her theory kind of counts on another market crash, doesn't it? considering the current economy is a championship-height Jenga tower, it just might work.

SF doesn't really have many places to build housing at this point.

whereas we have lots of under-built 1-story retail and parking lots that rich loonies have been sitting on till they died (see: Sam Israel), or their kids wrested control (see: the parking lot desert north of Virginia in East Belltown).

not to mention the convoluted ownership structures in the ID that prevent development. so much more could happen down there - that whole slope north of Jackson is filled with parking lots.

It seems that a lot of what is being built is replacing the "affordable" housing with unaffordable megahouses and modernized apartments. If you tear down an apartment building of 40 $800 studios and replace it with 80 $3,000 apartments, you haven't created any affordable housing but just eliminated 40 units of it. Sure, you've increased the overall number of housing units on that block and increased density, but you've also made the city more unaffordable overall. Since we're also experiencing a rapid growth in population we won't see the additional units impact supply in any kind of meaningful way in regards to price. It's just more expensive units for a market that can afford it. I don't think that we can count on another housing crisis or the "invisible hand of the market" to make any of those $3,000 apartments anywhere close to $800. Those 40 people who are now displaced are going to be competing for the now even fewer number of sub $1,000 apartments which will increase the rent there because of the higher demand. It's a lose-lose for the people who can't afford the high priced new units, and I don't think that anyone in that bracket can wait a few decades for the new stuff to get old and maybe have a possible dip in rent.

@3: who's tearing down apartment buildings? yes, existing apartments are forcing long-term residents out so they can "remodel" and double rents, but it's generally lowrise retail, vacant lots, and SFD housing on denser zoning that's being demo'd.

"drive to qualify" applies to renters, too. look out Greenwood, Whittier Heights, and Pinehurst, the Capitol Hill displaced are heading up your way!

San Francisco is much denser than Seattle and has been for years. There generally isn't much stock of single-family homes with lawns to rip up. The closest you get to that is rowhouses that haven't been split into flats along the way, except in the richer areas of town. The only times I wasn't sharing a flat with assorted roommates down there were when I lived in an SRO and a tiny (and presumably illegal) loft in the Tenderloin.

I'm pretty sure it hasn't gotten less dense since then.

The math is pretty simple. We're adding jobs at about twice the rate we're adding housing. Assuming each new job brings a household to live here, without associated new housing somebody is going to be displaced. And here's a key point: the person with a shiny new job will not be displaced, it will be the marginal income household just barely able to make rent.

Yes, we're beating SF because of a bit of buildable capacity in SLU and a bit of unused capacity downtown. But we need a whole lot more capacity to start winning the 2:1 jobs:units problem. The good news is that's amazingly easy to fix: UPZONE. Add height, increase FAR, reduce setbacks. With more buildable capacity land prices will drop, and an even larger construction boom will happen.

Remember: every new unit we build saves a household from being displaced. This is true of any type of housing we build.

@5 Yes, SF is more dense than Seattle. But that's not the important part. The important thing to watch is how many units you add compared to the number of new jobs. Most/all of the Bay Area is absolutely locked down with regard to building heights and density limits. Silicon Valley is mostly single family ranch-style homes, which is why people take buses for an hour each way to work there from SF. SF itself has been fighting new housing for decades (often from the left - I remember a big liberal fight against evil developers 25 years ago there, with the claim that they wouldn't add any "affordable" units).

How SF can fix their housing problem is the same way Seattle can fix ours. See my comment above.

@3: The thing is, if the market can already support 80 $3,000 units, then people are probably already charging it (or near to it). So if a new building goes up with units "worth" (whatever that means) $3,000 because they have fancy appliances and countertops and all that, you're not creating that demand, you're catering to it. The people that can spend $3,000/month are always going to win over those that can't. Those who can afford less will be displaced regardless of whether their building was torn down for new luxury apartments or they were just priced out of their still-standing building.

I think there's an important difference between not fucking up as terribly as another city & "doing it right". Arguing that sometime in the future (after a market crash) there will be plenty of affordable housing isn't helpful to those of us trying to live in a city where our jobs are located right now. Try building housing that is affordable now or just STFU about it.

Honestly, at this point I think we all need to be focusing our efforts on speeding up light rail development to all corners of the city. With housing prices going sky high in the city's core (thanks to Amazon and other tech employers) and a lack of parking associated with this new development, it will become more and more important that people can easily commute via mass transit into the city from the cheap(er) housing in outlying areas.

@1: San Fran has plenty of "room" left - in fact, there's no such thing as a city that has run out of room. Not only does SF have parking lots and empty wearhouses all over the place, the local government specifically imposes an onerous zoning code which ensures the city can't grow in the third direction. Seattle does that too, but less onerous. Remove the zoning, get more affordability - no economist at all disagrees with that statement.

@11: I agree totally with expanding light rail, but your reasoning behind it shows a myopic view of the world. People, like me, can get around fine with the bus and no personal transport vehicle. We should allow tall buildings *everywhere* and stop letting scared white people's fee fees halt development.

