Allow me to postulate a few axioms that will help define the way we think about housing in San Francisco and put our cover story this week in context. Some of these laws are easily provable with existing data; the others, I admit, are loaded with political values. So be it.
Axiom number one: There are already too many rich people in San Francisco.
Socioeconomic diversity is essential to a healthy urban environment. Cities of the very rich (and typically, the very poor) are not good places to live; they become tourist destinations where a fake veneer of urbanism is pasted over a place with no real soul.
San Francisco is rapidly heading down that path — and the first and by far most important reason is the cost of housing.
Axiom number two: Private for-profit developers can never build us out of this housing crisis.
The housing market in San Francisco does not behave according to any of the rational rules you learn in Economics 101. This is an international city, a place with a global housing constituency. Demand for high-end condos in San Francisco is, for all practical purposes, unlimited and insatiable.
You could build 50,000, 100,000 high-rise apartments, and the prices still wouldn't come down to a level that would be affordable for most working-class San Franciscans.
Axiom number three: Any sane housing policy has to start with the acceptance of axiom number two.
Building more market-rate housing does nothing, nothing, nothing for the current crisis. There is no lack of housing options for the very rich in this town. The problem is housing for everyone else.
Axiom number four: When you have an irrational market for a basic necessity, the only way to make that market function is with strict regulation and aggressive government intervention.
Axiom number five: Increased density is not a positive environmental policy unless axiom number four is operative.
Building high-rises in which the housing is priced out of range of the people who actually work in San Francisco — and doesn't offer the size and affordability the local workforce needs — does nothing to fight sprawl or build community. It just creates tall rich ghettos. (See axiom number one.)
Axiom number six: This city is running out of time.
There are virtually zero affordable apartments in this city for the people who make up the heart of San Francisco. We're doing ecological damage by driving them out of town (and forcing them to drive back, in cars). We're doing social damage by shattering communities (through evictions and displacement). And all we're offering is modest tidbits of real planning (a few slightly more affordable units here and there for every 100 we give to the rich).
My conclusion, as we lay out in this week's cover story, is that San Francisco has to turn its planning and housing policy upside down, to start treating housing as a necessity (as we're doing with health care) and not something to be played with by speculators on the financial markets (look how well that worked with subprime mortgages) or an amenity for Silicon Valley commuters who would rather have a playground here than live closer to work.
Instead of zoning for developers, the city needs to do something really bold and say: This is the housing ...
By the way, current HUD Area Median Income guidelines cap annual income for a single person at $60,000 per year (based on 100% AMI) -- not exactly a king's ransom in this town. More house-buying help for families making 60-90k per year is not only a good investment in our community, it fills the housing gap that currently exists between those at the lower end of the income scale, and the very high income people who can afford to buy market-rate homes. Those in the middle are currently left out, so I applaud Mayor Newsom's efforts to include more of them.
He whines about the 'rich', and the 'irrational market', as if the fact that people still want to live in San Francisco is something which he can prevent by building a medieval wall around the city as he jousts like Don Quixote at the windmills in his own mind.
Good grief, what a poor and clumsy excuse for a sensible discussion about housing, I had to laugh out loud at his pompous ignorance and social arrogance. Just who does he think he is fighting for ? On whose behalf ? It is he who is irrational, not the market !
You would think that Mr. Redmond styles himself as a latter-day Victor Hugo, waxing about the problems of "Les Miserables". In fact, his writing is much better suited to fiction -- he should take that up and leave social commentary and analysis alone. Well, ok, everyone has a right to their opinions and 'commentary' -- but as for socio-political analysis of the basic economics of urban life -- he is a fish out of water, floundering and flapping as if he thought he was a bird and could fly instead. In your dreams, Tim.
I had no idea that reading the Bay Guardian could be so amusing, but it is practically a National Lampoon parody of itself, replete with the failings and foibles of clueless socialist utopianism without any redeeming workable notions of practical utilitarianism which at least is based on the notion of public good.
Mr. Redmon's ramblings and meanderings would in fact be amusing were they on Saturday Night Live perhaps, but not in the context of trying to use his bully pulpit to spread his mental halitosis on the issues of living in San Francisco. He seems hell-bent on reviving the state-run economic models of the failed communist dictatorships of yesteryear. He should be happy that people still want to live and work in San Francisco, or will he next take to scorching his business advertisers with his flaming socialist blowtorch ?
His 'axioms' do require point-by-point reduction before recycling the newsprint at the bottom of bird cages, but as the job is a long one and will require more time and effort, I will leave that for a subsequent posting.
Illegitimus non carborundum, Q.E.D.
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