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Comment by aluminum96 | Hacker News Reader

> why is there never discussion of reducing demand instead of increasing supply

There is discussion of reducing demand, primarily by attacking the tech industry. Example: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/02/palo-alto...

Obviously, implementing such a policy at such a regional scale has major side effects, both on the tech industry and on America. The jobs and people have to go somewhere, and we are already exporting our housing crisis to other tech cities (Austin, Seattle, Portland) at an alarming pace. Eventually this will become a national problem.

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> The jobs and people have to go somewhere, and we are already exporting our housing crisis to other tech cities

I hear you, but we are out of space in the Bay Area. Still lots of land in other parts of the country. And quite simply, there's too much money in the Bay Area --with that inequity leading to homelessness in the lowest wage earners-- and too little money circulating in other parts of America (with therefore no low-wage employment opportunities in all the necessary support roles).

> we are out of space in the Bay Area

This could not be further from the truth. Consider: the Terraces at Lafayette, a proposed new apartment building that would replace an empty field. The City of Lafayette delayed the project for almost a decade entirely on spurious grounds. We are not out of space, it just feels like it because we refuse to allow our space to be used efficiently.

Eh, your example is on the other side of the hills, where yeah there's space -- and also horrendous traffic bottlenecks to get to/from the bay-surrounding cities. Which are out of space.

They're not out of space. There's a lot of yard and a lot of altitude to fill. There's empty fields all over the south bay. Luckily, some near my previous place in Sunnyvale recently-ish got turned into town houses. My current house is adjacent to two empty acres.

I'm not sure how to say this, but have you ever been to the sunset? There is nothing but space in large swaths of the city.

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