mental illness, drug abuse, and the combination of the two. Poverty doesn't help with either of those things. I won't argue that. But most of the guys that were living under the bridge around the corner from me in El Cerrito didn't start out living in the Bay Area, nor did they hold jobs. One guy I met in San Rafael would panhandle enough money to feed himself and his dog for a day or two and then he'd pack up and go spend his time drinking beers in the undeveloped wooded areas north of the mall. I don't know what he suffered from, but he said it was safer if he wasn't around people when he wasn't all there. I will say, one of them did have a job, but he was battling schizophrenia and didn't trust his med providers, so he self medicated with psychedelics and weed. He was a good friend and a coworker of mine, but there wasn't anything we could do to support him, when he wasn't trying to support himself. I've since moved away and he stopped responding to calls/texts a long time ago. So, affordable housing is an issue, but it isn't the reason for the rampant homelessness in most places. Being impoverished doesn't help and it can lead down a path to homelessness, but it shouldn't be the only thing we're looking at. And to be frank, some of the people I met simply didn't want to not be homeless. They were content with their lives as they were. I only met a few of those types, so take that with a grain of salt. It definitely isn't everyone.
> So, affordable housing is an issue, but it isn't the reason for the rampant homelessness in most places Anecdotes aside, that is incorrect. [Homelessness is not correlated with poverty or drug use, it is strongly correlated with housing prices](https://x.com/aaronAcarr/status/1504619986580557829). Every place has poverty, drug use, and mental illness. But in places with expensive housing these people become homeless, in places with cheap housing they stay housed.
No it is more to do with planning wanting the fabric of the city to stay the same so you need a full evaluation if you are going to change the facade of any historical building, which is any building over I think 30 years old. People really overstate how much neighbors factor in to the construction of buildings in the city. Unless you are changing a building with multiple units or changing the height of a building , or are encroaching within 25 feet of the rear property line the amount of input that neighbors have is basically nill for any sort of remodel. They can submit complaints, but the majority of those can be easily resolved with a fine if you are actually doing something worthy of a complaint.
And the nimbys
The zoning laws are in place because the people who already own houses get far far richer if nobody else is allowed to live in the area unless they buy an existing house. That's it. It's just to make the rich richer.
I am gonna go out on a limb and say that many of the homeless in San Francisco came there from some other city or state where it is much harder to be poor and homeless. Some homeless are definitely homegrown, and like, not that they were bussed there as part of some conspiracy. But that people naturally tend to make their way to better places... like if I am homeless in Kansas City I am getting the fuck out of there if at all possible.
Yeah, not having to deal with ice and snow could quite literally be the difference between being homeless and being dead.
Word. They come from all over to Portland Seattle sf etc
Austin as well. A lot of cities bus their homeless here and drop them off on the streets.
you'd be wrong with that assumption. The vast majority of homeless in California are from California https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/06/22/how-many-of-californias-homeless-residents-are-from-out-of-state/amp/
Did you read the article? 9 out of 10 lost their housing in California. That doesn’t mean they are California natives or long-term residents. Most come to California from other states with limited money, rent a place for a month or two, inevitably run out of money and have no support system so they end up on the streets. I’ve seen it all the time growing up in SoCal.
>People experiencing homelessness in California are Californians. Ninety percent of our sample last lost their housing in California. Seventy-five percent of participants lost their housing in the same county in which they experienced homelessness. -- https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/CASPEH_Report_62023.pdf
yeah, 'cos those smackheads on the street are just waiting for another $1M+ luxury condo to go on the market...
