Common sense is for sure the worst idea ever conceived of when the topic is highly technical.
Your common sense on the cost of construction is as valuable as mine is on how an affidavit should be filed in the second circuit.
You may be right and it’s just corruption but your common sense is totally meaningless in making that case.
I mean my career is in this field. I could walk you through the absurdity but what’s the point.
As was mine. I spent a decade building commercial, public, and residential development.
This is such an interesting example of how the media works.
Every article I can find just cites back to the original Chronical article. Nobody has done any actual reporting except them and they just have quotes from politicians and a very basic statement from the Parks department that says
The San Francisco Parks and Recreation Department noted the estimate is on the high end to account for construction costs, paying workers a living wage and “worst case scenarios.”
Not one paper or website looked for the development permit or budget. Nobody has reviewed either. It’s just an tsunami of media sources all citing the same original one forcing politicians to react. All without any actual review of data or budgets.
I’ll say again, this might be pure corruption but there is nowhere near enough available evidence to make that claim.
Kinda related but not really: having read about the housing situation in Santa Cruz, and UC Santa Cruz being a possible college destination for my kid, I wondered if it would make sense to buy a place and then sell it when your kid leaves. I give you the cheapest single-family property in Santa Cruz:
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/101-Park-Ave_Santa-Cruz_CA_95062_M24086-13899
If’n you don’t want to click:
Real estate in these places is just crazy. Less than 600 square feet! Lol
My friend just sold his place here for $700k and joked it was $680k for the property and $20k for the house as it was built in 1934 and was tiny. He knows the buyer is just going to level it and build a McMansion.
Sure but I would like to know more about the price. For example, let’s speculate the site was a former gas station that had leaking tanks. That price, if it included remediation, would be on the low end.
My original point, which now that I have looked into more, seems correct is this is just a standard “government is too big” click bait story where nobody has done any research. It has been picked up by hundreds of media sources because it perfectly feeds the anti-government narrative and seems so “obvious based on common sense”.
Honestly the house is probably a negative value. It costs money to knock it down. The real vale of the existing house is that it means the property is all connected to municipal water and sewage and electricity and gas lines.
LOL housing doesn’t just magically get this expensive.
Who said it does?
Prices like these are almost always the result of poor city planning and/or politics preventing proper development.
“it’s not necessarily corruption, maybe there was a superfund site on that four square meters of land that required a massive cleanup before they built the structure, then it would obviously be a pretty good bargain” come on guys listen to yourselves
I of course made no mention of superfund sites. Do you have information I couldn’t find supporting corruption?
This article is all over my twitter, and makes it seem casual cocaine use is still a huge thing in NYC?
I do wonder why they’re calling it a drug delivery service and not a drug dealer
It definitely was/is in LA, until recently at least. I think possible sudden death due to fentanyl has put a bit of a damper on it.
Casual cocaine use is still a huge thing among young professionals in tons of cities AFAIK, probably supercharged in NYC due to wall streeters with tons of money and no time for sleep
Fentanyl seems like a weird thing to put in cocaine. Like yeah, I wanna be totally jacked to the tits, but I also want to lay on the carpet in a stupor at the same time.
Yeah cocaine remains hugely popular. For a while it was a drug associated with the 80s but its very ubiquitous now.
Ginsburg wrote back Friday morning, noting it was the first time he’d received any questions from Haney about the $1.7 million project. Ginsburg agreed the project is “long and expensive,” but said it results from skyrocketing construction costs, as well as years of political choices laid out in local, state and federal codes.
For example, for one little bathroom, city laws require Rec and Park to seek approval from or partner with Public Works, the Planning Department, the Department of Building Inspection, the Arts Commission to review its civic design, the Public Utilities Commission, the Mayor’s Office of Disability and Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
He pointed out Haney’s previous stomping grounds, the Board of Supervisors, is responsible for some cost-raising choices, such as banning the city from doing business or contracting with companies in 30 states because those states discriminate against LGBT people, restrict abortion rights or suppress voting rights. Ginsburg pointed out that makes purchasing prefabricated bathrooms or other materials more expensive.
He also pointed out that the Noe Valley bathroom isn’t a rarity in its exorbitant price. A small, single-toilet bathroom in McLaren Park recently cost $1.6 million, and a similar one in Alamo Square cost $1.7 million. The difference this time is the public attention.
Ginsburg also provided Haney with a breakdown of the Noe Valley toilet budget. The construction itself — including construction management, materials, utilities and labor — is $1.05 million. The rest seems to go back to the city for its own work: Rec and Park’s project management, the Department of Building Inspection for permits, architecture and engineering fees and other matters.
I should have thought of internal “soft costs”. My city does this too. Adds the costs of their internal time to the budgets. It does matter from a FTE perspective but it’s actually spent money already.
