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How Urban Homeowners Rigged The Housing Market And Killed GDP Growth
Submitted by Daniel Drew via Dark-Bid.com,
Homeownership has been one of the most significant issues in recent financial history. It first came to the forefront in 2002, when President George W. Bush spoke about the importance of homeownership and the American Dream. He announced policies like the American Dream Downpayment Initiative, which would pay the down payment for poor people. The resulting surge in homeownership pushed housing prices to unsustainable levels, and then it all came crashing down in 2008 in one giant national margin call. When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson gave Bush the tap on the shoulder, he wondered, "How did we get here?" Now, seven years later, first-time urban home buyers are asking the same question.
If you have ever looked at real estate prices in San Francisco, you probably wondered if there were some kind of typo in the listing price. The median sales price of a home in San Francisco is $1.1 million.
These aren't mansions either. The median price per square foot is $958, which means that $1.1 million will get you a place that's only 1,150 square feet. This particular home is 127 years old.
In the rest of the country, the median sales price is $208,000, and the median price per square foot is $125.
The median price per square foot in San Francisco is 7.6 times higher than the rest of the United States. As your real estate agent will tell you, it's all about location. But the last time I checked, the people in San Francisco aren't shitting gold, there's no fountain of youth in Golden Gate Park, and there are no Everlasting Gobstoppers downtown.
What could possibly make San Francisco 7.6 times more valuable than the rest of the country? While they are the location of the booming tech industry, that doesn't explain the prolonged housing shortage. In the "free market," if there is such a thing, shortages are corrected as suppliers respond to higher prices. However, as usual, the free market turns out to be nothing more than a fantasy. The best description of a free market was provided by Matthew McConaughey's character in The Wolf of Wall Street:
It's all a fugazi. Do you know what a fugazi is? Fugayzi, fugazi, it's a wazie, it's a woosie, it's...(whistles)... fairy dust. It doesn't exist. It's never landed. It is no matter. It's not on the elemental chart. It's not fuckin' real.
Take a look at San Francisco's zoning map, and ask yourself if that is what a free market looks like.
And if you were wondering what all those yellow squares were, this explains it:
As you can see, the entire city has been designated as a perpetual single-unit metropolis, and with water on three sides, the sprawl potential is limited. After seeing this, it's no surprise that houses from the 19th century cost $1 million.
The phenomenon of homeowners objecting to new development is called NIMBYism, which stands for "Not In My Back Yard." The premise behind this is that homeowners don't want to risk any changes that could adversely affect their living space or the value of their property. There seems to be a legitimate case for this. Professor William A. Fischel of Dartmouth College elaborates on this situation in his paper about NIMBYism. For the average American, a home is their most valuable asset, and they are usually highly leveraged in it with a long-term mortgage. Unlike billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, the average homeowner cannot short the ABX mortgage index to hedge the risk of their home value depreciating. Without any kind of price insurance, it's only natural they would fear a devaluation. Consequently, they will do anything they can to mitigate the risk, however small it may be.
However, it's easy to see another motive behind NIMBYism: greed. As an investor of a highly leveraged asset, the average homeowner has every reason to inflate the price of their home as much as they can. You may not care about environmentalism, the skyline, or urban planning, but if halting new development will limit the supply of homes and boost your property value, you will definitely attend the local city council meeting to "voice your concern." This is not any different than an activist hedge fund manager clamoring for board seats.
It's easy to dismiss this as a local issue, but a recent study by Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti showed that these kinds of housing restrictions in high productivity cities like New York, San Francisco, and San Jose are reducing GDP by 9.5%. To put that into perspective, consider that U.S. GDP is $17 trillion. That means eliminating NIMBYism would boost GDP by $1.6 trillion. That's more than the entire GDP of Spain.
NIMBYism also contributes to inequality. In response to Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Matthew Rognlie, a 26-year-old graduate student at MIT, wrote a paper called "Deciphering the fall and rise in the net capital share." The Economist summarized the paper as follows:
Surging house prices are almost entirely responsible for growing returns on capital...Policy-makers should deal with the planning regulations and NIMBYism that inhibit housebuilding and which allow homeowners to capture super-normal returns on their investments.
