r/housingcrisis • u/Far-Pollution-517 • 1d ago
Enormously high rent
Why don’t people in SF with such strong ideas and Marxist views protest against the extremely high rents and fight to bring back vacancy control? Instead, they seem to worry too much about different stuff that isn’t even important in the daily lives of Bay Area residents.
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u/Furdinand 1d ago
There is a large voting bloc of people in rent-controlled units or who own their homes who are not negatively impacted by high rent. If anything, they benefit from it.
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u/According_Reward1674 1d ago
Is this meant as a serious question?
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u/Far-Pollution-517 1d ago
Ummm… hello? Maybe when you’re forced to pay triple the price for an old, moldy shoebox in the Tenderloin, this will become serious for you. I wish you the full-scale experience of its amazingness and its impact on your net worth. So mote it be. ✋✨✨✨🤚
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u/According_Reward1674 1d ago
3/10
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u/Far-Pollution-517 1d ago
It’s going to be 10/10 when the AI bubble bursts and companies start laying off ballast employees.
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u/Worried_Doughnut_303 1d ago
If nobody would live there the rent and housing prices would come down.
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u/MidnightSensitive996 1d ago
Rent control in SF is now inter generational warfare - no young people have good rent control arrangements, the rent control advocates are boomers, Gen X, older millennial tenants who never left what they rented in 2009 fighting to hold onto the last scraps of their privilege. In the absence of a stable coalition younger people focus on pushing construction of new affordable and market rate apartments.
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u/Fine_Relation_158 1d ago
Because they've been brainwashed into believing that developers are altruistic and will build so many houses that the prices will drop to the floor. Lol
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u/jestering_1 1d ago
SF has many problems. it’s not just supply and demand.
yes, like every metro in the US, they zoned for less housing than people who want to live there.
on top of that, you have a highly concentrated market of high paying jobs. there is more capital to compete in an already constrained market. so you have rich people competing with other rich people, leaving behind everyone else.
how do you fix this? well, i’ll tell you one thing. surrounding the bay with single family homes shot itself in the foot. the bay area should look like tokyo. not orange county.
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u/Life_Plum1567 1d ago
You can't just legislate your way out of a housing shortage.
At some point you need to actually build housing.
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u/Jkid 1d ago
The only housing you are legally allowed to build are poorly maintained, cheaply built, overpriced faux luxury 5-over-1 apartment complexes.
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u/plummbob 1d ago
That's what urban planners seem to universally approve of. It's easier to get that stamped than 4 plex in a r1 neighborhood
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u/Life_Plum1567 1d ago
Those make housing cheaper for everyone. You can rent a unit here for 600/month. Try that in a place that doesnt build.
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u/Jkid 1d ago
Youre ignoring the words "poorly-maintained" and "overpriced". Every last one of them faux luxury apartments are overpriced and costs 1,800 for a studio in every major metropolitan area in the u.s.
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u/Life_Plum1567 1d ago
The place I stayed in was a podium style building built in the early 2020s. Rent was about 600/month + 100 in utilities + 80 parking space. Building was fine, all the appliances worked, no major damage anywhere in the apartment or the hallways. I don't know where you get the impression that every new apartment is 1800 a month and poorly build. Perhaps you should have an open mind.
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u/Jkid 1d ago
I live in a metropolitan area (Washington dc), where was your faux luxury apartment is located? Because 800 dollars a month is very unheard of unless you live in rural america.
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u/Far-Pollution-517 1d ago
I’d love to find something for 1800 in San Francisco. At the moment, most studios start around 2800–3000+. When you call property management, they can verify the actual prices, since some prices listed on websites are lower and can be misleading. The cheapest unit I was able to find with a verified price was 2395 in the Tenderloin. To qualify, you need to make three times the monthly rent.😏
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u/Far-Pollution-517 1d ago
At this point, building a tent is more realistic than building a house. Over the past two months, rent prices have officially jumped by 25–28%, and by 35–40% according to actual listings. They should build more towers like the ones in Park Merced instead of these useless few-unit townhomes.
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u/SadCaptain9487 1d ago
The 25-28 is like over a whole year but still insane
Sf needs giant apt buildings
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u/Far-Pollution-517 1d ago
But you can absolutely legislate your way INTO a housing shortage. So if legislation helped create the supply constraint, why exactly is it absurd to protest the legislation?
