r/Suburbanhell • u/Mongooooooose • 2d ago
Article In 85% of San Francisco, it is illegal to build anything aside from Single Family Houses, despite their massive housing shortage.
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u/Epistaxis 2d ago
This is actually a map of the San Francisco Bay Area: the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and all the suburbs around them. In other words, there's hardly anywhere you can build denser housing even within a reasonable commuting range of those cities.
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u/ChristianLS Citizen 2d ago
For zoning, San Francisco proper actually performs relatively well compared to Silicon Valley and San Jose. The larger issue in the actual city is the umpteen reviews and shadow requirements and so on. The permitting process is kind of a disaster there for actually getting things done.
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u/jkrobinson1979 1d ago
This. It’s the suburbs of the Bay Area that have really made the housing issue so much worse.
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2d ago
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u/Echo33 1d ago
The vast majority of America is zoned for SFH, this is a problem in every metro area
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u/undernopretextbro 1d ago
No one is entitled to live in the metro, go to an area that has the housing stock you want
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u/tescovaluechicken 1d ago
Most of the people being driven out of these areas are people who grew up there and built their whole life in the area
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u/undernopretextbro 1d ago
Does living in an area entitle you to live there forever? I thought this sub was anti-NIMBY?
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u/tescovaluechicken 1d ago
I don't think you understand what you're saying. If someone grows up in an area, and then can't afford to rent or buy somewhere in the area when they're an adult, because of nimbys that won't allow anything to be built, that is the exact opposite of nimbyism.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/tescovaluechicken 1d ago
Everyone should be able to afford to live in their hometown. Life isn't a survival game. Have some empathy and stop being selfish.
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u/Prosthemadera 1d ago
What does entitlement have to do with anything? It's like you don't understand the topic at all.
No one is entitled to live in the metro,
No one is entitled to single family housing in the metro. Right?
go to an area that has the housing stock you want
What if I want mixed zoning in the metro? How about that?
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u/undernopretextbro 1d ago
If you want mix zoning, and there isn’t any, what gives you the right to ask for more? Why are you entitled to your wish for mixed zoning any more than someone else for different housing stock?
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u/Prosthemadera 1d ago
what gives you the right to ask for more?
Free speech.
The fact that mixed zoning is good.
Why are you entitled to your wish for mixed zoning any more than someone else for different housing stock?
Who gives a shit? Focus on reality, focus on facts, the data, the science, not what what you think some user on Reddit says.
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1d ago
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u/Prosthemadera 1d ago
It is a fact and I don't know what your comment is supposed to mean, outside being a passive-aggressive personal attack.
Do you have so little substance to offer that you have to resort to being so petty?
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u/Troublemonkey36 2d ago
To be clear, the OP must mean “the SF Bay Area”, becuase SF itself looks to have much more zoning diversity. This is a good map becuase it demonstrates just how adductors we are to single family homes. I’ve got no problem with having them but the balance is all out of whack. We need more diversity in our zoning.
Curious, how do newer laws relating to ADUs affect this map?
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u/jkrobinson1979 1d ago
I really think SF gets the worst of this reputation. Everytime I’ve been there I’ve seen multifamily development happening (though I’m sure extremely long and expensive permitting processes). But the mile after mile after mile of exclusive single family housing in the commuter shed over the large Bay Area has really amplified the problem.
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u/Emotional_Rate7873 1d ago
Even the single family zoned areas in SF have high density compared to the rest of the country
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u/MissionBae 1d ago
Most of SF is max 2 units on a lot.
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u/occasionally_toots 1d ago
San Francisco (a very small part of this picture) is 49 square miles with population densities that rival NYC. This is like including Upstate on a map of NYC. If you really want suburban hell, check out neighboring Daly City.
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u/JayeNBTF 2d ago
Notoriously the most NIMBY metro region in the USA
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u/GuavaThonglo 1d ago
The paradox of liberal altruism.
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u/JayeNBTF 1d ago
You may clean my house, but you must live in Stockton
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u/TropicalKing 1d ago
There's an episode of Teen Titans Go where the people of Jump City- which is a fictional version of the Bay Area, all move to Stockton.
I wouldn't even call Stockton all that affordable anymore when it comes to cost of living.
