> The Bay Area's housing crisis is caused by a mix of bad zoning laws and rampant NIMBYism that has blocked enough housing construction to keep up with population growth.

There shouldn't be any population growth to keep up with. The problem is too many people on too little space. Not sure why people seem to want to live in cities that resemble ant-hills if it's shown that it makes them miserable and depressed.

Seattle has smaller scale of the same problems combined with the same resistance to upzoning and "changing the character of the neighborhood". They bought a house on a sleepy street of Capitol Hill in 1996 and somehow expect to be insulated from any change when twenty years later Amazon dumps a few billion into office space a thirty minute walk away.

> If we allowed denser housing, especially near where people work, we could bring down housing costs massively while reducing commutes.

And still be absolutely miserable. Dense housing it part of the problem, humans need space, and lots of it.

I'm talking global population, not local. If we reduce the global population (by strict birth control) by a factor 1000, I bet you won't see any of these problems.