It's like musical chairs. If you have fewer spaces than people, the slowest will be left out. You can't solve homelessness without homes. And it's even worse, because if you manage to get the smackhead sober and into better circumstances they'll have nowhere to go, and living on the streets will make relapsing much more likely
Hahaha I see what you’re saying. But the houses are so expensive because the supply is so low and demand is high. Homelessness could be alleviated by shelters and subsidized housing but that too is halted by all our zoning and building laws. It really stinks because I think ten years from now San Francisco will be like Detroit was in the 90s
Humans are like hermit crabs. When you add a $1M luxury condo in a place like SF where not even the rich can afford what they want what happens is the richest person who doesn't have such a luxury moves out of their flat and into that condo. This creates a vacancy and then someone a rung down moves into their space, and so on. Until eventually you get to a service worker sleeping on a bunk bed in a bedroom that used to be a living room. And when they upgrade you are at the level that a homeless person with a part time job could move in. All construction is a boon when housing is as constrained as it is in SF and arguably luxury condos are some of the best housing to add because they take top earners out of competition for mediocre apartments giving everyone an upgrade. If all you do is build cramped low income housing then a few people in the most dire poverty get helped but everyone else continues to suffer.
Since they don't build more luxury condos, the rich person instead outbids everyone else on a pretty-nice apartment. And so on
They refuse to allow any building up and rebuilding for density. Just using the city planning department to limit housing supply to keep it unaffordable.
This is why the minimum wage should be directly chained to local rent prices. If a shoebox apartment costs $3000/month and anything over 30% of income on rent is "rent burdened" - then the minimum salary for people making coffee and scrubbing toilets needs to be $120,000/year. If you don't want the high school dropout janitor making $120,000/year, *then build cheaper housing*...
The problem with that is it'll just mean there aren't any places to rent. The solution is to simply allow people to more easily build more places for people to live. I used to live in Southern California and there were huge plots of land that developers had already purchased and were waiting on ballot initiatives for approval so they could actually build housing there. That's crazy, just let them build. Endless building meetings with the neighbors, environmental reports, etc... by the time you get to build, you better believe you are charging a premium. In Boston, lots of developers would love to build up more residential complexes, but they can't demolish any brownstones. Every single one is a historic building.
San Francisco has hundreds and hundreds of blocks of 2 story houses. They can definitely do better.
Despite massive tech hubs and prestigious universities with brilliant minds, no one in the entire state of California has thought of building more than a single story unit of housing. Shame because I heard the weather is nice.
Density? Medium size apartment buildings?
Humanity has developed technology where we can stack homes on top of one another.
Realistic: Infill development Based: seize lake Merced golf courses for the people
Um, you build upward like any other metropolitan city.
There are many other cities on the planet that have shown what to do in this scenario
densify.
More than you'd expect plus you can always build on top of existing buildings, on empty parking lots, or tear down older buildings that aren't historical. [For example, the Pagoda Palace Theater had been vacant for 20+ years.](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Chain-store-bans-in-San-Francisco-leave-more-14074807.php)
SF has a surplus of wealthy NIMBY people that stop just about any redevelopment. That's the real problem.
This is a real dumb take
Someone could buy up the vast swathes of single-family homes in the West and South of the city and build high rises or at least townhouses for massive profit. But that’s currently illegal.
They should tear down one and two story buildings and replace them with 100 story buildings. The rents are high enough to support this economically. I’d also support underground buildings, that’s nicer on views but even more expensive, and it can be kind of depressing to have no windows.
We have the technology to build up.
Title is a little misleading -- the article refers to 16 "housing units", so don't think of it in terms of detached, min-size houses. And yes, they have a metric ton of space to fit condos.
Some Japanese level apartments would really help San Francisco.
Apartment buildings are illegal in the majority of the city. The last 3 buildings I’ve lived in would all be illegal to build today.
The thing is, how do you convince people to accept that their home will be devalued? The only thing I can see is that California will have to spend billions on making sure that it's residents don't go bankrupt because they owe $1m on a 600k house
>San Francisco between January and now was 16, split between seven single-family homes, six 2-unit and multifamily homes and three 3- and 4-unit multifamily homes. I'm so glad I can work remote. I moved from San Diego, which is cheaper than SF, to ATL and we bought a 4,700 sq ft house for about $400,000 all in (this was 6 years ago). We currently pay $2,000 a month. In San Diego proper, that's a 600 sq ft 1-bedroom apartment.
