FAQs

From HousingWiki
Revision as of 04:35, 3 May 2017 by imported>Tmccormick

here we gather FAQs which may be open or previously answered (e.g. those from SFBARF, below). As discussed in Development Roadmap, one main aspect of YIMBYwiki is to analyze, or factor, topics and controversies into core, well-defined questions, with the aim of making discussions/response more productive. We believe that one way to better engage issues is to listen to and respond to the questions people are explicitly or implicitly asking.

This is also applying and extending the concepts of 1) factoring, also known as decomposition, taken from mathematics and computer science, which Wikipedia defines as:

 breaking a complex problem or system into parts that are easier to conceive, understand, program, and maintain.

and secondly, the concept of 2) Pattern language, derived from the work of mathematician and architect Christopher Alexander: 

a method of describing good design practices or patterns of useful organization within a field of expertise.

The pattern language concepts of Alexander were a key, explicit inspiration for the original development of the "wiki" publishing process and software model, by Ward Cunningham for the Portland Pattern Repository in 1987.

All topic pages X in YIMBYwiki, or in the conventional Wikipedia format, could be considered answers to the question, "What is X?" but we are also aiming to extend this to questions of other forms
 

General

What determines the price of housing?

What determines the cost of housing? 

(i.e. the cost to create new housing units). 

What is the effect of new housing on the overall price of housing? 

Who should control what land is used for? 

Who should get to live in our city? 

 

 

Aren't NIMBYs and YIMBYs basically the same thing? Both are trying to control the housing around them.

A: The key difference is that NIMBYs try to restrict what other people are allowed to do with the land they own, and YIMBYs work to lessen those restrictions. YIMBYism is the "pro-choice" of housing.

The reason NIMBYism is bad is that there's something everyone agrees we need (in this case, housing, but it could be a school or a bus depot) but nobody wants it near them, and if we indulge that reaction, everyone prevents it from being built near them, and ththus, at all. In other words, "If we all acted like NIMBYs, we'd have no schools."

That syndrome doesn't apply to YIMBYism; if we all were YIMBYs, we'd have lots of schools / housing / etc, and life would be great.

 

FAQs from SFBARF

We're a 7x7 mile city, so doesn't that mean we don't have room for any more people?

San Francisco's population density is 7,000 people per square kilometer. There are many beautiful, beloved cities throughout the world that manage to accommodate far greater density numbers:

  • Barcelona: 16,000
  • Buenos Aires: 14,000
  • Central London: 13,000
  • Manhattan: 25,846
  • New York City (overall): 10,100
  • Singapore: 7,600
  • Paris: 22,000
  • Central Tokyo: 14,500

[Here's a map of the zoning ceilings throughout San Francisco.](Tn7CSTX.jpg) Every yellow block in that picture is zoned 40-X, which means that buildings taller than four stories are not welcome. If we raised that to six stories (as is the norm throughout most of Paris), we could easily accommodate hundreds of thousands of new residents.

 

Doesn't San Francisco's earthquake risk make tall buildings unwise?

No; in fact, many of the tallest buildings in the world are located in the seismically active region known as the "Pacific Ring of Fire".

For example, [Taipei 101](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipei_101) is 1,671 feet tall (101 stories!) and since its construction in 2004 has proven its stability over the course of seven earthquakes ranging in magnitude from 6.2 to 7.0.

The [Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Metropolitan_Government_Building), built in 1991, is 48 stories tall and has endured 25 earthquakes ranging from 6.6 to 9.0, including six greater than 7.5.

The [Petronas Towers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petronas_Towers) are 1,483 feet tall (88 stories), and since their completion in 1996 have survived 53 earthquakes ranging in magnitude from 6.6 to 9.2.

Even right here in California, there are [countless tall buildings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_California) built throughout the state.

This is a solved problem.

If I support more housing density, does that make me a conservative? Isn't the progressive viewpoint to oppose new housing?

Here are some definitions straight out of the dictionary:

  • Conservative: *a person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes*
  • Progressive: *a person advocating or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas*
  • Liberal: *open to new behavior or opinions*

If someone is looking to keep a neighborhood as-is, believes it was perfect the day they arrived, and that proposed changes to it must be stopped, they're patently a conservative. Many people who were anti-establishment in the 1960s and 1970s turned conservative once they *became* the establishment. They just don't want to admit it to themselves.

Think of the people Bob Dylan was speaking to when he sang, *"Come gather ’round people / Wherever you roam / And admit that the waters / Around you have grown"* and *"Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call / Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall / For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled"* and *"Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command / Your old road is rapidly agin’ / Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand / For the times they are a-changin’"*. These people to whom he was singing, were they not conservatives? And do they not sound just like the voices that seek to obstruct and delay the construction of new housing throughout the city?

 

Why should someone who doesn't live in a neighborhood have any standing to advocate for more housing there?

If you take a look at [a map of all neighborhoods within a 30-minute commute of the city's downtown core](http://www.mapnificent.net/sanfrancisco/#/?lat0=37.793575045725184&lng0=-122.39584904847948&t0=30&lat=37.78027965816778&lng=-122.39602070985643&zoom=12), you can see that it covers 85% of the city, plus Oakland, Berkeley, Orinda, San Leandro and South San Francisco. All these places are catering to the same workers; they're all potential homes for people who work in downtown SF. In other words, their rental markets are all tied together; a person struggling to pay their rent any of the above neighborhoods will be impacted by what gets built in all the other ones.

Therefore, a person who lives in any of these places has a stake in what goes on in any of the other ones. And a person who doesn't live there, but *wants to*, has an even greater stake. Whether or not they get to fulfill their dream of living in the Bay Area depends on whether we build more housing.

New construction wouldn't look like the other houses around here

First off, would you really want to live in a "Little Boxes on the Hillside" world where all the buildings look the same?

But more importantly, do you really feel that your aesthetic preference is more important than someone else having a home?

Isn't it bad for the environment to bring more people to San Francisco?

If we prevent someone from moving to San Francisco, they don't evaporate. They end up living somewhere else, where they will almost certainly exert a greater negative impact on the environment than if we made a spot for them around here.

If we add more residents to San Francisco, won't we run out of water?

The average San Franciscan uses just [45.7 gallons of water per day, the lowest in all of California](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-residents-praised-for-using-least-water-in-5870159.php). And residents of **new** San Francisco buildings use even less than that, since modern building code mandates the strictest water-conservation standards.

To put that in perspective, California agriculture uses 23,000,000,000 gallons per day; if they reduced their usage by just 0.1% (in other words, to 99.9% of its current amount), it would free up enough water to cover more than 500,000 new San Franciscans.

And see the previous answer, too: People who don't get to live in San Francisco will move to another part of the state, and since every other part of the state uses more water than San Francisco, this will have a net effect of *increasing* the state's water consumption.

BARF receives money from people, so doesn't that mean their integrity is compromised?

[BARF does receive donations.](http://upstart.bizjournals.com/entrepreneurs/hot-shots/2015/03/30/pro-density-sfbarf-yelp-jeremy-stoppelman.html?page=all) This is not unusual; virtually every group involved in the San Francisco housing debate is donor-supported; here are links directly to their donation-solicitation pages:


Open Questions

 

 

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