> >New construction should drive down the
> >market price of housing to the point that the non-rich can afford to move
> >into/stay in the city, while regulatory attempts to hold back rising real
> >estate values can only make a tiny dent for a subset of existing
> >residents.
>
> Apart from neoliberal (aka libertarian) dogma, what reason is there
> to believe this? Another alternative is subsidized cooperative housing.
Hello, Tom,
I am afraid that I must disagree with your whole outlook on this.
As I understand you, you argue for increased subsidised housing rather
than increased home building as a way to reduce the city's astronomical
rents and keep people employed in "rust belt" industries. You are
missing two facts here. First, subsidised housing (and other services)
are ultimately paid for by those who pay taxes. And the vast majority
of the taxes in San Francisco are paid by home owners and by
businesses. Renters pay essentially no taxes (except the sales tax on
cash purchases). In most American cities, home owners constitute
approximately two-thirds of the population, renters the rest. In San
Francisco, for historical reasons having to do with the "middle class"
prefering to live in suburbia, these figures are reversed. That is why
the employment tax is such an important part of San Francisco's tax
base.
Now, if you want to increase money for any survice, including subsidised
housing, you have to increase the city's income. The only major sources
of increased self-generated income are larger numbers of home-owners and
/ or larger numbers of employees of those businesses that pay employment
taxes (in practice, "big business"). Yes, the poor are suffering in San
Francisco. But, the solution is not necessarily to discourage home
ownership (as tenate activists are doing) -- San Francisco will have no
future if it remains a city of mostly renters in decaying housing
stock. It would make much more economic sense -- both to the city as a
whole and to individual residents -- to subsidise home ownership, rather
than rent as we do now through rent control. (Our household is a
perfect example of this. Our "rent" -- i.e., the mortgage -- is only
slightly more than we were paying in rent, but now we are paying
thousands of dollars into the general fund every year. When we were
renters, we paid essentially nothing into the general fund.)
There are exactly two ways to increase home ownership, and therefore the
city's tax base. That is to convert rental properties to households,
either by selling the home to the renter or by kicking the renter out
and selling it to some one else; or, to build more housing. Of these
two choices, obviously, the latter is the more humane course. (It is
also more economically advantageous to the city since a new house pays
far more additional taxes than an old rental house converted to a
market-rate home, where the land lord was paying some property taxes,
albeit way below the market rate.)
The second fact you are missing is that subsidised rent really is
hurting the poor. There are thousands of new units of housing being
built in the city today, and almost none of it is being built for rent.
It is all being built for ownership. Sure, you can call that greed.
But, ask yourself, if you owned property in the city, what are you going
to build on it? Under the present laws, I submit that you would go to
just about any lengths to avoid renting to anyone. And that, in fact,
is exactly what is happening.
There are no easy solutions here. Subsidised housing costs money, lots
of it. To build it, the city has to get more money. The only sources
are home owners and businesses. To subsidise housing, we need to
attract and keep more of both.
On the subject of "rust belt," why do you want to subsidise dead-end
jobs with no future? It makes far more sense to subsidise education, so
that people who can no longer "bend metal" for a living can learn to use
a computer. The world is changing, for better or worse, but in ways the
city has no direct control over. The city has to change with it, or,
ultimately, lose its tax base. There is no advantage to the city,
either economically or culturally, to try to preserve "rust belt"
industries.
Which is not to say that the city does not have a problem. The single
greatest long-term risk to our future that I see is the lost of artists,
to Oakland and elsewhere. Where the artists go is where the future is.
This city _must_ find some way to keep artists, and that means we must
find the money to subsidise _their_ rent (or, preferably, home
ownership). This may seem contradictory to what I said in the rest of
all this, but it's not. Those subsidies cost money, and that money has
to be raised somewhere, and also split amongst MUNI and the homeless and
all of the other needs. Again, that money can only come from increased
economic activity and increased home ownership. It all comes down to
building more housing -- which -- wait for it! -- is why we need the
Third Street rail line. [See, this did belong in Rescue MUNI!]
And, thanks for the statistics!
-- Donald
_________________________
Donald F. Robertson
San Francisco
donaldrf@hooked.net
Donald's Space Exploration page:
http://www.hooked.net/~donaldrf/index.html
The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually
we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of
inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to
reclaim a little more land. -- Thomas Huxley.