ReasonTV
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 12 months, 2019–2025
14:44 · 1.5M views · Dec 27, 2018
ReasonTV tells the story of Bob Tillman, who spent nearly five years and $1.4 million trying to convert his San Francisco laundromat into apartments. It walks through the permitting, appeals and neighborhood opposition he faced.
It is HN's go-to concrete example of how local regulation and NIMBYism block new housing in San Francisco and California.
15 comments from Hacker News
Asking why there isn't enough housing is like asking why water is wet. The answer is state/local government regulation. There's an old saying "your margin is my opportunity" and I suspect that the current crop of homes that are built have decent margins, but in a deregulated market an entrepreneur could come in offer more affordable housing options with lower margins. You can see this in vehicles. Nobody complains about the vehicle affordability problem because there are far fewer regulations in the transportation industry (don't get me wrong, there are regulations, but not a constraining as you see in the housing market). There's a vehicle at every price point. You got bikes, then ebikes, mopeds, scoters, motorcycles, sub compacts, compacts, full size, trucks, suvs, and all the way to crazy expensive sports cars. You don't see that in house because affordable housing is not a good business. It's impossible to offer options at the lower end of the market because of zoning laws, environmental impact regulations, a difficult permitting process, nimby's, and affordable housing politicians that are really big proponents of affordable housing except "they have question about this particular housing project." Here is a terrific video that everyone should watch that shows how insanely difficult it is to make affordable housing. A this video Sometimes what you need is less government regulation, not more. edited sentence "You don't see that in house it's not a good business." to You don
Politics is a huge factor in the lack of affordable housing. Both legislation and concerns by citizen about how new housing will "change" a neighbor make it next to impossible to build higher density housing. Watch this video - it's eye opening this video
Landlords, yes, but also people who think that new market rate housing will destroy the character of their neighborhoods, or something. Take it with a grain of salt because it's reason.com, but this video does do a good job of conveying a sense of how ridiculous the situation has gotten: this video
It's very complicated. People have conflicting ideas - one the one hand, they want affordable housing (ie their rent to go down) or the other, not in my backyard. Worth a view The Insane Battle To Sabotage a New Apartment Building Explains San Francisco's Housing Crisis this video
"You can't have it both ways. Either change the city and build upwards or stop complaining about the price of living" Yes. Here is an awesome video documenting one persons struggle to create an apartment building: this video