Posted on 09/12/2026 9:53:28 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
This probably isn't going to be good.
San Francisco's Mayor, Daniel Lurie, who ran as a kind of get-things-done moderate in America's most liberal city, just declared a "rent emergency."
San Francisco definitely has high rent compared to other parts of the country.
In San Francisco, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is more than $4,300, up more than $1,000 from last year, according to Zillow.
But what exactly is a "rent emergency"? There's no law in California or in the city that recognizes such a declaration. This is just another PR stunt someone has cooked up. The real question is what actual policies will fall under this declaration. From the sound of it, this is going to be a grab bag of bad progressive ideas.
The emergency declaration itself is largely a symbolic gesture. But it could establish Lurie’s housing agenda as a priority...
Among the ideas the mayor supports is a proposal by Supervisor Jackie Fielder to block landlords from evicting tenants who owe less than a month’s rent. He also wants $3 million to pay for lawyers to represent 400 households facing eviction proceedings, an additional $3,000 to be paid to tenants displaced by the Ellis Act, and other protective measures.
More than 1,000 eviction notices have been filed this year in San Francisco, putting it on pace for the most in nearly a decade, Lurie’s office said.
Rent increases in rent-controlled apartments would be capped at 10% per year under proposed legislation from Supervisor Danny Sauter that Lurie supports. Tenants would get annual reminders about the annual rent increase maximum and rules regarding evictions under legislation sponsored by Supervisor Matt Dorsey.
Not exactly a rent freeze like the one promised by Mamdani but something close to it. The underlying problem here is that Lurie has been trying to get the city back on track by catering to all the AI expansion he can get. But the people in that field are making high salaries and can afford to pay high rents. People working regular service jobs in the city cannot.
He has been credited with bringing vibrancy and optimism back to San Francisco.
But the renewal has coincided with a huge injection of tech wealth, and rents are spiking more than anywhere else in the country, according to the mayor’s office. In the past year alone, the median rent has soared more than 25 percent...
But paying lawyers to keep people in their homes when they don't pay the rent isn't going to solve anything in the long term. The only real solution is to build more apartments for all those new tech workers coming to town. That would keep the prices lower.
But regular readers know it's almost impossible to build anything in San Francisco. The number of city agencies and regulations involved ensure that the cost is always higher than anywhere else. It cost the city $1.7 million to install a public toilet in a location that already had underground plumbing. That's what builders are up against.
The most direct way for cities to rein in housing prices, though, is to build a lot more housing, said Alex Horowitz, who studies housing policy for the Pew Charitable Trusts. Cities such as Minneapolis, Nashville and Austin, Texas, that have made it easier and cheaper to build more units have kept rents down, he said.
San Francisco, however, has not. Decades of resistance to new housing has finally given way to some changes in zoning and permitting laws, but only 489 housing units, or about 10 per square mile, have been built in the entire city so far this year.
“There are cities that have tried to regulate their way out of the problem,” Mr. Horowitz said. “None of those cities have seen big affordability improvements.”
Oz Erickson, a local developer and a member of the San Francisco Apartment Association board of directors, disputed that there was a rent emergency in the city. He said that San Francisco’s rents were only climbing fast now because they fell so far in the early part of the pandemic.
He said that the cost of building one unit of affordable housing, which he pegged at $1.1 million, was the real crisis.
What Lurie is doing is a stunt designed to make it look like he's addressing the problem, but he's not. In reality this is just another lousy way to avoid dealing with the real problem and in the long run the delay in focusing on new construction will only make things worse.
Sounds like a rent emergency to me. We lived. in SF decades ago, rented a charming apartment right across the street from Golden Gate Park and. a block from Clement Street that was lined with little restaurants from countries we’d never heard of. The bus ran right outside our door. Having pets was OK.
We paid $150 per month. Nice Chinese family owned the place. They soon moved to a huge mansion becaause the wife was one of the first people to bring plastic grocery bags to the States.
We lived there several years anf they never raised the rent
“…people in that field [tech] are making high salaries and can afford to pay high rents. People working regular service jobs cannot.”
I moved to San Fran in 1978 after getting my ME degree and worked in the power industry. I was out at plants in the west most of the time. After five years, I settled in Silicon Valley. That has been the same problem / lament all my years there.
The San Fran Peninsula / Silicon Vally area is u recognizable with all the high density housing that’s been added. But it’s still very expensive. Caltrain will take you from your somewhat cheaper apartment on the peninsula to your job in SF.
That's San Franshitsco. the only place I know that has a web site to Track and Map piles of Shit.
San Francisco Poop Map A
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=b6fab720912642b6aedafdb02a76d2a4
Daily Mail Online: Interactive map reveals the staggering number of human waste on San Francisco's streets
https://www.openthebooks.com/daily-mail-online-interactive-map-reveals-the-staggering-number-of-human-waste-on-san-franciscos-streets/
San Francisco's poop statistics: Are we measuring the wrong thing?
https://www.tonym-v.com/blog/2020/2/4/san-franciscos-poop-statistics-are-we-measuring-the-wrong-thing
We grew up between San Francisco and San José, when Kalifornia was California, and Reagan Country.