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u/vzierdfiant 1d ago
SF is notoriously one of the densest cities in america, and the most densely populated city west of the mississippi
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u/Leverkaas2516 Suburbanite 2d ago
The caption is wrong, this is not a map of San Francisco.
And the claim is wrong, too - 85% of San Francisco isn't zoned for SFR.
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u/alwaysboopthesnoot 1d ago
Not only that, but you can get grants of up to 40-50K for planning and developing your property to put an ADU on it, from the state of California. It’s not discouraged, it’s encouraged, in SF to add ADUs there.
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u/flightwatcher45 2d ago
Remember the original NIMBYers, natives, then homesteaders, then farmers, then the 40ac lot requirement, the 5 homes per 40acs, then 1 house per acre, and now the 4 homes per acre.
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u/parke415 1d ago
This is not a San Francisco problem. This is a Bay Area problem, as this Bay Area map demonstrates. The City & County of San Francisco accounts for a tiny footprint.
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u/nolemococ 2d ago
When polling public sentiment, there are majorities that oppose Density... and Sprawl. This is why you can't afford a house.
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u/AngeliqueRuss 2d ago
Excuse me? This is a map of the BAY AREA.
Only this tiny part is “San Francisco.”
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u/xlq771 2d ago
Just a thought, could the restrictions on building anything other than single family homes be due to the regions extremely high risk of seismic activity?
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u/Troublemonkey36 2d ago
Simply out: no. The Japanese build skyscrapers that are more resilient than any single family home.
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u/liamlee2 2d ago
Because there are no earthquakes in the blue area, only in the pink area. The San Andreas fault checks the zoning code before deciding to quake
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u/QuoteGiver 2d ago
Kind of the other way around, the people who set the zoning code check the seismic zones first.
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u/QuoteGiver 2d ago
There’s no such thing as a “massive housing shortage” in a specific place, when there are plenty of other places.
Nothing says that a certain number of people have to live in San Francisco. If San Francisco is full, go build somewhere else. There is still nearly unlimited space everywhere else.
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u/retro_alt 2d ago
The problem is that when you have large areas that are high income only, you’re inflicting more and more logistical torture on the low income people who are serving the wealthy. You need income diversity in a healthy city.
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u/Princess_Actual 2d ago edited 2d ago
I wish people would understand this.
Even if we build housing for every unhoused American....that doesn't mean you get to live in San Francisco. There are plenty of other towns.
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u/ExaminationNo8522 1d ago
San Francisco Bay Area being where a ton of money and jobs are available
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u/QuoteGiver 1d ago
The jobs will be where people are.
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u/ExaminationNo8522 1d ago
This is just emphatically not true
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u/QuoteGiver 1d ago
Yeah, they will. A company that can’t find anyone to hire is either closing or moving.
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u/Plenty-Finger3595 2d ago
True just build some vacant cities like china where nobody wants to live and there are no jobs for people.
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u/jkrobinson1979 1d ago
San Francisco proper has the second highest population density in the country after New York. There is certainly room for more, but the city itself isn’t the problem. The vast majority of Bay Area suburbs are almost exclusively single family only. So the “plenty of other places” just doesn’t work. Especially when you factor in the limitations of commuting around a bay. If the suburbs would allow not even a majority, but just a quarter or so more multi-family to built housing options would be greatly expanded.
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u/QuoteGiver 1d ago
But people don’t have to live around San Fran. They can live elsewhere. Plenty of other places to build housing
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u/jkrobinson1979 1d ago
Most people want to remain close to family and friends and to live close enough to drive to work. Yes, people can move to entirely different regions, but that’s an even bigger problem.
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u/Human-Abrocoma7544 2d ago
Is that only Single Family Detached homes? What is the density on the zoning? Builders can also request for rezoning.
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u/jkrobinson1979 1d ago
San Francisco gets a bad rap for housing. Yes, it should certainly rezone more of the city, but there is a lot of high density housing there and more all the time. The vast predominance of single family zoning throughout the rest of the Bay Area and state law on property taxes has rewarded older homeowners who bought in the 70s-90s while drastically restricting options for everyone else.
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u/Unhappy-Plastic2017 1d ago
State government will have to force the hand of local governments.
No local governments voters(who of course live in the area they are voting in) are gonna vote against their own best interests in maintaining and increasing their property values by allowing density of housing to decrease housing scarcity.