Rarely are cranes involved in the construction of residential housing, and the market rate for high rise living will always be out of reach for most people.

San Francisco is three times as dense as Seattle with only half the land area, it shouldn't be surprising that situation creates a much more challenging environment in which to grow.

@11 Agree.

@12 - It probably depends on what "getting around" means. My wife and I can manage on one car and one ORCA card, but we couldn't get rid of the car entirely; the tight, multi-location needs of a personal training/martial arts instruction business and an LMP biz, both combined with pursuits as theater artists, can be managed, one imagines, on a transit system where rides leave every 10-15 minutes and don't get stuck in traffic, but one in which either of those matters aren't true is basically useless.

@13 Cranes are usually involved in the construction of residential housing. Unless you're talking about single family housing.

@15 Ok, ok—I'll rephrase, the typical 4–5 story new construction I see here doesn't pepper the skyline with cranes, which caused the author to infer they aren't building homes. You're probably right and there's some little cranes moving things about, but it's nothing you'd noticed without standing in front of the site. There is a crane parked outside my kitchen window right now, but it's it's putting together a new hospital wing.

For what it's worth, I think SF is set to add something like 4,000 units a year for the foreseeable future. It won't make a huge difference in the short term, but at least we're closer to meeting our mandated growth targets than any other city in the Bay Area (fuck you South Bay).

There's no simple answer. It's completely reasonable to want affordable housing, it's also reasonable to expect that you won't be suddenly displaced from your home. It's your landlord, it's the job market, it's the global economy, it's everything.

Why are you only seeing 4-5 story construction in SF? Little* Seattle is adding 8k units per year, with much less demand and much lower housing prices. Here's a graphic of just the skyscrapers we're adding.

And I honestly don't know the complete answer to this question. I'm assuming it's either your zoning or your regulatory / legal environment. You certainly have land for towers, if you choose to use it.

* calling us little because our metro population is just 3.6M compared to your 4.6M - and that's ignoring the other 2.0M in San Jose's metro area (which, if Google buses are any indication, are really in the same metro area)

@11 - Here here!

Also, RENT CONTROL, because fuck all this greedy usurious "free market" profiteering bullshit. People are getting screwed.

@17 - I know what you're asking isn't a breakdown of the projects here, but "why not taller everywhere?" 10,000 units? 100,000 units? How long before the world runs out of investment capital and local teachers can move back in?

I'd like more units, but I think "doing it wrong," as the author suggests, is naive. I think we're handling shit best we can with enormous pressure from all sides. Parking lots and gas stations are quickly becoming new housing, they're even looking into tearing out streets for land (I like it, but... I don't see that happening.) The NIMBY's are pretty damned empowered here—and as frustrating as that element can be, they're not ALWAYS wrong (read about the Fillmore redevelopment, one of the most embarrassing chapters in city history we're still dealing with).

Tangentially, high rises are extremely expensive by their nature (units no one would consider "luxury" can have $1,000 HOA dues). Still, sure, build 20 of'em, 30 stories high in SOMA—might ease some pressure, that's good. Might also displace 5,000 people already living there.

There's really too much to say, my thoughts are really scattered trying to write in out. I'm certainly no expert, but I do enjoy talking about this stuff.

* and yeah, San Jose is usually included in our metro area, as Everette and Tacoma are yours.

@5 Not to pile on, but as a former San Franciscan, I'd point out that while areas like the Sunset and Richmond district are relatively dense compared to Seattle, they have a lot of old construction that's not as dense as it could be. Particularly along transit corridors.

Yup, the 2 or 3 story multi unit buildings out there are great, but they probably should be replaced with taller structures.

I don't think NIMBY forces are any less strong here in Seattle. We just happened to have a bunch of underutilized land in South Lake Union that Paul Allen was able to consolidate and develop (worth noting he initially did so at least in part to help build a park that the 'Seattle Process' balked at finishing).

There's also a large swathe of land called SODO (equivalent to pre-redevelopment SOMA or China Basin in SF) that is near the port infrastructure and currently zoned nearly exclusively industrial, as part of an 80s or 90s plan to preserve blue collar jobs. Which is a worthy goal. However, one has to wonder what percentage of those jobs are held by Seattle residents or folks from more suburban areas driving in, and from some perspectives (transit, cost of living) it wouldn't be better for those jobs to move outside the city core. Not all. A diverse economy is good, but it's a huge swathe of land. Admittedly built on tons of landfill, which is probably not tall commercial building friendly, but could potentially suffice for multi-unit residential structures. And it is along our nascent rail transit right of way.

San Francisco is only "dense" compared to demi-urban areas like Seattle. In terms of actual people-per-square-mile density, SF is a smidge less dense than noted urban hellscape Somerville, MA, and its population would have to quintuple before it even got within shooting distance of Brooklyn or Queens, nevermind Manhattan.

(And as noted copiously above, SF is even by its own standards only dense in a few select areas -- there are huge swaths of the city where one- or two-story townhouses are the norm.)

What San Francisco (and the greater Bay Area around it) has that Seattle doesn't is the single worst policy environment for housing in the USA. At this point, you could build a working housing policy simply by looking at SF and saying "whatever they're doing, do the opposite".