Every time someone would move, or pass away, they would scrape the old house, and build 4-6 houses where there was just one before.
IF-—PAYING A PERSON $20 AN HOUR PLUS BENEFITS FOR SERVING YOU FRENCH FRIES ACROSS THE FAST FOOD COUNTER IS SO WONDERFUL:
WHAT KIND OF $$$$$ DO YOU ALL THINK THESE PEOPLE SHOULD BE PAID TO DO ALL THAT BUILDING: ????
CARPENTERS/FRAMERS
ELECTRICIANS
PLUMBERS
HVAC INSTALLERS
CARPET LAYERS
PAINTERS
WINDOW INSTALLERS
ROOFERS
CONCRETE WORKERS
TRUCKERS DELIVERING THE SUPPLIES
ETC ETC ETC
NOT TO EVEN POINT OUT THAT LOGGERS NEED TO CUT THE TREES DOWN IN THE VERY FIRST STEP OF THE PROCESS-—AND CALIF HAS BEEN VERY BACKWARD ABOUT HARVESTING THE TREES GROWN FOR LUMBER...AND THE LUMBER MILLS THAT WERE CLOSED DOWN OVER THE “SPOTTED OWL”. OVER 100 IN CALIF ALONE. ENTIRE SMALL N CALIF TOWNS WERE DECIMATED.
EVERY CALIF COUNTY SEES HOUSING AS A CASH COW WITH PERMITS & OTHER COSTS BEFORE THE NEW RENTER/OWNER USES THE FRONT DOOR KEY FOR THE FIRST TIME.
IT IS THE USUAL POLITICIANS BLATHER ABOUT NEEDING SOMETHING DONE-—BUT THE COUNTIES & CITIES ARE THE FIRST HURDLE -—AND THE PROPERTY TAXES WASTED ON A MILLION THINGS ENDS UP COSTING US ALL.....
THEY IGNORED FRAUD & SOME ACTUALLY PARTICIPATED IN IT ALL-—
NONE OF THOSE MONIES SEEM TO BE REPLACED OR FRAUDSTERS ACTUALLY SERIOUSLY PUNISHED.
THEY TREAT LANDLORDS LIKE DIRT & FORCE LANDLORDS TO KEEP REPAIRING WHAT “HUMAN” ANIMALS KEEP DESTROYING.
THEY TALK OUT OF SEVERAL SIDES OF THEIR MOUTHS EVERY MOMENT OF EVERY DAY......
THERE IS MORE TO THIS ALL THAN WHAT THEY ARE BLATHERING ABOUT
A good start would be to apply the law of “supply and demand.”
Get rid of the illegals and there’ll be a larger “supply” of rental units available and a smaller number of prospective tenants. Thus the rental rates will decrease to attract the smaller number of tenants.
San Francisco and California will address this problem in the classic socialist way. They will start with variations of rent controls and tenant protections that suffocate landlords, kneecapping all efforts to increase supply.
To meet the spiraling social dysfunctions caused by crushing housing costs, they will relentlessly raise taxes on “the rich” and businesses until they drive Big Tech, banking and other highly paying industries away. (Just as LA has so successfully gutted Hollywood, which now wants to shoot movies and shows anywhere but California.)
Having wrecked both the housing stock and the economy, they will find it easier to turn SF into a settlement house for illegal immigrants, addicts and the mentally ill.
They will then demand massive and eternal federal subsidies to address the humanitarian crisis.
Works every time. Socialists call this social justice, by which they mean a system in which only the political class and its cronies do well. And they will do very, very well for themselves, because that’s easy to arrange in a one party state.
A rent emergency in SFO is a dem emergency.
A rent emergency in SFO is a dem emergency.
A rent emergency in SFO is a dem emergency.
A few years ago I sold a house in south Alabama. It was a 1500 square foot, brick house in good condition. I got an offer from some people from SF who had seen it on line. Their offer was fair, $128,000. Their address was on the offer and I looked it up. Their house was very comparable to mine. The Zillow price was $1.1 million. I do not know if they owned or rented as the sale fell through.
It doesn't matter
Build more housing units or live with high rent. It ain’t rocket science.
I believe San Francisco is still served by BART.
Service workers could live in Richmond and commute in.
Service workers could live in Stockton and work four days a week in San Francisco for say 35% higher wages than are paid in Stockton. They could take a commuter bus from Stockton to a BART station and then ride BART into SF.
I read about a San Francisco fireman who commuted in from Montana.
There have been commuter trains to New York City from Poughkeepsie, New Haven and Trenton for a long time.
Workers commute into DC from Fredericksburg, Frederick, Harper’s Ferry and the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
“Build more housing units or live with high rent. It ain’t rocket science.”
New housing tends to command a premium.
“Get rid of the illegals and there’ll be a larger “supply” of rental units available and a smaller number of prospective tenants. Thus the rental rates will decrease to attract the smaller number of tenants.”
Ilictos tend to rent rooms off lawful residents of the same origin.
Those lawful residents will remain in place.
Trump is making no serious effort to remove most ilictos.
Pretty much only felons and the ilicitos in their company are getting removed.
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