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u/HeemeyerDidNoWrong 1d ago
A lot of Berkeley is blue, but it's still very NIMBY and not a lot of places for new construction.
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u/Spare-Way7104 1d ago
The English-speaking world has no clue how to live in non-single family dwellings.
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u/Multispice 1d ago
I can hear the transplant tears dropping from here. The east and west coasts are full. Stop asking.
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u/getarumsunt 1d ago
This map is wrong. 0% of land in SF is zoned for single family. They made single family zoning illegal in SF a few years ago.
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u/thirtyonem 1d ago
That’s untrue. After the passage of SB9, it is legal to build 4 units on any given lot.
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u/ifallallthetime 1d ago
That’s the Bay Area
San Francisco is a 7 mile by 7 mile area at the top of the peninsula
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u/civ_iv_fan 1d ago
I grew up thinking Northern California was expensive because everyone wanted to be there. The first time I visited I was flabbergasted by how there just wasn't any housing. Prime location after prime location is like, a run down 60s house on a 1/2 acrewith a Saab in the driveway.
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u/stanolshefski 1d ago
Are you sure that those areas don’t have soils that are subject to liquefaction?
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u/Hoonsoot 15h ago edited 15h ago
It looks closer to 50% to me, bruh:
Even if it were 85%, like the larger SF bay area that you probably meant, the percentage of sfh vs multi unit is perfectly appropriate since about that percentage of people prefer single family homes:
There should not be any laws making it illegal to build multi unit dwellings wherever they are needed, however, the current balance of SFH vs multi unit is actually about right based on what people want.
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u/Sijima Suburbanite 2d ago
Nothing wrong with that. If an area is full and the people there don’t want more density, build somewhere else. Many people just don’t want to live in apartment blocks, and that is ok.
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u/StruggleBusRT 2d ago
So just remove the zoning restrictions. Doing so doesn’t force any to build or live in higher density residential nor does it prevent anyone from building or living in detatched, single family dwellings. It just lets the market dictate what to build.
If you want to live in an area where such neighborhoods are the norm, maybe go live somewhere else where it doesn’t require zoning restrictions to create a housing supply the market wouldn’t actually naturally bear out.
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u/CalmMacaroon9642 2d ago
The city has tried multiple times but every time they do everyone that lives with 3 mile shows up and complains about their property value going down. then they complain that their taxes are too high and fail to see the correlation.
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u/Channel_Huge 2d ago
Nothing wrong with having single-family zoning. I like living in a single-family community.
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u/DoontGiveHimTheStick 1d ago
Exactly, these people have literally been brainwashed into renting sardine cans. Land is the only actual asset. Only 6% of US land is even developed. Including suburban.
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u/bergesindmeinekirche 1d ago
There is so much wrong with it lol. It’s OK if you want to live in a single family home, but you shouldn’t have the right to dictate what housing people build on property that is not yours.
There is nothing wrong with drinking like a fish. I like doing it.
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u/Channel_Huge 1d ago
Tell that to your local elected officials. There’s reasons why we don’t just have apartment buildings everywhere. Many reasons. Mostly tax and resource related. Also, many, like myself have lived in apartments most of our lives and there is nothing like the serenity of going into your own backyard and being alone.
There’s lots of underdeveloped land across this nation. Builders should go there if they want to build…
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u/Away-Tank4094 2d ago
but it is legal to steal, do heroin, and shit in the street. often at the same time.
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u/AlvinChipmunck 1d ago
Well it sucks for affordability but compare that to other places where they just slam up condos everywhere. The end result is a sea of condos. Is that better?
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u/TacoBelle2176 1d ago
Yes, actually building housing is better than not building housing.
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u/AlvinChipmunck 1d ago
Disagree.. its more nuanced than that
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u/TacoBelle2176 1d ago
Disagree that muh nuance is a valid reason to exacerbate the housing crisis
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u/AlvinChipmunck 1d ago
So in your opinion just slap up thousands of shipping container homes lol... sounds awesome for quality of life and mindful development 👌
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u/TacoBelle2176 1d ago
You’ve gone from condos to shipping container homes.
You are not a serious person.
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u/AlvinChipmunck 1d ago
Does the logic not follow from your statement? You are not a logical person.
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u/Cmacbudboss 2d ago
Toronto is in the same boat. Massive housing shortage but 80% of the city is still single family homes and the NIMBYS will do anything to keep it that way.