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Comment by amiga_500 | Hacker News Reader

What happened? Did they change the zoning laws?

I think Hacker News always cites that as the main problem, right?

There are two sides to the housing equation. Supply and demand. Demand has been high for quite some time, so the only way to alleviate it was to increase supply (aka change the zoning).

But now demand is down. Lower demand will probably be temporary until things open up again. May people live in SF for the cultural aspects (bars, clubs, theaters, restaurants). Once those open people will want to live there again.

Just to be clear, currently demand falls is addressing both global warming and housing prices. But demand is a terrible way to fix things because it means a lot of human suffering at the same time. So yes, taking away everyones money is one way of solving expensive rents, but not the ideal way.

There's taking away people's money but there's also just giving people more flexibility in where they live. If everyone still wants to live in a particular location regardless of any work requirements, that's one thing. But if people are primarily there because they have to be that's another.

Totally agree, and it is a good thing if people who doesn't want to be there doesn't need to anymore. But in general demand slumps are hard to fix and last longer.

I think there are a lot of (especially) younger people who are looking at this through the lens of increased urbanization being inevitable. But the reality is that most US cities were still losing population into the nineties.

When I graduated from grad school in the late 80s, basically none of my cohort lived in Boston/Cambridge--including those whose jobs were in the city. (Pretty much all of the tech industry jobs were in the suburbs/exurbs "Route 128")

So, yeah, if there's a mass exodus, even if somewhat transitory, the restaurants and bars and shops will tend to be gone and it won't be easy to refresh. And the people who moved out will be somewhat older and won't be inclined to return and the younger generation won't really get the appeal.

No, demand is just lower because companies have everyone working remote for the time-being, and so for a lot of people it doesn't make sense to live in the city and pay SF rent while just sitting at home.

Instead, people are just moving to lower cost-of-living cities and working from there, so there's less demand for apartments and landlords have to lower prices to compensate.

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