Housing horror stories in San Francisco
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| Photo, Jason Henry for the NY Times |
In today's NY Times (The Housing Market With Nowhere to Go (but Up):
Not long ago the pink house at 1829 Church Street, in the Glen Park neighborhood here, hit the market for $895,000. It sold for $1.425 million---$530,000 over the asking price---in less than two weeks.
The story of this fixer-upper, with three bedrooms, two baths, linoleum floors and an Eisenhower-era kitchen, is in some ways the story of the moment in the city, where longtime residents complain that Silicon Valley money is basically ruining the place for everyone else....At a recent open house for 1829 Church Street, the broker explained the property’s dilapidated appeal. “It’s a block away from all the tech shuttles,” he said....When Mark Zuckerberg bought his pied-à-terre in San Francisco’s Noe Valley in 2012, he had a representative knock on the door of the home he liked---it wasn’t even for sale---and then offered the owners all cash at double the value of the property.
See also Rebecca Solnit in the London Review of Books.
Not long ago the pink house at 1829 Church Street, in the Glen Park neighborhood here, hit the market for $895,000. It sold for $1.425 million---$530,000 over the asking price---in less than two weeks.
The story of this fixer-upper, with three bedrooms, two baths, linoleum floors and an Eisenhower-era kitchen, is in some ways the story of the moment in the city, where longtime residents complain that Silicon Valley money is basically ruining the place for everyone else....At a recent open house for 1829 Church Street, the broker explained the property’s dilapidated appeal. “It’s a block away from all the tech shuttles,” he said....When Mark Zuckerberg bought his pied-à-terre in San Francisco’s Noe Valley in 2012, he had a representative knock on the door of the home he liked---it wasn’t even for sale---and then offered the owners all cash at double the value of the property.
See also Rebecca Solnit in the London Review of Books.
Labels: Housing in the City, Smart Growth
posted by Rob Anderson @ 9:58 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Hard to know if you're serious or not, Rob. Is this in fact a horror story or are you making light of it? No way to tell. Also not sure why it's tagged "smart growth". The house in question is far older than any "smart growth". Though it is uncomfortably close to transit, so that's one dim-bulb feature it has. Perhaps Muni will get cut back further and this unfortunate vicinity to public transit will be lessened in the future.
Of course I think it's a horror story. Only people like Zuckerberg or property owners looking to cash in on the situation can see this any other way.
You aren't a very close reader of this blog. Less than two weeks ago I knocked the Bay Guardian left for essentially being AWOL for years on residential highrises, which are all about market-rate housing, not affordable housing, however defined.
One of the earliest posts on this blog worried about the dumb smart growth approach to housing in SF, a theory that in practice never seems to produce much affordable housing.
That's also true of the UC project, the Market/Octavia Plan, and almost all of the development that's planned for 19th Avenue. None of these projects have any but a required "affordable" housing component (That term should always be put in quotes in San Francisco).
I'm also a supporter of the Muni system, since I don't have a car, which I couldn't afford even if I wanted one.
"I'm also a supporter of the Muni system, since I don't have a car,"
Yes but the house in this article is built close to transit, isn't that a bad, dim-bulb smart growth thing?
Rob, I had an idea. You know how you were saying that all the new development is making the housing crisis worse? Maybe if we demolished some of the existing housing and made it into parking lots? This might help to bring down housing prices by diminishing the supply, and also make it easier to drive in SF by providing more parking spaces. I'm just thinking out loud here, but seems like it might be worth a shot.
Chris Daly was AWOL on the residential highrise issue when he was Sup of D6. He negotiated a lump sum payment from developers of the transbay skyscrapers and as a resident of D6 I have not seen one penny worth of improvements in my neighborhood. Chris was silent to the MO plan which will dump 450 foot towers 25 feet from our 35 foot western soma resident enclave. The Planning Commission was deaf to our neighborhood's concerns which will be flooded with impacts from these monster developments.
Face it, what SF needs is an earthquake. Preferably a deadly one.
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