NIMBYism perpetuates the two-class society that we see today. As Professor Fischel noted, "Most of the labor demand increase was manifested as higher nominal wages instead of higher employment." In other words, a San Francisco tech job is good work if you can get it, but most people can't. You are either one of the few highly-paid workers, or you're out of a job - possibly even homeless. Robert Aguirre, a 60-year-old electrical engineer, went from being the owner of a successful tech firm to living in a tent in "The Jungle," a homeless enclave in San Jose. The NIMBYs eventually shut down the encampment.
Finding a way to combat NIMBYism is not easy. I don't want to deny the importance of homeownership. However, inflating home values like the Federal Reserve inflates the stock market ruins people's lives. To help homeowners with legitimate fears about property depreciation, perhaps they should be given access to mortgage indices like the ABX, or an index tailored for their local area. It could just be one of those things people check off their list: liability insurance, fire insurance, and price insurance. This wouldn't solve the problem by itself. Legislation at a higher level than the municipal authority would be required. Undoubtedly, this would incite anger about government meddling, but I don't see any other option to stop the NIMBYs and their ridiculous objections to development. For now, millennials are renting at a higher rate than ever before, but if they ever start buying en masse, they could provide considerable political support for new anti-NIMBY legislation.
The NIMBYs are trying to corner the housing market, but all monopolies eventually end.
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$1 million plus shithole in a shithole where theres hardly any water lol....
People have been protecting their interest since day one. We do in subdividsions with covenants. This has nothing to do with inequality unless you consider any one with more or less money than you an unequal. Maybe they earned it, maybe you did? I hate the smell of socialism.
With 65% buying home with cash there is little chance mortage lending will help improve interest on savings even if the Fed raises rates, no lending, no profit, no interest paid on savings. That what the flood of $$$ from the Fed has done to savers rates for years come.
You have the right to buy whatever you can AFFORD. If you can only afford to buy in a 'cheap' neighborhood (which is cheap BECAUSE it's farther from work, near the rail line and refinery and has higher crime rates), then you save up until you can live somewhere 'better'. But saying everyone has the 'right' to live ANYWHERE in 'affordable' housing is BS.
I lived in real slums when in college - in buildings filled with roaches because that's what I could AFFORD. I lived in an apartment in the Bronx when first married because it was close to mass transit and affordable. I later renovated a crappy two famliy house place in the neighborhood I grew up in (and was none too happy with) later and used the gain in value to buy a place in a really nice neighborhood (at the bottom of the housing market) - again a 'fixer-upper.' We put off having kids for a dozen years and worked our tails off to save (back when you needed 20% down). I was in my late 30's when we bought this place.
Sorry but i do NOT want the kid that lived next door with his Camaro race car living next to me HERE - or the people in the Bronx that blasted their radios and dropped their trash out 6 floor windows because they were too lazy to take it down to the basement. I do NOT want my neighbors having someone in an illegal basement apartment next door with all their 30 somethign kids living home with the front yard paved over for their cars. I paid MORE and pay more taxes to get away from that.
Aspiring to DO BETTER and live in a BETTER place drives people to work harder and do better. Anyone has the RIGHT to buy what they can afford - and believe me there are far too many self centered Manhattan types moving to the burbs who you'd rather NOT have as neighbors but they can afford to buy and are driving up prices because they don't want to raise kids in Manhattan (they'll be divorced before the kids are out of high school and the house will be sold right after the last kid graduates). Different kind of 'annoyng' neighbors but they are farther away and not as blatantly annpying as neighbors in the old neighborhoods.
The Feds are suing Westchester County for not doing more to bjuild 'affordable' housing. First - Pretty much ANY buildable land in Westchester has been built on - and has been built on for decades.
Second, there is a LOT of housing in Westchester - in ALL price ranges. Tons of people WANT to live in places like Scarsdale or Bronxville but can't afford to do so. You can bet that those communities are hardly going to be building 'affordable' housing. Yeah, they're expensive - far more than I could afford or woud be willing to pay. At the same time in places like Mount Vernon and Yonkers there are plenty of houses sitting burned out and vacant but nobody really WANTS to live in those neighborhoods. But they're far more 'affordable'.
You cannot FORCE 'equality'. Having said that, overall conditions in varied communities SHOULD be more equal but the taxes paid vary widely - which is one of the reasons some places ARE 'better' than others. BUT if I'm willing to pay far more than I was paying where I used to live for the benefits of living where I am, why should anyone else pay far LESS for the same?
