Lol I have a friend in SF who complains about high house prices and wants increased development. When I said he should move to NYC he said its too big and crowded and he doesn't want to live with a family in an apt. Didn't even blink.
> other people will ride BART, which will reduce traffic for me so I can drive
> (I do hear BART has better ridership now)
Not just better ... It's literally bursting at it's 1970s-designed seams.
The culture around driving vs rapid transit access has changed dramatically in the Bay Area since that time. In those days, people who couldn't afford to drive (very poor) used mass transit, which is why people of means preferred to drive. Today, people pay for the privelege of _not_ having to drive to the workplace.
There's a lot of evidence that housing near good non-car transit is in higher demand than equivalent non-transit accessible housing.
For proof you need look no further than the price/sqft for housing within a few blocks of BART stations vs farther away:
"A condominium located within a half mile of BART is worth 15 percent more than one located
more than five miles from BART, all else being equal" [1]
Admittedly that's a study by BART themselves, but you can see the same pattern around the price of housing near tech company shuttle stops, which has in turn attracted the ire of anti-gentrification advocates.
> There's a lot of evidence that housing near good non-car transit is in higher demand than equivalent non-transit accessible housing.
Anyone paying attention to house prices knows this well. 1,000 sqft. bungalows near BART stations are going for 1.5mm, while 5 or more blocks away, they're a more 'reasonable' 1.1 or 1.2. The price difference is stark and easily observable.
What kills me isn't so much the lack of apartments in single-family home areas, it's the resistance to ideal apartment development projects. 1900 4th St. in Berkeley is a perfect example: it's high density, right by Cal Train, nearly commercial/shopping, and currently a parking lot that's poorly utilized. It's the perfect example of sustainable high-density development, yet the resistance has been withering. Not to mention the exploitation of Ohlone culture and history. It's despicable.
Actually BART is continuing its downward trend as has most mass transit in the US [1]. Ridership was down in 41 out of 50 cities just from last year. Even with increases in service areas many transit authorities did not see a good return on investment. A common method has been to reduce bus service to try to bolster rail only to end up losing the revenue from the bus riders. Many transit authorities have tens of billions in deferred maintenance that is catching up to them. NYC has notorious problems with both expansion and maintaining its current system with pension debt fast becoming the big bogey man.
Is he perhaps seeking a middle ground, where he wants more development of spacious luxury condos? I wouldn't want to live in a crappy little (and usually old) apartment either, but I do like new luxury-ish condos. Theoretically, it should be cheaper to buy such a condo than a single-family home in a location where land value is very high.
Apartments really suck for a lot of reasons: the rent goes way up every single year, forcing you to move out every year or two, because the management companies seek to maximize profit by screwing over existing renters, thinking they won't want to move. They're typically very poorly built, because they're not owned by the residents, so they're noisy. They're usually very pet-unfriendly. I could go on and on. Condos are almost always much nicer to live in, even though from the outside they look much the same. They do have their issues (crappy management at many of them, but at least in theory the mgmt is answerable to the owners and can be voted out), but there's big advantages to living in a condo over a single-family home in my experience: not needing to worry about landscaping, exterior maintenance, etc., various amenities (gym, etc.), and just convenience in general.
I don't live in SF (I live in DC), but it seems to me that what SF really needs is a lot more high-rise condos like what we have here in DC. And DC isn't nearly as "crowded" as NYC.
I think you're painting apartments with a very broad brush. My rent in NYC has increased by a total of $125 a month over the 6 years I've lived in the same apartment. The building was built in something like 1839, and it's quite solid by today's standards. There are no noise issues to speak of.
Only thing I really want is central AC, a modern innovation that New York has not seemed to have heard of.
"Luxury apartments" are usually a bit cheaper than any well-maintained condo from a century ago in my city. Cement/stone construction, thick, sound-isolating walls, coupled with foundations and architecture that has proven to survive vs yet another Amli/RealEstateChainBuilder company that puts up a tinderbox townhouse complex and charges a $100k premium for $5k in amenities.
I never said anything about townhouses, I'm talking about high-rise condos here. A high-rise by necessity is made of concrete and steel; you can't build a 15+ story building out of wood in most places.
There's a middle-ground between detached houses and apartment blocks, though. For whatever reason, the US seems very low on terraced houses in particular. Much denser than detached houses, but not apartments.
Absolutely. The secret of NYC density is transit. Nerds invariably think that you can force people to act against their own interests; they call this "NIMBYism", but it's just rational economic behavior.
You don't make a neighborhood dense by changing zoning. You make a neighborhood dense by building decent transit, and letting economics occur. The zoning changes will take care of themselves.
> You make a neighborhood dense by building decent transit
Ehh, people will fight tooth and nail to oppose development literally on top of public transit access. Look at the fierce opposition to MacArhtur Commons (which is getting built, thankfully!) at the MacArthur BART stop and at the opposition to any and all dense infill near the West Oakland BART stop. These are one and four stops from San Francisco, respectively...
OK, so you've pointed out projects that are being completed. What was your point?
There's always opposition, to everything. That's called "politics". But the long term trend is clear: when you build transit, density follows.
In any case, building transit (something that benefits existing residents) is a more successful long term approach than telling local voters that they're idiots for behaving rationally.
This is a similar sentiment I've heard from several other renters who live in San Francisco. They often cite the appeal of the city keeping its "feel" and fear they will have to deal with more transportation issues. As a one-year resident in San Francisco, I can appreciate the desire to keep the city the way it is. I feel like this opinion is often overlooked by those who cheer for more housing development.
