This problem perplexes me, because it seems like it's a runaway train once it gets started.
First, we tend to build really huge homes. Make it possible to build small homes and that makes it possible to increase housing supply without tanking the price of the large houses.
Second, remove some of the tax protections that make housing super cheap for people who have owned it a long time already. This is a major issue in California and it's one people aren't going to want fixed.
It is a subsidy for The Haves who got in before prices went up and intentionally locked in their low costs and pulled the ladder up behind them. Their prices are low. It's everyone else who is paying for that.
You don't have to tank the prices on real estate in California to begin remedying this. Believing you do is part of the problem.
Start bringing down administrative costs and administrative barriers to building more housing. Ease up the choke hold on the supply.
You can have both "more butter and more guns" if you help people make their lives work. It's amazingly hard to be a productive member of society while sleeping in a tend and dodging the police. Getting back into housing tends to bring costs down while improving ability to earn, etc.
Stop flushing the lives of The Have Nots down the toilet in the name of preserving wealth for the privileged few. It does not have to be a tragedy for the already privileged to dump less on the less privileged.
That one's just a matter of messaging. I think you have bigger hurdles around:
* people want to have the same type of housing as they do today, or the opportunity to buy one of those less-dense single family homes in the future. If it's expensive, they can save up - or at least dream about it. If it's replaced with apartments, the option is gone entirely. However, there's lots of low-density commercial and industrial that can be upzoned instead! But if you're demonizing the suburbs and the single-family homes, instead of the single-use strip mall, you're asking for a lot more political opposition.
* and the biggest one to me: it takes SO LONG to build projects. You need streamlined plan approval, more labor availability, and a lot of money to do things in parallel instead of sequentially. Doing things in parallel also helps with some of the short-term property value hits you might otherwise get from a slowly-changing area.
But the only way you stop the land value appreciation is if people move out of the cities and the demand evaporates. And that's more likely if homelessness continues to increase than if you start doing something about the bottom of the housing market. Otherwise, a more populous city doesn't have lower land prices - look at Manhattan, SF, LA vs the rural US.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingWorks/comments/l6im7f/why_do...
https://www.reddit.com/r/CitizenPlanners/comments/lslfqg/mee...
People may well end up moving out of the big cities. But unless you are expecting a population crash for humanity globally, we just need more housing somewhere in the US.
I suspect California is so hard hit in part because we actively export homelessness from other states to California because the dry, temperate weather means sleeping outside isn't much of a hardship. And then there are myriad barriers to getting back into housing that help keep people long-term homeless once you are there.
It can be difficult to physically leave California on foot:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21309036
Climate:
https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/10/climate-and...
For every 100 families living in poverty on the West Coast, there are no more than 30 affordable homes
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove...
Across the US we need to be resolving our housing issues rooted in decades of housing policy gone awry. That's one of the things that needs to happen here.
Buying a house that you plan to resell is an investment. You don't have a right to a profitable investment, especially not one appreciating at the price that they are in California.
1. We are so far from building enough to even lower the price of houses, let alone depreciate them from $3m to $800k.
2. The idea that most residents in SF have outstanding debts of $3m is just.. you need to get out in this city a little more.
3. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. If there is even a possibility that with more building, the cost of your home would go from $3m to $800k, you shouldn't be going into debt if you are planning on not living in this home for the rest of your life.
Second, I don't live in SF, I live in a different area. Inflation is an issue here too, and I am genuinely concerned about how remedies would impact not only people directly but the city and the state. If California or it's cities do bad, there are implications across the country. Telling me to "get out of the city" is a confusing statement given that I know people that have these kinds of debts.
Three sounds like an empathy problem, so we can skip that one.