Rent prices in SF are down like 20-30% compared to last year. That doesn't mean 20-30% of people have left, obviously, I'd probably guess just a few percent have gone, but that's still a good chunk of people for an area that more recently was growing with huge demand.
The NIMBYs and prop13 are unnecessarily hurting everyone except those that bought property a long time ago and pay relatively no property tax while suppressing any new housing and forcing new buyers to subsidize them.
Median housing price on the peninsula is 3 million, you can get a tiny old condo from the 60s for 1.3M if you can find it.
SF is a little better with some newer apartments available in the 800k - 1.2M range and some older stuff that's cheaper.
It sucks and it's totally unnecessary. Allowing more housing to be built would reduce the cost. NYC does it, Tokyo does it, it's possible and would be better for everyone except the NIMBYs leveraging their luck for their own self-interest.
In the context of historical exclusionary zoning and explicitly racist policy about restricting housing access framing it as 'local control' and 'protecting neighborhood character' is just a way to continue to block people from entering the community to protect a small subset of owner's self-interest that was protected by historically unfair policy.
There's a deep irony seeing 'black lives matter' signs on someone's lawn right next to anti-housing council member election signs.
Rent-Control, 'affordable' housing are bad hacks that make things worse. We need to build more supply of everything and a lot of it.
The current situation also sucks for start-ups where massive costs get eaten up by landlords. Here you've either had one or two successful exits or live with 3 roommates (or your parents are rich, or are locals). It'd be so much less stressful if housing cost was something you didn't have to worry about or it was possible to actually buy something.
What if there was enough supply to buy a place for 400-500k? Maybe then my friends wouldn't have had to leave to start a family live without roommates.
My only hope is something like SB50 eventually passes and takes local control of zoning away from these people:
- https://www.sanjoseinside.com/the-fly/cupertino-council-cont...
- https://twitter.com/lydia_kou/status/857012783895912450?s=20