You're entitled to the opportunity to live in 'affordable' housing BUT that housing will be priced according to various factors affecting its desirability. Pay more and you get a 'nicer' neighborhood. Pay less and maybe you live farther away, in a less pictureesque place that's smaller and older. You have 'affordable' McMansions in places far from jobs in places people don't want to live - or places where there are no jobs - while you have expensive one room condos in high demand places like NYC and SF.
Supply and demand...... when you interfere with it by imposing artificial constraints - like rent control in NYC - you make the situation WORSE. Prices are higher in places like SF and NYC BECAUSE there's a high demand. Yeah you've got foreign demand to park hot money at the high end but much of the market is driven by people working in those places who are well paid and willing to pay to live in those places. I could buy a place by my brother in the boonies of NC for far less but there's literally nothign to do there, the schools suck and not many places to work if you're not raising pigs, drowing tobacco or working in one of the few factories left in the area. NONE of the available options pay all that well. Hence, my brother's house cost what my downpayment was and his taxes are 1/10 of mine. Nonetheless, I prefer to be where I am and am willing to pay the price. At the same time it's unlikely I will stay here after retiring - choosing to moove somehwere less expensive to live (many others have already left for less expensive adjacent communities now that their kids are out of high school).
People make rational ECONOMIC CHOICES - and while trying to get 'more' for less is everyone's goal, it doesn't happen very often unless outside powers FORCE inequality onto what had been a 'free market'.
Blackrock Shithole built on propaganda campaigns...America (all of it) is for sale, didn't you hear?
Blackrock I believe financed that Berkeley apartment, with CALPERS funds I bet
A fairy tale price for a house in Fairy Land. What's not to love?
"But the last time I checked, the people in San Francisco aren't shitting gold"
LOL. Not gold, rainbow colored condoms.
The folks across the bridge in Ookland have teeth made of gold if that's any indication.
Don't fret people! Obama's "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" Rule will even out the value discrepancy!
Yes, it was Urban Homeowners and not the Bagel Medici's own Greenspan who kept the prime rate lower than the rate of inflation on a perpetual basis. Gotcha.
NIMBYs have shit on Greenspan, Bernanke, Fannie/Freddie and the FHA. Housing inflation is a monetary phenomenon pure and simple. To ascribe it to anything else is a fools errand. Whether through enabling "exotic" loan products or fueling the tech bubble which is the only reason those few that can afford million dollar shacks have such incomes, the FED is ultimately responsible.
"Housing inflation is a monetary phenomenon pure and simple."
And the entire INTENTION of the policy!
"Housing inflation is a [counterfeiting] phenomenon pure and simple."
"Wealth effect"
...And I thought 'urban' was liberal 'dog whistle' code for 'negroes?'
So someone wants to live in a sixty floor tower in earthquake central? San Fran is screwed up in many ways, but real interest rates or the next big one will bring it back down to earth.
Millennials ever started to buy homes...MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh man this is a great afternoon joke.
What's wrong with cardboard, you arrogant PRICK?!
this is a very important issue and needs to be pushed bigtime
By whom?
the west coast equivalent of manhattan island
left coast.
Actually, SF seems much more expensive. In NY properties are being built like mad. Probably keeps the rents down at least a little.
Yes, price insurance, so that the government can bail out another insurance program that can't pay out when it matters.
What are rents like in San Fran?
I always assumed that because the tech industry had higher paying jobs that investors were buying properties to rent to even lower level entry-level tech employees. Then it comes to one investor just selling to another at a higher price and thus raising the cost of rent. Also people like Mark Zuckerburg just buying all the houses around him for privacy and that creates a "buy the property next to the property" of people like Zuckerburg...and with the Nasdaq at all time highs there must be quite a few rich techies right now.
So what are the prices for rent in San Fran?
http://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-ca/apartments/
$5000 a month + location location...
Yeah so this is a no brainer...
Oh you work at facebook? google? apple, yahoo, etc? Ok...well I'm going to buy as many places as I can and charge whatever I want for rent. You get a bunch of investors thinking like this then yeah this makes complete sense. Add in a bubble in tech stocks plus a few billionaires and abra kadabra.
Musical chairs. As soon as prices exceed what people in the tech space can afford for either rent or housing then this thing deflates.
Some professor at Dartmouth can call it NIMBYism or whatever the fuck he wants. It's a bubble.
But building empty cities promotes GDP growth!!!!
