Restrictions on building probably makes SF more sprawling, not less. Imagine if you allowed people to buy up a block in Sunset District and build 40 story apartment buildings. People wouldn't have to live in Livermoore anymore.
SF actually limits building height in most areas I believe. Every time we put another one of these laws on the books, it's another obstacle blocking the way for affordable housing that probably won't ever get reversed
It's a bit more complicated. If they allowed building more, property values wouldn't necessarily go down because more people would simply move to the city from other parts of the country, keeping both demand and property values high. One thing that would definitely happen is the character of SF would change a lot, more so than it already is. Perhaps, that's the right thing to do, but I can understand people who live there and are not looking forward to their city looking like Singapore/Chicago/Generic Skyscraper filled city
San Francisco has limited land, so there is a natural constraint on growth; in addition, there is a form of rent control and then there are lots of stipulations for building new units in the city. these things contribute to the low inventory, I think.
I wish they would allow more common sense building in the city. For example, in some areas, the shadows from new buildings may not be allowed to cast on neighborhood parks from 10am to 4pm, or so. This has killed a few projects. Then you have powerful neighborhood groups (like the ones along the embarcadero) who won't allow dense building because they would limit their view. I understand their position, but it's a selfish one. No one "owns" a view. More over, their buildings obstruct buildings behind them, but they would insist on having their own buildings be demolished to give others a view --nevermind that this could go on till very few houses were left.
The building requirements, in my layman's view, is that the requirements are onerous (compared to say San Jose) and make housing in SF an artificially limited/scarce resource which puts pressure on housing. The Peninsula is not much better. Neighbors always bring up traffic but then never approve BART to alleviate some of that traffic concern (or some other form of local mass transit (let's say spurs from the main Caltrain stations meandering to the local downtowns which host offices). My frustration is such that I wish someone like ABAG were given the power to overrule locals and allow them to do proper (integrated regional) planning and allow building up (vertically) to take the pressure off of housing in the Bay Area.
SF is not currently space constrained, only area constrained. They could build upwards if they wanted, but most of the city doesn’t allow buildings over 4 stories. Building up and having a functioning public transportation system would at least allow more people to live in SF, if not solve the housing price problem.
San Franciscos problem is building restrictions not high rent. Most of that is from the investor who owns a high % of property in san fran and his weight in the city.
With building regs like other cities we'd have skyscrapers to accomodate everyone who wants to live here at reasonable cost.
Isn't a huge part of the housing shortage in SF due to the zoning policies that prevent builders from building more than 2-3 stories in something like 80% of the city?
If there were more housing close to those skyscrapers; if it were legal to build it, those people would have shorter commutes - and occupy less land to boot.
Instead, San Fran is one of the NIMBYest cities on the planet and so all those people are forced to come in from further afield.
Housing would be a lot cheaper in SF if SF wanted cheaper housing.
Yes, they have geographical limitations on how much housing they can build horizontally, but on top of those they also have strict self-imposed limitations on how much they can build vertically.
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.
Just an aside but it's almost all regulation that limits the supply of housing in SF. There is essentially no lack of land due to our technical ability to stack things vertically.
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.
Both are more constrained by man than nature. SF could build up and up and up. It's not zoned for that. Practical limit is 10 stories where housing is. Could be changed, the argument is that SF would not be SF any more. It always makes me tear up when I hear that, tiny violin and all.
Maybe they should build something other than luxury condos. But that would require SF to change their insane zoning laws. And SF cares more about zoning laws than they do about people.
The problem in SF isn't that we couldn't build up more - we certainly could. It's that you generally have to tear something down to build something up,. I live in one of the less fashionable parts of SF that is zoned single family, though it is somewhat dense by American standards (small lots, no space between houses, though each house does have a small backyard). Most of the houses were built in the 1920s and are in my opinion architecturally interesting, though of course opinions will vary. I suppose we could allow people to buy up a block or a bunch of houses, tear them down, and replace them with 6 story (or higher) apartment buildings.
While there is a case to be made for allowing this, I think it's probably the weakest place to make your stand against the lack of new housing construction in the bay area. We have options other than tearing down some of the oldest neighborhoods west of the mississippi.
While everyone may be saying Not In My Backyard, there are degrees of NIMBYism. Personally, I think that it's far more egregious for very low density areas like Mountain View or Menlo Park to ban new housing development, especially when these are the same cities that have green lighted office construction that will bring hundreds of thousands of new workers to the region.
Why is SF so opposed to building up? Build more high rises filled with apartments and condos, there are plenty of areas that could be rezoned to accommodate high rise living.
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