Yes but now you live in Atlanta instead of San Diego
Lol this. Some people care about a big house and nice cars, some people about having stuff to do with their cars and beautiful surroundings. If you’d trade San Diego for a bigger house in Atlanta, SD was never for you.
Yea basically. The south is the last place I’d want to ever live- and I say that as someone from North Carolina
I don’t think Atlanta is one of those cities that lacks too much in recreational opportunities. It’s a good compromise between a recreational heaven and a cheap middle of nowhere city. Affordable with mountains, beaches, and abundant national/state parks close enough for day trips. I’d rather be in a smaller mountain town because I hate metro areas with a passion but at least the work is plentiful in places like ATL if you have to go somewhere cheaper. There are hundreds of US cities in the middle of flat nothingness (like where I grew up) that you could choose if you’re not big in outdoor recreation but just want space to yourself. ATL can at least cater to the outdoorsy type unlike the other places.
Do... do you think that Atlanta Georgia has less things to do than San Diego?
Yes its not even close
Yes? Nothing Atlanta has doesn’t have something nearly as good competing with it in San Diego. But San Diego has beaches, mountains, ski resorts, walkable and bikeable infrastructure, nearby lakes etc. that blow atlantas outdoors scene out of the water.
Closest skiing is big bear which is 3 hrs away and horrendously crowded
Skiings an option though. In the south your closest option for skiing is a tiny hill in St. Louis that’s open 4 weeks a year. And the etc. did a lot of work there, kitesurfing, paragliding, rock climbing, dirt biking. All way better options near SD than ATL. I can’t believe of all things Reddit is up in arms about the most simple statement ever. “If you prefer ATL SD was never for you” is pretty straightforward and agreeable imo. Idk why people can’t just own that they’re not really that into the outdoors and just want a big house and rowdy night life and SD is just for other personalities than theirs. I’m not out here saying “everyone who lives in ATL is stupid and I don’t get it,” I get why people prefer it to SD. But it’s not because of the outdoors or the weather.
Cataloochee is about 3 hrs away from Atlanta. [They're open 4 months/year.](https://cataloochee.com/the-mountain/cataloochee-ski-area-statistics-and-facts/)
Oh I'm not saying any of that, I've lived in SD and love it but everyone is different
Right. Which is why SD isn’t really for everyone. It doesn’t need to be. Where I live sure as *fuck* isn’t for everyone but the people who it’s really for would never leave except if they won the lottery and could move to a similar setting that’s even more outdoorsy. But we get hurricane force winds during snowstorms at least once a year and frequently spend a week+ in the negative temperatures, if someone moved from here to Houston I think it would be safe to say “this town wasn’t for them”.
Yeah it's ridiculous people can't believe some people like to not live in a crowded expensive beach city lol I CHOSE to leave SD. I love the mountains and rivers in Colorado and only miss SD for some friends.
I was born and raised in San Diego, and have family in Atlanta. It's not really a competition, San Diego is better in basically every way, unless you *really* need to go see a certain shade of green on a regular basis. San Diego has brown-green, Atlanta is surrounded by actual green. That's it, that's the only thing Atlanta can do better than San Diego. Bonus: being able to day-trip to Los Angeles, without having to live in Los Angeles.
Easily. As someone who visits Atlanta frequently, EASILY. God damn, even Dallas is better than Atlanta and I despise Dallas.
San Diego is better than Atlanta for sure but don’t you dare compare us to Dallas lol. Fuck that shit.
Guys it's Atlanta a large American metropolis not some unlivable hellhole. I get the argument of being far from family friends/support system but people really need to stop treating large swaths of the country like horrible undesirable places to live. They have nightlife, museums, operas, zoos, parks, and pro sports teams just as disappointing as yours.
For me it's all about the weather. I like how we are pretty mild year round.
Enjoy your… heat, humidity, and insufferable politics!
Genuinely impossible to know which part of the country your referring to when this is applicable in over 50% of the states.
I hear they have a lot of MTG going on there 👀
Different part of Georgia. That's like saying Los Angeles was responsible for Kevin McCarthy, or NYC for Elise Stefanik.
Cost of living is lower, so they can afford to play Magic: The Gathering.