It's the gays, double triple quadruple incomes, urban utopia
And yet they still complain they don't have the same "rights" as the rest of us.
I say if they want to be miserable like married people that's their business. Gay marriage can only lead to one thing: gay divorce.
'7.6'...?
Hmmm...
Wow, how could taxpayers not want broke, homelss people living in a tend next door? Enough cultural marxism already
san francisco has always been fucked up. my last visit 24370854875678465 homeless hit me up for money in the 2 days I was there
And they'll practically grab the cigarette buts right out of your hand right before you flick it. Wingnuts on every corner, keeps the city from blowing out to sea.
If there was such a thing as a free market, and those types of prices were possible, then we'd see developers buying less valuable properties and building towards the sky.
But we do not.
I am curious though. What's the school property tax on a 1.1 million 1000 square foot property? The school system must be in hog heaven trying to spend those dollars.
SF taxes depend on when you bought, 1.14% of the price paid unless* unless you own prior to 1979 (prop 13) in which case it's based on the assessment of 1975+2% creep for inflation, most held homes in SF would be valued at 30k. (30000X1.140% or < $400) or if you just bought $1M home $11400/year.
1.1mil will get you a starter single family detached house on the "wrong side of the tracks" in Vancouver:
The 6 biggest Canadian cities chart of SFD prices: http://www.chpc.biz/6-canadian-metros.html
Well Daniel,
How bout we build some Section 8 around the 4 sides of your house for the sake of equality?
Then throw in a dose of liberty & fraternity. eh?
Then some gun control atop that.
Secction 8 in San Francisco, it's called the "Tenderloin". You can forget taking a healthy stroll through that neighborhood, and the "Mission". Neither wants you there.
Economic success for some,has negative impacts ,especially in major urban centres in the whole world not just San Francisco. The poor or about to be poor due to high rents are forced to leave to more affordable pastures.Market economy at work for you.
"To help homeowners with legitimate fears about property depreciation, perhaps they should be given access to mortgage indices like the ABX, or an index tailored for their local area. It could just be one of those things people check off their list: liability insurance, fire insurance, and price insurance."
Given the inflationary predilections of Fed governors EVERYWHERE, what idiot financial institution would take the other side of this???
Right!
A new insurance industry! So not only can we pay for the crime and shabbiness and other disadvantages of having Section 8 housing move in next door to us, we can help support a brand new insurance industry.
In Detroit $1.3 gets you the largest mansion in the city.
“Own a part of Detroit history! The former Berry Gordy, Jr Motown Mansion has undergone an award-winning restoration by its current owner. Built in 1917 and situated on a lush 2.2 acre lot, this Italian Renaissance Revival mansion is an architectural marvel. Property includes a 10,500 sq ft primary residence and adjoining 4,400 sq ft pool house. The main residence boasts 10 bedrooms, 5 full and 4 half baths plus 4 fireplaces.”
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/918-W-Boston-Blvd_Detro...
What's the problem?
They couldn't sell them for a million dollars apiece if SOMEONE weren't buying them for a million dollars apiece.
And if they are worried about the prices going down, then so what? If I buy something for $10, and the price goes up to $99, and then the price goes back down to $10, I haven't lost anything.
Proprty Rights!! Respect them. Civil Rights!! Protect them. Democracy!! Preserve it.
IF....a democratically-elected legislature were to remove the restrictions as to what type of housing could be built on private property, and then applied the same criteria to all properties within its jurisdiction in a uniform and universal way, the ability of property owners, to maintain scarcity and exclusivity regarding nearby properties which they do not personally own, would be over.
I lived briefly in the San Francisco area in 1970. Rents were cheap. The city was just as charming as it is today, and a lot friendlier. If the rents were once again cheap as they were then, the city would still be a great place to live.
Overpopulation.
It is called,"supply and demand" in case anyone forgot.
Rich people have to put that QE to work, now that artwork has ballooned.
Greed is a moral judgement, the opposite of deserve. Please don't talk about greed, or who deserves what.
Focus on freedom - the transfer of power back from the government to the people.
It would be too kind to call this writer a Communist. For it is even an excessive argument that private property does not belong to its owner, it belongs not only to the public but to specific segments of the population, the non-producers or the recently arrived, or the ninjas, or the majority minorities, or to whomever else social engineer Daniel Drew has in mind.
