The article lost me on the first line, "The U.S. is running out of places for people to live."<p>That's just not true.<p>An trending increase in the national average monthly cost of rent shows that people are competing more for housing. But, that can be explained by a migration to major metropolitan centers and/or tech centers. Which is a totally different mechanism than "running out of housing".
> Progressives on the city’s Board of Supervisors recently called for certain height limit restrictions to be lifted only for developments that include 100 percent below-market-rate housing (the current policy sets the number at 30 percent). Obviously, developing housing at entirely below-market rates is impossible without heavy government subsidies, so this proposal would effectively stop all new construction in many areas of the city.<p>I must be missing something - housing prices are combination of "affordable minimum" due to costs, and "what the market will bare". In a market with scarce housing and huge housing prices, it should be very doable to offer below-market-rate housing and still be profitable, all without subsidies. Right?<p>That said, I'm all in favor of increasing density. I forget where I read it, but I saw a great analysis about how it's "cheap" to get city councils to pass limitations on future growth (Nimby), but getting them to pass actions (new housing, etc) often requires they show how it is paid for. As those limitations have an opportunity cost, they too should be justified.<p>Still though, I don't understand the above part of the article. Help?
> The U.S. is running out of places for people to live.<p>Just when you thought you heard it all, journalists find another way to sound supremely stupid. The US ranks 182 out of 244 on the list of countries by population density.<p>If you took the entire world's population and crammed it into the continental US, we'd be midway between Bangladesh and Taiwan.
> <i>If we’re going to create cities where everyone can live and work, we need density -- there’s just no way around it.</i><p>Is it safe to say that, in US cities, quality of life generally gets worse with increases in population density?<p>If so, is it because US local and state governments are pretty bad at managing population increase, in general?
What a puerile and intellectually dishonest rant.<p>Basically they're taking a situation that is notoriously complex and entrenched, with multiple interlocking tradeoffs and feedback loops; cherry picking a few of the driving factors, and throwing in a few offhand observations about the positions that "progressives" (as if this were an identifiable, let alone unified group) supposedly take in regard to these issues; and concluding with the innuendo that this "Them", this "Other", is "declaring war" on not just affordable housing, but on economic growth and progress itself.<p>And also:<p><i>Unlike progressives in New York City, who are often big supporters of density, San Francisco progressives have decided to focus on kicking the tech industry out of the city.</i><p>No, not bending over for every regulatory or other concession certain elements of an industry might want does not equal a drive to "kick them out." This is a scare card, pure and simple; it's meant to befuddle and distract, and sheds no light on the complex issues at root.
Oakland passed an eviction moratorium because there is an epidemic of illegal evictions of long-term tenants from rent-controlled units, and activists wanted to force the city government to actually enforce the city's laws. Characterizing this as part of a move to "kick tech out of the city" misses the point by several thousand miles.<p>It is true that San Francisco's "left" is against housing construction. It is also true that San Francisco politics are an inverted world where "left" and "right" cease to even have meaning. So we need competent writers to try to sort this out. But writing articles like this that just plow through the nuance and make elementary mistakes, like apparently not even reading the language of or rational for Oakland's eviction moratorium, make it harder to get to a bargain on this stuff.
This is not a well researched article. Various sweeping comments like:<p>"Rent control is in effect, but that has just increased the incentive for evictions"<p>... ignore so many issues that it makes it hard to believe the core argument.
I apparently don't know what "Progressive" means anymore.<p>Maybe I'll start calling everyone progressive. They all have opinions about something.
I don't think it's unreasonable for people who like a place to try to preserve the things they like about it. People living in San Francisco would be living in Manhattan if they wanted to live in Manhattan. Why would you expect them to quietly acquiesce to efforts aimed at turning SF into Manhattan West?