I'm assuming there's political pressure from wealthy land lords who don't want their cash cow slain?
Comapre to Massachusetts. We have a law against snob zoning. So while there is a homeless problem, we're making steady progress because of developers buying people out and building apartments. (Mind you're, they're mostly buying parking lots, gas stations, and mini strip malls and putting housing there. And nobody's eminent domaining anybody.)
If you could just do something there are a number of solutions to housing affordability. Building, zoning, public transport, taxes or mortgage regulation. None of these by themselves solve the actual problem.
Boo-hoo. Poor rich people.
Then sell it and stop being that person. There's no obstacle. The interests of the landlords financial situation requires no extra care, let alone at the expense of tax payers or citizens at large.
Everyone person that buys a house is responsible for that decision, and punishing renters to protect them is straight up poor payers for the rich.
The only case where property values would drop is if you were in an area that exists unnaturally due to how low density the city core is. The trick is though if California ever fixed this problem the immense influx of capital investment, job creation, and migration pressure since the economy would be kicked into overdrive would drive those property values back up and way higher than the currently crippled density environment can allow. It might take longer than some owners are comfortable with (ie, decades) but considering how much growth Cali sees while stabbing itself in its own foot I'd imagine almost any currently developed and commutable single family home in any major metro area of the state would be worth twice what it is now in 30 years (adjusted for inflation) if they allowed unlimited building because the manic development you would see would drive density up in all directions of city cores for miles around each year.
Before I moved into my current place, I was in low income HUD subsidized housing. It was a brand new building with rent control. Rent control worked great, but the owners didn't keep their side of the promise. Maintenance took months, all amenities we paid for were broken, access to the garage to store our vehicles was broken for 4+ months, elevators were broken for months at a time.
There is no way to get people to freely build affordable housing in or around larger cities under this current system.
This is largely true but needs more qualifiers. There are non-profits that have done this successfully in cooperation with federal and local governments for the long term, for example Arlington Housing Corporation
https://www.ahcinc.org/
Like many business models it is often a challenge to pull off successfully and attempts to make it work without the right combination of people with the right skills, motivation, long term vision, persistence... will fail.
Thats how revolutions start. Be sure to do a door-to-door inspection for firearms before tearing down someone's house without their consent.
OR, people in the Bay Area can MOVE. Why can't you move?
Why can't you move?
Yeah but the problem is you can’t. Additional capacity always comes in onesie-twosie, not fast enough to outstrip the seemingly limitless demand to live in the area. Put up a couple thousand unit high rises? Big deal, won’t affect prices one bit, they’ll get snapped up before breaking ground. You really would have to build a million units all at once to do anything, and logistically you can’t.
Because the mechanism by which NIMBYism works is democratic control of the relevant governments, not a few hold outs refusing to sell out to a government-approved development (because if there was a such a development, it would use eminent domain from the outset, so such resistance would fail.)
Eminent domain isn't so much fun when its your stuff is it?
And these one million new apartments...where shall they get their water to drink or send their waste water? Where will these people park? What highway will they use?