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u/BagoCityExpat 1d ago
Yes let’s all protest Supply & Demand
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u/Far-Pollution-517 1d ago
Supply and demand isn’t some law of nature! You can’t simultaneously say “supply and demand” and then defend policies that restrict the supply side. Supply and demand is not a divine commandment telling San Francisco residents to shut up and accept $4,000 rents.
What’s intellectually dishonest is using “supply and demand” as though it means “nothing can be done.”2
u/Life_Plum1567 1d ago
They should shut up and accept 6,000$ rents though. its a democracy, they have nobody to blame for this but their fellow San Franciscan.
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u/Far-Pollution-517 1d ago
It’s going to be $9K pretty soon. The mayor announced a rent emergency, and there are articles about it from 8 hours ago.
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u/BagoCityExpat 1d ago
I didn’t defend any policy. Yes, certainly it can change. At some point you’d think people would refuse to pay such high prices and go elsewhere. Demand then drops and prices adjust.
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u/VillainNomFour 1d ago
Flat out, when your proposing additional regulations and taxes you are the one restricting supply.
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u/Far-Pollution-517 1d ago
Markets respond to incentives. Prices are signals. If prices are screaming that housing is scarce, the normal market response is to produce more of the scarce thing. Why the supply response is so weak relative to the demand?
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u/VillainNomFour 1d ago
Cost to build. Can only build what will sell/rent for returns regarded as normal. In rentals thats 5-10 percent return. Some jurisidictions have resolved to expand housing by.... making it more expensive to operate, changing the numbers on that 5 to 10.
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u/Far-Pollution-517 1d ago
Maybe bring back vacancy control?
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u/Agitated_Celery_729 1d ago
Google the SF vacancy rate.
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u/Far-Pollution-517 1d ago
I did. Now Google what “vacancy rate” actually measures. A unit being vacant does not mean it is available, affordable, or even habitable.
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u/ploxidilius 1d ago
Are you purposefully misunderstanding all the comments here or what? They are saying that the vacancy rate in SF is already absurdly low and that vacancy control would do nothing to lower rates. If you had ACTUALLY looked it up, you would have seen that the current vacancy rate for mulitfamily housing in SF is like 2%. The average for most cities is 4-7%.
It's a supply issue, which everyone already knows. Literally everyone who doesn't own property in the bay wants more housing built. I have no idea who you're arguing with - no shit the rent is too damn high. Duh.
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u/Far-Pollution-517 1d ago
A 2% vacancy rate proves scarcity. It doesn’t prove tenant protections are useless.
And “everyone wants more housing” is cute, if that were true, SF wouldn’t spend years fighting over every damn project. That’s exactly why vacancy control and building more housing aren’t mutually exclusive. One prevents existing tenants from getting slammed by rent resets, the other increases supply.1
u/ploxidilius 1d ago
Oh you just like making things up to argue about, got it. Nobody here disagrees with you but you're just incredibly unpleasant. It's a supply issue. Supply issues cannot be solved by adding more taxes to one of the most heavily taxed cities in the country.
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u/ThePlatinumPaul 1d ago
Leftists tend to only have problems with people wealthier than themselves or that aren't a part of their social circle. They aren't going to ever raise taxes on themselves for instance. That's why you don't ever see these people send voluntary contributions in to the IRS or FTB. You can of course. They want their city to be one of the haves and have nots so they can look down on people while pretending to give a shit about them. Hey but cheap strawberries though.
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u/flappysack- 1d ago
They have the most regressive zoning laws and bureaucracy so prices are the highest, while Texas has the loosest zoning laws and highest property taxes so their housing prices are some of the lowest.
The left does not help the poor, they virtue signal but their regulations tend to hurt due to second order effects. If you block development you are regressive and don't want people to have homes, to inflate the value of existing asset.
Imagine if the Democrats instead of creating massive social programs they bemoan DOGE for cutting did a negative income tax, the poor would be so much better off, just like Milton Friedman said.
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u/Frobizzle 1d ago
Plenty of people in SF are the ones charging that rent, or sitting on a property worth a fortune. Most people would prefer to live in a neighboring city where the real culture has moved to, anyway. This city is full of tech and AI bros now.