People just aren't interested in any perceived threat to their property values so they're strangling growth based on an entitlement mindset. No, sirs and ma'ams, your home's price appreciation isn't a right.
No, but they do have a right to vote for policies and politicians that defend their interests.
However, any system that allows people to rent seek by creating building restrictions that protect their property values is not an optimal solution. So sure, they can vote but they should not be able to vote on zoning.
What about nuisances or factories or what have you? Well, that's easy enough to take care of through noise ordinances. Land use zoning is mostly a well intentioned but terrible in practice policy idea.
1. Less room to spread out in the Bay Area. Detroit does not have many high-rises, and as far as I can tell, it has had a large number of single-family dwellings condemned/abandoned etc. during the recession. Also, Detroit is in a seismically stable zone.
2. Large number of incoming people who do not have a say in local politics in the Bay Area. To my knowledge, many of the incoming workers are here on visas, and they are largely apolitical, unable, or uninterested to cast a vote. Most of the busy workers do not have the time or the inclination to participate in local politics. I imagine this must not have been the case in Detroit, where unions were strong.
The other problem is that many Bay Area residents who bought their properties when interest rates were quite high (I had an older colleague who bought his house at 24% or so interest rate --- unimaginable nowadays), and the Federal Government had not embarked on a protracted QE, QE2 ... phase of pumping money into the economy, so to a certain extent, buying a house in the Bay Area has always been hard (not impossible, though, which it is now, for most people); as a result these existing homeowners (who ploughed a significant portion of their incomes into their homes) feel entitled to keep their insane property values that way.
2. This is much closer to the heart of it. Local politics allows homeowners to veto good housing policy in the interest of protecting their investments. However, Detroits expansion had nothing to do with the unions lobbying for housing policy, there just wasn't much in the way of zoning laws and people built where there was demand.
In any case, the only thing that's going to fix the housing crisis over there is zoning reform. Believe me I feel your pain, I live in Manhattan. At least we're doing some building, though not nearly as much as we should. If it were up to me all (most) of the three story sixpacks in Bushwick would be bulldozed for six story tenements.
But New Yorkers beware. The Subway is at risk of being destroyed by idiot Cuomo. It's already leagues behind London (which does it cheaper and better), not to mention Tokyo and others.
I'd put this more on the Bay Area's low population than on the geography.
Also, Santa Clara county is chock-full of EPA superfund sites. Lots of soil and groundwater contamination.
The other is that most of the built land is zoned extremely low density.
Doesn't increased density help property values? If I can build a high rise on your 1 acre plot of land, its value should go up.
However, if you are in a neighborhood of single family homes and a huge multi family building is constructed on your block, your home price will go down because there will be enough supply to meet demand, taking pressure off the single family homes.
If you are in an already dense city and regulations are relaxed so that more high rises can be built in more neighborhoods, the price of your condo all else being equal will be lower because there will be more supply. The land price may well go up but your individual apartment would likely be worth less.
which is why NIMBYs should at least be in favor of gentle density - duplexes and triplexes, small walk-ups, etc. But they fight those like the end-of-days too.
Look, I don't want to destroy the value of the largest "asset"[0] most people will own. But... what's the alternative here? The incumbents just get to grow fat off riches that they absolutely lucked into and played minimal part in creating, while lower-income residents get forced out of their homes? We just give up on the bay area as a worthwhile economy, have all the tech companies pull out, and then home prices crash?
[0] People really really love to believe their primary residence is an asset/investment, because it cost them so much money to acquire it, that it just has to be. If they'd consider it just a cost of living, a liability even, we'd have such fewer financial issues in housing markets.
The problem is (1) we haven't built that much since 2008 anywhere, so any change seems like its a flood (2) most growth pre 2008 was greenfield SFH development, most growth happening now is in established communities