By Keith Menconi : sfexaminer – excerpt (Includes audio)
Want to solve California’s affordability crisis? The popular answer these days is to allow developers to build more homes. Supporters say it’s an intuitive solution that follows the basic logic of supply and demand laid out in Economics 101.
But as San Francisco city officials move forward with a controversial plan to allow much denser housing development across large swaths of The City, some residents who oppose that effort are embracing a heterodox housing researcher who argues that the mainstream housing consensus is simply wrong.
On a Saturday afternoon last month, a crowd of about 200 massed inside Noe Valley Ministry to hear the housing homily delivered by Patrick Condon, a professor of urban design at The University of British Columbia. Condon had come all the way from Vancouver to offer up a warning: “You’re in for a big disappointment.”
A former city planner, Condon has become a prominent voice in Vancouver’s own housing debate. He told the gathered crowd he has seen firsthand how increasing density doesn’t solve the problem of housing unaffordability. Despite a massive development boom in recent decades that has made Vancouver one of the densest cities in North America, housing prices there are among the highest on the continent.
“Unfortunately, it will take 30 years for you to realize that you were wrong,” he said...(more)
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