How high do living expenses have to be before a place has trouble hiring low-income or blue collar employees? Or will there always be those who are willing to put in the travel time to fill them?
My commute was 2 hours in the morning, and 2 1/2 hours back at night. It was miserable, and I would never wish it on anyone. I feel for these people possibly losing their homes (some who have lived there for 30+ years!).
So look, I read Ayn Rand when I was in college, I get economic impact of rent-control, and how it actually ends up hurting the lower socio economic strata - It's not like I'm ignorant of all these things.
It's just, at the end of the day - I can appreciate how it would suck to have your entire world ripped apart.
The entire peninsula is unaffordable for low-income workers. Crossing the Dumbarton bridge is a ~30m commute in itself and costs $5/day. Downtown Palo Alto just instituted parking restrictions on the surrounding neighborhoods so low income commuters no longer even have a place to park.
To clean a house in the area can cost ~$150. Good nannies can make $50-60K a year. Plumbers are expensive. Gardeners are expensive. And so on. This is just basic economics.
Also, I think the commutes are somewhat blown-up. Plenty of cheap places in San Jose that aren't much more than 40 minutes away if you avoid rush hour.
Leaving aside the question of whether or not 40 min is a reasonable commute, you don't get to determine if you avoid rush hour, and you probobly won't. So 40 min is at best a lower bound rather than what you would expect to see.
You don't even need to fire anyone -- just hire more slowly than otherwise when things are growing, and potentially not replace people when they leave (although that's less scheduled).