IOW, you didn’t build that, that’s not your labor that purchased that property; that belongs to all of us. And, by golly, we are going to take it.
This is Communism. If you don't want me to have my backyard, then buy it. Otherwise, go back to your Communist Party meeting and leave us alone.
These Dark-Bid articles are even worse than the neocon TheDiplomat series that ZH ran a while back.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-04/guest-post-roadmap-american-gra...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-05/guest-post-roadmap-american-gra...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-15/guest-post-roadmap-american-gra...
I think it's just one of the Tylers trying to screw with us.
"but a recent study by Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti showed that these kinds of housing restrictions in high productivity cities like New York, San Francisco, and San Jose are reducing GDP by 9.5%. To put that into perspective, consider that U.S. GDP is $17 trillion. That means eliminating NIMBYism would boost GDP by $1.6 trillion. That's more than the entire GDP of Spain."
It's fucking fairy dust.
Fugazi if you will.
Exactly. In its annual report on population and housing stock, the California Department of Finance reports that in 2014, Silicon Valley’s San Jose (population 1.02 million) increased its housing stock by 378 new single-family homes and 4,071 multifamily units.
The demographics of San Jose show that in 2010 it was 28.7% white, 32% Asian and 33.2% Hispanic.
Here is the density rank of west coast cities according to CityData.com:
1) San Francisco-17,935 persons per square mile
2) Berkeley-11,164
3) Los Angeles-8281
4) Seattle-7779
5) Oakland- 7247
6) San Jose-5710
7) Sacramento- 4937
8) Portland-4537
9) San Diego-4180.
According to CityData.com, some of these cities are even less dense than the suburbia that surrounds them such as Portland that is less dense than most of its suburbs:
1) Aloha -6702 persons per square mile
2) Cornelius- 6421
3) Happy Valley- 6047
4) Beaverton-5731
http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_28030664/report-san-jose-california-population-2014
"Surging house prices are almost entirely responsible for growing returns on capital...Policy-makers should deal with the planning regulations and NIMBYism that inhibit housebuilding and which allow homeowners to capture super-normal returns on their investments"
Huh?
When you develop an inflationary economy it systematically transfers wealth away from the productive and the savers to the borrowers. This requires ever-more, ever-larger borrowers, until the interest payments consume all discretionary income...at which point the whole shebang collapses.
But in the process, it distorts the economy by artificially elevating demand for all things that can be bought on credit...and hence raising the prices for them.
What is the thing most commonly of all bought on credit? The thing for which the very first loans were available?
REAL ESTATE.
This article is a case of yet another ivory-tower intellectual castigating unavoidable human nature (NIMBYism, causing a restriction in supply) for his systematic, intentional, and DISCRETIONARY, choice of monetary theories.
You can't castigate gravity for ruining your brick-airplane-design. Gravity and human-value-conservative behavior are non-replaceable features of reality.
Keynesian and Monetarist credit and currency theory are entirely replaceable...and in the course of human history, quite new. They are also very noticably crashing to the ground like a brick airplane.
Deal with it.
Professor Fischel’s radical attack on private property rights is somewhat curious…until one digs deeper into to who Fischel really is. One of his non-scholarly positions is the chairman of the Hanover Zoning Board (Dartmouth University, Hanover, New Hampshire).
At a Hanover Planning Board meeting in 1995 when angry residents of Occom Ridge Road again presented their case against the proposed location of the Center for Jewish Life at Dartmouth, Fischel, an adamant supporter of the Center, stepped down from the zoning process but forcefully made known his opinions that the citizens’ research in opposing the Center was flawed.
In the final analysis the Jewish center was approved by the Board on the primarily residential street with the condition that the planners expand parking.
According to The Dartmouth in “Residents oppose new Jewish center”:
"The [Occom Ridge] association has protested the Center’s site since Nov. 1993, complaining about parking size and placement, traffic access and safety, scope of services and size-design of building. ...
"The citizen’s group estimates a 200 percent increase in Jewish worship attendance in the first decade after the Center’s completion. Officer said those figures are based on changes in church attendance in the Upper Valley. …
"Opponents of the Center have cited the 220-seat auditorium in the building’s blueprint as evidence it will attract too many people from beyond the Dartmouth community to be appropriate for the Occom Ridge location."
http://thedartmouth.com/1995/01/19/residents-oppose-new-jewish-center/
this story is bullshit. there is lots of housing in SF. the problem is that it is vacant. go over towrds chinatown. building after building has been vacant for 25 years. all held in trusts. the dust is an inch thick on some of these building. there are lots of vacant stuff in the marina also. the problem isnt lack of housing but the rich stock piling assets. i bet i could find 20 empty buildings in NYC also.
