The problem can be attacked from two angles. Either ramp up housing development to take care of the population influx, or slow down the population influx to match the rate of housing development. Obviously, the people of the area have a vested interest in keeping the area attractive; but for the rest of us, I think it's important to remember there are other places to live and you can be just as happy or happier elsewhere. I'm someone who could have used that reminder a year ago.
There's a lot of justification that goes into paying $3000 per month to live in a one bedroom apartment. You have to recoup that value elsewhere. A lot of it has to do with the job opportunities available to tech workers. That's undeniable. But some of the other justifications I used were more or less lies I started telling myself about why I had to stay.
> Are you proposing that everyone in SF move to places like the Central Valley (driving up price)
It's already happening, so maybe we should embrace it as a valid option. The town I'm living in has become sort of a telecommuter town, precisely because of rents in SF.
> and start driving around cars (increasing traffic and pollution)?
I actually went about 8 months without a car in SF. I took Uber, bike, and muni as my get around. Between me and my wife, we were spending $700 per month on transportation, so we ended up buying a car to get around -- it was just more convenient. Out in the valley, we actually put fewer miles on it, because it's easier to bike out here, and things are actually closer to us than they were in the city (both in miles and minutes).
care to elaborate?
I don't know where you came up with this. The OP implied that by moving away from a heavily populated area and working remotely, he was able to afford more space and shorten his commute. You managed to turn no commute into increased pollution and moving to a less densely populated place as "driving up price"?
Besides this obvious thing, what exactly is your point?
Saying "it's crowded here, let's go move somewhere else and make that crowded" is not just kicking the can, it's making the problem worse because often those areas have even less mass transit.
Infrastructure is not something the average citizen seems to give a fig about.
I would bet >50% of the people working in the bay area who say they can't work remote are doing jobs that could very easily be done remote.
Do you work on a computer? You can do that remote.
Plenty of people work on, and require physical access to, computer systems that can’t practically be made available to remote workers.