@18: San Francisco has the most stringent rent control laws in the country by a long yard. How's that working out for them?

(I get and sympathize with the moral case for rent control, but results matter. How many times is this policy going to fail before we start looking for a better policy?)

@19 Thanks, I knew it was at least partially NIMBYs' fault, but wasn't clear how much (and in some sense you need a government framework that empowers NIMBYs before they really become an issue).

I've done the math and highrises aren't really much more per unit than shorter buildings, especially when you factor in the cost of land. But even if they were it doesn't matter - building any type of unit avoids displacement. And don't worry about those 5k units displaced - for that to happen we're talking about around 50,000 new units*. And that avoids 50,000 households being displaced (because if you think it's the rich that will leave if we don't build them units, you're wrong - they'll rent your apartment instead).

And as a fan of history and former SF resident I know the story of the Fillmore well (there's a great PBS documentary about the Japanese and then the Black populations removed, and the huge amount of culture and community destroyed with it). But it's important to learn the right lesson from that - *removing an entire neighborhood is usually a bad idea*, not *development can be bad*. If we had the old Fillmore again, the right idea would be to let individual buildings be redeveloped. Failing to do so would simply gentrify the neighborhood as prices shot up due to lack of supply. That said, I'll take your general point that NIMBYs aren't always wrong (just usually).

* Seattle currently adds at least 10 units for every one removed.

@4, Obviously not all construction is replacing affordable housing, but enough of it is that the shrinking number of affordable housing options is a direct result of them being redeveloped. If you just look at the "affordable" end of the market, you'll see that happening quite a bit.
The apartments at Bellevue and Pine (where Bauhaus used to be) were renting for $400 back in the 00's. Not sure what they were going for a couple years ago when everyone got kicked out, but it was still affordable and when the new ones come on line they won't be anywhere near that end of the spectrum. Look around Ballard and you'll see that any home under $400,000 has a flock of developers circling over it. All of these get knocked down and turned into new houses in the $650k-$1mil range. They have to in order to turn a profit. While $400,000 might seem like a lot to a 20something working in retail, it's a very affordable home for a couple with savings and decent jobs. Bring a downpayment and you'll have a mortgage around $1500. Those kind of options are quickly disappearing inside the city limits.

Seems like most of us agree. More can be done. Transit is good. More density is good. Let's try not to destroy communities, but maybe we'll have to. In 30 years they'll be new ones having this same conversation regardless.

I still have serious reservations about the sustainability of an "affordable" high rise. Maintenance is insane on those things. Could this be done here? Chicago has some pretty tall—not high-rise, but tall, reasonably priced buildings. But, Chicago has a LOT of buildings.

@11 Yes! I've ridden the BART for years from Oakland to SF. 35 mins to downtown SF from Lake Merritt. Light rail here may make many commutes less than one hour in Seattle, and open up large areas for more housing

@12--"the local government specifically imposes an onerous zoning code which ensures the city can't grow in the third direction."
Actually, that is the result of 'neighborhood' groups who want to micro-manage the city. SF has the stupidist ideas--it only takes one person to stop a project. Even after all the public meetings and approvals;if someone doesn't like the way a project is designed or just doesn't want it to go forward they can file a stop. You don't even have to be a neighbor--I've gotten notices for a project three blocks away.
The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association ( may they rot) is trying to take over my area. They opposed a redevelopment of an empty UC campus because it had off-street parking. THe argument was that not having parking available would mean that the tenants would give up their cars and traffic would be less. One of the Mission Neighborhood Associations fought against a housing proposal because they thought the heights were too high and insisted that the housing be reserved for the Latino population there. It goes on.

@23--those 'stringent' rent controls that the Libertarians/Republicans/developers like to bitch and lie about and blame for the lack of housing aren't all that strict.
1. It only affects buildings built before the law passed(1978 I think). All new construction is exempt--so how does rent control keep new building out, again?
2. Once an apartment is vacated, the rent can go up to whatever the market will bear. Sure, it's then under rent control again but an apartment that rents for $3000 hardly seems like a rent controlled one, does it?
3. It's been almost 40 years since rent control started. A lot of those original tenants have left and some have died. The myth of the 200 rent-controlled apartment is just that. A friend has lived in his apartment since the beginning of rent control--he's over $700 now. The myth of the dirt-cheap rent controlled apartment is false.

I'm fed up with these rich snotty developers hiking up rents. I go to school full time getting my art degree and I need the government to pay my student loans and we need rent control and subsidized housing. I need to live downtown with a view because I paint landscapes for my classes. All these developers are greedy and are just out to take away what little money I have. They should build new affordable housing, and not just the 50% of income type housing. It should be affordable to people like me who are full time students.

Yep. Adding lots of new supply may not be sufficient to achieve affordability goals in the short of medium term but it sure as hell is necessary, unless the economy collapses. The supply/demand denialists of the left (far thicker on the ground in SF than Seattle, thankfully) are the climate change deniers of the left, useful idiots of the incumbent property owners profiting from the shortage.