SF is land limited but that isnt the real issue........
funny, zerohedge has a beef with private detached single family homes and not property owned by the government and excluded for human use or individual ownership, SF is tiny when compared to all the "open space" excluded from development in the SF area.
Exhibit A notice map "open space" http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/google_map_San_Jose_CA.htm
Most of overpriced CA is full of open space , privately owned and excluded from use by the state, without question or compensation.
Development is only allowed by the anointed few in CA. (unlike in Texas)
Bank Credit as money comes into being typically against FIRE. Finance, insurance, and real estate are responsible for about 70% of the “bank credit” money supply.
The new credit then points at housing, causing asset inflation. The debt instrument mortgage came into being against housing, and therefore the credit must point at housing. QE since has held bond prices high/interest rates low, which then makes new credit loans cheap. QE action adds support to already bubbled housing, in what Bernanke called a “wealth effect.”
When observing patterns of land locked areas, those areas bubbled in price the most. NO new supply of housing stock is easily available in land locked areas. Supply and Demand is sticky as Supply may come on slowly with new money as demand. Areas with available land eventually have new supply that will help bring prices back down.
Those areas that have shifted the tax burden off of land and onto labor via income taxes will also have bubbles. A land tax helps dampen price bidding to get a new loan. During bidding process, economic surplus is passed on to banker, and this also causes general price rise as labor has to recover their costs; they recover their costs by pricing labor and services higher. Of course, banker doesn’t give a damn, as he is in the game only for the usury, and the hell with price inflation.
Prop 13 has maximum property tax rate of 1%, and in San Fran total rate is only 1.14%.
http://www.sanfranciscorealestatebrain.com/buying-selling-real-estate/property-tax-rates-san-francisco
In California, If your income range is between $47,056 and $1,000,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 9.3%.
(Note lack of steps in income tax, thus punishing the middle class.)
In greater Austin, Texas area, property tax rate is 2.5 to 3%. There is no income tax.
In Texas, land is available; hence less of a bubble and property tax further dampens credit bubbles. Also, illegal aliens have to pay some of their way in apartment rental prices; landlords pass on their costs to their renters, including land tax cost.
Given a banker credit system, Californians with their high income taxes and low land taxes are engaging in junk economics, and are paying the price.
The low land taxes will also encourage absentee landlords, as this is a rentier mechanism that allowed a landed gentry in Feudal Europe
With regards to GDP growth, housing bubbles are counted as increase in GDP on NIPA statements (National Income and Product Accounts). This is crazy of course, as the housing stock really didn’t become more valuable, it only had more money chasing it.
I read this several times. Perhaps I don't understand it, but it seemed to me an excellent example of COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA. It seemed to me to imply: "Private homeowners are greedy no-goods AND they are decreasing GDP 9.5%, which might be why you haven't got hired yet. WE, on the other hand, MIGHT be able to increase GDP, and then you MIGHT be able to get a job, IF you TRUST US FIRST to dismantle YOUR private property rights FIRST."
Well, I could be convinced to give up NIMBYism if I didn't have to pay overly leveraged prices for a house that is inflated by non-resident investors (a bigger problem where I live in Vancouver Canada than San Fran).
By the way, Vancouver Canada doesn't really have much NIMBYism. The Chinese are paying such high prices that nice homes in places like Oakridge (high end shopping mall) or across from one of the city's crown jewels of parks, Queen Elizabeth, are being assembled by the block. Some houses are less than 10 years old and probably sold north of $3m (per house).
http://www.oakridge2025.ca/news
http://vancouver.ca/files/cov/Cambie-Corridor-Plan.pdf
Yet land assemblers bought entire blocks.
Then there are the newly allowed laneway (carriage) homes which are hard to develop as there is no subdivision yet so the homeowner can't leverage the plot of land that the laneway house sits on. This is about to change.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how to take a once-sleepy village (according to Li Ka Shing's son Victor Li) to a crowded metropolis.
Vancouver planners expect population to double from current 2m to 4m over 25 years.
Most demand will come from Chinese (capital flight).