In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build

[KamaAina]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/business/economy/san-francisco-housing-tech-boom-sf-barf.html

San Francisco does not have enough places to live. Sonja Trauss, a local activist, thinks the city should tackle this problem by building more housing....

Ms. Trauss is a self-described anarchist and the head of the SF Bay Area Renters’ Federation, an upstart political group that is pushing for more development. Its platform is simple: Members want San Francisco and its suburbs to build more of every kind of housing. More subsidized affordable housing, more market-rate rentals, more high-end condominiums.

Ms. Trauss supports all of it so long as it is built tall, and soon. “You have to support building, even when it’s a type of building you hate,” she said. “Is it ugly? Get over yourself. Is it low-income housing? Get over yourself. Is it luxury housing? Get over yourself. We really need everything right now.”

Her group consists of a 500-person mailing list and a few dozen hard-core members — most of them young professionals who work in the technology industry — who speak out at government meetings and protest against the protesters who fight new development. While only two years old, Ms. Trauss’s Renters’ Federation has blazed onto the political scene with youth and bombast and by employing guerrilla tactics that others are too polite to try. In January, for instance, she hired a lawyer to go around suing suburbs for not building enough.

Senior Berkeley Correspondent daredtowork tells me that the name BARF is apt indeed.

[villager]

1. Self-described anarchist? Working for developers?

You'd think she'd be about retrofitting, re-using, capping rents, etc...

I guess that's what passes for an "anarchist" in the tech industry now?

[KamaAina]

4. Pretty much.

A better description of her and her ilk would be "techno-libertarian".

[hueymahl]

2. Trouss makes good points

More affordable housing will allow the artists and weirdos who make the city great to stay.

[KamaAina]

5. But if we just let developers build willy-nilly, all the new construction will be luxury

Not enough profit in affordable housing, you see.

[MADem]

3. There are parts of this nation with lots of room, no earthquakes, a willing work force,

access to rail and air, surrounded by natural resources that have potential to support a robust recreational business model...why in hell don't these stupid high tech companies JUST MOVE?

Why does everyone feel like they have to be sitting on top of a fault line in a single location, crowded together like ten kids in a one-bedroom apartment? Hell, they can SKYPE if they need to collaborate!

I think some of these companies ought to think about pushing against the grain. Get the hell OUTTA there. Go up country!!!

[KamaAina]

6. There are parts of this nation with bad coffee, no sourdough, where it rains all year and even snows

That's the way we see it.

[LeftyMom]

7. Sure. Let's put some multistory housing on fill so in the next quake it can

fall down, sink into the now liquefied soils and then catch fire.

Good plan.

[mackerel]

8. I noticed they are putting in a bunch of condos in Dublin now.

San Francisco is a small city square footage wise, not sure building up would be ideal.

[Baobab]

9. Its a common scam to tear down existing affordable housing and build market rate housing thats

not even remotely affordable.

"Churning" basically makes money for developers and captures the value added to communities by creative residents, displacing them.

All new housing is also not rent-stabilized. So people who are displaced rarely can afford the new housing, even if some of it is supposedly affordable it likely wont remain so for long.