....is a Phoenix

A generational issue is rising in San Francisco. Suddenly density is "in". A developer described taking a 600 foot building plan to the City. Instead of the expected haggling, the planning department suggested, "Why not make it taller?"

Unusually for San Francisco, these new towers, if not totally residential, include a large amount of housing. While developers may be required to provide some "affordable housing" in the mix, new units are not cheap*. The effects are going to be felt for decades, but what do we expect them to be? It won't be the 1950's, in which suburban development led to urban decay. Nobody then wanted the gingerbread trimmed Victorians on their tiny lots without garages. A lovely old house, now worth over a million dollars, housed the Black Panther breakfast program in the late 1960's. To some extent bringing housing back to the City should help the jobs/housing balance. To some extent, developing in the vicinity of the new Transbay transit hub and the growing South of Market district also makes sense. The unanswered questions, however, are legion.

Will people buy that kind of density? Wells Fargo financed development of the Albany Hill Towers thirty years ago. They were not widely appreciated and more recent nearby projects have lower density. Increasing supply, demand remaining about equal, yields lower prices. Well, demand is not going to stay absolutely equal because office space is also being built. But there hasn't been so much residential built in the City for fifty years. Someplace will probably lose out, at least relatively. My bet is that the new high density buildings may not meet their investors' expectations, but that also San Francisco's hinterlands, areas more than five miles from the Financial District, will also feel the pain.

Bayview/Hunters Point has risen in price dramatically in the last five years, which makes it vulnerable. It is still an area of high crime and casual violence. But the old Hunters Point shipyard may actually enter the local economy again in the next decade, and the Third Street light rail line is already operational. The surprise may be The Sunset. It is not well anchored to any employment centers beyond Downtown, and it is a long Muni (Municipal Railroad) ride to get there. Developed from the 1930's through the early post WWII period, some of the properties are showing their age. Some blocks look good, others shabby. There are a lot of people in the neighborhood who bought forty years ago. "Estate Sale" signs are about as common these weekends as "Open House". The latter is our local symptom of the deflation of the housing bubble. And tastes change. The simple row house, memorialized in Malvin Reynolds' song "Little Boxes', may lose out relative to newer towers and lofts, or older Victorians.

Another interesting question is politics. San Francisco dealt with decline in much the same way as many cities, cosseting city employees and sapping private employers. Expansion of employment without accompanying housing allowed the process to evolve into the present silliness. After all, many of those that pay for it are corporations, legal entities but not voters. What sort of voters will all those new residents be?

*Indeed the provision of "affordable" units necessarily inflates the price of the rest of the building.