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It's not; there are literally tens of thousands of new units currently under construction[1] in the City. The issue people have is most proposals for new construction in San Francisco consist almost exclusively of luxury housing.

There's no shortage of housing in San Francisco, only a shortage of affordable housing.

[1] http://paragon-re.com/San_Francisco_Housing_Development_Repo...

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Generally construction of luxury-only housing indicates high regulatory barriers. Because it is hard to make a building, then demand is high, and the costs of meeting the regulations is also high. The rational response to that is to make he unit-cost high.

If you placed sever restrictions on car production you'd find the surviving brands would be the luxury brands.

According to your link, there are about 10,000 new units under construction. That's about 10-20 buildings worth. Not exactly a huge boom.

It's better than nothing.

And developers don't tend to want affordable housing. That's why it usually has to be enforced by regulations of some sort. They're quite cheap and want to maximize their profit (like any other business). City, cultural, etc concerns come second.

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