There is a cost to society in effectively pricing out half of the population from an entire city. Is the benefit of mitigating that worth the cost?
For what it's worth, I think that it probably is.
Now in my case, the people who are shut out of my neighborhood arguably have less access to things like good schools, so in principle I'm uncomfortable with exclusionary zoning and economic segregation. But I don't know if that's the case in SF. Are the elementary schools in SF that much better than in surrounding towns?
There's a great deal of city-by-city, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, unit-by-unit variation, but the crisis is that even the floor is so high.
By some estimates it's double digit percentage points off US GDP
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/opinion/housing-regulatio...
Part of the cost is that tech companies have to find more and more money to pay staff in order to maintain the growth their investors demand, which leads them to do less and less ethical things like spying on people.
While such a large portion of tech company revenue is going to landlords (via staff wages) tech companies will continue to get worse at things like privacy.
I never said anything about if someone deserves to live somewhere.
A 1-bedroom apartment is a very specific type of unit and that's part of what I wanted to point out. You can also rent studios, converted rooms, or get roommates in a bigger place with more rooms. There's a lot of other options I'm leaving out too, but I reject the premise that everyone in SF absolutely requires a 1-bedroom apt as an essential. It's nice to have certainly, and having roommates isn't for everyone...but there are tradeoffs to every place you live. You can absolutely make SF work if that was your desire and you knew the tradeoffs.
Look at median household income, San Francisco is effectively off limits to most people.
I’ll push back a little on your point back alternatives not being too far behind the price of a 1 bedroom though. I know several people with units <$1800. Some converted rooms go for <$1500.
>don’t see any solution anytime soon
There's not. But a solution 5 years from now is better than never.
Would you argue we shouldn't do anything about climate change because that will take years of approval and political decisions before anything gets done?
I mean, yeah, it would be better to start ten years ago than today, but starting today must be better than never right?
However I’m not holding my breath nor am I optimistic about the short-medium term reality.