You do realize just how tiny SF really is, don't you? It is only ~49 square miles. Take out land that is parks, schools, public services, roads, parking lots, retail, offices, not suitable for building, etc. - doesn't leave lots of land available for housing.
San Francisco is extremely space constrained due to the Ocean, Bay, and Parks.
If you look at the actual population vs land available it needs a far higher density than I am talking about. 1k people per square mile is really low density. That’s single family homes with 1/2 acre back yard territory.
There’s not an acre of open land between San Jose and SF that doesn’t have a building structure on it. Compare with most other US states where land is plentiful and they could use the economic boost of additional residents.
Regardless - there is some land scarcity in SF, objectively speaking. It's bound to have some non-zero contribution to housing shortages. This is a city surrounded by water on 3 sides. It's not like some iconic-looking locality in Texas, home of the Marlboro Man, where "the land stretches out forever".
The areas around SF are not dense at all. About half are nature preserves. That is, political decisions have been made to not build any more housing there.
It's worth pointing out that minimum lot sizes were used to push poor people, particularly POC, out of wealthier neighborhoods by making it uneconomical to build smaller homes on oversized lots.
SF has a minimum of 2,500-4000sf [1], and San Jose has a minimum of 5,400sf! It's the same for much of the bay area, the SFH I live in occupies ~20% of the lot it sits on, which is pure insanity for one of the most expensive metros in the US. It is even more insane when you look at the giant lots of SFHs right next to Bart stations.
How about stop pretending like we don't have enough land in the Bay Area. The entire population of the bay area could live within the borders of San Jose, with room for a million more, if it were built at the density of Paris. Land Use is the problem, not quantity.
In case you haven't noticed sf is bounded by the Pacific Ocean. It can't just grow and it already has a very high housing density. The only area that can absorb new housing is china basin (3rd st) and that is being developed. The rest is already full.
Do we really want or feel that more people in sf is a good thing? Why not live down the peninsula or the east bay where there's an unlimited amount of space.
But then... SF still wouldn't have housing, Oakland would. It's in another county. Come on, there's no reason to limit buildings to as short as they are right now. It's as if the city of SF has given up on change entirely.
SF also has some of the most ridiculously onerous zoning laws in the country.
A HUGE portion of the city is just giant single family homes or 2-3 story buildings and you are absolutely forbidden from redeveloping them into dense, affordable housing.
Change the zoning laws and developers will gladly build affordable market-rate housing.
And it's not just limited to SF. You can go out to Tracy or Fairfield where there's miles and miles of space in every direction and yet, you still see the houses piled on top of each other with less than 5 feet in between each house, all because the greedy government and it's citizens won't allocate more space for residential areas. It's just crazy. Somehow, these democratically controlled areas just feel that everything (traffic, fishes, insects, a river, etc) is more important than basic human needs (shelter). They need to start putting basic human needs first, above all the other petty stuff.
More than a stretch - there’s almost 200k residential properties in SF alone. 7k across the whole Bay Area is tiny no matter how you slice it. Just curious, but does this change your original opinion at all?
In SF you can't build a house that casts a shadow over a park ever no matter how small. The entire western half of the city is zoned for 4-story housing. This is why housing is expensive in SF. SF added less than half as many houses over the last few decades as necessary to keep pace with job growth and there's simply no excuse for it. [1]
No. SF has ample space horizontally and more importantly vertically for housing. The problem is the construction of housing has been hindered dramatically by bureaucrats.
3/4 of residential land in SF is zoned for single family. We're not to the point where we need to talk about geography or the superfund sites.
When we actually use our land wisely, then it will be easy to build more around train stations. The measure of distance that matters is not miles, but minutes.
> It's wishful thinking that the rest of America's real estate market is much more affordable due to wise zoning choices.
SF jobs are more concentrated in a down town area. Offices in cities that were built post car culture are more sprawled out. It's terrible for the environment, but it postpones the problems that SF is running into.
> Ironically, it really is pretty much supply and demand.
Well, cheers to agreeing on something. Sucks that this is a debated thing here.
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