Giving up until the Federal government solves the problem isn't good enough. Especially because nobody even knows what policies will work. It's better to experiment at the city level.
The city of San Francisco is in a unique position of having resources and political will to try new policies. I'll cast my vote accordingly.
You're way to focused on the concept of elasticity. There's a lot more to figure out before that's the immediate problem.
Your error is that you're obsessed with trying to fix this within a market economy, by specifically housing them in areas of high economic activity where they can supposedly find "opportunity". That won't work and is counterproductive.
> Only housing near economic opportunity means anything.