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Unless your plan is to undermine democracy I don't see how you can really fix this. With some exception, the people who decide the rules for what is and isn't allowed to be built in an area are the people who live there. I can be mad all I want that a city/township doesn't want to provide me the kind of housing I want but it would be wrong to force them.

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I think it was one of the US founding fathers that said, "The primary responsibility of a democracy is the education of its citizenry".

It sounds like Bay area residents are working against their own interests (home values) by reducing housing supply, thereby making their city so unlivable that home values will collapse anyway. Getting people to see the problem and vote accordingly may be difficult, but it doesn't seem completely impossible.

DOesn't have to be this way. NIMBYism is a failure of hyperlocal politics where the population looks out for their own interests at the expense of everyone who wants to move there. It can be solved by higher level governments banning restrictive zoning. California has already begun that process with the mandatory duplex zoning.

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