San Francisco has a density of 18,000 people per square mile, while Austin has a density of 3,000 per sqmi. There isn’t room to build new stuff, so they just convert old stuff into more expensive new stuff.
They already found some space, but they would find a ton more if it there weren’t so many single family homes or areas with density limits or building height restrictions
Tokyo was able to redevelop most of its areas to use land better, why can’t SF?
A) That link is behind a paywall. I could only read the first two paragraphs.
B) The first two paragraphs are about how hard it is to find a place to put any new housing. It talks about converting existing spaces into housing, adding new units to existing apartment buildings, etc. And even then, it caps out at 60,000 POSSIBLE units while Austin is permitting over a thousand a month, many of which are single family homes that you are complaining about.
That said, Austin has done a great job of building a ton of apartment buildings. So much so that businesses are complaining that housing prices are going down. It’s easier for Austin to do that, since they have both more space overall and less space that is already developed; but it’s great that they have broken the lines of NIMBY and bureaucracy to actually do it.
Yes, but out of those tens of thousands of possible houses they permit very little.
Single family homes are not an issue in Austin because they have room for them. You are totally correct in that. But the big difference is being willing to change, SF voters are actually the home owners and they like their insane property prices
It’s almost like there’s a gigantic difference between building new housing in a city that has water on 2 sides, a mountain on the 3rd, is hilly as fuck, and looks like this: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tripsavvy.com%2Fthmb%2FcDzV0BmLpYR9pvR2fM4WyJBGlfs%3D%2F2121x1414%2Ffilters%3Ano_upscale()%3Amax_bytes(150000)%3Astrip_icc()%2Fcolumbus-ave-downtown-san-francisco-aerial-538152367-58460a475f9b5851e5e8e767.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=40220336d594426b1951f443a0803c0edbae4bf26b20180063d42a59bfa3c822&ipo=images
Versus a completely flat city with open scrub-land on 4 sides that looks like this: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fphotohome.com%2Fpictures%2Ftexas-pictures%2Faustin%2Fdowntown-austin-1a.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=59082578a907c28cc53849c4638464ef282fe68eb7b754bda3287bbb07364464&ipo=images
San Francisco has a density of 18,000 people per square mile, while Austin has a density of 3,000 per sqmi. There isn’t room to build new stuff, so they just convert old stuff into more expensive new stuff.
Don’t act like there’s no space in SF, I’m from there.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/housing-building-maps-17625366.php
They already found some space, but they would find a ton more if it there weren’t so many single family homes or areas with density limits or building height restrictions
Tokyo was able to redevelop most of its areas to use land better, why can’t SF?
A) That link is behind a paywall. I could only read the first two paragraphs.
B) The first two paragraphs are about how hard it is to find a place to put any new housing. It talks about converting existing spaces into housing, adding new units to existing apartment buildings, etc. And even then, it caps out at 60,000 POSSIBLE units while Austin is permitting over a thousand a month, many of which are single family homes that you are complaining about.
That said, Austin has done a great job of building a ton of apartment buildings. So much so that businesses are complaining that housing prices are going down. It’s easier for Austin to do that, since they have both more space overall and less space that is already developed; but it’s great that they have broken the lines of NIMBY and bureaucracy to actually do it.
Yes, but out of those tens of thousands of possible houses they permit very little.
Single family homes are not an issue in Austin because they have room for them. You are totally correct in that. But the big difference is being willing to change, SF voters are actually the home owners and they like their insane property prices