Every city has rules about what you can and can't build within its boundaries. Even lightly-regulated cities like Houston still have rules about density, lot sizes, and what you can build where. There isn't such a thing as a city without "government intervention."
The current rules were put into place by previously powerful people who wanted the Bay Area to be low density. There are new powerful people who want to change the rules so it can be higher density.
Other people (not the people who are the main focus on this article) also want the local government to help pay to build homes for poorer residents. There are families which have been living in these areas for a long time who can no longer afford to stay. Many communities are only strong because there are people who have been there for a long time, who know each other and have worked hard to build that community. Kicking them out to make room for new comers, who may only be there temporarily, in time weakens the quality of life for everyone.
[1] http://www.hcd.ca.gov/policy-research/docs/2016-12-12-ADU-TA...
The biggest area of difference between states is the balance of power between city and county, from New England (where counties are basically just statistical divisions) to Hawaii (where cities are just statistical divisions, and counties handle everything). Whatever that balance is, it's at this level that things are administered day-to-day; no state that I know of, for example, has a single state-wide police force (only state forces with limited jurisdiction, like the California Highway Patrol), or a statewide primary and secondary education system ("school districts" run those instead).
That last (school districts) touches on a complicating factor in understanding US local government - special-purpose districts. These are bodies formed by agreement between a set of local governments (usually with a state veto) to jointly handle certain policy areas. For each area of responsibility, the lines are drawn differently - for example, the LA Unified School District runs services for Los Angeles and neighboring cities, which do not share the LA Police Department. The East Bay Municipal Utilities District has a jurisdiction which is based on a collection of cities, and overlaps not-quite-perfectly with the AC Transit District (a body run jointly by Alameda and Contra Costa Counties). The policy areas a special purpose district manages are often quite granular - for example, while AC Transit runs buses, a separate transit district (SF Bay Area Rapid Transit District) - run by Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties - runs the BART commuter rail. Despite BART running into South Bay counties, those counties do not participate in BART governance, and instead participate in the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties), which runs CalTrain, a different commuter rail service.
The results are... suboptimal. For example, in public transit, the result is a disjointed system where different transportation modes, and even different lines of the same transportation mode, are badly coordinated (have fun trying to get from Oakland to Mountain View by rail!). Compare with the gold standard of Germany, where Deutsche Bahn runs everything from intercity high-speed trains to local commuter rail and makes coordinated plans for the development of the transit system as a whole.
The insane house prices kind of only apply to newcomers on the scene and the system is rigged. It is inherently unfair and also undermines a functioning economy.
Therefore govt intervention/reform is needed to allow more housing to be built.
It is entitlement on both sides- but the law currently favors long term residents extremely- homeowners feel entitled to keeping their neighborhood the way it currently exists.
Most love the high property value (and low property tax!) for potential retirement and rental income- but some are frustrated their adult children cannot purchase a house and enjoy stability.
New residents feel that the law has been rigged against them and has created this situation.
>If enough people take that approach, maybe the jobs will move elsewhere too?
That is what is starting to happen now, but then there are millions of people desperate for jobs that are willing to put up with terrible conditions to make the finances work.
Given current trends of homelessness (both on street and in vehicles), extreme housing inflation, it will be interesting to see what happens without significant changes.
why aren't there more houses? maybe the government intervention already happened. anyway, they're just using their first amendment right to lobby the government, so yeah, it's an entitlement thing, in that they are entitled to do that.
Of course its reality. Wages can't go lower than subsistence for long, either people move out or wages go up.