Tuesday, June 23, 2015

San Francisco, 'Gentrification(!)' and why the small cities "need to step up"

Henry Grabar at Slate has an interesting take on the rental crisis in San Francisco in an article titled, "The Biggest Problem With San Francisco’s Rent Crisis". Could extrapolate on West Palm Beach and their revitalization, All Aboard Florida, and the high number of lots in a city just south of West Palm; but I'll let you draw your own conclusions. From the article in Slate:
     Between 2007 and 2014, San Francisco issued as many permits per capita as booming Santa Clara County, home to San Jose and Silicon Valley, one of California’s fastest-growing counties.
     The biggest problem with housing in San Francisco isn’t actually in San Francisco. It’s in the suburbs.
     In the Bay Area, the cities that have shut their doors to housing are the suburban municipalities that contain most of the region’s population. “The smaller communities, in my opinion, need to step up, and I don’t see that happening,” San Francisco planning director John Rahaim says. “There’s such a huge demand in general and that can’t be met just by the big three cities.”
     Nor should it be. Once upon a time, a forward-thinking planner might have conceived of the region as three high-density nodes of housing and jobs, in San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland, with quiet bedroom communities strung like beads along commuter rail lines and highways.