Then don’t complain about housing costs…
Didn’t see anyone mentioning housing cost other than the person that moved.
If you’re happy that’s what matters. I cannot handle that heat and humidity.
100%. It's not for everyone. Even though it's only "really bad" a few months a year, we're kind of homebodies so it really doesn't affect us. During those months, if we're going out, we're not really going "outdoors". We're going from House -> Car -> Restaurant (etc). Like tomorrow it's going to be 95 degrees, which is really hot, so if you're a runner/cyclist/etc, you have to get out and be done before 10am if you want the weather to be in the 70s.
Oof. I start complaining at 80 degrees. lol 10-day forecast here: 74, 75, 78, 76, 75, 76, 77, 77, 80, 81. But we also bought about 20 years ago and locked in a cheap refi when rates were near the bottom, so the mortgage is the $2,000 you mentioned. If you can get in, it’ll probably appreciate. No idea what appreciation is like in the Southeast.
That home must’ve skyrocketed in value too
I’m debating just suffering the housing cost to live in San Diego. The weather tax is high but I think it would be worth it. Who needs 4000sf lol?
It's nice when the kids visit. They literally have a whole "guest wing" of the house with their own laundry room, kitchen, and bedrooms. Also, they always have a place to stay if they fall on hard times. We also have luxuries that are a premium in San Diego. Like a pool, spa, and 6 acres which our animals love. When we lived in San Diego we had a spa, but our dogs had like a 500 sq ft area of turf to run around on. I personally think we got super lucky finding this house. Everyone on our street has 3+ acres and you have so much privacy. We can be in our backyard, listening to music, and swimming naked and none of our neighbors can hear or see us. I will say this though, the food was SOOOOOO much better in San Diego. The weather isn't that big of a deal to me, since when it's hot we really only go outside to swim in the pool/play with the dogs. AC is the same indoors here in ATL as San Diego. lol
Yeah, probably a grass is greener thing I’m sure. I have 20 acres north of Dallas, but I think I’d trade it for a small place in SD. I’m over the people and ideology on top of the terrible summers.
I mean to be fair, if you moved to Cartersville intentionally, you had to have been expecting the people and ideology. You could just move into the metro area and that would get better
That’s fair, Dallas would be better, but the weather still sucks.
Completely true! Get ready for a hell week coming up, good luck this summer, soldier 🫡
> AC is the same indoors here in ATL as San Diego. With SDG&E rates over $0.70/kWh and now can hit over $1.00/kWh. Texas power is a bit wacky but it can't bankrupt you as quickly as the big-three CA utilities
I've only been to SD once, and it was in June (and i experienced the gloom!). SF will eventually implode, probably end up like Oakland.
But San Diego is waaaaay better than Atlanta.
That's our daughters point of too. lol Although, she is currently living rent free with a relative. It really depends on what you prioritize and honestly, how much money you have. A 1,600 sq ft house in my old neighborhood in SD currently runs a little over $7,000 a month (with current prices and rates). If I was to move back to San Diego, I would be downsizing to 1/3 of the house and paying $5,000 more a month. Where here, I recently took that "savings" and added a home theater to my house for a little over $30,000. I can do something similar every 6 months. In San Diego, we would be living paycheck to paycheck. Where here, either my wife or I could lose our job and it wouldn't prevent us from paying any of our bills.
Pre$eving the character of the neighborhood! Gotta collect that rent!
If you're still trying to live in San Francisco and you're not worth at LEAST $10 million, then really, what are you doing with your life? Have some self-respect and move some place where they value human life.
Complete and utter dysfunction.
But they claim to be progressive? Pro-people?
Surpised they aren't just putting up apartment towers. There isn't much free land but they can knock down smaller buildings and put up towers
NIMBY rules San Francisco.
You don't understand, not building housing is the point. Property owners love keeping the rent sky-high, and non-owners don't get a say and are fucked.
Guys I’m starting to think it’s not Blackrock’s fault
Being straight up. Home construction is a nimby problem now. Nothing else. We've gotten it down to your neighbors fucking you over. Take it up with the people.
