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Comment by temp129838 | Hacker News Reader

You either do not live in the Bay Area or you are wildly misinformed. 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. It has nothing to do with overpopulation.

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> 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.

The number of people I know in suburban settings and inner city settings are fairly equally miserable and depressed though. I kinda don't buy that suburbia makes a happy-life theme...

I’m not talking about suburbs, if you’re able to walk to a neighbours house within a day, it’s too crowded.

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.

By 1996, price inflation for housing in Seattle was in full force, as was NIMBYism. It was unaffordable enough by '92 that I got out then. I have friends who bought around that time and were paying what I considered to be ridiculous prices. I don't blame them for wanting to preserve it. They didn't ask Amazon to start there.

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