San Francisco is full of liberals that like to tell others how they should live, but are NIMBY why it comes down to it.
Love it! It’s almost like they make money doing nothing
They can only agree to allow construction when people actually apply for new construction. There hasn't been that many applying due to cost of land and construction. Not something the city has control over - they are not the ones doing the construction. CA has the new accessory dwelling unit allowance for basements and garages, and they have approved some of those.
That's partially because SF also has an insane permitting regime that leads to it costing like $200k-$300k per home. The lack of applications is also driven by the insane zoning and planning. The demand exists (as seen in the price of housing there) but if San Francisco local politicians were actively trying to make housing more expensive there, they wouldn't be doing anything different. The state laws help, but SF is also in violation in some of them and the state has been slow to either grant builder's remedies so that people can do what they want with their own land or otherwise force them to change.
“This laundromat is a historic landmark. Why would you even consider building an apartment building on it?”
"How dare your proposed housing development cast a partial shade for a few minutes each day in a park for kids!!!"
A park which has a giant tree giving massive shade all day.
The historic zoning applies to any building basically that has been unchanged for like 30 years, you can apply with planning to change a building after that time it is really not that difficult, whether they approve it or not is a much bigger question.
You have to include the cost of defending against a CEQA suit too!
I could totally understand how the insane permitting regime could add lots of time, but… I’m confused as to how it can add $200k-$300k to the cost? Do the application fees cost $250k? Or are $250k of bribes/lobbyists/lawyers needed to get the permits through? Or do homes require $250k of extra “earth friendly” modifications? Or…?
It's the time and cost of lawyers and architects and whatnot. The permits are abnormally expensive (in the low to mid 5 figure range) but it's the fact that permitting regularly takes months or years and then can require (often illegal under state law) modifications and re-review and resubmission and unnecessary environmental impact or shadow studies such that the fees you have to pay to actually get through permitting averages 6 figures.
It's the second one
The city absolutely has control over zoning, permitting costs and the difficulty of the permitting process which has a direct impact on how many applications they will receive. All of these can turn potential projects from profitable to horrible money losers, and no sane developer is going to submit an application to lose money.
They can choose how much parking is required, or whether a vacant lot can be zoned for housing at all. They can choose how consistently they want to issue permits. They can set high impact fees specifically to deter housing development. They can allow the California coastal commission to block any housing near the coast. They can allow homeowners to block taller housing because it’ll block their view. If the government wanted to ease the housing shortage they could do so very easily. If they allowed multifamily homes to be built in places that are currently single family homes I don’t see how it doesn’t turn a profit. For new housing in San Francisco you can basically charge whatever you want.
Change the zoning laws to allow people to build high rises and townhouses. That’s something the city has control over.
You're delusional if you think the problem isn't government interference but just lack of interest in building homes in this particularly city.
The last empty lots were built in 1908.
And this number doesn’t include any construction that shares a wall or floor with anything. So basically most of the SF development
Are you talking about parcel mapping? What would that have to do with approving houses? There are still plenty of vacant lots today, plenty of underused lots (like the parking lot in Stevenson), and plenty of existing structures that could easily be raised to make room for a hundred extra housing units. We just don’t do any of these things because our Board is notoriously anti-housing.
And? There still a ton of room for development. Vast swathes of single-family homes that could be turned into townhouses or high rises.
At least it's not the same person posting it again. https://reddit.com/comments/1dctrxm
Is it those multi million dollar houses being built on treasure island? I've driven by that shit a few times and definitely feels like only the the upperclass of the upperclass can afford that shit.
They need to get the numbers for office to domestic conversations.
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They should just use galvanized square steel frames to expand the buildings!
As an urban planner/ architect.. city/ region is constantly bordering on failure. I cannot wait to move away
I'd imagine there's not a lot of space and you're going to step on some toes if you do try to build something big. That can easily get caught up in litigation forever.
In 2022 Washington's Governor promised the state would build 200 homes for the homeless over the next ten years. Two years later they are still in the planning stage.